Thus, dietary vitamin C plays a critical role in protecting against sperm damage. Low dietary vitamin C levels are likely to lead to infertility. Cigarette smoking is known to greatly reduce the vitamin C levels in our bodies. RDA of Vitamin C for smokers is twice as much as that for nonsmokers. After one month, sperm quality improved proportional to the level of vitamin C supplementation.
Nonsmokers also benefit from vitamin C supplementation.
For example, in one study, thirty infertile, but otherwise healthy, men received either 200 mg or 1,000 mg of vitamin C or a placebo daily. Their sperm was tested weekly for sperm count, viability, motility, agglutination, abnormalities, and immaturity. When more than twenty-five percent of the sperm are agglutinated, fertility is very unlikely. At the beginning of the study, all three groups had over twenty-five percent agglutinated sperm. After three weeks, the agglutinated sperm in the vitamin C groups dropped to eleven percent.