Craig Conover (Southern Charm) & Who Should Freeze Sperm

Dr. Amber Klimczak and Dr. Beverly Reed discuss why Craig Conover from Southern Charm decided to freeze his sperm. They discuss why men consider sperm freezing as well as the logisitics, how long it is good for, and the cost to do so.

Watch this (Season 2, Episode 13) on Youtube or listen on your favorite podcast platform to Two Peaks in a Pod.

https://www.youtube.com/@peakfertility

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/two-peaks-in-a-pod/id1694248202

Links are in @drhappyeggs IG bio.

#fertility #womenshealth #ivf

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:06

Hi, I'm Dr. Beverly Rhee, and I'm Dr. Amber Klimczak, and we are Two Peaks in a Pod. Well, welcome back, everybody. Dr. K, I have a celebrity story for you. I would. And this is one of my favorite reality shows. It's called Southern Charmed. We've actually talked about them before, but it's been a while, so I don't know if you remember. Do you remember? I feel like I

Speaker: 0:26

have seen this, like, once before.

Speaker 2: 0:28

I, here's why I kind of remember, is I think you like the southern mix.

Speaker: 0:32

Yes, yes. Aren't they the ones, like, they're in South Carolina or something? Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2: 0:37

yeah. You like him, right? Yes.

Speaker: 0:38

Yeah,

Speaker 2: 0:39

I know. This is Craig Conover. Yeah. And he's really handsome and sweet and cute and everything. And I saw a recent episode that I just loved because it involved fertility. So, of course, whenever I'm watching reality TV and there's fertility, I'm like, see, it's kind of like I'm working right now. Right? And so the scene is that Craig is talking to his girlfriend, Paige. And the thing is, Craig, he really wants to be a dad. He wants to get married and settle down and have kids. But Paige is this like New York woman. She's a career woman. She's got things to do. She's not even sure if she wants to get married, not even sure if she wants to have kids. And so, When they're talking about their timeline, they're thinking maybe three or four years at a minimum before they're going to have kids. Okay.

Speaker: 1:27

How old are they?

Speaker 2: 1:28

Are they? I think they're maybe thirties. I think he might be older than her as well, um, but, but poor Craig. He says, you know, since we're going to be putting things off, I think I'm going to freeze my sperm. And she looks at him and she was like, what? Like, that's crazy, you know? And I thought it was so interesting because on the female side of things Yeah, I'm like, maybe she should think about freezing her eggs. Right, she should probably freeze her eggs. Exactly, but we don't really ever hear the guys talking about it. And I think it brings up a lot of really important points. Like, number one, why aren't the guys talking about it? Should they be talking about it? And what is sperm freezing too? We can talk all about that today. So, um, I feel like there would be a lot of people that might want Craig's

Speaker: 2:16

sperm.

Speaker 2: 2:16

But I don't think he's just giving it out to people. If he's freezing it. I need to do a little bit more leg work here.

Speaker: 2:23

I need to look up Craig a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 2:26

He looks very handsome from the one photo I saw. I think his sperm would be in high demand. It really could be. But I think it's a really good thing because I will say a lot of times I will see couples and They'll come in and these days so many female patients are really educated about their fertility They know once they hit 35 their fertility is declining. They've got to be on top of it But because they get concern, then oftentimes their partner is getting concerned too. And he'll be saying to me, Oh my gosh, is my sperm going to be okay? Do I need to be worried and things like that? And I mean, really, I'm mostly giving reassurance. Do you see the situation too, where the male partner is really worried about his sperm? Yeah,

Speaker: 3:08

absolutely. Well, about their sperm and maybe if there's any increased risk, you know, to just being an older dad, you know, to a child or fathering a child at a later age. Um, and I think that they worry similar to how women do that. They're going to run out of sperm, you know, not have as much sperm. Um, Which isn't as big of an issue for men.

Speaker 2: 3:30

Well, and it is hard to explain because, um, you know, I'm such a visual person. So I actually got a recent graph that just shows it so beautifully. And maybe I'll try to add it later to this if I, um, if I can. But I, you don't want to be dismissive because really the true answer is yes, male fertility declines with age. And yes, there can be a higher risk of, of issues even with a pregnancy and all that. But the degree to which the fertility declines is so much slower. It's almost negligible when you compare the drop in fertility for females. And so if you're, you know, if you're listening, you won't see this, but if you're watching, you can see, I mean, here's kind of how the line goes for men, okay. A little bit down like this, right? Here's how it goes for female. It tanks like that. And a really easy example that I tell them to is look, if I think about my oldest female patient. Who's had a baby. She was 56. Now she used an egg donor. Okay. 56. My oldest male patient who I helped have a baby was in his late seventies. So that really shows you the difference in the capabilities of what we can do fertility wise. And, and honestly it wasn't even hard. But, but, but why, why was it so easy to help him? Well, his wife was much younger. You know, his wife was in her thirties. Um, and so in a case like that, if you've got young, young eggs, then sperm, even if it's not great, sperm can still have the capability to be able to produce Children. And so I think that's why you don't see very much information from fertility doctors saying, Hey, you really need to preach your sperm before the sperm ages. Because really, any low kind of amount of aging really is is easily correctable, I would say, with a lot of fertility treatments, too.

Speaker: 5:23

Right, definitely. And I think also just the fertility consult when I meet with a male and a female in a couple, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about ovarian aging, right, and how age affects the female's fertility. And then I think the man just from that, you know, is a lot of anxiety stims and then that's when I start getting the questions, well, do I need to do any other testing? Like they want to like, they're all, their only test is the semen analysis, you know? Yeah. And so I think they, they hear that too, coming from those sites. Yeah. And can

Speaker 2: 5:52

I just say on the female part of it too, it is kind of big. It's so annoying. Because, you know, they'll, some of the guys, the one is just do all the testing, right? And then what are my results? They're perfect. And the other people partners like rolling around. It's like, great. It's all me. It's all my old

Speaker: 6:09

eggs,

Speaker 2: 6:09

you know, and I'm

Speaker: 6:10

like, I know it's

Speaker 2: 6:11

so hard.

Speaker: 6:11

One of my new patients today was like, can I do his test? His test sounds fun.

Speaker 2: 6:18

Well, I do just want to bring up to you since we're talking about older sperm, um, there are kind of a couple. test you could consider. just basic semen analysis will look at the volume o look at the concentration of the sperm are swimming morphology, the shape of sperm. But even if you have a normal semen analysis, sometimes there can be something called DNA fragmentation or DNA damage inside the sperm that you cannot see on a traditional semen analysis. And so sometimes if I have, um, older male patients and let's say we're not getting the outcome we would have expected or. Let's say his partner is having a lot of miscarriages or something. You could always consider doing advanced testing to look for DNA fragmentation on the sperm. It's, um, some people call it a halo test, or there's kind of, there's different ways of looking at it. Now, it is considered controversial because some people would say, well, what would you do with that information? Ultimately, The treatment is live a healthy lifestyle. Or something that the men don't want to do, like surgical extraction of their sperm. Well, yes, that's true. Um, and so, you know, sometimes it's a, well, what, what, what kind of information would we gain from this? How would this change anything? Um, but at least it's something that could be thought about, because they do say men that are over 45 are probably higher risk of having some DNA fragments. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker: 7:46

But I will say, on the other hand, there are some circumstances where if you anticipate something might be happening in your future that you really might consider preserving sperm, right? Um, and so I think we're going to go through some of the examples.

Speaker 2: 8:01

Yes, and I, so I wanted to bring up a personal example, and this is about another Craig. I know this Craig. Yes, so we've been talking about Craig on Southern Charmed, but my husband's name is Craig. Does he know you're going to share his story? No. But we are, we are undergoing a momentous moment as a couple because he had a vasectomy. Oh, he did it. He did it. He did it. I know I was actually a little concerned because, um, You know, we, I kind of brought it up and then the next day he was like, well, my appointment's booked for Monday. And I'm like, what? And he was like, yeah, they actually offered me tomorrow, but I couldn't. And I'm like, you called and they immediately said they would do it. I'm like, there's no new patient appointment. There's no pre op appointment. No, all testes are the same. Oh, goodness. Okay, so, but, knowing he's going to get a vasectomy, I, of course, asked him as a fertility doctor, should we free some sperm before we do the vasectomy? And so, this is a really good time to think about that because a good proportion of my consults are We call it NFL, New Found Love, where you're with your partner. This is so sad to think about. I know, you're with your partner. Everything's great, you get a vasectomy, but then you get divorced, right? And then the guy finds a new wife who doesn't have kids, and she's all I want is a kid. But he says, I have a vasectomy and then they have to do IDF and everything. And, um, and so they say, look, if you're doing, maybe you should consider squeezing some sperm as a backup for yourself, just in case something like that were to come up, um, I did ask him, I said, are you sure you're not going to want any more kids in the future? And he was like, absolutely not. And I said, well, wait, if we get divorced and you have a new one, he's like, no, no, no, you didn't want to do it. Because of course everybody does, they think it's not going to happen to them, right? Well I hope you think it's not going to happen to you. I'm traumatized. My parents got divorced at like 27 years of marriage. And I'm only on 25 right now. I'm like traumatized. I'm like it could happen to anyone, anywhere, anyhow. Nobody's above that, right? Um, and so, you know, I said, I think you should think about it, but he doesn't want to, but he said, if you want me to, I will. See, he loves you. And so I kind of thought about it. I'm like, well, if something happened to him, would I want his sperm? You know, but we decided, we ultimately decided not to. But we are going to need the semen analysis. Uh, I hope I can do a couple free ones if that's okay here. Wait, why do you need the semen analysis? Because after you do the vasectomy, you have to prove that it worked. True, very true. And let me just tell you too, it's labor intensive, okay? They have to ejaculate 20 to 30 times. before you can test the sperm to see. Are you involved in this process? I know, I'm like, look, I'm busy. Knock some of these out on your own. But, um, but anyways, um, so that was kind of our recent discussion about it. We decided not to, but I think it's good to at least have the discussion. And here's the thing too, even if somebody has a vasectomy, and they later changed their mind. There are options. You can consider a vasectomy reversal and or you can consider doing IVF with Tessie where they Get ready to cringe, put a needle directly into the testicles and pull the sperm out, so you can do it that way too. So there's other options as well, it's just freezing sperm would be a lot easier. Definitely, no one's signing up for that. Yes, less pain. Um, okay, so what about some, some other reasons why somebody, um, might want to freeze their sperm? Sometimes more serious reasons too, right?

Speaker: 11:40

Yeah, so I think there's certain health conditions that it can, no one plans for these things. things, right? Um, but you can have certain types of cancer, maybe that you get diagnosed with. And I think it's really important because this isn't always discussed. And maybe sometimes you're young. When this is happening, you might be diagnosed with testicular cancer or other forms of cancer that might require chemo or radiation, which ultimately can affect sperm. And so it's always a good idea. And it really is so important. so straightforward and easy to freeze sperm ahead of time. Unfortunately, sometimes the cancer actually can already affect the sperm and counts might already be low, but freezing some sperm is better than others. Um, and so, you know, I just actually had a consult with a patient who had to have his prostate removed because of cancer. He didn't have radiation or anything, which is It's commonly done with prostate cancer, but just the removal of the prostate gland, um, really locks you in later to not really having a lot of options to reproduce. And so he was wishing that he had frozen some sperm.

Speaker 2: 12:42

Yeah, that's really hard. Yeah. Well, and I think too, just even timeline wise, um, so sometimes I've had cases where the male partner has cancer and maybe it's even easily treatable and very survivable, but he has to have chemotherapy. And it does depend on who you talk to, but a lot of people will say that you have to wait for about a year after having chemotherapy before you can try with your sperm again, um, if, if it's even okay at that point. Um, and so some people really just like the idea of being able to freeze so that once the cancer treatment is done, you don't even have to wait the full year if you're able to use that sperm, you froze ahead of time. So I think that's really helpful.

Speaker: 13:19

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, and a really important question, I think, to be armed with, maybe if your spouse gets diagnosed. I know probably not a lot of our listeners are male. Um, if your spouse or partner is diagnosed with something, make sure you put that on your list of questions to ask about. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 13:36

Um, okay, so I wanted to think about some other issues, other reasons why somebody would freeze sperm. And one of the most common that I think we see is for patients that are going to be undergoing IVF, A lot of times the male partner will need to give us a sperm sample the day of the retrieval, a fresh sperm sample. But that's a lot of pressure for a guy, right? I mean, here, their partner's been taking injections. I mean, you've literally been planning for months, you've invested thousands and thousands of dollars, and then it all rides on you being able to give a sperm sample in this one moment, right? Lots of pressure. And So one of the things we offer for patients is, hey, do you want to have a backup freeze just in case the day of the retrieval you feel too stressed or something happens where you're not able to produce a sample? And I think that's so nice to take that pressure off of them. The answer

Speaker: 14:30

is yes. Yes, you do. I call this stage fright. I told all my guys, and I don't have to, like, if I just say it, they're like, yes, okay. I understand what you mean. Yeah. I mean, we should. And some guys are like, no, I don't think I'm going to have that problem, but I'm telling you, you cannot predict who it's going to happen to. You really can't. Like, I feel like even my guys that worry about it, they end up being fine. It's kind of the guys that I, you know, weren't worried necessarily. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:55

And then another group is our out of towners. So we have a lot where, this is a big one, pilots.

Speaker: 15:02

Pilots

Speaker 2: 15:03

are always out of town.

Speaker: 15:04

Occupational travel is very common. I have a lot of linemen. You know, they get called out for storms and everything and they go travel and it's always during my ovulation window. No, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:17

Or people that work in the oil field a lot too.

Speaker: 15:20

Yeah,

Speaker 2: 15:20

and so that patients are always so worried about this because they say oh my gosh like When exactly is my IUI going to be? When is my IVF going to be? And, and, you know, of course we try to do our best to predict, but sometimes it just depends on your ovaries, right? We can't always tell you exactly. And so a lot of times, if they just freeze sperm ahead of time, then we say, great, now we don't need them. I know, that's what I say. I'm like, we make babies all the time without minerals. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, okay, so question, Dr. K. Once sperm is frozen, how long is a good period? Forth forever. Till till the end of time. Great. and let's just kind of talk about the process of sperm freezing. Now, I will say for somebody freezing eggs, it's such a complicated process and it does take a long time and everything, but for guys, it's so easy. It's so easy. Yeah. So you can literally just come in. You give us a sperm sample. That's it. I mean, all you have to do is give us a sperm sample. That's it. And then our andrologist does all the hard work there. Um, they will look at the numbers and then based on the numbers, they will freeze and sometimes they try to divide it into multiple samples and freeze however many vials they can get from it. And then ultimately they can let you know, hey, this is how many vials we were able to use. Now, how many vials do you need? Well, that might depend on the type of treatment that you're planning on using it for.

Speaker: 16:44

Right. Yeah. Um, I have patients that maybe are just freezing knowing that they might use it for IVF in the future. And so you really only need to do that one time. Maybe if you're considering where you have lower sperm counts, you might need to freeze a couple of specimens as backup. And so it's always good if you do a sperm freeze, check back in and say, Hey, how did it look? Do you think I need to do another one? Do you sufficient because, um, usually it's going to close that loop. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 17:13

Um, okay. So what if you freeze sperm? Let's say you have a bunch of sperm, five vials or something. So let's say you freeze it and then time goes on and then you don't need it. What do you do with it?

Speaker: 17:24

Um, well, you can thaw and discard it. Probably

Speaker 2: 17:27

the most common thing that we

Speaker: 17:29

do with it. Or I guess

Speaker 2: 17:32

you can just save it. It's a family heirloom. No one wants your spoon. Gotcha. Okay. And then what about the cost? I think this is important to think about because with women, we really struggle with freezing eggs because it is so expensive overall, but I think they would be very jealous of that. to know how much it is to freeze sperm.

Speaker: 17:57

Right. Well, we should preface this by saying the reason why egg freezing, just why the reason why an IVF is expensive is because it is a much, much more intensive process for the embryologist to do, um, and requires expensive medias, okay, very different than the sperm media that we freeze with. And so a sperm freeze is actually only 300 at our facility, which is very affordable. Yes. Yes.

Speaker 2: 18:20

Yep. 300. Not bad at all. Okay. But then you do have to factor in storage in the long term, right? So, um, long term storage is a thousand dollars per year. And I will say too, at the time that we're doing this podcast, somebody could be watching this in five years from now. So it may be more in the future. That's true. We'll see how the economy's looking. Yeah. but at least that kind of gives people a ballpark figure. I would have assumed it would be way more, you know, just knowing how expensive so many other things are in fertility, but at least guys can know, Hey, if it's something that they want to do or that they're interested in, it's a very reasonable price. I, you know, another kind of thing just popped in my head too. I have a patient, they wanted to freeze their sperm because they had an IVF cycle coming up. Right. And they were living a perfect life. No alcohol, perfect diet, taking all the supplements and everything. They knew their sperm was going to be so good, but their thought process is, I don't want to have to be perfect ever again. So I was like, should we need to do another IVF cycle in the future? Let's just have some frozen sperm that we can use. I don't have to be so healthy next time. That's funny. That's really funny. I

Speaker: 19:30

don't know if I would prefer that or fresh sperm though. I know. Because that would be like a frozen sperm. Yeah. That's kind of funny.

Speaker 2: 19:36

Well, since you brought that up too, you know, what do you think is better, fresh or frozen sperm?

Speaker: 19:41

I mean, I do always

Speaker 2: 19:41

tell

Speaker: 19:41

my patients I prefer fresh, right? Um, but frozen works really well and we have to use it. It's really, it's It's a moderate difference. It's really not a big deal. So

Speaker 2: 19:50

yeah, and we know this for sure too, because remember, a lot of our patients may not have the option for fresh. So our patients that are single mothers by choice or same sex couples, they may be using donor sperm and all they have is frozen sperm and they still have great success too. So we know based on that data that it should be fine. But I agree. I usually will say, let's at least try to get a fresh sample. Um, but if not, it is always nice to have something. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Should we wrap it up for the week? Everyone have a good week. Thanks for listening. Thank you guys so much. We appreciate you guys listening and supporting us. If you would be so kind to leave us a review on our Pete Fertility website or on our YouTube or on our Apple podcast or Spotify, we would greatly appreciate it. Bye.