Heated Car Seats and Sperm: The New Ham and Eggs?

Are those warm and toasty heated car seats secretly (or openly) frying sperm cells? One can only say beware if you are male, and read on about this interesting German study.

Perhaps that famous insurance carrier, Lloyd’s of London, might now consider sperm cells as an insurable commodity; you know, those tiny, necessary carriers of life. This vital equipment may well have been taken for granted by a civilization bent on comfort in transportation. Nature has provided the ultimate safety by insuring that testicles hang outside the main part of the body. Optimal sperm production requires a temperature 1 to 2 °C below the core body temperature of 37 °C. According to news sources, Andreas Jung, at the University of Giessen, in Germany, and his colleagues decided to test whether heated car seats might be raising scrotal temperatures above this threshold. They did this by fitting temperature sensors to the scrotums of 30 healthy men, who then sat on a heated car seat for 90 minutes. Jung noted that the slight increase in the resulting scrotal temperature might well be enough to damage the sperm production process. Sitting in a car for long periods of time, even without a heated seat, is already known to raise scrotal temperatures, and previous research suggests that couples take longer to conceive if the man drives for more than 3 hours a day. So unless you plan your next conception to take place while driving or traveling somewhere by car, be on the safe side. Keep your sperm at home where they belong and know their way around. Better safe than comfortable? Go figure.