For women who are pregnant or trying to conceive, the warnings seem endless: Don?t drink! Stop smoking! Avoid caffeine! But what about dads" (After all, they are 50 percent of the equation.)
Recent studies indicate men?s health and habits pre-conception also impact babies for years to come, because things like alcohol and cigarettes can damage DNA within sperm. If one of those imperfect swimmers wins the race and fertilizes the egg, the baby?s genetic makeup can be compromised.
Trying to quantify just how much dad?s health affects children isn?t easy, though. ?Women ovulate one egg, whereas men have so many sperm to choose from,? explains Caitlin Dunne, a doctor who specializes in fertility at the Pacific Centre for Reproductive Medicine in Burnaby, BC. ?With that redundancy, there’s still the possibility that there’s a good sperm.? Men can increase the likelihood of producing fit sperm by adopting healthier lifestyles. Sperm rejuvenate every 72 days, so Dunne suggests guys wait three months before trying to have kids for the changes to take effect. Here are some good places to start.
1. Lose weight

We joke about dad bods, but men packing extra pounds may pass on an increased risk of obesity to their kids. That was the finding of a 2015 study from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research. Researchers compared the sperm of men who were a healthy weight to that of obese men and discovered differences in how cells read genes in each gro...