Can we inherit the essence of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions from our forefathers? Furthermore, can they pass down through DNA like physical characteristics? That is to say, is there a relationship between epigenetics and trauma; either emotional or physical?
In the last 100 years, the world population experienced vast amounts of emotional and physical trauma. We’ve engaged in several major wars, not to mention the plethora of civil wars and acts of terror. Additionally, the Spanish flu epidemic, slavery, and an increase in stress levels have all been high in our awareness. That’s just in the last century. So, what if we’re carrying trauma in our DNA from the beginning of our bloodline?
Biochemistry 101 - A Lead Into Understanding Epigenetics
Epigenetics is a 21st-century science. It is the study of changes in gene activity, not involving changes to the genetic code, passed down to successive generations. In other words, it’s the study of how your behaviours and environment can cause changes to your DNA, affecting the way in which your genes actually work.
Unlike genetic changes, these modifications don’t change the DNA sequence. This means the changes are reversible. Specifically, these alterations change the way your body reads a DNA sequence.
The real question is whether the way our body reads our DNA sequence changes if our ancestors experienced emotional or physical trauma.
What is DNA?
Human DNA comprises approximately 3 billion nucleotide bases. There are four fundamental types of bases making up our DNA. These are adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. We commonly abbreviate these substances using the letters A, C, G, and T, respectively.
Only About 99% of Our DNA is Coded
Within the 3 billion bases, there are about 20,000 genes. Genes are specific sequences of bases that provide instructions on how to make important proteins that allow our bodies to carry out life functions.
How Is DNA Sequenced?
The order or sequence of the bases is what determines our unique life instructions. In other words, it’s the sequencing of the DNA that makes a human different from a monkey or a chimpanzee, and the differences are minute.
What Do Cells Have To Do With DNA?
DNA stands for the chemical ‘deoxyribonucleic acid’. Every cell in our body contains a DNA sequence of instructions telling our bodies how to behave and what actions to perform.
What Do We Inherit From Our Family Members?
Our families pass on pieces of themselves to us in many different ways. The colour of our eyes may be a result of genetic inheritance, however, not everything we adopt from our parents is encoded in the letters of our DNA. For example, a passion for music could be something our parents pass on via social influence, playing music to you in the car or at home, perhaps as their parents did for them.
Fundamentally, this is a question of nature vs nurture. The last few years has seen some interesting breakthroughs in epigenetics that give us many answers to our current state of health and well being.
What Does Clinical Research Know of The Relationship Between Epigenetics And Trauma?
We already know that our core values are heavily impacted by so many external factors, passed down from family, society and environment.
The profound discovery, that has been made in the last decade or so, by scientists and researchers, is that life experiences like trauma, can also be passed on. Children can inherit the changes that occur in how their parents genes are expressed due to environmental stressors. Blimey!
You’ll appreciate just how controversial this field of study is. The study of Epigenetics questions the basic premise of inheritance.
The idea of ‘epigenetic inheritance’ instead suggests that things like smoking, diet and stress can all impact future generations. Environmental factors like stress modify our genes, by sending chemical signals to our DNA that switches them on and off. Scientists now believe that those switches or instructions can be passed on in our DNA. It’s a concept that’s being called “soft-inheritance”.
Physical Changes Are Now Widely Researched
This study on the impact of starvation in worms [1] came to the following conclusion. “Starvation early in life can alter an organism for generations to come, according to a new study in nematodes. Famine survivors are smaller and less fertile, and they acquire a toughness that lasts at least two generations.”
Similarly, in 2013, scientists conducted this research [2] to quantify the relationship between prenatal famine exposure and adult mortality.
Specifically, they researched the Dutch famine (Hunger Winter) of 1944–1945 which occurred towards the end of WWII in occupied Netherlands.
The findings identified that “prenatal famine is associated with an increased mortality from age 18–63 years.” Moreover, in middle age, they had higher levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol and higher rates of obesity, diabetes and schizophrenia.
Research Into Early-Life Exposure To Famine in China
In 2019, researchers in China published this study [3] came to this conclusion. “Increased methylation level in the IGF2 gene was associated with early-life exposure to severe famine, and this change was also positively associated with total cholesterol in late adulthood.”
Have We Measured The Impact Of Emotional Trauma?
The simple answer is ‘yes’. In a time where researchers are working to create the perfect baby, it’s interesting that the idea of releasing trauma from the parents prior getting pregnant, is barely explored.
Research in 2015 showed evidence of epigenetic inheritance in mice, rats and even humans. One study [4] assessed how trauma, suffered by Holocaust survivors, might be passed on to their children. The scientists analysed the genes of the children of 32 Jewish men and women who had been imprisoned and tortured in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII or those who had hidden during the war.
This Scientific American article [4] discusses research by Rachel Yehuda, a researcher in the growing field of epigenetics and the intergenerational effects of trauma. The identified “survivors of the Holocaust have altered levels of circulating stress hormones compared with other Jewish adults of the same age. Survivors have lower levels of cortisol, a hormone that helps the body return to normal after trauma; those who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have even lower levels.”
This is significant because how such genes are regulated can determine how a person deals with stress.
This study [5] in monkeys shows “Substantial scientific evidence suggests that epigenetic changes in response to chronic stress have the tenacity to be transmitted and persist intergenerational. Patterns of brain activity associated with anxiety in monkeys are passed from parent to child. Scans of stressed monkeys’ brains showed that two regions in the extended amygdala, the central nucleus and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, exhibited similar responses. Family studies revealed that this heightened connectivity was passed on from parent to child. The same brain regions have been implicated in anxiety in humans.”
What About The Impact of Slavery?
When we consider the psychological and physical impact of 400 years of slavery on the African-American population, it seems logical that it would be significant. This study [6] states “In Legacy African Americans, resilience has emerged as a continuum of responses within the context of family, community, and religious beliefs as a consequence of Intergenerational exposures to 250 years of chattel slavery followed by 150 years of systemic discrimination. This resilience has ameliorated but not eliminated the impact of this trauma over approximately 16 generations of exposure.”
Is the impact of slavery and racial discrimination linked to higher stress rates and poor health in African-American populations today? The studies show this could be the case.
Conclusion: Is there a relationship between epigenetics and trauma?
Soft Inheritance, a term coined by Ernst Mayr, refers to the process whereby current environmental conditions are “stored” in the genetic materials of the organism. Those conditions are then passed on to offspring during the Present lifetime.
There are a growing number of studies that support the idea that the effects of trauma can reverberate down the generations through epigenetics.
How Far Back Can We See The Influence?
What we don’t know yet is how far back the influence on our DNA goes. Some research suggests that events in our lives can indeed affect the development of our children and perhaps even grandchildren – all without modifying the DNA. However, could these modifications travel through our bloodlines for 200 years, 500 years or even 2000 years? If the answer is yes, we really want to consider how we impact our children’s health with our behaviour today. Essentially, we want to avoid war, poverty and extreme emotional trauma at all costs.
Moreover, if the majority of these changes are irreversible, is there a potential for us to improve our health today? In fact, can we do this by releasing trauma from our ancestral timelines
Find Out More About Working With Me
Together we create the future well being of generations to come. Moreover, if we’re experiencing psychological and physical health issues today, can we use regression to release traumatic events from our historical timeline? I know we can.
Would you like to release any trauma from your ancestral time line to improve your current emotional and physical well being? If you’d like to find out more about coaching with me, or if you’d like to arrange a call to see if we’re a good fit for one another, please send me an email to sarah@sarahmerron.com.
References - Is There A Relationship Between Epigenetics And Trauma?
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150731105240.htm
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953613005753?via%3Dihub
[3] https://clinicalepigeneticsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13148-019-0676-3
[5] Fox AS, Oler JA, Birn RM, Shackman AJ, Alexander AL et al. (2018) Functional connectivity within the primate extended amygdala is heritable and associated with early-life anxious temperament. J Neurosci 0102-18.
