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Very Interesting NYT article on fatherhood
#1

Very Interesting NYT article on fatherhood

Why Father's Really Matter

The title is offensive, (implying father's only matter for their genetic input) but the article is very interesting. It discusses epigenetics

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Lately scientists have become obsessed with a means of inheritance that isn’t genetic but isn’t nongenetic either. It’s epigenetic. “Epi,” in Greek, means “above” or “beyond.” Think of epigenetics as the way our bodies modify their genetic makeup. Epigenetics describes how genes are turned on or off, in part through compounds that hitch on top of DNA — or else jump off it — determining whether it makes the proteins that tell our bodies what to do.

I'll take a few examples to show what this means

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More than a decade ago, three Swedish researchers dug up records from Overkalix going back to 1799 in order to correlate its children’s health data with records of regional harvests and other documents showing when food was and wasn’t available. What the researchers learned was extremely odd. They found that when boys ate badly during the years right before puberty, between the ages of 9 and 12, their sons, as adults, had lower than normal rates of heart disease. When boys ate all too well during that period, their grandsons had higher rates of diabetes.

When the study appeared in 2002, a British geneticist published an essay speculating that how much a boy ate in prepuberty could permanently reprogram the epigenetic switches that would govern the manufacture of sperm a few years later. And then, in a process so intricate that no one agrees yet how it happens but probably has something to do with the germline (the reproductive cells that are handed down to children, and to children’s children), those reprogrammed switches are transferred to his sons and his sons’ sons.

A decade later, animal studies confirm that a male mammal’s nutritional past has a surprisingly strong effect on his offspring. Male rats that are starved before they’re mated produce offspring with less blood sugar and altered levels of corticosterone (which protects against stress) and insulin-like growth factor 1 (which helps babies develop).

Southeast Asian men who chew betel nuts, a snack that contains a chemical affecting metabolic functioning, are more likely to have children with weight problems and heart disease. Animal studies have shown that the effects of betel nut consumption by a male may extend to his grandchildren.

All of this can be extrapolated to a game context...

Quote:Quote:

By the time the torture stopped, about two-thirds of the field mice exhibited permanent and quantifiable symptoms of the mouse equivalents of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. The researchers then bred these unhappy mice with normal females. When their pups grew up, they tended to overreact to social stress, becoming so anxious and depressed that they wouldn’t even drink sugar water. They avoided other mice as much as they could.

Basically depressed, stressed mice breed emotionally overreactive, anxious, depressed and unsocial mice.

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When instead of letting the “defeated” mice mate, Dr. Nestler’s researchers killed them, harvested their sperm and impregnated the female mice through artificial means, the offspring were largely normal. Perhaps the sperm was harvested at the wrong stage in the process, says Dr. Nestler. Or maybe the female mouse picked up some signal when she had sex with the dysfunctional male mouse, some telltale pheromone or squeak, that made her body withhold nutrition and care from his pups. Females have been known to not invest in the spawn of non-optimal males, an outcome that makes perfect evolutionary sense — why waste resources on a loser?

Bolded made me laugh. The article goes on to discuss how instances of disorders like autism and schizophrenia increase as the age of child's father at conception.

Anyway, if it's been shown that seriously fucked up "beta" mice can pass that on to their children, the opposite logically should also be the case: That a guy who learns (meaning he had no genetic predisposition for it) to be confident, charming, social, seductive, masculine and all the rest could have those traits inherited by his sons epigenetically. Roosh's hypothetical long lost son in Poland could grow up to be a lot like his dad [Image: wink.gif]

[Image: tumblr_m97k8ayzdh1r7j8eko1_250.gif]
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#2

Very Interesting NYT article on fatherhood

That is a really concept. And I would to see more research carried out.

But let's not get too ahead of ourselves, we do not have enough information about how this mechanism works nor how it would apply to humans in a controlled environment. Also, data can be fudged really easily to make a theory seem like it works. I'd file this under, hope this shit pans out but it's not really changing what i do (even if it was true).
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#3

Very Interesting NYT article on fatherhood

I read about this last year. Sort of makes me regret not studying genetics/stem cell research/bioengineering.

For a long time it has been known that a man's sperm cells mutate throughout his life. So before we do something more advanced, like trying to determine if females' bodies are actively trying to abort the fetuses of weaker men (to me that seems plausible, remember that most mammals do not have close to a 100% surivial to adulthood rate of their young, so weakening the fetus is essentially a "late abortion" - it will be taken out by an early childhood disease), we need to figure out if these mutations of the sperm cell are random or affected by the man's life (it's probably both). To me the latter seems more plausible, but of course I do not have any proof.

Egg cells are present at birth, and the dna they contain hardly change - it's there since the woman was in her mom's womb.

Reading about this sometime last year was indeed mind-blowing. How I lead my life (nutrition, health, personalty, mental health...) will affect my offspring genetically? Great news; more motivation to be the best I can be.
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#4

Very Interesting NYT article on fatherhood

Quote: (09-09-2012 04:46 PM)Norset Wrote:  

I read about this last year. Sort of makes me regret not studying genetics/stem cell research/bioengineering.

For a long time it has been known that a man's sperm cells mutate throughout his life. So before we do something more advanced, like trying to determine if females' bodies are actively trying to abort the fetuses of weaker men (to me that seems plausible, remember that most mammals do not have close to a 100% surivial to adulthood rate of their young, so weakening the fetus is essentially a "late abortion" - it will be taken out by an early childhood disease), we need to figure out if these mutations of the sperm cell are random or affected by the man's life (it's probably both). To me the latter seems more plausible, but of course I do not have any proof.

Egg cells are present at birth, and the dna they contain hardly change - it's there since the woman was in her mom's womb.

Reading about this sometime last year was indeed mind-blowing. How I lead my life (nutrition, health, personalty, mental health...) will affect my offspring genetically? Great news; more motivation to be the best I can be.

As for the bolded, the book Sperm Wars (which I think all guys here should read) outline how "alpha" males (using CEO's, President's and Vice-Presidents as a proxy) have sons at higher rate then normal, something like 60% if my memory serves me correctly. Also very attractive couples have more females. Both of these facts make sense from an evolutionary point of view.
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#5

Very Interesting NYT article on fatherhood

More boys are also born to begin with overall. 105:100. It's not even close to 50/50 how people say it is.

Various theories are that men commit more crimes, end up jail, goto war, etc.
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#6

Very Interesting NYT article on fatherhood

its called gene-expression. idk if it is the correct medical term. would arnold schwarzenegger look the way he looks now, if he trained for marathons? no
+ its one of the best arguments for males to stay in shape (physical and mental).
+ a developing fetus is constantly showered with chemicals produced by the mother. so it does make a difference if the mother is a diabetic fat fuck or a happy, fit, healthy eating mother.

so for the sake of our offspring, we should workout and only impregnate high quality women

Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
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