A UK man who was struggling to have a baby was stunned after doctors diagnosed that his laptop had caused heat damage to his sperms.
As a result, the 30-year-old electrician Scott Reed and his wife, Laura, were finding it hard to conceive.
Reed started using his laptop on a table
instead and three months later, his wife Laura became pregnant with a daughter, the Daily Mail reported.
“I’ve never heard of this happening before, when the doctors told us it was a real shock,” Laura said.
“Scott would use his laptop in the evenings for a couple of hours on and off while we were watching television. He would use it for work and general things like Facebook. We had absolutely no idea the damage it was causing him,” she said.
The couple, from Clanfield in Hampshire, visited their doctor after trying for a baby for six months without success. Under the microscope, it was possible to see that the tail of the sperm had coiled around the head, meaning it couldn’t swim quickly to the egg.
Biomedical andrologist Sue Kenworthy, from Queen Alexandra Hospital, confirmed the heat of the laptop can have an effect on sperm. “Scott had been producing a healthy amount of sperm but looking under a microscope, I saw that there was heat damage,” she said.
The problem is common in chefs — who work in hot environments — but can also be caused by laptop computers.
“I never thought using a laptop would affect the quality of my sperm. After asking if I was a chef, the next thing was ‘Do you use a laptop?’” Scott said.