In the mid-90s, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and Kaiser Permanente discovered an exposure that dramatically
increased the risk, for 7 out of 10 of the leading causes of death in the
United States.
In high doses, it affects brain development, the
immune system, hormonal systems, and even how our DNA is read and transcribed.
Folks who are exposed in high doses have tripled the
lifetime risk of heart disease and lung cancer and a 20-year difference in life
expectancy.
And yet, doctors today are not trained in routine
screening or treatment.
Now, the exposure I'm talking about is not a pesticide
or a packaging chemical, it's childhood trauma.
What kind of trauma am I talking about?
Threats that are so severe or pervasive, that literally
get under our skin and change our physiology: things like abuse or neglect or
growing up with a parent who struggles with mental illness or substance
dependence.
Exposure to adversity can affect the developing brains
and bodies of children.
A STUDY CONDUCTED BY DR. VINCE FELITTI AT KAISER AND DR.
BOB ANDA AT THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL (CDC) ON CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES
They asked 17,500 adults about history of exposure to
what they called "Adverse Childhood Experiences," (ACEs).
Those include physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; physical
or emotional neglect; parental mental illness, substance dependence,
incarceration(imprisonment); parental separation or divorce; or domestic
violence.
They correlated the ACEs scores against health
outcomes.
they found TWO things
1. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are incredibly
common.
67% of the 17500 population had at least one ACE, and
12.6%, one in eight, had four or more ACEs.
2. There was a dose-response relationship between ACEs
and health outcomes:
The higher your ACE score, the worse your health
outcomes
For a person with an ACE score of four or more, their
relative risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was two and a half times
that of someone with an ACE score of zero.
For hepatitis, it was also two and a half times.
For depression, it was four and a half times.
For suicidality, it was 12 times.
A person with an ACE score of seven or more had triple
the lifetime risk of lung cancer and three and a half times the risk of
ischemic heart disease.
This makes us understand how exposure to early
adversity affects the developing brains and bodies of children.
It affects areas like the Nucleus Accumbens (a pleasure
and reward center of the brain), a key role in feeding, sexual, reward,
stress-related, and drug self-administration behaviours)
It inhibits the prefrontal cortex, which is necessary
for impulse control and executive function, a critical area for learning.
Therefore, there are real neurologic reasons why folks
exposed to high doses of adversity are more likely to engage in high-risk
behavior.
It also turns out that even if you don't engage in any
high-risk behavior, you're still more likely to develop heart disease or
cancer.
The reason for this has to do with the
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the brain's and body's stress response
system that governs our fight-or-flight response.
How does it work?
Well, imagine you're walking in the forest and see a bear. Immediately, your
hypothalamus sends a signal to your pituitary, which sends a signal to your
adrenal gland, that says,
"Release stress hormones! Adrenaline!
Cortisol!" And so your heart starts to pound, your airways open up and you
are ready to either fight that bear or run from the bear.
But the problem is what happens when the bear comes
home every night, and this system of flight or fight is activated over and over
and over again, and it goes from being adaptive, or life-saving, to maladaptive
or health-damaging.
Children are especially sensitive to this repeated
stress activation because their brains and bodies are developing.
High doses of adversity not only affect brain
structure and function, they affect the developing immune system, developing
hormonal systems, and even the way our DNA is read and transcribed.
Dr. Robert
Block, the former President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said
"Adverse Childhood experiences are the single greatest unaddressed public
health threat facing our nation today.
Not forgetting that all adults were once children. Every
child deserves to be treated with love and care.
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