A person’s mental state is a fundamental part of a happy life. Studies have shown that adverse childhood experiences directly affect people’s psychological and physical condition. A parent has to have a good upbringing and attitude towards his child to avoid negative consequences that affect his health in the future. This paper reveals the article’s primary content, which describes the data on the biological mechanisms that link problems in childhood with diseases later.
The article contains an analysis of the adverse childhood experience associated with the deterioration of human health in the aftermath. Negative childhood experiences include abuse, exposure to violence, an unstable or careless environment, and the damaging effects of society, such as crime or discrimination (Berens et al., 2017). Early life adversity (ELA) affects the nervous, endocrine, metabolic, and microbial axes. The human brain develops from the beginning of human origin and almost to the end of life. After ELA, the volume of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex decreases, which means the negative impact of stressful situations on the human brain.
Moreover, ELA influences stress reactions because they are controlled by hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and autonomic axes. Studies in humans and animals have shown that ELA causes dysregulation of HPA, which also persists with time during adulthood. Violation of the regulation of glucocorticoids contributes to the formation of oncogenic tumor cells, which leads to a link between ELA and cancer. Parasympathetic balance shapes the overall physiology of stress. Studies have shown that an imbalance in the parasympathetic direction means the manifestation of excessive allostatic load, which leads to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, psychopathology, and cancer.
The article approves four recommendations:
- Screening for ELA should become a common practice of clinical care for all people
- It is necessary to attract investments in the expansion of activities for screening ELA
- Testing of new intervention strategies should continue to prevent the physiological effects of ELA
- Therapists should recognize ELA as a factor in the manifestation of poor health throughout life (Berens et al., 2017)
Reference
Berens, A. E., Jensen, S. K. G., & Nelson, C. A. (2017). Biological embedding of childhood adversity: from physiological mechanisms to clinical implications. BMC Medicine, 15(1). Web.