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

I would be interested to see how places like Korea or Australia with large drinking populations would differ from dry places.

"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.

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.

Yup. The headline is "fake science", by and for moral scolds. The study doesn't even come close to demonstrating the headline claim.

in northern culture, the CDC's recommendation is laughable. Excessive drinking is a regular thing where its 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.

3-4 beers after work several days per week seems like a drinking problem imho.

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......?

> 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 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.

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 think it is very important to mention.

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".

Or the shorthand:

… in mice.

> ... (usually pregnant on one try). Both kids are healthy

This word, "usually" ...

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.

> 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

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05611-2

https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases...

Here is the link https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/andr.13566

Best of luck

But maybe it evens out in later generations?

The US and EU already have declining fertility rates when you take immigration stats out of the equation.

Or rather the absence or decision to not conceive.

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.

Seems to be suggesting that FAS is some kind of adaptation. I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure that FAS is an adverse effect, rather than a response.

the_sleaze9 asks "what negative effects are there?"

The partner one chooses: after 4 beers one may mate with anyone having a appropriately-matching part!

> 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.

fun, for one

Because I want to.

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

You presumably drink only water and eat only Huel (or similar just-add-water nutritionally complete powdered food), then?

Good red wine is one of life's most blessed gifts.

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.

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.

Most pleasures carry some risk.

Smoking has become socially unacceptable. Eventually this will happen to alcohol as well since it is worse for health than smoking.

Teetotalers coming here to apply small-N animal study to humans.

I don't see it as adding a hurdle, but rather giving people, who might be trying to conceive, a hurdle to avoid.

Color me skeptical... people have lived without antibiotics for thousands of years. I would be terribly surprised if their use had a statistical effect.

"Something, something, Darwin" ought to be a journal