Roots of Illness

A study released by the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at the childhood roots of disease.  The researchers expressed that everything that happens to us from conception to early childhood and on through life has a profound effect on adult health!  They concluded that adult disease is often the result of two sources: accumulation of unhealthy stressors over the years or from adversities during sensitive developmental periods in childhood.  In both cases, they often found a delay of years or even decades before disease was expressed later in life.  They found that autism and even cardiovascular disease later in life can be linked to poor prenatal nutrition before we were born!  They believe that chronic stressors over time accumulate and change both the function and the structure of the brain in order to adapt to an abundance of physical, chemical and emotional stress.

What’s the message here?  If you’ve followed this column, you’ve heard about the term epigenetics which is rapidly replacing the former model of traditional genetics.  This research is the essence of epigenetics – meaning that it is not the DNA that we inherit from our parents that determines our future health or disease.  Rather, it is the environment that we are exposed to over time including childhood years and even prior to birth that will unfold the expression of our genes either for health or disease.  This is why I always teach that everything we do, everything we eat or drink, and everything we think is either moving us closer to wellness or closer to disease.  This study merely proves that we need to think of health in these terms for the future of our children as well.  The good news is that a great deal of research shows it’s never too late to improve health by making better choices but hopefully you also understand that it may be even more important to teach and support our children on the importance of healthy diet, exercise and positive thinking.