Increasing Our Ability to Cope With Stress Can Make Us Healthier, Part 4: Early Life Events That Increase the Response of the Brain to Stress

This is blog four of the series to educate you about stress and to help you increase your ability to cope with stress. Please refer to previous blogs for background information and to review the behaviors that reduce the response of the brain to chronic and acute stress. The focus of this blog is to make you aware of the effects of high levels of stress early in life on the structure and function of the brain, on an individual's susceptibility to mental and physical disease, and also on longevity. Understanding that early life abuse harms both mental and physical health across one's lifespan is the first step to developing and implementing programs to reduce the extent of stress early in life that now exists. There are many types of abuse that children may experience. They are not all equal in the severity of their effects on the brain, health, and behavior of children. Yet, each can have an impact. A primary source for learning more about early life abuse and health is the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE) which studied the extent and effect of abuse on 17,000 middle class individuals. This has previously been discussed on HuffPost. Here are some of the difficult circumstances that a young person could face that could have a lasting impact: • Physical abuse • Verbal abuse • Sexual abuse • Neglect -- either physical or emotional • Witnessing domestic violence • Disappearance of a parent through divorce, death, or incarceration I am going to cite a fe...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news