Effects of stress on sperm

Children of stressed fathers are at greater risk of developing PTSD and depression, according to a new study. Researchers found life's pressures can change the DNA of a man's sperm - leading to brain development changes in his yet unborn baby. It's widely known that a mother's environment during pregnancy, including factors such as poor diet, stress and infection, can negatively impact the offspring.

Learning how a father's behavior and environment can impact his child's development could lead to the detection and prevention of many mental health disorders. Researchers have known for years that stress can increase the risk of mental disorders,' Dr Tracy Bale, professor of neuroscience at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told Daily Mail Online. 'What’s interesting here is that we are finding intergenerational effects.'

Researchers, led by Dr Bale, conducted a mice experiment to examine how a father's lifestyle impacts his children. Previously, the team has found male mice experiencing chronic periods of mild stress passed down genetic coding for a less effective hormonal response to stress in children. Three major hormones are released by the nervous system when the body is under stress. These are adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine. Collectively, these hormones send human bodies into ''fight''mode, which is important to the body's ability to cope with the effects of stress.

Stress resulted in changes in sperms genetic material known as microRNA, which plays a key role in which genes become functional proteins. These changes in stress reactivity have been linked to some mental disorders, including depression and PTSD.

In the new study, presented at the 2018 AAAS annual meeting in Austin, Texas, Dr Bale and her colleagues unraveled new details about the microRNA changes in the sperm. The caput epididymis, the structure where sperm matures, release vesicles which contain microRNA that can fuse with sperm to change its cargo delivered to the egg. When males mice were stressed, the caput epididymis responded by altering the content of these vesicles.

This suggests even mild environmental stress, such as workplace stress, can have a significant impact on the development and potentially the health of future offspring. This is through a process known as epigenetics where DNA is changed through lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise - or even stress. Scientists have known a mother's environment during pregnancy can damage a fetus by diet, stress or infection affecting the expression of certain genes in the same way.

Father's stress can affect offspring development by altering important aspects of his sperm. Her previous studies on the placenta have revealed novel sex differences during pregnancy that may predict increased pre-natal risk for neurodevelopmental disorders in males. Historically, most research on how a parent's lifestyle, behavior and environment can affect their children has focused on the mother. But scientists have recently been paying increasing attention to how a father's health impacts his children.
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Links between stress and sickness

A Michigan State University researcher is providing new insight into how certain types of stress interact with immune cells and can regulate how these cells respond to allergens, ultimately causing physical symptoms and disease. A stress receptor, known as corticotropin-releasing factor, or CRF1, can send signals to certain immune cells, called mast cells, and control how they defend the body.

Mast cells become highly activated in response to stressful situations the body may be experiencing. When this happens, CRF1 tells these cells to release chemical substances that can lead to inflammatory and allergic diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, life-threatening food allergies and autoimmune disorders such as lupus.

One chemical substance, histamine, is known to help the body get rid of invading allergens such as pollen, dust mites or the protein of a particular food like a peanut or shellfish. The histamine causes an allergic reaction and in a normal response, helps the body clear the allergen from its system.
If a patient has a severe allergy or is under a lot of stress, then this same response can be amplified, resulting in more severe symptoms ranging from trouble breathing, anaphylactic shock or death.

Researchers compared the histamine responses of mice to two types of stress conditions - psychological and allergic - where the immune system becomes overworked. One group of mice was considered "normal" with CRF1 receptors on their mast cells and the other group had cells that lacked CRF1. While the 'normal' mice exposed to stress exhibited high histamine levels and disease, the mice without CRF1 had low histamine levels, less disease and were protected against both types of stress. This shows that CRF1 is critically involved in some diseases initiated by these stressors.

The CRF1-deficient mice exposed to allergic stress had a 54 percent reduction in disease, while those mice who experienced psychological stress had a 63 percent decrease. The results could change the way everyday disorders such as asthma and the debilitating gastrointestinal symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome are treated.
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Links between epigenetic aging and bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder may involve accelerated epigenetic aging, which could explain why persons with the disorder are more likely to die from age-related diseases. Chronological age is measured in the amount of time that a person has been alive, epigenetic age measures molecular markers of chemical modifications to DNA. Bipolar disorder has been previously associated with accelerated aging but the mechanisms are unknown.

The chemical modifications could be precipitated by the disorder itself or by poor lifestyle habits in diet, exercise, tobacco use and illegal substance use. Controlling these factors is just as important as taking medications. Using blood samples, the researchers compared patients with bipolar disorder,  siblings of bipolar patients and healthy controls.

They also found that while older bipolar disorder patients had significantly accelerated epigenetic aging compared to controls, no difference was found in younger patients.A difference wasn't detected in younger patients because they haven't had as much exposure to stressful events. This gave us a hint that cumulative chronic exposure to stress would relate to accelerated aging.

 We would see it more in older people who have experienced a lifetime of stress in dealing with the disease. Along with the epigenetic clock, the study included two other biologic clocks: telomere length and mitochondrial DNA copy numbers. The epigenetic acceleration correlated with the number of copies of mitochondrial DNA, suggesting that the cross-talk between the nucleus and the mitochondria might be underlying the premature aging in bipolar disorder.
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Effects of estrogen treatment on menopausal women

Hormone replacement therapy may protect menopausal women from stress-related memory loss. The sex hormone estrogen buffers working memory from the impact of stress, which is known to impair short-term working memory. Women going through menopause take hormone replacement therapy HRT which contains estrogen to offset hot flushes, night sweats, sleep disturbances, mood swings, and reduced sex drive. The treatment also blocks fluctuating hormones from affecting memory.

Estrogen can modify women's hormonal response to stress, researchers discovered that the treatment after menopause protects working memory needed for short-term cognitive tasks from the effects of stress. Stress prompts the hormonal system and the hypothalamus to release cortisol. Cortisol interferes with the activity of the hippocampus from making new neurons and neural connections, a process that is key to working memory.

HRT may reduce the response and cortisol, when there are environmental or immune system stressors. Stress can interference with prefrontal cognitive processes such as working memory.
HRT can reduce the HPA response to stress, the hormone may also mitigate the effects of stress on working memory by limiting the cortisol response to the stressor. Researchers examined different study participants, some received estrogen therapy for menopausal symptoms and others received a placebo for five years. The women provided saliva samples so their levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress, was measured.

During two separate sessions, each woman completed a memory task where they were instructed to remember the final word of each sentence. Prior to one of the sessions, the women submerged their non-dominant hand in ice water for as long as possible, for a maximum of three minutes. During the other session, the women submerged the same hand in warm water before completing the memory test.

Although the women who were receiving estrogen therapy reported feeling more stressed by the cold water exposure than the women who received the placebo, they had lower levels of cortisol than their counterparts following the stress test. Women receiving HRT performed about the same on the memory task, regardless of whether they were exposed. sed to the cold water stressor in advance or not. Women who were taking the placebo performed worse on the memory task because of exposure to the cold water than they did when they were not exposed to a physical stressor.
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Stress affects psychological response to danger

Being under stress makes us worse at detecting new dangers, according to a new study. Stress can make our thinking and responses less flexible, so we are slower to learn new dangers.

Researchers taught their subjects cues for danger, then put half of that group under stress. The cues for danger and for safety were then switched, and the study found that those exposed to stress adapted to the new cues more slowly than their peers.

Fight or flight responses to stressors are meant to help us take action when we're in danger. When we are already under stress, we are slower to learn that something that once was safe is now a danger.

In the first round of the test, none of the subjects were under stress, and they were all shown a series of images. Half of those images predicted a small electrical shock, while half did not.
After half of the subjects had been subjected to stress, everyone watched the images again, but this time the dangerous and safe cues were switched.

The subjects that had been put under stress - by holding one arm in a tub of ice water before doing the danger activity again - were even slower to learn that something that had been safe was now dangerous than they were to learn the reverse. It took the stressed subjects an average of six extra tries to catch up to the physiological responses of their unstressed peers.
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Links between gut bacteria and autism

According to the latest research, gut bacteria could cause spectrum disorder. Pathogens in the stomach alter the brain's development and may increase risk of suffering from the spectrum disorder.

Links between the brain, gut and stress hormone cortisol can influence how messages are passed in the body, which may cause autistic symptoms.

Changes in neurometabolites in childhood can have dangerous effects on brain development. Collection of bacteria, fungi, and viruses living in humans gut may be responsible for the disorder.

Autism may be corrected by changing of diet, taking probiotics and adopting a gluten-free lifestyle which may improve social behaviour and ability to express emotions in autistic people.

Leaky gut releases toxins and even undigested food enter the bloodstream and travel to the brain, which may cause autism symptoms. Probiotics can change this by enhancing the gut's lining.
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How stress affect foetus through amniotic fluid

Stress during pregnancy for a longer period of time can lead to concentration of stress hormones in amniotic fluid.

If an expectant mother is strongly stressed over a longer period of time, the risk of the unborn child developing a mental or physical illness later in life -- such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or cardiovascular disease increases.

Physical stress to the mother can change the metabolism in the placenta and influence the growth of the unborn child.

 The research team tested 34 healthy pregnant women, who took part in amniocentesis within the scope of prenatal diagnostics.

Such a test constitutes a stress situation for the expectant mother as her body secretes cortisol in the short term. To determine whether the placenta also releases stress hormones, the researchers compared the cortisol level in the mother's saliva with the CRH level in the amniotic fluid -- and determined that there was no connection.

The baby obviously remains protected against negative effects in case of acute, short-term stress to the mother,

The situation of the results regarding prolonged stress is completely different, as was determined using questionnaires for diagnosing chronic social overload: "If the mother is stressed for a longer period of time, the CRH level in the amniotic fluid increases

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Stress can cause liver disease

 Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress may cause non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, independent of other factors.

When there is nutritional excess, the protein load exceeds the ER folding capacity and a collection of conserved signaling pathways, termed the unfolded protein response (UPR), are activated to preserve ER function.

Research team demonstrated that UPR activation in the forebrain, is linked to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

 Brain ER stress can cause the disease independent of changes in
body weight, food intake, and other factors.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease impairs normal liver function and is linked to other diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

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Long journey can cause depression

Researchers examined the impact of commuting and flexible on health and productivity. People who endure long
commutes are more likely to be stressed and depressed.

A study of more than 34,000 working British adults found journeys upwards of half-an-hour are damaging the nation's health and productivity.
They were 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression.

Shaun Subel, director of strategy at VitalityHealth, said: 'The result demonstrates the significance of the daily work routine in influencing individuals' health and productivity.

Employers should be looking at
flexible working arrangements as a more prominent part of their workplace wellness.

Allowing employees the flexibility to avoid the rush-hour commute where possible, or fit their routine around other commitments can help reduce stress and promote healthier lifestyle.




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Stem-cell therapy may be effective for erectile dysfunction

Erectile dysfunction is inability to get erection firm enough for sexual intercourse. According to Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Diseases, about 12 percent of men under the age of 60, and 22 percent of men between 60 and 69 have erectile dysfunction.

Common cause of erectile dysfunction are: diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, anxiety, depression and stress.

Stem-cell therapy is the process of injecting the patients' own stem cell into the erectile tissue of his penis, patients' stem cells is always derived from his abdominal fat cells.

Dr Martha Haahr discovered that within 6 months of stem-cell, 8 out of 21 men treated were able to have sexual intercourse.

Current treatments for erectile dysfunction like injections, penile implant and PDE5 have side effects, researchers are looking for safer treatment. Steam-like cell therapy is safer in animal trials and will be safe for men.