We’ve known for decades that parent’s words and deeds affect the emotional and mental health of their kids.
Today, evidence is growing that a mom and dad’s experiences before settling down to the business of having babies, affect their children’s genes and nervous system functioning.
This could explain why some people suffer from phobias (intense fears) about water or spiders though they have never had a fearful experience with water or spiders. Inheriting the influence of distressing memories may also put children at increased risk for anxiety disorders, or PTSD.
The Nose Knows
Animal studies are providing compelling evidence that parental memories can influence the next generation because they chemically alter DNA expression.
In one experiment, researchers caused some mice to fear the oder of cherry blossoms by associating it with electric shocks. Later, the shocked mice conceived, and their offspring acted fearful when exposed to the smell of cherry blossoms. When these cherry blossom shy babies grew up and had their own families, their little ones also were made anxious by the aroma of cherry blossoms—even when first encountering the smell.
All generations of mice involved in the cherry blossom experiment where found to have brain changes in areas that react to smells. Plus, their DNA showed chemical alterations, or epigenetic methylation, on genes involved with olfaction.
Epigenetic alterations are genetic modifications caused by environmental influences. The modifications may not change basic DNA structure, but they affect how our genetic material expresses itself, much as an addendum can alter the expression of an already-written document.
Of Mice and Men
So, in the saga of the original cherry blossom mice, their experience of associating an electric shock with the perfume of cherry blossoms was somehow transmitted from their gray matter to their genes. The memory was then deposited in their offsprings' DNA during conception.
It is cautiously assumed that this genetic transfer of memory also occurs in humans, though it will take much research to verify it.
“It is high time public health researchers took human transgenerational responses seriously,” said pediatric geneticist Marcus Pembrey, University College London. “I suspect we will not understand the rise in neuropsychiatric disorders or obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disruptions generally without taking a multigenerational approach.”
Source: Health Freedoms
Photo credit: Tony Fischer / flickr creative commons
