They call it "epigenetics" because their throat closes up if they admit it.
If a pregnant rat is put under a high stress load at a critical time, her pups will react differently than they would have. In plain language, they'll be high-strung.
But the really interesting part is that, even if the little fellows are kept in total stress free luxury, her grandpups are also affected. Now, to me, that is a startling finding. Think what happens if the pups are kept in a high stress situation and the grandpups too. They would become increasingly higher strung unless they could adapt. If the stress comes and goes, then adaptation might not even be possible. So, you would have a gradual increase in stress related problems in the population. Each generation would be a little worse off. The weak, the old, would be the first to show it. But as the stress induced weakness affected younger and younger people so would the "diseases" that went with it.
And that's why, I think, that PD was born in the Industrial Revolution.
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Originally Posted by Fiona
I'm going to bravely just jump in a little on this - I forget what wonderful person said this but I totally loved it - I've got PD not a PhD -
Some traditional Chinese interpretations of the origins of PD centered on the stomach and gut, challenging the idea of the brain as the king organ, but what Rick says in that case "feeds" (sorry) right into that idea.
And about the stress and maternal stress - I can totally relate. I have always felt that the manifestation in me of PD was larger than just me, and had something to do with intergenerational stress - my mother as a deported war laborer surviving the fall of Berlin in World War II, my greatgrandmother losing 8 sons, a husband and a father during another war, my mother moving me from England to the US when I was five because she was so afraid of the Cold War and thought we might be safer there - how could all of that not have informed their bodies and my body in formation and then development? It makes sense.
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