How Trauma Affects Epigenetics by

What is Epigenetics?

mmihalko3 — 2024-02-28 00:38:55 UTC

According to the CDC, "Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence."

How does Epigenetics work?

mmihalko3 — 2024-02-28 00:40:36 UTC

While genetic changes can alter which protein is made, epigenetic changes affect gene expression to turn genes “on” and “off.”

How does trauma affect Epigenetics?

mmihalko3 — 2024-03-02 00:19:07 UTC

"Research has shown that the effects of trauma can be intergenerationally passed on through epigenetic mechanisms, such as methylation (264). Specifically, childhood trauma has been associated with alteration in methylation patterns in human sperm, which may induce intergenerational effects."- Frontiers in Psychiatry

PTSD

mmihalko3 — 2024-03-02 00:29:35 UTC

A study conducted in Cleveland on PTSD among Holocaust survivors brought attention to how that PTSD was past on to their children. One man who was the child of a Holocaust survivor mentions he "lived each day with a vague sense that something terrible was going to happen and that he might need to flee or fight for his life."

Can it be undone?

mmihalko3 — 2024-03-02 00:34:05 UTC

There are epigenetic tags can be removed from our genetic makeup. Through a variety of psychotherapeutic interventions, epigenetic traumas can actually be reversed.

How to fix it

mmihalko3 — 2024-03-02 00:36:30 UTC

Through changing your environment and treating epigenetic factors, you can heal and remove the tags that have attached themselves to your DNA.

My Opinion

mmihalko3 — 2024-03-02 00:48:17 UTC

I am very thankful that there is work that can be done to undo the trauma tags on your epigenetics. If that wasn't the case I wonder if everyone would make more conscious decisions on how they treat one another and take care of themselves if it meant it would be embedded in you and your family for the rest of time. But I doubt it would make a change