Mom, why did you eat all that Cheez Whiz ?

[Gaia]

Did you inherit your parents stress ? Your grandparents stress ? What about their environmental enrichment ? Current research in rats is exploring possible mechanisms through which stressful and positive environments could affect our future children and grandchildren. Also something to consider in tandem: Many of the genes associated with addiction and mental illness are also associated with resiliency.

"The study found that stress experienced by young female rats can impair their future offspring, but can also improve resilience"

The environment makes the same set of genes do different things. Is that right ?

Head spinning stuff. Now I'm going through my whole history wondering what might've altered my genetic code. Could it be the cheez whiz...

Gaia

http://www.newswise.com/articles/stress-during-early-development-is-inherited-by-offspring

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21637770

[TigaHawk]

I think we've all known this from personal experiences :P

I believe there was also a study done on pregnant mothers and the child where they took mothers that got pamperd, ensured they were in a stress-free and relaxing enviroment. Then took the same from the complete oposite enviroment, stressed and upset etc.

They found that the frontal lobe in the child's brain was larger in the mothers in the relaxed enviroment, and smaller in the child's from the mothers in the stressed enviroment.


whoa.... Everything in our lives revolves around how we interact with our enviroment and what is in it to interact with, how can our "local" enviroments NOT contribute so much to the shaping of our personalities and lives?

[Gaia]

Certain percentage of your happiness is determined by genes. I heard it was 25% or something.

[giovonni]

Excellent post ~ thanks Gaia for bringing this to all's attention here ~

Note - not only can stress be passed on from one generation to the next, but also as your title suggest - one's lifestyle changes may influence basic cellular functions as well as metabolism, behavior and disease...such as heart disease and diabetes, and also in psychological diseases, such as schizophrenia. Special note for expecting mothers ~ to be (even) more cautious about the stresses they allow and expose themselves to while pregnant. We (all) as adults should always be sensitive and careful to the stresses we expose (sometimes daily) to developing infants and young children.

Blessings Gio

ps ~ i love the threads title :lol:

[conk]

Genes represent a propensity for a particular occurence or trait. They do not have to be expressed. Our habits, thoughts, intentions, and environment can change our DNA and influence genetic expression. These should be taken as general statements. Of course no person born with a withered limb or serious defect can overcome that particular genetic display.