Zinc and Vitamin A Can Protect Your Testis Against Alcohol

While most gymrats abstain from alcohol, anyway, some do not mind the occasional binge drinking and other consume drugs and "supplements" which may as well increase testicular malonaldehyde (MDA) content to potentially dangerous levels. To this group of people it may thus be of special interest that scientists (Xie. 2010) from the Center for Desease Prevention and Control in Shijiazhuang, China, have found that vitamin a and zinc supplementation at a human equivalent dose of 8µg vitamin A/kg and 1.3mg zinc gluconate/kg effectively protects rat testis against MDA induced damage:

Histological evaluation for testes revealed that seminiferous epithelium was disorganized and the sertoli cells and germ cells were degenerated in alcohol-treated rats.Zinc or vitamin A supplementation decreased the testicular mitochondrial MDA formation and the expression of iNOS in testes,as a result,the germ cells degeneration was improved,sperm counting and motility were higher than those in alcohol group,however,which couldn't prevent the decrease of serum levels of sexual hormones(T,LH,FSH)(P0.05).

So, if you cannot resist consuming too much alcohol or other potentially dangerous substances you better watch your vitamin and trace element intake.