‘Y-SPERM’ MOVES FASTER BUT DIES MORE QUICKLY? NO – AND THIS WON’T HELP YOU CHOOSE THE SEX OF YOUR BABY

‘Y-SPERM’ MOVES FASTER BUT DIES MORE QUICKLY? NO – AND THIS WON’T HELP YOU CHOOSE THE SEX OF YOUR BABY

There’s a “simple, natural way to select the sex of your baby”, claims a Facebook post viewed millions of times.

It says sperm cells carrying male genetic material move more quickly but die sooner than sperm with female genetic material. People can therefore plan when to have sex during the femaleovulation cycle to improve their chance of conceiving a male or female baby.

The information is attributed to an anonymous “First Doctor”. It says male sperm cells are either X or Y and female egg cells are always X.

Y-sperm, which will cause the foetus to be genetically male, “move faster but also die faster” than X-sperm. It claims knowing this and having sex accordingly can influence what type of sperm cell will reach an egg cell, or ovum, and fertilise it.

But where does the claim come from, and is there a natural way to select the sex of a child?

Genetic material is generally collected into pairs of chromosomes – packages that hold a certain amount of genetic information. All human cells have a full copy of each pair of chromosomes, except for sperm and ova (egg cells), known as sex cells or gametes.

Gametes contain only half of a person’s genetic information, so they typically contain only one chromosome from each pair. This single chromosome determines what is known as genetic orchromosomal sex.

It is not until a sperm, carrying a single X or Y chromosome, fertilises an egg, carrying a single X chromosome, that the sex of the resulting zygote, or fertilised egg, is determined.

The zygote will then have two chromosomes, one from the sperm (X or Y) and one from the egg (always X).

This article was originally published by Africa Check.

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