Child abuse leaves lasting 'scars' on DNA - Lingering marks on DNA could amplify stress responses.

Nature News ^ | 20 February 2009 | Heidi Ledford

[dr_lew]

That’s nuts.

[rmh47]

That’s nuts.

Not at all. Check out Epigenetics at Wiki.

[Minutemen]

Well if that’s the case,would not every other hiccup & annoyance throughout our lives be changing our DNA too?

[neverdem]

That’s nuts.

Maybe it's epigenetics?

[Mr Ramsbotham]

That’s nuts.

Some of the conclusions might be nuts. However, I've always wondered whether the nervous system has some kind of mechanism to protect the organism from the physiological effects of prolonged stress.

[FormerACLUmember]

Preposterous.

[dr_lew]

Thank you. The article says “changes to their DNA”, which is not epigenetics, strictly speaking. The change described does seem to be within that realm, though, being a change in the celluar environment related to DNA expression. It’s still hard to believe that high level interpretations of sensory experience, such as “abuse”, could lead to such deep chemical alterations at the celluar level.

[wolfpat]

Paging Dr. Paul Kammerer.

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[Arthur McGowan]

Maybe. That wouldn’t mean that the changes induced by abuse aren’t real, and harmful.

[Salamander]

I was doomed from the start.

[Salamander]

If you’d lived for 37 years with the “side effects” of abuse, I bet you wouldn’t say that.

For some of us, this explains why *nothing* we do ever “erases” the damage.

This seems to imply we were “wet-wired” into what we are, now.

And not to put too fine a point on it, it *seriously* sucks and “changes” your whole life, right down to the tiniest details.

[and for all I know, it changes it forever which I can’t provide proof for since I’m still alive and “forever” hasn’t come yet]

[Salamander]

“However, I’ve always wondered whether the nervous system has some kind of mechanism to protect the organism from the physiological effects of prolonged stress.”

Generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, depersonalization, derealization, withdrawal, anti-socialism, multiple personality disorder are all “mechanisms” to “shield” the person from the initial event.

They’re all types of psychological “displacement behavior”.

When your brain can’t cope with the real trauma, it will often manufacture other more generalized and vague anxieties to keep you from focusing on the real injury.

[garbanzo]

It’s also a pop-science article in which scientific precision runs about 80% in most cases. Methylation of DNA is a pretty well established fact.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, depersonalization, derealization, withdrawal, anti-socialism, multiple personality disorder are all “mechanisms” to “shield” the person from the initial event.

Those sound to me like symptoms of the action of whatever mechanism is present. Kind of like saying that rhinitis or asthma are mechanisms to fight allergens.

[Salamander]

Not really.

Just run of the mill mental “coping mechanisms”.

[Mad Dawg]

I guess I think that the exercise of "coping mechanisms" is a "sign or symptom" of underlying pathology, just as a fever suggests bacterial infection.

I mean, you got your "psychopathology of everyday life" over here, and then you have more pronounced clusters of behavior. Among these, in no particular order,would be inability to stay focused in a conversation, depressed behavior, evasion in counseling, failure to complete tasks agreed to, sleeplessness, abuse of alcohol, remarkable neatness, blah blah.

Sometimes, as in alcohol abuse, the thing to do is to address the "symptom" directly. Aside from anything else, doing so can improve the quality of life and get the client "Well" enough to pursue other matters.

Other times, and I'm thinking here of evasiveness in counseling, the behavior is just data to be pondered as indicative of and a response to something else.

Even then, I guess a frequently encountered course is,

1. Client evades.
2. Counselor begins to comment on the evasion.
3. Client displays denial (as in anger, minimizing, etc.).
4. Counselor persists.
5. Client gets anxious.
6. [lots of backing and filling and general dithering]
7. Client begins to look at what feelings are cloaked by anxiety.
8. Good stuff begins to happen ....

Isn't a it a kind of "rule of thumb" definition of neurosis that a neurosis is what you get when coping mechanisms make problems that interfere with coping?

What makes it fun is when the coping mechanism works okay for the person with the, sort of, primary problem but makes life miserable for others.

I once said to the chief deputy, only half-joking, "You don't suffer from stress; you're a carrier." Of course what was going on was that his position gave him space to "act out" (in the strict sense, not in the modern sense of "misbehave") so that others experienced the stress he was not able to confront in himself.

Blah blah. I need more coffee and to quit displacing my anxiety about the day ahead...

[neverdem]

Epigenetic regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor in human brain associates with childhood abuse

[neverdem]

New antibodies block a range of influenzas - Discovery hints at the possibility of broad-spectrum vaccines.

Scientists close in on 'universal' vaccine for flu: study

Any suggestions for Type 1 diabetics if the worst happens?

Clearing away the smoke [Republican Christian on Medical Marijuana]

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