[HN Gopher] Early-life stress changes more genes in the brain th...
___________________________________________________________________
Early-life stress changes more genes in the brain than a head
injury in rats
Author : wglb
Score : 286 points
Date : 2023-11-21 00:44 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medicalxpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medicalxpress.com)
| everdrive wrote:
| I don't know that I would particularly expect a head injury to
| primarily change genes, but rather just to damage the structure
| of the brain itself. I don't have any reason to doubt the study
| itself, but the article here is not very useful. Which genes are
| changed? Is it necessarily bad that genes are changed? Articles
| such as this are one of the reasons why people badly
| misunderstand (and overestimate) the effects of epigenetics.
| sys32768 wrote:
| I have never heard this either, and I spent a few years dealing
| with a TBI (traumatic brain injury) in a loved one.
|
| The finding that really surprised me is that whole brain
| atrophy is seen ~11 months after mild and moderate TBI:
|
| https://www.ajnr.org/content/23/9/1509
| gtirloni wrote:
| Only the headline is wrong, the article itself says something
| different.
|
| > stress changed the activation level of many more genes in
| the brain than were changed by a bump to the head.
|
| > "We found many, many, many more genes were differentially
| expressed as a result of our early life stress manipulation
|
| > First author Michaela Breach, a graduate student in Lenz's
| lab, examined the gene expression changes
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| > I don't know that I would particularly expect a head injury
| to primarily change genes (...)
|
| It doesn't change genes, it changes gene expression. The
| headline is wrong.
|
| > "We found many, many, many more genes were differentially
| expressed as a result of our early life stress manipulation
| than our traumatic brain injury manipulation,"
|
| Judging from the rest of the comments no one else read the link
| either.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| In rats.
| kerowak wrote:
| This refrain is beginning to sound like the "checkmate
| atheists" of people who don't understand biology
| jackomelon wrote:
| Can you elaborate?
| kerowak wrote:
| Pointing out that biologists use animal models that don't
| map perfectly to our biology is a lazy criticism. It's not
| a good-faith way of engaging with research, and
| demonstrates ignorance to the purpose of modelling in any
| field.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| 12 October 2023 - Reproducibility trial: 246 biologists
| get different results from same data sets
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03177-1
|
| I think it's perfectly far to be very very critical of
| these paper especially because of the impact they can
| have on society, medicine, and legislation.
|
| We should be very harsh and disciplined.
| freedomben wrote:
| GP isn't saying we shouldn't be critical, hard and
| disciplined. They are saying we shouldn't just lazily
| dismiss any results as "in rats."
|
| I fully agree with your comment out of context, and I
| think it actually backs up GP's point about not lazily
| dismissing stuff as "in rats"
| pvg wrote:
| This info is conventionally added to HN titles since
| articles have the bad habit of omitting it so HN users
| often point it out. You can read it as equivalent to
| comments pointing out publication year so it can be added
| to a title.
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| Certain experiments are not ethical nor possible to do in
| human subjects, so scientists rely on model systems to
| interrogate biological questions. It has become somewhat
| common for people to immediately dismiss scientific
| findings on the basis that this research was done in a
| mouse, and therefore not applicable to human biology.
| qwertox wrote:
| I agree that this should be a part of the title. It could then
| mention how applicable this is to humans, but that is another
| story.
| nshunter wrote:
| Gabor Mate has published quite a few works on the effects of
| stress on children, even starting in utero with effects from the
| mother.
|
| Scattered minds and when the body says no connect to the effects
| of stress on the body and children in particular.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Sorry I don't understand. Stress had an effect or had no effect
| on children's minds?
| greendesk wrote:
| Gabor Mate expresses that stress has an effect on children.
| The effect is expressed in actions as children grow into
| adulthood.
| ravishi wrote:
| Scattered Minds and When the Body Says No are book titles.
| graphe wrote:
| Children cope with their surroundings and if traumatized
| habituate themselves to these habits that are temporarily
| soothing but deleterious long term, often imitating family
| members who may have also carried these learned behaviors in
| their own life. Cycles of generations that are impoverished
| in comparison to their well to do neighbors are an example.
| 98codes wrote:
| Dr. Gabor Mate1 should be taken with large grains of salt when
| it comes to ADHD and related conditions. There is a lack of
| published research or dedicated expertise on the matter; Dr.
| Russell Barkley, a leading ADHD expert and researcher2, has a
| good video on the subject3.
|
| 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabor_Mat%C3%A9
|
| 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Barkley
|
| 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO19LWJ0ZnM
| Aeglaecia wrote:
| id probably prefer to listen to the drug opinion of the guy
| who doesn't have a laundry list of drug sponsors :P
| rightbyte wrote:
| There are these test done on hen, where stressed hen led to
| stressed chickens even if they never even met after laying the
| eggs.
| robg wrote:
| Be careful with this article, it's based on a poster at a
| scientific meeting, not a peer reviewed publication.
| tokai wrote:
| A poster at a conference stand a good chance to get more and
| better peer feedback than what is afforded to the peer review
| of the average journal paper.
| robg wrote:
| Perhaps, but that feedback won't be reflected in the poster
| itself, maybe the publication, if there is one.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Hmm, not the case in my experience going to Society for
| Neuroscience for 25 years. If you are luck you get useful
| (non-critical) feedback from 5 people. Why would one "review"
| a poster seriously? They are often years away from submission
| even to bioRxiv.
|
| 3 cases id single-cell RNA-seq per group, all males. I hope
| you all appreciate the amazing noise level of single-cell
| RNAseq. This study should have used bulk RNAseq to keep noise
| lower.
| amelius wrote:
| Does amount of genes even say something?
| methodical wrote:
| Uh, yes. The difference between the human and chimp genomes is
| only like 1% but that minute variance clearly makes a massive
| difference. Different expressions of individual genes can
| vastly change appearance such as eye color, hair color, etc.
| These are physical traits but obviously, a similar concept
| applies to other traits.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Key question: are the genetic changes passed on, or are the
| changes limited to expression rather than encoding?
| kyleyeats wrote:
| Gabor Mate has taken a close look at the epigenetics of trauma.
| He suggests it takes a few generations to clear up, but it's
| unclear if that's an epigenetic thing or just a re-traumatizing
| thing.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| It makes sense. Children takes cues about what's normal,
| what's rewarded, etc, from the behavioral patterns of their
| parents. If your parents are victims of bone fide trauma, the
| patterns will be different from what they would have been
| otherwise. So a trauma victim might display signs of
| hypervigilance, and children will observe this hypervigilance
| (in behavior, in the words used, in the attitudes adopted and
| result from it). So the child will be conditioned, but also,
| the child will likely infer the mental state of their parents
| to some degree. If you look hypervigilant, the child will
| infer "there must be danger". If maintained consistently
| enough, the inference is "the world is a highly dangerous
| place", blown out of proportion with the situation.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| The article doesn't say explicitly, but I assuming this is
| talking about epigenetics rather than mendelian mutations?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Title should be "...changes gene expression levels"
|
| So they took a cohort of baby rats, exposed one group of rats to
| 'stress', smacked another group of rats in the head hard enough
| to cause brain injury, had a control group which was
| 'unstressed', then sliced up their brains to measure levels of
| protein expression. Some rats were not chopped up and their
| 'natural behavior' was monitored.
|
| This is apparently valuable research because it shows that
| traumatized and injured rats have different protein expression
| patterns in their brains from non-traumatized and injured rats
| and also behave differently as adults. This is applicable to
| humans because...???
|
| Takeaways: (1) torturing rodents for dubious results is ethically
| questionable and (2) what a waste of money and resources.
| ramon156 wrote:
| Im glad this is brought up. This research feels like dots being
| vaguely connected together. What am I even supposed to do with
| this info?
| floor2 wrote:
| > What am I even supposed to do with this info?
|
| Seems like a weird question. Are you a researcher in a
| related field? Then maybe incorporate this finding into your
| models for how things work or tweak your future experiments
| based on this data.
|
| Are you an unaffiliated Rust developer? Then you're not
| really supposed to do anything with this.. it's not
| particularly for you. Read it if you're intellectually
| curious, to expand your knowledge and understanding of the
| world in general? Or ignore it if you don't care?
| krisoft wrote:
| > This is applicable to humans because...???
|
| We don't know if it is applicable to humans. Some of it might,
| some of it might not. First you figure out how rat brains work
| and then you can check if human brains work the same way.
|
| You are right that we are interested in human brains, and how
| to heal them. The reason we don't do these experiments on
| humans is mainly ethical. Simply put we value human lives more
| than rats. There are also logistical challenges with humans.
| They take too long to grow up and cost too much to raise.
|
| > torturing rodents for dubious results
|
| What makes the results dubious? I'm not an expert on brain
| research. Is it just that you have a dislike to animal analog
| studies? Is the gene expression changes caused by early-life
| stress and brain injury well understood enough that there are
| no open questions the experiment might answer?
| robwwilliams wrote:
| No protein work. mRNA assayed.
|
| Applicable to humans because head trauma is unfortunately very
| common in infants, toddlers, and children. Developing effective
| treatments of pediatric TBI and adverse childhood events would
| be a real boon to humanity.
| xerox13ster wrote:
| It would literally save my life, as I would actually be able
| to live mine and do all the things I'm capable of instead of
| feeling partially locked in.
| thang wrote:
| Original article:
|
| https://news.osu.edu/early-life-stress-changes-more-genes-in...
| dontcontactme wrote:
| In rats, not humans. Interesting nonetheless
| 0003 wrote:
| CTRL+F did not disappoint. Thank you.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks - I've inratsed the title above.
| blindriver wrote:
| "Stress alone and stress combined with traumatic brain injury
| (TBI) produced a few noteworthy results. Both conditions
| activated pathways in excitatory and inhibitory neurons
| associated with plasticity, which is the brain's ability to adapt
| to all kinds of changes--mostly to promote flexibility, but
| sometimes, when the changes are maladaptive, resulting in
| negative outcomes. "
|
| It's weird that this study is interpreted as changes in gene
| activation is bad, when it's clearly mostly good. It's like
| saying that micro-tearing of muscles during exercise is bad, when
| in fact that's the process which builds more muscles. Sure, some
| tears of muscle are bad, but it's mostly good, and I assume that
| the changes in gene expression in the brain are a form of growing
| and reacting to new situations, not necessarily bad.
| sonofhans wrote:
| The two processes are not entirely analogous. They are both the
| result of the body reacting to external stress, and to become
| more fit for the environment that creates the stress. In the
| weightlifting example this is a positive change -- the body
| gets stronger, as long as the exercise program is good.
|
| In the TBI and trauma cases, though, the external stresses are
| negative, not positive, thus the adaptations are negative as
| well. Teach a young brain that the world is stressful and scary
| and the brain will remember this, and act that way even when
| removed to a less scary world.
| keenmaster wrote:
| Absolutely not. If your brain is molded in a stressful
| environment, it'll optimize for reaction to and preemption of
| threats, with all the anti-social behavior that entails, rather
| than creativity, cooperation, high-level learning, and
| constructive pro-social behaviors.
| z2h-a6n wrote:
| Do you have any references to support this? What you and the
| person you responded to said both seem reasonable to some
| extent, but without evidence It's not clear to what extent
| they are true.
|
| Relatedly, does "stress" have the same meaning in what you
| say and others are saying? It seems reasonable (though I have
| no evidence or related expertise) that the optimal level of
| stress is non-zero (for some definition of stress, to the
| extent that it can be quantified). Why wouldn't the optimal
| level of stress promote more pro-social, creative,
| cooprerative, etc. behaviour than sub-optimal stress levels?
| beebeepka wrote:
| If you're old enough to be here, you've already seen all
| the evidence you need.
|
| And not just humans. Pretty easy to tell if an animal has
| been mistreated. Kittens raised on the street, where they
| compete with each other for food, are nothing like those
| born and raised indoors.
|
| Do you really need "hard science" for this kind of stuff?
| feiri wrote:
| I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for "hard science"
| on this. Just as you've provided an anecdote of "street
| kittens," I have personal anecdotes of children who grew
| up in abusive families who turned out to be very nice
| people. Of course, there may have been less visible
| setbacks in other parts of their development, but at the
| end of the day it's not a clear-and-cut A causes B to me.
| beebeepka wrote:
| You are right. It's not unreasonable to ask, however it
| wouldn't hurt to demonstrate some basic acknowledgement
| that things do seem to be strongly correlated. Even the
| biggest idiots understand the concept.
|
| You are also right that not everyone (human or different
| animal) reacts the same. Some turn the other cheek, some
| will break your nose. The scars will always be there,
| though.
| keenmaster wrote:
| I went down a rabbit hole about this while reading The
| Telomere Effect (recommended reading). The book goes into
| the good stress vs. bad stress paradigm and how it has a
| biological basis - literally at the RNA level. There's a
| Goldilocks zone where, for example, the right amount of
| good stress actually increases your lifespan, and the lack
| thereof is actually bad for you. Of course bad stress is
| bad in any amount, with bigger consequences if you're
| younger or, get this, in the womb. If a pregnant woman
| experiences a traumatic event or bad or chronic stress,
| that can result in lifelong issues for the kid. I don't
| recall if the book went beyond RNA and into the
| neuroscience aspect or whether that was from further
| reading, but the neurological effects are significant too.
|
| Update:
|
| Harvard Medical School article: Understanding the stress
| response https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-
| healthy/understanding...
|
| Research on effect on neural circuits: https://jneurodevdis
| orders.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.118...
|
| Harvard article on impact of early childhood adversity,
| including on brain:
| https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/inbrief-the-
| im...
| xerox13ster wrote:
| Do I get to count as evidence? The stress they're talking
| about is clearly defined. It's ACE levels.
|
| Before the age of 5 I was hospitalized for falling out of a
| moving truck and had an ace score of 9, after adoption at 5
| I had an ace score of 6-7. I was regularly beaten over the
| head, yelled at, had food withheld--the whole 9 yards.
| Almost always related to academic performance because I
| already had ADHD and PTSD from before adoption.
|
| I now am starting to realize that beyond being easily
| triggered due to PTSD, I can ONLY function cognitively if I
| am under stress. It's taken me a long time to figure out if
| what I'm dealing with is ADHD, PTSD, dissociation, or what
| --it's hard to pin down. I finally realized that I perform,
| socialize, play, create and cooperate better if I am angry,
| scared, worried I'll get fired, or various other social
| pressures that make people panic. I am useless otherwise. I
| have come to the conclusion that I am adrenaline deficient
| because my brain developed in a wash of adrenaline and
| learned to stay there.
|
| In social situations I come across as aloof or
| disinterested, absent, withdrawn, and when I'm excited
| about something or seeking socialization I come across as
| confrontational, argumentative, or upset when I'm happy and
| joking. I mostly don't see a point in socializing when I am
| not perceived according to my internal experience.
|
| The only time I've ever been normal and functional is the 6
| months after my mom died, a time when most people are
| incapacitated due to the stress of grief.
|
| I gotta say as an N=1, having early childhood stressors and
| head trauma have not exactly made me more pro-social,
| creative, cooperative, etc. To get that Optimal level of
| stress requires that I destroy my body with cortisol.
| rednerrus wrote:
| All of the people who I know who are actual geniuses had early
| childhood trauma.
| eob wrote:
| The longitudinal studies of the of the kids who were 0-10 during
| the pandemic are going to be fascinating.
|
| As a tiny example: I've anecdotally heard that kids in the 5-10yo
| bracket need their parents in the bed to fall asleep at a higher
| rate than would typically be normal. Probably because parents
| cuddled their kids to sleep during the lockdowns as a stress
| reducer for both of them, rather than turning out the lights and
| leaving the room.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > Probably because parents cuddled their kids to sleep during
| the lockdowns as a stress reducer for both of them, rather than
| turning out the lights and leaving the room.
|
| That's a good thing. Child has a need, Parent meets that need.
| That is a healthy relationship. But... the parent should have
| worked to ween the child from this behavior back to a normal
| sleeping situation.
| avgDev wrote:
| From my reading it isn't really good or needed. Cuddling is
| great but child should learn to sleep on their own.
|
| A parent should not be meeting every want of a child.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Funny. You translated "need" to "want". A parent should
| meet a child's _need_. That is absolutely necessary for
| development. If a child is nervous and needs cuddling, do
| it.
| avgDev wrote:
| Funny, how you are saying that somehow sleeping with your
| child is a need. It isn't.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's not a negative either. Large parts of humanity sleep
| as a family and I'm not aware that it causes any
| problems.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Funny how you leave out that the child was stressed in
| this situation. Exceptions for helping a child through a
| stressful situation is meeting a need.
| PsylentKnight wrote:
| I think "normal" is relative here. My understanding is that
| it's mostly Western cultures that consider co-sleeping to be
| a bad thing.
| contemporary343 wrote:
| Surprisingly, perhaps less effects on the youngest cohort:
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
|
| "At 4.5 years of age, pandemic kids had higher vocabulary,
| visual memory, and overall cognitive performance compared with
| pre-pandemic kids."
|
| The authors suggest that pandemic 2-year-olds developed better
| problem-solving skills, accelerating the increased cognitive
| performance by age 4.5
|
| Although pandemic 2-year-olds had more socio-emotional risks
| early on, these seem to disappear by age 4.5
| easymodex wrote:
| People are really blowing this covid lockdown stuff out of
| proportion, like seriously we had to be more indoors for a
| while, how is that stressful? Some children are literally
| living in a warzone and don't know if they will survive through
| the week, some live in poverty, some lose one of their parents
| or both.
|
| My son is 6 so it falls neatly in that bracket and if the covid
| lockdown is the most stressful thing to happen in his childhood
| I will consider us extremely lucky.
|
| And even so, cuddling more with parents? How will they ever
| recover?
| johnsimer wrote:
| Evolutionarily speaking, social isolation is more stressful
| than violence
|
| Soldiers develop mental health issues more often when they
| return home and become socially isolated than when they are
| at war, surrounded by their brothers
| salamandersss wrote:
| I was no "real" soldier but due to some weird circumstances
| I fought in a war. The difficult part of returning home is
| everything is so low stakes, the freedom to ride around on
| a Hilux living by your wits and a rifle turns into a world
| where you can easily survive flipping burgers and you have
| a toddler screaming at you because you selected the wrong
| color cup and the HOA has a meltdown because they decided
| the wrong species of plant is growing on your yard. Boring.
|
| Sometimes you dream of the war because life is so simple
| and the goal is obvious, and every decision seems impactful
| to your survival.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _My War Gone By, I Miss It So_ by Anthony Loyd.
| CptFribble wrote:
| > Some children are literally living in a warzone and don't
| know if they will survive through the week, some live in
| poverty, some lose one of their parents or both.
|
| This isn't the gotcha you think it is. Yes, there are
| children who experience worse trauma and stress than COVID
| lockdowns. However, those children of war will be also be
| developmentally stunted, _far, far, more_ than the children
| of COVID lockdowns.
|
| This is a "yes, and" scenario. Reducing stress in all its
| forms during early childhood development is the goal here,
| and the fact that some have more than others does not mean
| those with less stress are worthy of casual dismissal.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Note to readers: Take this with a grain of salt. University PR
| team (and HN) should wait until this work is reviewed and
| published as a full length paper.
|
| This is an abstract that has not been reviewed---a small study
| developing a rat two-hit model. All of the RNA work is based on
| three 21 day old males in the three groups. No information in
| abstract on the strain of rats (often outbred Sprague-Dawley).
|
| If this work interests you then you will find hundreds of studies
| on stress effects on hippocampus and many also on TBI effects on
| cortex and hippocampus.
| svnt wrote:
| Other than the general shortcomings of a rat study, does this
| result run counter to your understanding of the effects of
| stress on genetic expression in the brain?
|
| My understanding is that early childhood stress in humans has
| also been fairly reliably linked to things such as
| "psychopathic" behaviors. e.g. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.academia.edu/download/89809148/2128.pdf
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Most neuroscientists would expect TBI to be linked to
| regional micoglial activation. And perhaps activated GFAP-
| positive astrocytes. Psychosocial stress will have different
| effects mediated in part by the hypothalamus-pituitary-
| adrenal system.
|
| There may be some postmortem RNAseq studies of humans, even
| small pediatric cohort, but I did not find them in PubMed. I
| did find this treatment approach for TBI (yes, in mice)
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33540074/
| sethammons wrote:
| Related, you can read about nadine burke harris and adverse
| childhood experiences (ACE).
|
| Tl;dr: childhood mental trauma manifests in physical issues.
|
| For a solid intro, check out her ted talk:
| https://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_harris_how_childhood_...
|
| Edit: ah, referenced in the article:
| https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/aces/index.html
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Thanks for the CDC link. What I got out of it is traumatized
| children when they become adults have an increased risk of
| depression and risky behavior.
|
| Is there any advantage for being depressed in a traumatic
| environment? I read one argument is that by shutting down
| higher order mental and physical processes, we can use the
| saved energy to heal? Does that hold any water?
| sethammons wrote:
| It is more profound than "increased risky behavior."
|
| https://onlinegrad.baylor.edu/resources/adverse-childhood-
| ex...
|
| Increases in autoimmune diseases, cancers, and even COPD
| controlled against smoking habits are observed. The body
| doesn't handle increased stress hormones well during
| childhood development.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| If a child's caretaker or environment are hostile, a
| reduction in the normal childhood activity that is likely to
| attract subsequent negative attention can be beneficial for
| survival to the extent it allows for possible reproduction.
| "The nail that sticks up gets hammered".
|
| To be clear, this is typical evolutionary speculation. Sounds
| reasonable, but I've not seen anything that would be able to
| prove this and there are likely many other considerations
| that complicate such a nice and easy conclusion.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >Researchers temporarily separated newborn rats...
|
| Not worth my click.
| wutwutwat wrote:
| I swear I'm stating to experience increasing levels of the
| Mandela effect (might not be the proper explanation) over the
| last few years, because this is the first time I've ever heard of
| genes being a thing which could change. Granted, I'm not a
| biologist, but we have sayings like "good genes" or "it's in the
| genes", and I've heard countless medical explanations that things
| are passed down "in the genes". Aren't genes directly linked to
| one's dna, and not a thing that any physical trauma or stress can
| physically modify? Why does this seem like it directly clashes
| with my life long understanding of "genes"? I'm possibly going
| insane, because odd things like this keep popping up and are a
| bit troubling in some odd dejavu kind of way
| donkers wrote:
| If you had read the article you'd understand that it's talking
| about changes in gene expression, not changing of genes
| entirely.
| wutwutwat wrote:
| My question still remains. Even if the gene isn't altered,
| but the expression is, which I assume is the important part
| in determining outward influence the gene has, I wasn't aware
| anything short of radiation could alter that. If stress can
| change you at the gene level, or metal state in general,
| wouldn't we all be able to "fix ourselves" or otherwise
| change our gene expressions by submitting ourselves to
| various metal states to invoke the wanted gene response?
|
| TL;DR, I wasn't aware anything regarding genes could change,
| that's all, and I'm more curious why I keep discovering so
| many large gaps in things I personally considered life long,
| common knowledge. My question was almost rhetorical for
| myself.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| Appropriate username
| svnt wrote:
| Epigenetics is the catch-all term. "Evolution in Four
| Dimensions" is an interesting if slightly dated book going
| into many of the ways that the expression of your genetic
| material can chance who you are.
| hyperthesis wrote:
| Disconcerting, like returning to someone's comment, and
| it's subtly different from how you remembered (before you
| knew of the recent editing feature).
|
| Most (all?) scientific ideas are simplifications. e.g. that
| species are separate. That the relationships between
| species can be represented by a tree.
|
| Yes, it used to be taught that genes don't change. But
| there's methylation and telomeres and "gene therapy" is a
| thing. I agree that changing gene expression sounds like
| sophistry, since the point of genes is their effect. Sounds
| like Lamarckism to me.
|
| Everything you've been taught is wrong - in that however
| thoroughly something is known, there's always more to it.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| It is relatively new discovery. We now understand that DNA
| strands are usually tightly wrapped around histones. This
| resembles strings wrapped around beads.
|
| Gene expression is talking about the myriad number of
| things that causes the DNA strands to relax and unwound
| from the histone. By exposing that piece of DNA strand the
| gene can be expressed and the resulting protein is formed.
| I don't believe we have a complete understanding yet of
| what causes genes to be expressed or not expressed. There
| seem to be multiple factors at play.
|
| My understanding of telomeres is that is primarily a
| mechanism to prevent cancer. After a cell replicates itself
| a number of times the telomeres grow shorter and shorter
| and at a certain point it stops replicating because the
| assumption is the DNA has now been damaged by environmental
| factors. Some cells don't have this mechanism and can
| replicate infinitely eg skin cells.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Yes, your body does something called methylation to alter
| gene expression, and yes, medicine is trying to use this
| fact for diagnostics at the moment.
|
| If you experience stress, your body will upregulate
| expression of cortisol and other hormones. If you remove
| the stressor, it will downregulate. Chronic stress can
| break these processes and require medical intervention.
| This is all (in theory) detectable with methylation
| analysis of the genome, but it will take a decade to fully
| flesh the technology out.
| tiku wrote:
| Genes are the blueprint but they can be damaged and replicate
| wrong. That is how stress or poverty "changes" them.. (feel
| free to correct me). Cancer is also wrong copying dna etc.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| Is this epigenetics? Don't want to assume anything, but maybe
| this wasn't well known when you were in school. I vaguely
| remember reading about this a decade ago.
| bowsamic wrote:
| The headline is wrong, as the article clearly shows, and
| instead of reading the article to check, your first instinct is
| the Mandela effect and doubting your sense of reality?...
|
| I don't say this often but you should probably go to a
| therapist
| wutwutwat wrote:
| Obviously I didn't say that because of this article alone,
| which is why I said "increasing levels of". I, like many
| people here, am an engineer, and like to consider myself a
| pragmatic and logical person, and have not jumped to such an
| explanation immediately. It was also half said in jest,
| because I'm logical enough to know the real answer is my lack
| of knowledge on the subject, and a bit of superstition
| surrounding coincidences in my personal life that literally
| just this weekend a friend randomly started talking about
| being able to "will past trauma and fix your genes", to which
| I said they were nuts, then this article hits the front page.
|
| Thanks for your recommendation, if it was said in good faith
| and not as a put down, but I'm well grounded in our shared
| interpretation of this thing we call reality.
| wutwutwat wrote:
| Also, I'm all for therapy and have been many times, but CBT
| won't fix a schizophrenic who has detached from reality,
| which is what you're trying to convey with the selective bits
| of my original message used, so your "go see a therapist"
| suggestion isn't helpful, even if your intent was, and based
| on the tone of your message I'm assuming that your intent was
| not to be helpful anyway.
| tejtm wrote:
| As you may have noticed, say from technologyland, some words
| are hopelessly overloaded.
|
| "Gene" is such a word in biology.
|
| In its purest essence, a gene is "An inheritable trait."
|
| This is from when they were an idea, not a particular thing
| (yet).
|
| I won't go through biology's "central dogma" but encourage all
| to do so [1].
|
| This will start to shed light on some of the basic different
| molecules that are at various times refered to as genes.
|
| But this easily understandable frmework is only the start as
| there will be exceptions to everything, and nuances everywhere.
|
| If you need a set of decoder rings to read a message are the
| rings part of the message? Is the message really a message
| without the rings. and so on off into opinionland. (like I just
| did)
|
| [1]
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=biology%27s+%22central+dogma%...
| ulrischa wrote:
| Kids have a lot of stress today. It often starts in the
| kindergarten. I wonder what covid induced Stress for kids will
| have in the future.
| totallywrong wrote:
| I can't imagine my childhood with the pressure to maintain an
| idyllic image on social networks which seems to be the number
| one priority of kids today.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Ever since I heard someone describe ADD as your "fight or flight
| response going haywire", I've realized that a lot of people in my
| life with true ADD have experienced trauma in their childhood.
|
| But I'm no doctor, just making observations and trying to
| understand the world.
| esafak wrote:
| Anybody got references for this?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I am fairly certain that for many people, adhd is their brain
| being on constant alert / hyper-vigilance due to instability
| and trauma growing up, and needing to become very sensitive to
| people's behaviours to anticipate bad responses.
|
| Yes, I am speaking from experience.
| saltcured wrote:
| Isn't this what the PTSD label is for? Or is the implication
| that this another "spectrum" where we've historically had
| some discrete labels?
| INTPenis wrote:
| I guess the implication is that ADD is what PTSD in
| children could evolve into.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Not necessarily; i was thinking more about hyper-vigilance.
| It doesn't necessarily have all the issues of PTSD.
| scohesc wrote:
| I agree with your statement - I know it's anecdotal, etc. etc.
| but it seems to have some credibility to it given my upbringing
| and my experiences.
|
| You don't learn executive functioning skills when the opposite
| is modeled by your parents. You also don't learn them from
| other people in your community when you're focused on trying to
| survive day to day and constantly dread going home to an
| environment where you're not respected.
|
| Every day is a struggle but I feel I'm starting to come around
| and realize that I can change myself for the better.
|
| I hope everyone else experiencing the same can come to this
| realization too.
| Arch485 wrote:
| Also not a doctor, but from the arm chair research I've done (I
| have ADHD), in the case of having trauma in childhood it's more
| likely that those people have PTSD (not ADHD). Certain types of
| PTSD have overlapping symptoms with ADHD and are commonly
| misdiagnosed.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Also, people imagine PTSD comes specifically from war,
| starvation, physical injury, etc. but it actually comes from
| emotional trauma. Emotional trauma to children can be just as
| bad from a high conflict or high stress household, even if
| the family is financially secure.
|
| Having rich parents that fight constantly and emotionally
| neglect their children is probably emotionally worse than
| being a homeless war refugee with kind and loving parents...
| I suspect PTSD is widespread among kids in the middle and
| upper class, but people categorically deny the possibility of
| it, and these kids may instead be diagnosed with something
| else.
|
| The book "Simplicity Parenting" by Kim John Payne was really
| interesting, because he was actually a psychologist that
| worked with children in war refugee camps, and later worked
| with middle class American children from stressful
| households, and found many of them to be experiencing similar
| issues, with similar symptoms.
| novok wrote:
| With ADHD, there are issues that bring up similar symptoms, but
| is not ADHD. A person can be 'distracted' if they are sleep
| deprived, anxious, have PTSD or are depressed, and part of
| diagnosing it is ruling out those other conditions. Giving a
| 'normal' anxious person stimulants can be a bad combo for
| example, where it will amp their anxiety up a shit ton instead.
|
| Also there are different forms of ADHD. An inattentive ADHD
| type person could be said to have the opposite problem of their
| 'fight or flight response going haywire' for example. They can
| often be quite relaxed, maybe a bit too relaxed.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Why would a physical injury change much in terms of genes to
| begin with?
| dsco wrote:
| As someone who both experienced childhood trauma (refuged to
| another continent at the age of 4) and has received a fair share
| of blows to the head (many years in martial arts) - this does
| kind of resonate. Mood disorders and ADHD like symptoms are
| things I've dealt with but which I'm learning to control with
| age. It did take several decades and much introspection to
| introduce some sort of self-control and awareness about when I'm
| acting irrational though.
| elvis10ten wrote:
| Off: Did you stop martial arts? If no, How did you cope/manage?
|
| Just curious.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Neither can change the genes, the headline is wrong, probably
| intentionally to generate clicks.
| graphe wrote:
| Genes are made of DNA which degrades and does change. The mRNA
| vaccine and viruses also change your DNA. It won't change your
| gender or race but it will affect you mentally and your
| phenotype. Cancer is another way genes can change.
| vjk800 wrote:
| ...in rats.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| we typically use rats for stress tests.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5915631/
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I'm convinced that stress is the single biggest factor in aging
| and overall health. Look at the careers of people who live to
| 100+ -- they almost always worked in something where they weren't
| dealing with a lot of trauma and high stakes. You read this blue
| zones stuff and at the center of all of it is low-stress. Not
| necessarily "leisure," but activities that are intended to be
| calming and thoughtful - exercise baked into the day, shared
| meals prepared at home, community interaction.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Sapolsky has been at this for many years. Here's a great talk on
| one of his older books.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9H9qTdserM
|
| Especially with regards to his commentary on Selye's theories/lab
| work with rats.
|
| Makes sense if you've read a good number of books on stress (i.e.
| Stress of Life, Sapolsky's work, etc)
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