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Growing up in a violent environment is likely to accelerate aging and disease risk, according to new study review

2020-08-03T22:01:18.016Z


A meta-review of dozens of studies published in the Psychological Bulletin, a journal of the American Piscology Association, shows that you are likely to experience early adversity…


A boy searches for plastic at the Anlong Pi landfill in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

(CNN) - Experiencing adversity early in life is likely to cause boys to reach puberty more quickly, increase cellular aging, and impair brain development.

This according to a meta-review of dozens of studies published in Psychological Bulletin , a magazine of the American Piscological Association.

And as the country faces a legacy of systemic racism and inequity, pediatricians need to be trained to recognize these adverse impacts at an early stage and help guide children's development from earlier. This is key to reducing known health disparities among blacks, who are at increased risk for illnesses such as depression, heart problems and diabetes, the study authors said.

"This study shows the effects that systemic exposure to violence has on children," said lead author Katie McLaughlin, an associate professor of psychology at Harvard University and director of the school's Stress and Development Laboratory.

McLaughlin noted that making an effort to provide more stable home environments for children as they grow can dramatically reduce strain on the public health system decades later, when accelerated aging processes may end up causing illness.

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"The positive news is that it is never too late to reverse these changes," he said. "Because the brain is so plastic in the early stages of life, it presents a tremendous opportunity for us to step in and prevent long-term damage," he explained.

Adversity during childhood can accelerate the onset of puberty

McLaughlin and colleagues analyzed 79 peer-reviewed studies looking at a total of 116,000 participants who had grown up in hostile environments.

Those studies looked at how childhood adversity correlated with puberty age, cellular aging, and changes in brain structure.

In those studies, the researchers made a distinction between "threat" and "deprivation" environments. "Threat" settings likely included abuse and violence, and were more associated with accelerated aging. The environments of "deprivation", which are marked by child abuse, sexual abuse, neglect or chronic poverty, had a remarkable but less drastic effect in accelerating aging.

As children grow into adulthood, their experiences dealing with adversity can lead to depression, anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, substance abuse, suicide and cardiovascular disease, the study authors said, citing medical literature dating back decades.

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"Some of these accelerated aging markers are really easy to see," said McLaughlin. "There is a consistent pattern that growing up in a stressful environment leads to further aging compared to those who don't (grow up in such an environment)," she explained.

At a time when most of the literature provides an increasingly specific picture, this meta-analysis is empowering other researchers to take a more assertive approach to dealing with childhood adversity.

"This is a major study showing how childhood threat and deprivation extend their long arms into adulthood," said Eric Loucks, associate professor of epidemiology at Brown University and director of the Brown Center for Mindfulness.

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The analysis helps Loucks frame his research on what science can do "for the many adults among us who have been exposed to child abuse, neglect and poverty," he said.

"The results are consistent with our own studies finding negative effects of maltreatment on the structure of the brain," said Amy Garrett, assistant professor of psychiatry and radiology at the School of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center. in San Antonio. "We have also shown that early intervention can restore some of these effects," he explained.

Adversity can accelerate cellular aging

The meta-analysis found that children living in adversity will show signs that their cells are aging faster than normal, measured by the length of their telomeres, which are caps at the end of the chromosomes that protect our DNA. Chronic stress is associated with shortened telomere length, and can lead to physical and mental health problems in adulthood.

This process can be illustrated with what scientists call an "epigenetic clock", which can measure how stress can stretch a person's body to appear biologically older than it actually is.

"In a healthy adult, the epigenetic clock is right on target," said McLaughlin. "For those who have been through adversity, the watch would assume they are much older than they are," he explained.

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Living under violence can change the structure of the brain

Growing up amid trauma and violence was linked to thinning of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with the processing of social and emotional information, according to a systemic review of 25 of the studies that were part of the analysis, all focused on how adversity affects the structure of the brain.

Adverse childhoods marked by poverty and deprivation, on the other hand, were more likely to show thinning of the frontoparietal cortex, which controls sensory and cognitive tasks.

There are a couple of explanations for why this might be the case. Aging faster than usual in a violent environment could simply be a way that evolution drives our ability to reproduce. And if the brain developed more rapidly in a violent period, children would be better able to process and respond to the dangers around them.

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“These processes are probably adaptive in some way. In the long run, they have costs to our health, "said McLaughlin. "Mentally, those (costs) may be anxiety and depression later. Physically they can be diabetes and heart disease, "he explained. Children living in adversity may have a fight or flight response that is "constantly activated," he added.

These changes can be reversed

McLaughlin's lab is testing ways pediatricians can detect signs of violence or deprivation during a routine medical visit. McLaughlin noted, for example, that if a child goes through puberty early, it could be a signal for potential adversities to be traced, and then a four to six visit treatment plan to help equip the child with coping mechanisms. .

"Reversibility is something we are beginning to learn from," McLaughlin said.

For young people, psychosocial interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy were a possible solution.

At the Brown Mindfulness Center, Loucks is developing a Reversibility Network of scientists studying how to remedy the long-term effects of childhood neglect, poverty, and racial discrimination.

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"One of the areas that we are excited about is the potential of mindfulness programs to help 'heal the past in the present moment,' as Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh described in his book 'Reconciliation,'" he said. Loucks.

Loucks noted research showing that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy was effective in helping prevent depression relapses.

"Mindfulness training can help us be more aware of and move away from those habits that took hold when we were children because of our adverse experiences," said Loucks. "We did not have the power and wisdom that we now have as adults to learn to help reverse, or at least mitigate, the effects of adversity in early life," he explained.

Sexual abuseRacismViolence

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2020-08-03

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