Ivy League sperm: Do you have it?
Talk about swimming upstream.
And there's a lot more about sperm banks and donor sperm that might surprise you. Keep clicking to read some fascinating facts assembled by Dr. Randi Hutter Epstein, the author of a new book entitled "Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank."
Brains and personality matter
To become a sperm donor, a guy must have lots of fast-swimming, well-formed sperm. But that's not all he needs. Potential donors are also judged on their personality and intelligence. It helps if you're an Ivy Leaguer (though being a sperm donor probably won't impress the admissions committee at Yale). If you've been rejected by a sperm bank, there's little chance applying again will do the trick. And rejects never find out why they didn't make the cut.Looks matter too
The ideal sperm donor stands six feet tall and has blond or brown hair, blue or green eyes and a "medium" complexion. Dimples? They're a plus, says Dr. Cappy Rothman, medical director of California Cryobank. Guys who are under 5'9'' are often rejected - though short men of Italian descent have been accepted as donors. It all depends on what women are looking for.Middle-aged? You can forget about becoming a sperm donor. Sperm banks generally want guys between 19 and 39 years of age.
One of millions and millions
It takes only one sperm to fertilize an egg. But to be accepted as a sperm donor, men generally must have above-average sperm quantity - about 300 million to 400 million sperm cells in each ejaculation. The average guy can muster only about 200 million sperm per ejaculation.Lucky for sperm donors, the male body is a sperm-making machine. In fact, once he hits puberty a guy churns out sperm every day of his life. Each sperm cell takes about 64 days to make.
GPS for gonads
The fertilization process is a bit like dating, only on a microscopic scale. And most of the little "guys" trying to score are so inept that they never make it anywhere near first base. They straggle. They go the wrong way. And even the best sperm are painfully slow. In fact, they swim about 30 micrometers per second, meaning it would take them 10 minutes to swim across the period at the end of this sentence.On the other hand, sperm aren't completely clueless. Recent research indicates that each sperm cell has a chemical receptor that helps guide it to the waiting egg. Think GPS for the gonads.