Hit The Treadmill Before You Start Trying
Better hit the treadmill before you start a family with your soulmate.
Planning on having a child soon?
Well… it’s time you hit that treadmill at your gym.
Parental exercise alters the epigenetic makeup of gametes (sperm and egg cells), which can have significant implications for the health and development of offspring. These epigenetic modifications include; DNA methylation, histone modifications, and changing cellular non-coding RNA profiles.
Cumulatively, these modifications alter gene expression in offspring, leading to dramatically improved health outcomes and reduced risk of disease.
For example, maternal exercise has been found to prevent the hypermethylation of Pgc-1α that’s induced by a high fat diet. Pgc-1α is a gene that is crucial for metabolic regulation. Preventing hypermethylation of Pgc-1α in an animal model was found to improve metabolic outcomes in an animal model. Some of the effects observed include enhanced glucose tolerance.
As for fathers, exercise was found to alter the expression of non-coding RNA in sperm, which play an important role in regulating gene expression in offspring.
Outlined below are some of the health benefits that were observed in the F1 offspring of male mouse fathers who took part in various exercise regimens:
Broadly speaking, the evidence appears to suggest that maternal exercise can help protect offspring against the harmful metabolic effects of a high fat diet.
Paternal exercise, on the other hand, seems to have broader implications with far-reaching effects on offspring lifespan, health, and disease that still hold true regardless of the diet consumed by the mother.
References:
Ivo, Vieira, de, Sousa, Neto., Wagner, Fontes., Jonato, Prestes., Rita, de, Cássia, Marqueti. (2021). Impact of paternal exercise on physiological systems in the offspring.. Acta Physiologica, 231(4) doi: 10.1111/APHA.13620
Rhianna, C., Laker., Travis, S., Lillard., Mitsuharu, Okutsu., Mitsuharu, Okutsu., Mei, Zhang., Mei, Zhang., Kyle, L., Hoehn., Jessica, J., Connelly., Zhen, Yan. (2014). Exercise prevents maternal high-fat diet-induced hypermethylation of the Pgc-1α gene and age-dependent metabolic dysfunction in the offspring.. Diabetes, 63(5):1605-1611. doi: 10.2337/DB13-1614