> 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 most 12 oz. of 5% ABV (or 8 oz. of 7% ABV, or ...). One 16 oz. pint of 7.5% is two drinks.
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.
Sure, and during COVID we kept the liquor stores open--so alcoholics in withdrawal weren't a problem when we had bigger fish to fry. Do you think that's a good thing?
Less about mere "dry drunks" -- which refers to someone who is sober but still stuck in the behavioral traps that led to drinking -- and more about the medical support required for abrupt detoxing from alcohol.
Maybe for you. Moving to Finland and seeing that a six pack cost as much as a month's worth of breakfast was all the motivation I needed to kick the stuff.
Pretty sure Finnish people jump on a ferry to get cheap booze from Estonia instead. Just like Estonians jump on a bus and get cheap booze from Latvia. Where Latvia goes however, I do not know.
Some of us live in free and warm countries with no matriarchical nanny state. Gov't doesn't take half my income, and doesn't charge me an arm and a leg to have a beer.
It's probably some deep DNA-induced craving. In the summer I barely want to drink. When it's cold... I want to drink. Maybe it's the Slavic chunk of my DNA.
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 climate.
Anyone else heard this? Does alcohol perhaps keep all the bad stuff(lipids et al) in your blood in solution better in cold weather?
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.
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!
Alcohol actually lowers your body temperature slightly, making you feel more comfortable in the cold. The big problem is that the alcohol metabolises straight into the citric NADH, which means your body converts the rest of the food you eat straight into fat.
The eating part is as you can see above relates but it has been demonstrated that the mitochondria in your brown fat burn significantly more energy after cold exposure, so it makes sense you would be hungrier.
I find that hard to believe. I spent a winter in Helsinki, which is roughly 2 to 4 K warmer than Moscow, and you barely spend any time outside below -15°C (5°F), why would you do that? It's probably dark anyway.
What probably did happen is that he spent a lot more time indoors and not doing sports if he's not an avid gym rat.
I lived 2 years in Sweden, I just bought a good winter coat. Somehow that an a few good sweaters/base layers were enough to keep me warm without hammering my face every evening. But that's just me I guess.
1. what would be "a good winter coat" in that environment? I'm curious b/c I once found myself in upstate NY in winter with Texas clothing and it was near-fatally inadequate.
2. I've heard the phrase "get hammered[drunk]" but not "hammering my face". Searching for that sent me down a rabbit hole, i.e.,
1. You don't know how to pick clothes? Just make sure you pick something wind and water proof that covers your junk. Clothes are often rated for specific temperatures.
2. Legit can't tell if you're serious here? Yes I took the idiomatic "getting hammered" and made it my own with "hammering my face". You really couldn't infer the meaning based on the context of this thread where we discuss alcohol consumption?
As others have alluded, alcohol is a vasodilator. Your blood vessels dilate so you end up with more blood flow to extremities and the surface of your skin. So you feel warmer, but you're actually cooling your body off faster. Vasoconstriction is your body trying to keep your core body temperature up, so drinking alcohol is weakening your body's defenses to the cold.
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.
90% of alcoholic drinks are consumed by the top 10%. Something like 40% of people don't drink ANY alcohol, another 10% a few times a year, 10% maybe once a month, the last once a week, and the final group, drinks 10-20 drink per day...
For anyone curious about a source, there's https://archive.is/j3lg3 . Though I still vaguely recall looking at the source data (now lost to linkrot) and thinking that they had misinterpreted it.
Exactly. Maybe I’m just a lightweight, but 4 beers is into ‘drunk’ levels for me. Doing that 2 or 3 times a week? Of course that’s going to have health impacts.
Makes you smarter too. Your brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells, and alcohol tends to kill the weakest brain cells first. It's like culling the herd, you speed everything up.
Your liver is pretty unique here, as most other organs don't grow back (they get covered in scar tissue if they grow back at all). You can donate your liver, they'll remove about half, and it'll be back to normal in about 2 months.
It's all about tolerance. Half a pint gets me quite tipsy now because I drink maybe once a month at best, a pint will get me past the sweet spot already. A few years back I could have half a bottle of wine and be in the same perceived state
Sure, knock back 2 12oz beers back to back on an empty stomach and that’s noticeable. But, I’m at the it’s warmed to room temperature long before I’ve finished side of things.
Bro 4 beers in I would be actually sick, I definitely can't drive after 1 beer(nor would I want to). I literally don't understand how some people can chug 10-12 beers in an evening, like even ignoring the alcohol where does all of this liquid go?? I'll have two beers and the third one is literally a struggle to drink, it's just too much.
That's interesting; is it your perspective that people generally believe "that which is commonly done" to be equivalent with "that which is probably harmless"?
I don't see it that way at all, but my attitude about risk doesn't fit well with what I see in the culture where I live; perhaps the people I'm observing experience the world more in the fashion you describe.
it's a pretty normal and established occurrence I'd Say. I don't know if most people do that, but yes one way to rationalize or reassure yourself that what you are doing is safe is to look around at the wider group and see if people are doing it without worry.
> I would say that 3-4 beers several times a week is allot of alcohol.
I agree, I drink on average 1-2 a month, it's going to be 3-4 this month because of extra family and friend gatherings because of the holidays and I'm already feeling like its excessive. The article doesn't answer if my level of drinking would require the same length of abstinence.
As pointed out by the parent comment, one strong 16 Oz can is already 2 drinks. Having 2 of those in a night or even slightly weaker ones puts you in the 3-4 drink range. I'm sure I'm not the only one with a habit of having 2 of those a few nights a week to tie a long day off.
When I think of "beers" in America, I usually think of Bud Light or similar lightweight lagers that are usually in the 4-5% alcohol range. Drinking 3-4 of those over a few hours with food will not get most people very drunk at all, depending on bodyweight and tolerance.
I prefer IPAs which average closer to 7% and that higher alcohol concentration seems to make a big difference. Drinking 3-4 of those can get a person quite drunk.
I guess so! I mean hey, if you never drink and you weigh 150lbs and have an empty stomach and you chug two Bud Lights... you're gonna get drunk! But this is not the situation most people are in when we think of someone "having a few beers".
And maybe people have different ideas of "drunk"? I don't think simply feeling some effect from alcohol constitutes being drunk.
There is an interesting explanation for this. Instead of thinking of apv what matters to your body is more the “retained alcohol” over a period of time.
Your body can process something like a 4% beer every hour, so drinking one 4% beer an hour isn’t going to get you that drunk as your body is keeping up. Drinking a 5% beer though you start retaining 1% of beer an hour, but with a 6% beer you retain 2% per hour (twice as much alcohol) and you get twice as drunk. So for a 7% beer you will be 3 times as drunk.
Rough math and everyone will be different, but you get the idea.
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 life is finite, and how one chooses to experience it, as long as it doesn't harm others, can be seen as a personal decision. However, it's also crucial to acknowledge that responsible consumption and understanding its potential effects on health and well-being are key considerations.
> 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').
I'm not sure that makes it a trap, but no I would not trust anyone's view of the consequences of their own drug use. But the alternative is not to match their use against a number created by an uninvolved third party either. Probably a person's family and other close relations have the most useful perspective on their use and its effects.
I'm not a moralizing teetotaler or drug abolitionist here either. Recreational drug use is often fine, people can and in some cases maybe even should do it. But it should stop when the negative consequences reach a certain point, and it's probably impossible for an individual to have the perspective allowing them to see where they are relative to that point.
> I'm not sure that makes it a trap, but no I would not trust anyone's view of the consequences of their own drug use.
And I wouldn't trust about anyone else's view. It's either a feeling (when you have to rely on the "drug user", how they feel about it) or it is hard facts. Outsiders opinions are worthless.
Right, I'm saying an outsider doesn't have an experience of the user and so no grounds for any particular insight about them and their use and its effects.
Their family and friends however are not outsiders. They have hard facts about how the use affects them, which is often some of the most significant negative consequences of drug use. I don't think any single person is situated to confidently say that someone else's use isn't a problem. But in cases where it is a problem, family often have all the information necessary to know that it is.
They're diagnostic criteria intended for use by physicians, not for random internet people to diagnose others without even performing any kind of assessment.
If someone drinks one glass of wine a year, but their significant other gets upset about it (it's now "affecting their relationship"), is it them or their significant other that has A Problem?
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 certainly not under the impression that it was good for me; I don't drink at all any more.
I have drank average of 3 oz. per day (3 beers, or one healthy pour of scotch or bourbon), 5-6 days per week for the last 30 years. All blood work is normal. My parents drink significantly more than that are still healthy in their 70s.
Depends on the beer. Measuring one beer as we donin Bavaria, in at least half litres, and meaning by multiple times a week more than three days, maybe. By measuring beer in 0.3 and 0.2 litres, ans assuming the average US beer, even doing so 5 days a week propably doesn't get into abuse territory by the alcohol amount alone.
I can't speak for all of Europe, but in Austria no-one speaks of "drinks" when talking about alcohol consumption. This concept of a standard "drink" size is foreign to me and I know it only from US literature.
Before kids I had an active social life that could definitely be construed as a “drinking problem”. I’d argue that the benefits to my social life outweighed the harm to my health. IMHO, “problem” drinking is defined as the inability to stop drinking, i.e. a true addiction.
If you are regularly in social situations where you feel you can't participate without having several drinks, you have a drinking problem. It's still a problem even if it's driven by external pressure rather than an addiction.
By this definition, people who embrace high levels of alcohol consumption despite their obvious effects don't have a drinking problem, which seems a bit tentative to me. I would say someone like George Best very much had a drinking problem.
A drinking problem isn't defined by quantity, it is when you have a problematic habit/dependence that you can't quit at will. There are plenty of people who enjoy a few drinks several days a week but can just cut back or stop completely when they want/need to because they don't have alcoholism.
I used to drink 3 beers almost every night. I cut down on it to lose weight and now have a single beer 2-3 nights a week and no alcohol other nights. Some weeks I have none. If I had an actual "drinking problem" i.e. alcoholism, I wouldn't have been able to do that.
Yeah. When I run out, I just add it to my grocery list and pick up some more the next time I go to the supermarket. Can't remember the last time I left my house specifically to buy alcohol.
That's like saying "repeatedly banging your head on the wall is not a problem; it's only a problem if you can't stop at will".
The latest science says no amount of alcohol is good for you. And there's plenty of evidence that any amount of alcohol is bad for you. Of course there is pleasure that comes with imbibing alcoholic drinks, unlike banging your head on the wall, but you are still damaging your body with every sip.
Unfortunately the words "alcoholic" and "addict" are difficult for people to accept and associated with only the worst cases. But I think addiction is far more common than we think.
I used to drink occasionally, maybe once a week, to slight excess which one might call "merry" or "tipsy". I would always sleep badly and feel terrible the next day. I would also eat essentially an extra meal after drinking (usually consisting of junk food). This would happen every single time and I observed that this commonly happened to others too on a regular occurrence. Knowing that these bad effects would ensue, continuing to drink made me an addict: I knew it was bad for me, but I did it anyway.
Substances affect different people differently. I can have 3-4 drinks in an evening without changing my eating or sleep habits at all and without feeling any different the next day.
Some people experience drinking-related issues other than alcoholism and I just don't want to conflate those issues with alcoholism. I know some actual alcoholics. It's different.
alcoholism is a particularly harsh curse in the North of Europe!
A tourist went to Edinburgh Scotland for the holidays. So much whiskey and pub life all around. Herbal tea in hand, the tourist said "wow, its hard to get used to how much drinking there is here!" and the reply from a friendly local "hey this is nothing, you should see the Irish! they are certainly the worst drinkers". SO the tourist moved along to the big city Hamburg, where money is obvious and the ships are as large as anything in the world. In downtown bars, the working class and the financiers are all taking their fill. The tourist after going to the gym says "Germans in Hamburg seem to drink quite seriously" and a well-dressed local said "oh this is nothing, the Russians! the Russians are the worst drinkers by far" .. so the fast International train is waiting in the big Hamburg station, and the tourist goes to Copenhagen, land of the Little Mermaid and Christiana bike shops. Obviously beer is the fifth food group, and red noses are common. The tourist makes the same observation at the town square. A local replies "oh yes, Denmark loves their beer, but the Norwegians ! what a sight, they are certainly the worst alcoholics overall"
The tourist walked over an empty package of cigarettes and said "they are all a bunch of tankards to me"
>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 most 12 oz. of 5% ABV (or 8 oz. of 7% ABV, or ...). One 16 oz. pint of 7.5% is two drinks.
Doing maths when drunk is fun, and the cdc be damned.
Nobody understands the difference between one drink, and two drinks = one drink, as well.
We all work in pints and litres. What damage/ fun is a 500ml of 9% beer costing me? Half a pint of 4.8%? Nobody asks for 8oz of beer.
Do they......?
Your average glass bottle or can is 12 oz. That's not some arbitrary measurement, it's literally the most likely size for you to get. Sure most people aren't asking for an (imperial) cup of beer, but the idea is to recognize how much you're actually drinking.
> 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.
I quit for ~5 months with our first (we had spontaneous fraternal twins) and ~4 months with our second. It would've been longer but we conceived the first month we started trying in both pregnancies. It seemed self-evident to me, at the time, that I should do everything I could to "clean" myself up. I stopped eating fried food, stopped drinking calories besides milk, ate more fruits and vegetables, etc. My wife doesn't drink so she didn't have to change her lifestyle much.
> 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 dmned seriously" signal to your wife.*
I'd read that as : Instead of following sound medical advice, he is making up rules based on single study of dubious quality. He will probably make up more rules once the baby is born. Run!
There is a lot of snake oil about baby care. You would get 2 or 3 different incompatible advice from different pediatrician.
An interesting one, is which food the baby can eat during the first year. The common element is honey because it's difficult to pasteurize. But each doctor, nurse, magazine, ... adds a few things to the list. And it's more interesting to compare common list from different countries, that have a different additional food that are very bad for the baby.
> If nothing else, it sends a loud "I'm taking daddyhood d*mned seriously" signal to your wife.
Also to yourself, surely? Why is the wife here being framed as the judge of moral character for the other parent? Men also have agency and the ability to self-reflect.
> Am I missing something - what negative effects are there?
Paragraph 1:
> Researchers at Texas A&M University have already shown that paternal drinking habits prior to conception can have a negative effect on fetal development — with semen from men who regularly consume alcohol impacting placenta development, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)-associated brain and facial defects, and even IVF outcomes.
This is a research report, and despite the recommendation being about as non-harmful as you can get, it shouldn't be used for health advice. Even systematic literature reviews are a stretch for health advice as opposed to tertiary sources, such as the CDC or Mayo Clinic websites.
I've got a couple of questions about this. Maybe they were covered in the paper but I couldn't see the link? Let me know if I missed it.
1. What do they mean by "changes in sperm?" What are they actually measuring here?
2. Is there previous evidence that these changes in sperm are linked to FAS, or are we extrapolating from the known effects of motherly drinking?
3. They say 3-4 beers a couple times a week is enough to notice the changes, but do we know how big that change is and if heavier drinking leads to A) higher incidence of FAS or B) worse outcomes of FAS?
Anyway, wish me luck. I'm expecting a baby now since 6 weeks ago after becoming an alcoholic during the Corona period. I "only" drink one to two beers per evening but I'm sure that more than covers the case of "moderate drinking." I experience withdrawl when I go even only one day so I'm sure there's some effect for sure.
Right now I'm hoping for the best and hoping the power of good socialisation can trump any hopefully small damage I've already done to my child's brain.
> Alcohol can affect fertility by altering sperm count, size, shape, and motility.
> Animal studies have provided clear evidence that offspring sired by ethanol-exposed males in the absence of maternal ethanol exposure showed more adverse behavioral development11, including increased risk of anxiety- and depression-like behaviors7,10, increased in activity and sensorimotor integration deficits, as well as decreased balance, coordination, and short-term motor learning
Damn. I was hoping the best on the basis that my own father liked a drink, and knowing that at least my own intelligence level was fine. But "anxiety- and depression-like behaviors, increases in activity and sensorimotor integration deficits, as well as decreased balance, coordination, and short-term motor learning" sadly sounds like a pretty good description of my own life's history.
At least if I know this ahead of time I can coach my child with it all in mind and lean harder into self-care solutions for managing anxiety etc. in a way that I might not have done otherwise.
I was thinking the same. The anxiety patterns could be leading the fathers to drink, and those same anxiety patterns could be passed on via socialisation independently of the direct effects on the sperm.
And not be obese, and exercise regularly, and don't smoke, and.. and ...
Yeah so basically being in good shape means you're in good shape, we need more studies to prove it! Surely the 10th study will make people more serious about it
“Oh, we are living in an environment that has a really strong oxidative stressor in it. I need to program the offspring to be able to adapt to that kind of environment”
Wow. Just wow. And people are surprised why it’s so easy to make people categorically distrust “science”. These “researchers” have no sense of academic integrity.
Thats's just a natural behavior of people who are having it good. It happens everywhere, even in Turkey the fertility rates slid into the "catastrophic" range as the life quality of the people increased. When in places where tragedies are happening, the fertility skyrockets.
some fun. Some courage (well, it's more removal of inhibitions, but that works out to the same thing). Ok, the courage might be a good or a bad thing, depending on the situation
Yes to water. Unfortunately I've already been chemically addicted to foods that taste good but are bad for you. If I didn't have that addiction and didn't care about taste then it would absolutely make a ton of sense to eat a "no more hunger" capsule daily, you'd save plenty of time and money and would be a lot healthier in general.
In a sense you're not wrong, but would you say the same thing about refined sugar? Both of these substances, in terms of immediate physiological effects, are known to be unambiguously bad for you past a certain low threshold. But immediate physiological effects are probably not the terms with which we ought to evaluate our lifestyles.
You would say the same about sugar in some aspects, I guess. The hitch with chemical addictions is that they are more or less not up to you, once your brain is hooked you're locked in until you put extreme effort to break out of it. With sugar it's in many cases given to you when you're young and before you have developed the awareness or agency to avoid it. It's also in nearly every store bought food and is much more difficult to avoid. It also doesn't have immediate drawbacks that are quite as severe as alcohol (you're not getting a DUI for eating a tootsie roll).
There are a lot of things like these that are just bad for us on an objective level but that we do anyways because they hack our weak little monkey brains. I don't even think it's hypocritical to partake in sugar or alcohol while openly saying that they're awful for you and that you should avoid them. The fact is that they're addictive, and an addiction by definition means that your actions are on some level no longer in your conscious control. Unless I am actively dieting I don't think twice about eating a candy even though I know that by all means I shouldn't.
In theory yes but it’s hard to avoid in practice. It doesn’t cause the same amount of acute damage and altered state though. But either way yes I don’t eat sweets like candy and generally keep things like donuts and cookies to one day a week.
For the great joy of a good time spent with friends, of course, which is one of life's most important sources of happiness. A little bit of risk to one's health is worth such a reward.
Color me skeptical... people have been drinking for thousands of years. I would be terribly surprised if moderate drinking had a statistically significant effect.
Either way, this is an irresponsible recommendation at a time when birthrates among native populations are falling precipitously. Adding yet another mental/physical hurdle to having kids is the wrong thing to do. Shit, next generation in South Korea will be 40% the size of the current generation with the way things are going.
Color me skeptical... people have lived without antibiotics for thousands of years. I would be terribly surprised if their use had a statistical effect.
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.
I don't know how accurate mouse models are for alcohol, but alcohol tolerance varies widely among animals, and even between humans. We have complex metabolic pathways for alcohol, we even get quite a lot of calories out of it. And while both mice and humans are mammals, I guess there are significant differences regarding reproduction too.
So going to a study on mice to some conclusions like: you should abstain from drinking for at least 3 months, and quantitative measurements like "moderate drinking", which, at about 3 drinks/day is more than "moderate" to me.
After a quick look at the paper, there is no such conclusion. When it comes to humans, there is not much more than "maybe it is something worth looking into".
How does this pertain to if a male only drinks alcohol a few times a year, but consumed alcohol once within a month of conceiving?
Reading the article and looking at some of the linked papers, it seems that the research more looked at males who drank regularly. I am sure zero alcohol is best, but interested to know if there is any info or research on the effect of sperm with rare alcohol consumption, but close to conception.
This is a mouse study. Seems questionable as mice would not need to adapt to regular alcohol consumption anywhere near the level humans would have. The length of impact on humans would probably be different than mice.
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).
Sounds like an easy place to get great data for their hypothesis. Compare places like Saudi Arabia with England. Sure it's messy because of the other factors to consider (since it's not an experiment), but if there are zero cases of what you're looking for, your own experiment is probably wrong.
"Stuffing half a dozen or so mice with booze and not giving them water for months gets them FUCKED UP, so forward this article to everyone whose husband drinks more than one tbsp of beer a week to prove that their child is gonna have all kinds of nasty birth defects" - The Science™
> I´m all for science on alcohol abuse and effects of moderate drinking
But don't we have that? And have recently been getting more and more of that? Most specifically, as I understand the current science: alcohol (e.g., red wine) in any form and any amount is not good for you. Full stop.
I do drink, still, moderately. But given all I hearing / reading, I'm giving more and more consideration to going dry. The "benefits" (i.e., being social, de-stressor, etc) don't seem to be worth it.
It raises your risk of cancer. Not by much, but I'm not aware of anything might outweigh that effect. (you can have a social life without it) I'm not aware of anything that counters those effects.
1. No one dies from "cookies poisoning". No one loses a liver or other organs from too many cookies. Alcohol, by definition, is a poison. The comparison to chocolate chips simply doesn't apply.
2. While I have my general doubts about the WHO in some cases, this was the quickest and easiest thing I could find.
1. No one dies from "cookies poisoning". No one loses a liver or other organs from too many cookies. Alcohol, by definition, is a poison. The comparison to chocolate chips simply doesn't apply.
No, but too much sugar/butter does cause health issues. There's a certain threshold for damage. Does alcohol cause damage to offspring via genetic alteration to sperm? Perhaps it does, but we can't really say anything concrete about it based on a study of this quality.
I'm well aware of the problems cause by sugar and lack of exercise. But, again, alcohol is different. It is literally a poison. Sugar is not a poison in that same sense.
Most claims about whether something is "healthy" or "unhealthy" rely on single studies with small sample/effect sizes. We know that many studies fail to replicate, and in the absence of preregistration there are researcher degrees of freedom for scientists to find whatever they want to find in the data.
I don't know about the current status of alcohol research, but unless there is a large body of replicated work supporting a claim, we should be skeptical of it.
Thank you for pointing this out. Unfortunately, there are many problems interacting here. There is an incentive in science journalism to write the most attention-grabbing headline, regardless of how well it summarizes the research. Of the people who read the headline, only a fraction will click through to read the popular article, and only a fraction of those will click through to read the scientific article. Most people have never heard of the replication crisis, preregistration, or researcher degrees of freedom. Even if this is valid research with valid methodology, the scientists themselves are incentivized to cut corners and come up with catchy, counter-intuitive results. It's all a shitshow that drives the spread of misinformation and public distrust in science.
It seems bizarre to consider the effects of maternal drinking during gestation and these postulated effects of paternal drinking prior to conception to be the same disease
I don't follow these things particularly closely and I don't consider myself particularly concerned with health issues, but for some reason I always had it in my head that the general rule of thumb was six months of no alcohol before trying to conceive. Weirdly this article seems to be portraying this three month rule as a shockingly strict new development.
I drank regularly, so did my wife, and we had no problems conceiving (usually pregnant on one try). Both kids are healthy. Wife did NOT drink while pregnant or while breast feeding. I therefore drank enough for both of us during those times.
I know someone who got pregnant on vacation with their husband because they ran out of condoms and thought one time wouldn’t be statistically significant.
I would presume “usually one the first try” with two kids to mean definitely first time on one, and we are not sure if it was the second or third attempt for the other that took.
In humans no birth control at all is about 80% successful in preventing pregnancy, so if they normally got pregnant in just one try that is amazingly higher than normal. More likely he meant first month of daily unprotected sex, which is likely to result in pregnancy, and a common plan for those trying to have kids.
Everyone drank in the Middle Ages. It was a shelf stable way to deliver nutrients and calories (and not cholera, typhus, …)
Of course we also believe we are smarter and more put together now than we were then. But we did survive, and we did get to the Enlightenment with a lot of people soused before we started switching to coffee and tea.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] thread> “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 most 12 oz. of 5% ABV (or 8 oz. of 7% ABV, or ...). One 16 oz. pint of 7.5% is two drinks.
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.
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 climate.
Anyone else heard this? Does alcohol perhaps keep all the bad stuff(lipids et al) in your blood in solution better in cold weather?
No, but it sounds like a great excuse for alcoholism.
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!
[0] https://www.fitbit.com/foods/American+Vodka/740555260
[1] https://www.greygoose.com/faqs/how-many-calories-are-there-i...
If you look at any 40% vodka, you'll find a 1.5 oz shot clocking in at 96-98 calories.
The eating part is as you can see above relates but it has been demonstrated that the mitochondria in your brown fat burn significantly more energy after cold exposure, so it makes sense you would be hungrier.
What probably did happen is that he spent a lot more time indoors and not doing sports if he's not an avid gym rat.
1. what would be "a good winter coat" in that environment? I'm curious b/c I once found myself in upstate NY in winter with Texas clothing and it was near-fatally inadequate.
2. I've heard the phrase "get hammered[drunk]" but not "hammering my face". Searching for that sent me down a rabbit hole, i.e.,
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hammering+my+face&t=operav&ia=web
I assume you intended the former meaning, that is, "getting drunk"?
2. Legit can't tell if you're serious here? Yes I took the idiomatic "getting hammered" and made it my own with "hammering my face". You really couldn't infer the meaning based on the context of this thread where we discuss alcohol consumption?
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.
(I am not a doctor.)
(.../s)
Your liver is pretty unique here, as most other organs don't grow back (they get covered in scar tissue if they grow back at all). You can donate your liver, they'll remove about half, and it'll be back to normal in about 2 months.
I drink maybe once a month, though- it's pretty wild to notice how much more affected you are once you lose your tolerance.
Bro 4 beers in I would be actually sick, I definitely can't drive after 1 beer(nor would I want to). I literally don't understand how some people can chug 10-12 beers in an evening, like even ignoring the alcohol where does all of this liquid go?? I'll have two beers and the third one is literally a struggle to drink, it's just too much.
> like even ignoring the alcohol where does all of this liquid go?
Into pee. You know how starting around the third or fourth round, everybody is getting up to pee every round or two?
The volume part is trivial. Average human stomach is about half a gallon and it is not hard to drink a gallon over a few hours
I don't see it that way at all, but my attitude about risk doesn't fit well with what I see in the culture where I live; perhaps the people I'm observing experience the world more in the fashion you describe.
I agree, I drink on average 1-2 a month, it's going to be 3-4 this month because of extra family and friend gatherings because of the holidays and I'm already feeling like its excessive. The article doesn't answer if my level of drinking would require the same length of abstinence.
I prefer IPAs which average closer to 7% and that higher alcohol concentration seems to make a big difference. Drinking 3-4 of those can get a person quite drunk.
And maybe people have different ideas of "drunk"? I don't think simply feeling some effect from alcohol constitutes being drunk.
> For men, heavy drinking is typically defined as consuming 15 drinks or more per week.
You're definitely not the only one.
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/faqs.htm
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.
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').
I'm not a moralizing teetotaler or drug abolitionist here either. Recreational drug use is often fine, people can and in some cases maybe even should do it. But it should stop when the negative consequences reach a certain point, and it's probably impossible for an individual to have the perspective allowing them to see where they are relative to that point.
And I wouldn't trust about anyone else's view. It's either a feeling (when you have to rely on the "drug user", how they feel about it) or it is hard facts. Outsiders opinions are worthless.
Their family and friends however are not outsiders. They have hard facts about how the use affects them, which is often some of the most significant negative consequences of drug use. I don't think any single person is situated to confidently say that someone else's use isn't a problem. But in cases where it is a problem, family often have all the information necessary to know that it is.
If someone drinks one glass of wine a year, but their significant other gets upset about it (it's now "affecting their relationship"), is it them or their significant other that has A Problem?
Maybe `sed 's/oz. per/drinks per/'` here? Though if they're 12oz x 8.5% beers, and the "healthy pour" is 8oz of 80 proof...
There are stronger drinks, but in this scientific context should be considered multi-drinks.
People not understanding this unit scale causes a lot of problems, like teens having 20-30oz pours of alcohol like it's (also ugh) soda or juice.
I wonder if European science and US science get muddied due to different "drij" sizes.
I used to drink 3 beers almost every night. I cut down on it to lose weight and now have a single beer 2-3 nights a week and no alcohol other nights. Some weeks I have none. If I had an actual "drinking problem" i.e. alcoholism, I wouldn't have been able to do that.
The latest science says no amount of alcohol is good for you. And there's plenty of evidence that any amount of alcohol is bad for you. Of course there is pleasure that comes with imbibing alcoholic drinks, unlike banging your head on the wall, but you are still damaging your body with every sip.
Unfortunately the words "alcoholic" and "addict" are difficult for people to accept and associated with only the worst cases. But I think addiction is far more common than we think.
I used to drink occasionally, maybe once a week, to slight excess which one might call "merry" or "tipsy". I would always sleep badly and feel terrible the next day. I would also eat essentially an extra meal after drinking (usually consisting of junk food). This would happen every single time and I observed that this commonly happened to others too on a regular occurrence. Knowing that these bad effects would ensue, continuing to drink made me an addict: I knew it was bad for me, but I did it anyway.
Some people experience drinking-related issues other than alcoholism and I just don't want to conflate those issues with alcoholism. I know some actual alcoholics. It's different.
A tourist went to Edinburgh Scotland for the holidays. So much whiskey and pub life all around. Herbal tea in hand, the tourist said "wow, its hard to get used to how much drinking there is here!" and the reply from a friendly local "hey this is nothing, you should see the Irish! they are certainly the worst drinkers". SO the tourist moved along to the big city Hamburg, where money is obvious and the ships are as large as anything in the world. In downtown bars, the working class and the financiers are all taking their fill. The tourist after going to the gym says "Germans in Hamburg seem to drink quite seriously" and a well-dressed local said "oh this is nothing, the Russians! the Russians are the worst drinkers by far" .. so the fast International train is waiting in the big Hamburg station, and the tourist goes to Copenhagen, land of the Little Mermaid and Christiana bike shops. Obviously beer is the fifth food group, and red noses are common. The tourist makes the same observation at the town square. A local replies "oh yes, Denmark loves their beer, but the Norwegians ! what a sight, they are certainly the worst alcoholics overall"
The tourist walked over an empty package of cigarettes and said "they are all a bunch of tankards to me"
Doing maths when drunk is fun, and the cdc be damned. Nobody understands the difference between one drink, and two drinks = one drink, as well. We all work in pints and litres. What damage/ fun is a 500ml of 9% beer costing me? Half a pint of 4.8%? Nobody asks for 8oz of beer. Do they......?
True, at least in my part of the US. Though larger cans seem to be a growing trend. And "on tap" beer is very often served in other sizes.
OTOH, 5% ABV seems to be anything but the norm.
The key is finding wife who takes having children more seriously, it's not that difficult.
I'd read that as : Instead of following sound medical advice, he is making up rules based on single study of dubious quality. He will probably make up more rules once the baby is born. Run!
There is a lot of snake oil about baby care. You would get 2 or 3 different incompatible advice from different pediatrician.
An interesting one, is which food the baby can eat during the first year. The common element is honey because it's difficult to pasteurize. But each doctor, nurse, magazine, ... adds a few things to the list. And it's more interesting to compare common list from different countries, that have a different additional food that are very bad for the baby.
Also to yourself, surely? Why is the wife here being framed as the judge of moral character for the other parent? Men also have agency and the ability to self-reflect.
> "I need to program the offspring to be able to adapt to that kind of environment"
What does this mean?
The partner one chooses: after 4 beers one may mate with anyone having a appropriately-matching part!
Paragraph 1:
> Researchers at Texas A&M University have already shown that paternal drinking habits prior to conception can have a negative effect on fetal development — with semen from men who regularly consume alcohol impacting placenta development, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)-associated brain and facial defects, and even IVF outcomes.
1. What do they mean by "changes in sperm?" What are they actually measuring here?
2. Is there previous evidence that these changes in sperm are linked to FAS, or are we extrapolating from the known effects of motherly drinking?
3. They say 3-4 beers a couple times a week is enough to notice the changes, but do we know how big that change is and if heavier drinking leads to A) higher incidence of FAS or B) worse outcomes of FAS?
Anyway, wish me luck. I'm expecting a baby now since 6 weeks ago after becoming an alcoholic during the Corona period. I "only" drink one to two beers per evening but I'm sure that more than covers the case of "moderate drinking." I experience withdrawl when I go even only one day so I'm sure there's some effect for sure.
Right now I'm hoping for the best and hoping the power of good socialisation can trump any hopefully small damage I've already done to my child's brain.
> Animal studies have provided clear evidence that offspring sired by ethanol-exposed males in the absence of maternal ethanol exposure showed more adverse behavioral development11, including increased risk of anxiety- and depression-like behaviors7,10, increased in activity and sensorimotor integration deficits, as well as decreased balance, coordination, and short-term motor learning
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05611-2
https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases...
At least if I know this ahead of time I can coach my child with it all in mind and lean harder into self-care solutions for managing anxiety etc. in a way that I might not have done otherwise.
All those effects could be the result of “alcoholic” father figures, right? What am I missing here?
Best of luck
Yeah so basically being in good shape means you're in good shape, we need more studies to prove it! Surely the 10th study will make people more serious about it
Wow. Just wow. And people are surprised why it’s so easy to make people categorically distrust “science”. These “researchers” have no sense of academic integrity.
And I think alcohol consumption is also declining, isn't it? At least among people at the age where having children while drunk is most likely.
I really hope vasalgel is going to lead somewhere, but something tells me if such a tech is available, the birth rate will be going down a lot faster.
There are a lot of things like these that are just bad for us on an objective level but that we do anyways because they hack our weak little monkey brains. I don't even think it's hypocritical to partake in sugar or alcohol while openly saying that they're awful for you and that you should avoid them. The fact is that they're addictive, and an addiction by definition means that your actions are on some level no longer in your conscious control. Unless I am actively dieting I don't think twice about eating a candy even though I know that by all means I shouldn't.
Most pleasures carry some risk.
Either way, this is an irresponsible recommendation at a time when birthrates among native populations are falling precipitously. Adding yet another mental/physical hurdle to having kids is the wrong thing to do. Shit, next generation in South Korea will be 40% the size of the current generation with the way things are going.
I don't know how accurate mouse models are for alcohol, but alcohol tolerance varies widely among animals, and even between humans. We have complex metabolic pathways for alcohol, we even get quite a lot of calories out of it. And while both mice and humans are mammals, I guess there are significant differences regarding reproduction too.
So going to a study on mice to some conclusions like: you should abstain from drinking for at least 3 months, and quantitative measurements like "moderate drinking", which, at about 3 drinks/day is more than "moderate" to me.
After a quick look at the paper, there is no such conclusion. When it comes to humans, there is not much more than "maybe it is something worth looking into".
… in mice.
Reading the article and looking at some of the linked papers, it seems that the research more looked at males who drank regularly. I am sure zero alcohol is best, but interested to know if there is any info or research on the effect of sperm with rare alcohol consumption, but close to conception.
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).
But don't we have that? And have recently been getting more and more of that? Most specifically, as I understand the current science: alcohol (e.g., red wine) in any form and any amount is not good for you. Full stop.
I do drink, still, moderately. But given all I hearing / reading, I'm giving more and more consideration to going dry. The "benefits" (i.e., being social, de-stressor, etc) don't seem to be worth it.
cookies are also "not good for you. full stop". but they're also not all that bad for you in reasonable quantities.
1. No one dies from "cookies poisoning". No one loses a liver or other organs from too many cookies. Alcohol, by definition, is a poison. The comparison to chocolate chips simply doesn't apply.
2. While I have my general doubts about the WHO in some cases, this was the quickest and easiest thing I could find.
https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
No, but too much sugar/butter does cause health issues. There's a certain threshold for damage. Does alcohol cause damage to offspring via genetic alteration to sperm? Perhaps it does, but we can't really say anything concrete about it based on a study of this quality.
I don't know about the current status of alcohol research, but unless there is a large body of replicated work supporting a claim, we should be skeptical of it.
This word, "usually" ...
I would presume “usually one the first try” with two kids to mean definitely first time on one, and we are not sure if it was the second or third attempt for the other that took.
It made me laugh :)
Of course we also believe we are smarter and more put together now than we were then. But we did survive, and we did get to the Enlightenment with a lot of people soused before we started switching to coffee and tea.