Semen and sperms: Do they deplete?

One of my young anxious patients once told me about his uncle telling him that losing semen is like losing blood, and that it makes man sexually and physically weak. He was also told that if he masturbates, his semen reserve will get depleted, leaving him incapable of becoming a father in his life.

It took efforts to convince the disturbed young man, educating and counselling him about how his uncle was misinformed and was unknowingly propagating a myth. This myth is being propagated widely since several generations, as I have observed in thirty seven years of my practice as a sexologist and counsellor.

It is not just this young man but large number of boys across the cultures and countries worry that if they ejaculate too often, they may run out of semen and won't have enough when they need it. This is a big fat myth and such a thing can never happen.

Semen is nothing but merely a mixture of the products of three glands – Secretions of the ‘Seminal Vesicles’ constitute 60% of semen. Secretions of the ‘Prostate gland’ constitute 30% of the semen… and lastly, ‘Sperms’ constitute only 10% of the semen quantity. Starting at puberty, these three glands continue to produce their secretions throughout a man’s life.

Sperms are produced in large numbers on an ongoing basis in the ‘seminiferous tubules’ of our testes. It takes about 74 days for the sperm to get fully formed and have a life of about 25 to 40 days. No less than 20,000 sperms are produced every minute by an average healthy young man. Each millilitre of semen contains about 20

to 120 million sperms. Every time a man ejaculates, he releases around 60 to 360 million sperms. Such is the level of sperm production in a healthy man from the start of puberty till his dying day.

Semen gets produced in our body only to get expelled out at the peak of sexual excitement. This facilitates conception (pregnancy) if desired. It has no other role ‘within’ our body and holding it back serves no purpose and has no extra benefits whatsoever!

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