Report identifies early childhood conditions that lead to adult health disparities
The origins of many adult diseases can be traced to early negative experiences associated with social class and other markers of disadvantage. Confronting the causes of adversity before and shortly after birth may be a promising way to improve adult health and reduce premature deaths, researchers argue in a paper published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association. These adversities establish biological "memories" that weaken physiological systems and make individuals vulnerable to problems that can lie dormant for years.
"Improving the developmental trajectory of a child by helping the parents and improving the home environment is probably the single most important thing we can do for the health of that child," says co-author Bruce McEwen, Alfred E. Mirsky Professor and head of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at The Rockefeller University. "Adverse childhood experience is one of the largest contributors to such chronic health problems as diabetes and obesity, psychiatric disorders, drug abuse -- almost every major public health challenge we face."
In the report, McEwen and his co-authors distinguish between levels of stress experienced by young children. "Positive" and "tolerable" stress, with the support of adults, help the body and brain learn to cope with brief situations of adversity, while "toxic" stress, which can disrupt brain architecture and other organ systems, increases the risk for stress-related disease and cognitive impairment well into adulthood. Major risk factors for toxic stress include extreme poverty, recurrent physical and/or emotional abuse, chronic neglect, severe maternal depression, parental substance abuse, and family violence.
An intervention to relieve toxic stress that children experience early in life could not only affect their own individual well-being and longevity but also improve overall societal health, the report concludes. In particular, the researchers highlight three findings and propose promising applications in health policy and clinical practice:
- Adult disease prevention begins with reducing toxic stress in early childhood, as a reduction in the number and severity of early adverse experiences will lead to a decrease in the prevalence of a wide range of health problems.
- High-quality early care and education programs can benefit lifelong health, not just learning, by providing safe, stable, responsive environments and evidence-based treatments for family mental health problems.
- Child welfare services represent an opportunity for lifelong health promotion by augmenting their exclusive focus on child safety and custody with comprehensive developmental assessments and appropriate interventions by skilled professionals.
"Health care reform is clearly essential for assuring universal access to needed medical care," says co-author Jack Shonkoff, founding director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. "Yet we also know that health disparities linked to social class, race, and ethnicity are not primarily about health care access or quality, since these inequalities persist in countries that provide health care for all their citizens. These disparities are rooted in where and how we live, work, and play. Science is now telling us that they're also about how we as a society treat our youngest members."
McEwen and Shonkoff wrote the report with W. Thomas Boyce, the chair in child development and professor in the College for Interdisciplinary Studies and Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. All three authors are members of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, a multi-disciplinary, multi-university collaboration housed at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.
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June 2, 2009
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Report identifies early childhood conditions that lead to adult
June 4, 2009 by Anonymous, 24 weeks 6 days ago
Comment: 37037
This article is a discussion of the original article in JAMA: Neuroscience, Molecular Biology, and the Childhood Roots of Health Disparities, Jack P. Shonkoff, MD; W. Thomas Boyce, MD; Bruce S. McEwen, PhD , JAMA. 2009;301(21):2252-2259.
The article states, "Physical and mental health problems in childhood can have lifelong consequences, which means it's important to start health promotion and disease prevention early in life, experts say." Now, I agree with this. In fact, the entire basis of addiction prevention methodology in the Hypoism paradigm is all about identifying Hypoism in kids and beginning Hypoism recovery in them. I've written about this since 1992 when I first discovered Hypoism as the cause of all addictions. However, addictions are not caused by stress as these two articles "suggest." Addictions are not caused by any of the environmental issues "suggested" by the JAMA article or its bibliography, even though the references are used as arguments for this association. There's not a single study in either the JAMA article or in its references that proves this claim. [I actually read the JAMA article. Did you?] Yet, it is said countless times in the article as well as in the Health Day article: "A scientific consensus is emerging that the origins of adult disease are often found among developmental and biological disruptions occurring during the early years of life," according to Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff, of Harvard University, and colleagues. A scientific consensus? There is no such thing. There is scientific proof, but no such thing as scientific consensus. Science is not produced by voting on it, only by doing studies that prove a hypothesis. Consensus only proves one kind of thing, whether people like chocolate better than vanilla, not whether stress causes addictions.
The reason stress is "associated," (and I use the word "associated," not "proved," because there is an association but there is no proof of causation) with addiction is that the actual cause of addiction, Hypoism, a genetic disease present at conception, also causes decisions and evaluations in hypoics that result in stressful situations in the childhood environment. Thus, Hypoism is causative of both the stress as well as the addictions. This is why we see stress associated all the time. But, as I have written a thousand times, association is not causation and never will be as many times as these kinds of "scientists" write it and journals like Healthday repeat it. As much as these articles write about these associations doesn't ever make for scientific proof; consensus yes, but proof no. In fact, when you take the hypoic kid out of the stressful environment by early adoption into "good environments", for example, the kid still ends up addicted like his brothers and sisters left behind in the "stressful" environment. This has been done so many times, it's funny, but writers like today's authors keep forgetting it. I wonder why. The reason this happens is that addictions are genetic, not environmental. The kids takes his DNA with him to the new environment. Geez. I thought everyone knew this.
On the other hand, they do have one thing right in this article: Early intervention in kids [with Hypoism, a disease they know nothing about] can be a good way to prevent addictions in adolescence and adulthood. However, this intervention must be done according to the correct cause of addictions, the Hypoism paradigm, not their "stress" paradigm. and that's the major wastefulness of this article and all the work behind it - it is still pushing the same old psychobabble causation of addictions - bad neighborhoods, bad parenting, discrimination, bad education, etc. Yes, we do need to get rid of all these bad environmental stresses, but that is a human rights issue, not an addiction causation or prevention issue. Addiction prevention will only work if we use the correct scientific paradigm of addiction causation which is Hypoism and Hypoism recovery methodology as means of prevention.
But, of course, these guys know nothing about this because JAMA has censored Hypoism as a couple of articles on my web site have shown when I tried to get letters to the editors published in JAMA about other articles which were similarly scientifically wrong - but they refused to publish them.
Thus, the P/R paradigm (psychobabble/religious paradigm of addiction causation which the hijacked brain hypothesis belongs to) thrives while addictions get worse and addicts continue to die. That's what this article is, the dead and disproven P/R paradigm asserting itself once again -wasting money, time, and lives.
"Love is an action not a feeling.
Integrity is an action not a thought.
Anything less is too little." ---
Dan F. Umanoff, M.D.
Author of Hypoic's Handbook - The Hypoism Paradigm of Addiction.
http://www.hypoism.com
President and founder of The National Association for the Advancement and Advocacy of Addicts, Inc. (N4A), a not-for-profit 501 (c) (3) organization of addicts for addicts offering free educational and legal services to discriminated against and abused addicts of all varieties, "substances" and "behavioral," and their families.
http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thenationalassociationfortheadvancementandadv...
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