Pothead Dads May Be Sabotaging Pregnancy Before It Starts |
Pothead Dads May Be Sabotaging Pregnancy Before It Starts
(Photo by NELSON ALMEIDA/AFP via Getty Images)
In case you haven’t noticed, America and the entire West are undergoing a severe fertility crisis.
It’s almost impossible to stop. Once a country gets rich and educated, baby-making rates begin to plummet. Maybe the root problem is affordability and how expensive America has gotten. Maybe it’s that people are too stressed all the time. Maybe it’s cultural. Of course, many a solution has been proposed, including tax credits for kids and longer paid maternity leave, but none seem to work. (RELATED: US Fertility Rate Plummeted To All-Time Low In 2024, New Data Shows)
Besides the cost of living or cultural attitudes toward parenting, other factors at play harm fertility: in this case, being married to a pot head.
On Monday, a snippet from podcaster Andrew Huberman’s show went viral. Huberman hosted Dr. Natalie Crawford, a fertility doctor in Austin, Texas, who explained how cannabis can be “detrimental to sperm.” Basically, THC messes with the paternal DNA in sperm and can not only affect a woman’s chances of getting pregnant, but also lead to miscarriages, according to Crawford and a Duke University study.
The research behind this is wild. Your sperm carries a set of instructions that tell your genes when to turn on and off. A Duke University study found that THC rewrites those instructions. The more weed in your system, the bigger the changes. It goes straight for the genes your… https://t.co/5xEkrf7WIv — Anish Moonka (@anishmoonka) April 14, 2026
The research behind this is wild. Your sperm carries a set of instructions that tell your genes when to turn on and off. A Duke University study found that THC rewrites those instructions. The more weed in your system, the bigger the changes. It goes straight for the genes your… https://t.co/5xEkrf7WIv
— Anish Moonka (@anishmoonka) April 14, 2026
Cannabis is detrimental to sperm: even if they can fertilize, there can be DNA damage. Many miscarriages and (in the case of IVF) “day 3 crashes” which is when paternal DNA normally kicks in, are cannabis related. Dr Natalie Crawford on the Huberman Lab podcast out now. pic.twitter.com/Vdp98K890f — Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. (@hubermanlab) April 13, 2026
Cannabis is detrimental to sperm: even if they can fertilize, there can be DNA damage. Many miscarriages and (in the case of IVF) “day 3 crashes” which is when paternal DNA normally kicks in, are cannabis related. Dr Natalie Crawford on the Huberman Lab podcast out now. pic.twitter.com/Vdp98K890f
— Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. (@hubermanlab) April 13, 2026
Of course, the entire fertility crisis cannot be blamed on dads ripping doobies right before they try to, you know, create life with their wives. Studies have also shown that THC lowers a male consumer’s sperm count. I’m sure a lot of things we consume in modern life lower sperm count, as well. But if you’re looking to get pregnant or to impregnate your spouse, it might be best to lay off the ganja. And the alcohol, too.