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Men should abstain from drinking at least three months prior to conceiving

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Re: Men should abstain from drinking at least three months prior to conceiving

#81

Post by heyoni »

biasedestimate wrote: post #59

Perhaps important to note that this result comes from a lab experiment done on mice, with as far as I can tell N=24 mice split in a control and two treatment conditions. I would be very careful concluding anything from that study about what human males should or should not do.

Tell you what though, I drank more than I should have most of my adult life and now have a kid with a single point mutation that'll affect her in all sorts of ways and I will never stop thinking about whether or not this could have been avoided by not drinking.

Re: Men should abstain from drinking at least three months prior to conceiving

#82

Post by koolba »

magicpin wrote: post #64
giardini wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knew a fellow from Texas sent to manage a business in Russia for 6 months. He was in excellent cardiovascular health when he left. 6 months later he returned with 15 extra pounds of weight. His story: arriving in Moscow he found it brutally cold and began to drink under friends' advice. He later reported back that "you need to drink vodka and eat like crazy to keep warm and keep you body weight up" in that cold clima…

Alcohol is very caloric. A single shot of vodka can have 100 calories. Also it can increase blood flow to the skin, making you seem warmer than you actually are, at the expense of your internal body temperature.

> A single shot of vodka can have 100 calories.

Using the standard 7 calories per gram of alcohol, the alcohol content of a 12 oz 5% beer (equivalent of a 1.5 oz 40% shot) is 117 calories (12oz x 28g/oz x 5% x 7 Kc/g).

That’s just the alcohol and an average beer would have been more from the additional carbs.

If your vodka shot has only 100 calories, that’s either a weak pour or some weak vodka!

Re: Men should abstain from drinking at least three months prior to conceiving

#83

Post by swells34 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #49
reliablereason wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that 3-4 beers several times a week is allot of alcohol. It is an amount where I would definitely start to think that ones life would be degraded in certain ways by the amount of alcohol consumed. Where I live the recommendations are that people that drink 10 or more units of alcohol per week should be provided support from the healthcare system to reduce their drinking.

It's in the eye of the beholder I suppose. I wouldn't consider that bad, but that's coming from a former hope-to-die alcoholic who would drink around a dozen units of alcohol on any given night. I also know others who drank at about that level. I was able to keep up a job at a tech company as well, though I'd say that job was degrading my life and the alcohol was more a result of that than the other way around. I'm c…

>it's in the eye of the beer holder.

Re: Men should abstain from drinking at least three months prior to conceiving

#84

Post by spiderice »

_3u10 wrote: post #68
bell-cot wrote: post #2

> He also noted that it doesn’t take excessive alcohol use ... > “In the models we’re using, even drinking three to four beers after work several days a week can induce [bad stuff for sperm],” Golding said. “You may not feel inebriated, but your body is going through chemical changes.” Vs. the CDC's current upper limit for "moderate" male drinking is 2 drinks/day, and they're very quick to specify that "a" beer is at…

> That said, with how many acres of "skin in the game" it is to become a father - I'd say to abstain for 6 months. If nothing else, it sends a loud "I'm taking daddyhood d*mned seriously" signal to your wife. The key is finding wife who takes having children more seriously, it's not that difficult.

I'm not sure what you mean. In the scenario GP is talking about, I read it as the wife already being serious about having children and not drinking is one way for husband to show he is also serious about it.

Re: Men should abstain from drinking at least three months prior to conceiving

#87

Post by jpdus »

Does nobody question how they get from a non-preregistered, 9-mouse study (where the treatment group gets only 6%-10% acoholic drinks and nothing non-alcoholic for 10 weeks) to this headline?

Addtionally:

> First, we did not generate offspring using the cessation males. Therefore, we do not know if the sperm noncoding RNA signature we identified correlates with changes in offspring fetoplacental growth or if the resulting offspring would develop normally. However, as significant differences in the ncRNA signature of EtOH-cessation sperm and epididymal mtDNAcn remained, we speculate that abstinence for 1 month is insufficient for the epigenetic memory of paternal alcohol exposure to abate, likely due to the ongoing stress associated with alcohol withdrawal.45, 46 Furthermore, we acknowledge that our analysis does not distinguish between changes in sperm ncRNAs that are causal drivers of altered epigenetic programming in the next generation versus abnormalities that are merely additional symptoms of alcohol-induced stress.

I´m all for science on alcohol abuse and effects of moderate drinking, but this doesn't look like solid science for me (especially as afaik, there is still very few reliable, double-blind controlled evidence on epigenentic effects at all).

But please correct me if I´m wrong (worked with biotech companies on admission studies for several years but no biologist myself).

Re: Men should abstain from drinking at least three months prior to conceiving

#89

Post by ryandrake »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #63
misiti3780 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to observe the varied attitudes towards the consumption of alcohol. If someone chooses to drink alcohol and it doesn't negatively impact other aspects of their life, it could be viewed as a personal choice rather than a matter of societal concern. Throughout history, many cultures have incorporated alcohol into daily life, often as part of their culinary traditions. It's important to remember that li…

> If someone chooses to drink alcohol and it doesn't negatively impact other aspects of their life Almost everyone who drinks has this view of their own alcohol consumption. They aren't always wrong about this, but certainly very many of them are. Even people who are very obviously experiencing negative consequences of alcohol use will confidently assert that this isn't the case.

> Almost everyone who drinks has this view of their own alcohol consumption. They aren't always wrong about this, but certainly very many of them are.

This just seems like a trap. "Alcohol doesn't negatively impact my life." "Well, that's exactly what an alcoholic would say!" So, you can't rely on the person's own judgment. But you can't rely on others' judgment either. For any level of alcohol intake, from 1 beer a year to a liter of vodka a day, you can easily find someone who says it's too much and someone who says it's fine (or at least 'it depends').

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