EXTREME STRESS IN CHILDHOOD IS TOXIC TO YOUR DNA
The real story about the ICE policy of separating children or confining them to harsh, frightening circumstances, even infants is not the psychological stress, it’s the biological time bomb. The screaming and crying, the anguish and desolation – the obvious effects of forced separation of children from their parents and from familiar environments, particularly in a strange land among strangers. But as gut wrenching as this fallout is, it pales in comparison to the effects that are not obvious but are much more sinister and dangerous. Extreme stress in early childhood, and forced relocation or separation in a strange land among strangers is about as extreme a life stress as humans can have, causes profound and irreversible changes in how DNA is packaged in the cells of the body, in organs like the pancreas, the lungs, heart and brain. How DNA, the blueprint of life, is packaged in cells determines how cells function. Virtually every cell in the body has the same DNA, as they all come from that first fertilized egg. But a liver cell knows it’s not a lung cell, which knows it’s not a brain cell. The way the cells know this has to do with how the DNA in cells is packaged, a process called “epigenetics”. Epigenetics is the software that runs the DNA hardware.
I am a Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, Neuroscience and Human Genetics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Director of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development and the Maltz Research Laboratories where scientists study how genes and the environment shape the development of the human brain. Our studies and those of many other researchers around the world have shown that early life stress causes changes in how DNA is packaged, i.e. their epigenetics, which makes cells function differently than their original intentions. DNA is organized in a complicated protein package, which acts like insulation covering and protecting the DNA strand. The insulation is the software that runs the DNA hardware. This insulation determines which genes are turned on to make the particular proteins of a particular cell. The varying packaging of DNA from one cell to another allows for different cells to have different proteins which make them function uniquely. Studies of children who have experienced major early childhood stress show dysfunction of diverse organs in the body for many years after the stress, resulting in increased likelihood of heart disease, lung disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, poor school performance, drug abuse and mental illness. Scientists in the Institute where I work have shown that the sensitivity of DNA packaging to environmental stress is greater during the first five years of life than all of the rest of life combined.
Harry Harlow, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, performed a controversial series of studies in the 1950s on isolation of infant monkeys from their mothers for a few months, analogous to the period of separation experienced by young immigrant children at our borders and by ICE agents in our cities. Harlow’s infants became profoundly disturbed for the rest of their lives. Studies on the brains of the monkeys even after they became adults revealed significant alterations in the structure and chemistry of their brains. Studies of human children reared without parental support also show significant increases in the frequency of later life psychological and social disabilities as well as medical illnesses and changes in the anatomy of the brain. Perhaps the best-known research on this subject was with children raised in
Romanian Orphanages in the 1980s and 1990s. In their compelling book, Romania’s Abandoned Children: Deprivation, Brain Development, and the Struggle for Recovery, Nathan Fox of the University of Maryland, Charles Nelson of Harvard and Charles Zeanah of Tulane document the devastating impact of infants in institutions without the emotional support of parents. In addition to profound behavioral and intellectual problems, the brains of these children failed to show normal growth patterns.
HOW DOES STRESS DO THESE THINGS?
We know that stress causes a biological reaction in the body, including increases in cortisol, the so-called “stress hormone”, but also increases in a number of inflammation related proteins. In cases of infection, these inflammatory proteins are sentinels that help protect against infectious agents, but in the absence of infection, they can damage the host. They do this by getting into cells and changing the packaging of DNA. Forced separation from one’s parents or drastic changes in environmental safety especially in unfamiliar circumstances is an extreme form of childhood stress, causing DNA packaging in cells to be transformed by these stress chemicals. Some of how the DNA is repackaged is permanent and the cells involved go through life in an altered state, making them hyper susceptible to a myriad of other stresses and medical problems. Scientists know how dangerous toxic stress is to children because they know what it does to the DNA in their cells. Now you know too. The longer we fail to get these children reunited with their parents, the more responsible we are for violating their DNA.
Daniel R. Weinberger, M.D.
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