You are what your father ate: Father’s diet before conception

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Child Development

Child Development is a fundamental duty. Do not ignore.

You are what your father ate
You are what your father ate

Most child-seeking couple take care of would-be mothers. No one really talk about father’s role. As if father has nothing to do with the creation process. 😀

And so mother may take care of low hemoglobin, low folic acid, low calcium etc during and before pregnancy based on Gynecologist’s advice but father? He will eat anything and everything! He will smoke and drink! Who cares? 🙂

Ideally, if you are planning a child, both would-be mother-father should have conscious diet plan with healthy living habits.

Of course, above all cares we take (or don’t care at all) , it is all karma.

Old friends may recall that we discussed this in past. To all my young friends, I suggest to regulate diet (that you offer to senses, not limited to physical food you eat) at least 6 months before planning child. At least make sure that you are not Vata heavy on the day of planning.

72 days long spermatogenesis
72 days long spermatogenesis

Would be father’s diet for 72 days nurtures sperms (Development of immature sperm to mature sperm takes 72 days.) until they are sent out on mission. As per Ayurveda, it takes almost a month to convert your food into Shukra (शुक्र) (Google 7 Dhatu process to know more) so Day 1 for immature sperm gets शुक्र emergy from the food digested month back. So 72 + 30 days. For roughly 90 days before planning day, both couple should eat same diet and on same time together joyously. For 90 days, do not do stressful job. For 90 days, sleep well. Pray daily to your pitru(s). Do daily Sandhya. To practice this, at least train your body for another 90 days. So 180 days before actual conception, fix image of child in mind and start preparing for them.

If you are doing root cause analysis of growing number of cancer/diabetes and other diseases, you must go back to era of Green revolution. Because seeds were sown then by replacing traditional farming by chemical farming. What your grand-father ate, you represent now! Same will go on with your future generations.


Research


Low paternal dietary folate alters the mouse sperm epigenome and is associated with negative pregnancy outcomes

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3889

Epidemiological studies suggest that a father’s diet can influence offspring health. A proposed mechanism for paternal transmission of environmental information is via the sperm epigenome. The epigenome includes heritable information such as DNA methylation. We hypothesize that the dietary supply of methyl donors will alter epigenetic reprogramming in sperm. Here we feed male mice either a folate-deficient or folate-sufficient diet throughout life. Paternal folate deficiency is associated with increased birth defects in the offspring, which include craniofacial and musculoskeletal malformations. Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis and the subsequent functional analysis identify differential methylation in sperm of genes implicated in development, chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, autism and schizophrenia. While >300 genes are differentially expressed in offspring placenta, only two correspond to genes with differential methylation in sperm. This model suggests epigenetic transmission may involve sperm histone H3 methylation or DNA methylation and that adequate paternal dietary folate is essential for offspring health.

You are what your father eats

http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/you-are-what-your-father-eats-231995

Mothers get all the attention. But a study led by McGill researcher Sarah Kimmins suggests that the father’s diet before conception may play an equally important role in the health of their offspring. It also raises concerns about the long-term effects of current Western diets and of food insecurity.

The research focused on vitamin B9, alsocalled folate, which is found in a range of green leafy vegetables, cereals, fruit and meats. It is well known that in order to prevent miscarriages and birth defects mothers need to get adequate amounts of folate in their diet. But the way that a father’s diet can influence the health and development of their offspring has received almost no attention. Now research from the Kimmins group shows for the first time that the father’s folate levels may be just as important to the development and health of their offspring as are those of the mother.Indeed, the study suggests that fathers should pay as much attention to their lifestyle and diet before they set out to conceive a child as mothers do.

“Despite the fact that folic acid is now added to a variety of foods, fathers who are eating high-fat, fast food diets or who are obese may not be able to use or  metabolize folate in the same way as those with adequate levels of the vitamin,” says Kimmins. “People who live in the Canadian North or in other parts of the world where there is food insecurity may also be particularly at risk for folate deficiency. And we now know that this information will be passed on from the father to the embryo with consequences that may be quite serious.”

The researchers arrived at this conclusion by working with mice, and comparing the offspring of fathers with insufficient folate in their diets with the offspring of fathers whose diets contained sufficient levels of the vitamin. They found that paternal folate deficiency was associated with an increase in birth defects of various kinds in the offspring, compared to the offspring of mice whose fathers were fed a diet with sufficient folate.

https://www.shadygrovefertility.com/blog/fertility-health/fertility-facts-sperm-regeneration/

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