Patient's Own Decision-Maker
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Is there anyone disinterested in how to age well? If so, you can go now.
One of the finest studies in 20th century medicine was the Harvard Study on Adult Development.
A second fine outcome of this study was a book by George Vaillant, M.D., the last director of the decades-long study. This book examined what had been learned about aging well: Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development.
Dr. Vaillant’s book used data from three separate longevity studies. Each study started with people who were teenagers and followed them for more than five decades.
The subjects included:
- Male Harvard graduates.
- Inner-city, disadvantaged males.
- Intellectually gifted women.
- The only missing group—no inner-city disadvantaged females.
While this is a rich, wonderful book, one point had the power to make readers do a double-take.
People often overcome very tough beginnings. With time, he wrote, people’s memories of their childhoods are softened by later accomplishments—making the later years better ones for many people.
Now we have a study which supports the opposite position.
It says that children who have hard starts are more at risk for medical problems . What follows that? An increase in the likelihood they will have age-related diseases later, says a new study, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine’s December 7, 2009, issue.
Is it possible that Harvard studied a population which came up in hard times and so were more resilient to start with? Of course, that is possible. However, the amount of information they gathered on their 800-plus participants was so detailed, if that were so, it is likely Harvard would have caught that.
Instead, it is more likely that this study pertains to people who do not possess the quality called resilience—people who come through adversity intact.
There is no question that more research is needed to understand how to help children develop resilience if that is not inherently part of their nature. Resilience, to some extent, can be learned.
However, another recent story about the impact of deployments on the children of military officers points to how their young lives can be altered when their environments are not stable enough for their developmental needs.
The bottom line: All of these studies are right. Many people develop resilience over time but there has been little attention paid to how one can cultivate that characteristic. As they age, the impact of hard beginnings on the resilient ones is minimized. For those who are not, the study below sheds some light on the high costs of a challenging childhood.
“Children who suffer psychological and social difficulties are prone to mental and physical abnormalities that put them at higher risk for age-related diseases later on, a new study found. (Emphasis added)
“Adults were at higher risk of age-related diseases if their childhood experiences included socioeconomic disadvantages (incidence rate ratio 1.89; 95% CI 1.36 to 2.62), maltreatment (IRR 1.81, 95% CI 1.38 to 2.38) or social isolation (IRR 1.87, 95% CI 1.38 to 2.51), according to an online report in the Dec. 7 Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
Among 32-year-olds, adverse childhood events were associated with 31.6% of cases of depression, 13% of cases of elevated immune system inflammation levels, and 32.2% of cases with clustered metabolic risk factors.
“It has long been known that pathophysiological processes leading to age-related diseases may already be under way in childhood,” Avshalom Caspi, PhD, of Duke University, and colleagues wrote.
“This study suggests the possibility that children’s experiences while growing up contribute to such physiological processes. Reducing damage done by adverse childhood experiences may help reduce the cost of age-related diseases.”
Source: Medpage Today, December 7, 2009
Topics: Patient's Own Decision-Maker
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