A study conducted in New Zealand showed that adults who grow up in an environment of stress and adversity are often more prone to disorders such as depression, hypertension and high cholesterol, reports the site ScienceDaily.
According to information obtained, adults who had psychological and social adversity in childhood may have abnormal function of their emotional profiles, immunological and metabolic help explain why they have age-related diseases.
This research was conducted by experts from King’s College London and was to analyze thousand cases of 37 patients who entered the Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, a study that took place 35 years ago in Dunedin New Zealand city, and the consequences of which were published in the December 2009 edition of the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
For a year, April 1972 March 1973, these children, all with three years of age were subjected to three types of aversive stimuli: low socioeconomic level, abuse and isolation. When participants met 32 years were analyzed to find whether they were likely to suffer depression, inflammation at the cellular and metabolic risk factors such as obesity, increased blood pressure and high cholesterol.
The results showed that people who had experienced any of these traumatic events in childhood increased the likelihood of having an illness related to the above risks, according to these findings, 31% of cases of depression in adults, 13% of cellular inflammation and 32% of patients with metabolic risks presented by these sufferings because of problems in childhood.
The study authors mention that the effects of adverse childhood experiences are cumulative and independent of the influence the development of other risks inherent in people’s lives as family history, low birth weight or childhood obesity.
The research findings claim that all those long psychological and pathological processes that lead to the emergence of diseases could have their onset during childhood of people. “Promoting healthy social and psychological experiences is a necessary objective and cost effective for the prevention of age-related diseases” refers to the article.