About 40% of adults in the world are overweight and 13% are obese. This epidemic of the 21st century carries different risks of diseases and also Obesity has been linked to poor sperm production, with the consequent influence on male fertility.
That is, trying to maintain an adequate weight and healthy living habits will contribute to improving men's fertility, but the genetic and epigenetic inheritance left to their children is also affected.
Lately, different studies carried out in different fields suggest that the function of sperm is not only to provide the genetic information of the father: In addition to DNA, the sperm provides more things that may have epigenetic potential, that is, they could change the way a gene expresses itself in the body.
A recent study in Denmark suggests that the sperm of thin and obese men have different epigenetic marks, perhaps changing the behavior of genes and transmitting to their children, in the case of obese men, a predisposition to suffer the same problem .
In the investigation, the sperm of thin men and obese men were compared before and after having undergone a gastric surgery to lose weight. It was found that the genetic composition of sperm cells was likely to remain the same, but there are epigenetic changes.
In other words: the semen cells of thin and obese men have different epigenetic marks in the regions of genes associated with appetite control and this can change in the same man who modifies his body weight.
This could be due to evolutionary reasons, because when obesity was not a problem, in times of abundance, that genetic information would somehow encourage children to eat more and grow bigger, storing energy to survive famines, diseases ...
The good news is that yes bad diet negatively influences offspringYou can also do a healthy diet positively. A poor diet, a poorly balanced diet, are related to a lower production of sperm (due to the lack of antioxidants and folates ...) and a worse quality of these. So why not avoid that poor diet? Man has to take care of this point, especially in the preconception stage.
But even for obese men who have achieved conception and are already offspring, maintaining bad habits over time is also a cause of "inheritance" undesirable for their children, since the whole family will be affected.
And although much remains to be discovered about the way in which epigenetics acts, to identify all the molecules responsible for inheritance outside the DNA ... it is clear that It is in the hands of men to try to stay as healthy as possible when it comes to having offspring.
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