If you have any kids in your life, read this.
I recently uncovered an amazing study from the mid 1990’s from the CDC and Kaiser Permanente that discovered an exposure that dramatically increases the risk of 7 of the 10 top causes of death. In high doses – it affects the way that our DNA is read and transcribed. Let that sink in for a second – exposure to this risk, fundamentally alters your DNA. This is not my opinion – this is backed by clinical research published as part of a number of scientific studies. Exposure to this risk also triples the risk of heart disease and lung cancer and a whopping 20 year reduction in life expectancy.
I bet you have never even heard of this dramatic exposure risk. I also bet that many of you have been exposed to this risk, and your symptoms are manifestations of this exposure. For example, asthma and emphysema are both more likely as a result of this risk exposure.
The default for the medical community is to not even investigate this exposure. I can tell you that my PCP has never asked me about this exposure…. I am also willing to bet that you have never even heard of this. Even more alarming, my kids’ doctors have never raised this as a risk that sits behind some of the conditions that we know my kiddos to have today.
When I came across this Ted Talk delivered by Nadine Burke Harris, and then researched the study referenced – I continued to dig into this as it was mind blowing to me as a father.
This post is aimed at educating you for yourself and for your children. I’m not intending to provide a solution here, only to share the facts in the hopes of raising your level of awareness.
Any guesses on the risk?
You think it is bad drinking water?
Poor air quality?
Adverse Childhood Trauma is the risk exposure. Think of it as toxic stress that our children get exposed to in the home.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study was conducted across 17,500 adults. These adults were surveyed about exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences. These traumatic experiences were identified as the following categories:
- Physical, emotional, or sexual abuse
- Physical or emotional neglect
- Parental mental illness
- Parental substance dependence
- Parental incarceration
- Parental separation or divorce
- Domestic violence
The details on the mechanics of the survey are outlined in the survey write up, referenced above. They did not use a Survey Monkey here…
So back to the study itself, for every yes, the adult would get a point on the ACE score. The ACE scoring was then summarized across the various types and frequencies of trauma. From there they ran statistical a statistical analysis tied out to and correlated against health outcomes.
This is where this gets crazy, the results speak LOUDLY.
If you have kids or any young people in your life – this is a compelling issue…
What they found out was that ACE events were really common – 2/3 of the adults had experienced toxic stress / trauma when they were kids resulting in at least 1 ACE.
Even more alarming – 12.6% of the respondents had over 4 ACEs… The more ACEs – the more damage to your brain and HPA function. If you do not know what I’m talking about regarding the HPA – I hit this topic as a lead into this article a few days back here.
ACE amounts / toxic stress dosage and health response outcome was discovered to be closely linked.
A couple of the highlights from the study are here:
If you have 4 or more ACE events – you are more 2.5x more likely to get hepatitis.
If you have 4 or more ACE events – you are more 4x more likely to get depression.
If you have 4 or more ACE events – you are 12x more likely to kill yourself. HOLY SHIT.
Even more details here…
If you have 7 or more ACE events – you are guaranteed to have triple the risk of fatal lung cancer across the span of your lifetime.
If you have 7 or more ACE events – you are guaranteed to have 3.5x the risk of heart disease that will kill you.
Hold on a second…
This is not my opinion. This is the result of the ongoing research. Toxic stress exposure to our young people is killer, literally.
When I first saw this, I honestly thought this was garbage until on the Ted Talk she talked about the root cause. With all of these health outcomes – I originally thought that this was alarmist garbage that was attributed to all sorts of seemingly unrelated issues as an excuse.
I tend to think we have gotten softer as compared to earlier generations. This is my default mindset that I’m continuing to work on.
Dr. Harris then breaks down the root cause of these seemingly unrelated risks and in many instances – fatal outcomes.
Again, this is the science and study outcomes – not my opinion. I have struggled to believe this study, which is why I’ve been doing the research over the past few weeks in preparation for equipping you with the knowledge I have uncovered leading to this post…
ACE events effectively damage young brains and the HCA capabilities in a long term fashion.
That’s it.
The scientific and clinical communities now understand how exposure to ACE events inhibits the brain development of young and vulnerable brains. Neurologic changes occur due to the early adversity. Back in the 1990’s – they did not have the root cause firmly established, and I’m willing to bet that the science will continue to narrow the damage centers tied to the health outcomes in the next decade.
Brain research is a fascinating field if you have not taken a look recently. Just the other day – I was in a conversation about how our brains get cleaned while we sleep. That’s a future post, fersher.
Okay – back to this study…
HPA is directly damaged due to the exposure to the ACE counts. ACE events trigger fight or flight responses in these young children when there are perceived risks tied to adversity.
Have you ever actually seen a bear in the wild? If you have, you will get an adrenaline rush that is for real – fight or flight. I have seen one while in a car, while literally parked on Route 302 between Barre City and East Barre (Vermont!) once with my mother driving. We slowed down to a parked stance as this thing lumbered across the road from the river. Now we were in the car, and it was a ways off – still there is a primal setting that got flipped that day. Not adverse stress, it was a genuine moment that my body did what it was supposed to do.
Now let’s play a juxtaposition game here…building off of the example from the Ted Talk…
Imagine that instead of seeing a bear, the child was exposed to the bear coming home every night with substance abuse issues?? Imagine that ‘the bear’ was beating on the other spouse each week?
This is serious damage being done to the child – physically. This is a debt that is carried unless treated later in life. Again, I’m not going into the treatment angle here, just raising some awareness of the issue and of the underlying study.
The HPA response becomes problematic and clinically described as maladaptive. This is the crucial takeaway that childhood stress permanently alters the brain structures and HPA response. There is physical and clinically relevant damage that occurs, and it is real. There is a large and growing body of research to support these claims.
In the Ted Talk, Dr Robert Block Former President of The American Academy of Pediatrics is quoted as saying:
“Adverse Childhood Experiences are the single greatest public health threat facing our nation today.”
This is a public health crisis that many of us have never heard of.
The original ACE study was conducted on a population that was 70% college educated, 70% Caucasian. I believe the ACE prevalence is higher than reported for the study pool and for the adult American population in general.
Dr Harris then proposes why we have not made this such a compelling priority, and I agree with her proposal.
She states that we have marginalized the issue because it does affect us. We’d rather be sick than address the issues. I can confidently state that I have a few ACEs from my childhood, and I had a very strong family bringing me up through.
This study makes me very concerned for those of us that did not have as much support as I was blessed with…
I can also state with absolute conviction that I was way more comfortable being numbed with booze, zoning out in front of the TV, over working, and other distractions a few years back than actually addressing my various challenges.
I know for a fact how frigging hard it is to address underlying issues that are the source of the pain in our lives. I have lived it over the last few years, and I know I still have a long way to go. It is probably a lifelong journey to keep working on getting a little better each day.
This is what the old timers have told me, and I was too young and proud to listen. I at least know that I know even less than I did back then.
Punting on resolving the damage to our brains and to our HPA systems will continue to have you living in a degraded state. Our bodies truly do carry our trauma, and our health is in many ways a reflection of our history of circumstances as much as our choices of things that we can control. I will share way more about how much smarter our bodies are than we acknowledge in coming posts.
The science is clear – early childhood adversity affects lifetime health.
The single most important thing we need to do today is to acknowledge that this is real and that we can beat this.
Once I have something worth sharing on the treatment approaches, I’ll post out on that.
If you have heard of this ACE risk and of treatments – give me a shout.