Epigenetics and DNA Fragmentation

I think we can probably all remember that “wow” moment when we first learned that our eggs are created when we are but a foetus - at four months gestational age to be precise! But did we ever stop to think that our mother’s eggs were made in our grandmother’s womb?! So that 50% of my DNA is actually 70 years old! And the DNA of our daughter’s eggs will form 50% of the DNA in our granddaughters! So essentially, we are the product of our grandmothers. Double wow! 

So let’s take a moment to have a think about what our grandmothers might have been getting up to all those years ago…

If you’re as old as I am (ahem!) then my grandmother would have just endured ‘Britain in the Blitz’ before she became pregnant with my mum. Food rationing continued for nine years after the war ended with meat being the last item to be “derationed” in 1954. Interestingly, tea, sugar, chocolate and sweets were among some of the first items to become more readily available. Cigarettes and alcohol, of course, were never rationed. 

Therefore, it’s scary to think that whilst your mother was developing the egg that made you in your grandmother’s uterus, your grandmother would have been chronically nutrient deficient, stressed to high heaven, “caffeined” up to the max, and possibly puffing on a few cigarettes to see her through. And, depending on when your grandmother was pregnant she was probably battling with unstable blood sugar levels with the introduction of sugar before protein.

You won’t be surprised to learn that stress, nutritional deficiencies and insulin resistance all have a negative effect on egg quality. On top of this, if a mother has cortisol dysregulation, so too will her child. (Duthie & Reynolds, 2013)

But if that weren’t depressing enough, it’s not just the female sex to consider. 

In a mouse model study, male mice subjected to stressors, (loud noises, bright lights, sleep deprivation and mild electric shocks) were shown to father offspring who exhibited increased measures of severe depression and anxiety-like behaviours. Male offspring also had significantly elevated cortisol. Cortisol of course being known to impact semen parameters via testosterone output - among other things. (Dietz et al, 2011)

So, by these terms, 50% of my mother’s DNA was made up of a chronically deficient, severely stressed female, and the other 50% from a man who had endured a war and had the PTSD to prove it.

But, despite this, they created a child that was fertile who went on to have me! How can this be? Well… if you think about it, my grandmother’s eggs were not affected by such hardships since they were created in a time of peace and relative plenty (nearly 100 years ago!). Not to mention in a time where all the meat and vegetables were locally sourced, grass-fed and organic. 

Therefore, it’s no wonder our generation and generations to come are struggling with their fertility. 

It’s interesting when you think that sperm parameters have declined by 60% in 50 years with no sign of levelling off. Males born post-war would be fathering their own children by 1975, which, interestingly is when semen levels started falling off a cliff.

Now I’m not saying that it’s simply the war that’s to blame for our dwindling fertility. But certainly wartimes and the mass production of food and industry that followed can be squarely lumbered with a good proportion of blame. Pesticides were introduced and widely used from 1945 onwards. 

As discussed in my article, “Can you predict your fertility?” (Allen, 2021), in which we talk about anogenital distance and penis size, or lack thereof, being a direct indicator of a man’s fertility. We see that women who are subjected to endocrine disrupting chemicals, such as those found in pesticides, have a fundamental impact on their offspring’s fertility.

So what are we really talking about here? There’s a new buzz word in town - “epigenetics”. 

Your genetics are your gene code. Epigenetics are the gene’s ‘expression’ of that code. Your genes have the capability to act in many ways depending on its environment. 

“During embryonic development, the effect of exposure to environmental pollutants seems to have an even more crucial effect on the epigenome and increases the risk of developing disease in the F1, F2, and F3 generations.” (Downs, 2023) So in other words, three future generations are affected by the environment which you are in when you create a child. 

So, given that the next generation is already up against the wall (fertility speaking), we need to do all we can today to improve our gene expression so that it is not negatively informing our offspring’s genetics and their ability to conceive, not to mention to be free from disease. 

Remember that quote above…? “Semen parameters have fallen by 60% in 50 years with no sign of levelling off”. What happens in another 50 years? Human extinction? 

I’m sure lots of you are thinking, well there’s Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) that will surely sweep in to fix it. Yes. It’s predicted that by 2050 most couples will need to use IVF to conceive. (Swan, 2020) But did you know that babies born via conventional medical ART treatments were shown to be twice as likely to have autism than those born without reproductive assistance, according to study findings in the American Journal of Public Health (Fountain et al, 2015) “Higher percentages of miscarriage, preeclampsia, placenta previa, gestational diabetes, premature births, low average birth weights, perinatal mortality, cerebral palsy, and congenital defects are the new issues concerning disorders that accompany ART.” (Strömberg et al. 2002) Clearly IVF is not the answer, 

So what is the answer? Honestly, I don’t know if there is one. But there are things that every prospective parent MUST be doing to minimise the transference of infertility and poor health to their young. Genetic integrity must be improved by way of the epigenome and this is where we really need to enlist the help of the male species.

So let’s talk about DNA code. Your DNA code is essentially a copy of your parent’s DNA code except, in making the copy, some bits were written down wrong. Imagine you’ve got your grandmother’s recipe for sticky toffee pudding but your mum wrote down 1 tablespoon of treacle instead of 3 and passed it on to you. So now when you come to make that delicious sweet treat you just can’t get it right!  

Now, as a woman you cannot go back in time and ask your mum to apply better concentration when copying the recipes. She was in a stressed out uterus and did the best she could with what she was given. It’s happened, and there’s nothing you can do about it. 

BUT, men are making copies of their DNA all the time! “The sperm that a man ejaculates today was made 70 days ago.” (Downs, 2023) So, you could legitimately send your partner on a three month sticky toffee pudding baking masterclass so that he can learn the best recipe of all time and pass that down to your child. It may not have the same pizazz that your grandmother’s version did but your child certainly wouldn’t be thrown out of the Women’s Institute for it. 

We can apply this analogy to, say, our folate conversion. Perhaps your DNA code that converts folate into a useable form (needed for foetal development) was copied across wrong and now you lack the instruction as to how to convert folate into something useable. (This is a rather crude explanation of the MTHFR gene variant that can be responsible for miscarriage and poor pregnancy outcomes - but you catch my drift!) BUT your partner has worked on improving his DNA integrity so that his MTHFR gene is a beautiful, black market-worthy copy of a pristine and original MTHFR gene. If his gene was as defunct as yours, your child has a 70% chance of their gene being defunct. But pair it with a pristine version and your child now has a 30-40% chance of their gene being defunct and inheriting the MTHFR gene polymorphism that will predispose them to miscarriage. 

In this way scientists have observed that genetic coding can be passed down for 14 generations! (Klosin et al, 2017)

So, given that ART comes with its problems, and 30% of men are solely responsible for a couple’s infertility, with 50% of men being partly responsible, we really really need them to make every effort possible to improving their DNA so that your children can be conceived naturally and don’t have to go through the same hopeless nonsense that you are being subjected to right now. 

It’s also worth pointing out that the first baby born by ICSI is only now 25 years old. We have absolutely no idea what the reproductive capabilities are for those people conceived by ICSI. (Downs, 2023)

So let’s do it right. Let’s put the building blocks in place now before you get to the egg fertilisation stage. And if you’re not sold - it only takes 3 months! 

And if you’re still not sold, according to our 2022 audit, couples who received acupuncture treatment in our clinics for three months or more had a 72% natural pregnancy success rate. 

Thought for the day
If you’ve been reading this thinking, well our sperm test was good so this doesn’t apply to us then I’m sorry to say that this still may apply to you. A semen analysis that you might get from the GP or fertility clinic doesn’t check for DNA integrity - only a sperm DNA fragmentation test can do that, which is why you hear me talk about the importance of them ALL the time! 

Research has shown that 40% of men attending a fertility clinic with a good standard semen analysis had high DNA fragmentation, rendering them infertile or sub-fertile. (Examen Lab, 2025) I often wonder that if fertility clinics spent the time to run DNA fragmentation tests and then gave the male time and targeted lifestyle advice to improve the DNA before IVF that maybe some of those complications associated with ART wouldn’t be so prevalent. I would even go as far as to say that some of those IVFs might not be necessary. 

Studies are slow to trickle in on the subject but we do know that DNA fragmentation of sperm is a major contributor to a child having autism and doubles the risk of miscarriage - improving the DNA should then, in theory, improve other genetic risk factors to foetal development and the long term health of the child. More research must be done and, as ever, I will keep you posted if it is! 


Reference list

Duthie, Leanne and Rebecca M. Reynolds. 2013. “Changes in the maternal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in pregnancy and postpartum: influences on maternal and feral outcomes.” Neuroendocrinology 98, no. 2, 106-115.

Dietz et al. Sept 2011. “Paternal Transmission of Stress-Induced Pathologies”. PubMed [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3217197/]

Allen, Verity. Aug 2021. “Can You Predict Your Fertility?” [https://www.verityallenacupuncture.com/blog/can-you-predict-your-fertility]

Swan, Shanna. 2020. Countdown: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male And Female Reproductive Development And Imperilling the Future Of The Human Race.

Fountain et al. 2015. “Association between assisted reproductive technology conception and autism in California.” American Journal of Public Health 105, no. 5, 963-971

Strömberg et al. 2002. “Neurological sequelae in children born after in-vitro fertilisation: a population-based study.” The Lancet 359, no. 9305, 461-465

Downs, Jaclyn. 2023. Enhancing Fertility Through Functional Medicine: Using Nutrigenomics to Solve ‘Unexplained Infertility’. 

Klosin et al. 2017. “Transgenerational transmission of environmental information in C. elegans.” Science 356, no. 6335, 320-323. [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6335/320]

Examen Lab. 2025. [https://examenlab.com/for-men/fertility-test-for-men/]