[Fiona]

Ok, I decided that this is too important to risk getting buried in the blame thread, because...it ain't about blame.

Here is an article:

The biochemistry of generational trauma
By Richard Manning | Published: June 29, 2009

a few quotes...

"...First, understand the complicated role of cortisol. It is indeed present in people under stress in higher levels, but it is there for a reason. Cortisol helps us shut down fight and flight, that is, returns the body clenched by stress to a normal state, and this is precisely what people suffering from PTSD or developmental trauma cannot do. Further, we now understand that these people can’t do this, at least in part, because their bodies do not produce cortisol..."

"...The mother was responding to her stress by being overprotective, which was exactly the source of stress Yehuda discovered in second-generation holocaust survivors. Traumatized mothers were frightened mothers, behavior that in turn traumatized their children. One can trace this across generations with low cortisol, as researchers did indeed do with the rats..."

"...Now for the interesting and sobering part for those of us who battle inter-generational trauma. This faulty biochemistry can be inherited by infants in utero. The inheritance is not genetic. It is epigenetic, but physical, hard-wired inheritance, nonetheless. Immediately, this reshapes our story and offers some pretty firm marching orders in regards to how we treat infants of mothers with PTSD..."

Read the whole piece:
http://www.goodworksintrauma.org/blo...tional-trauma/

Your responses, please?

[bluedahlia]

It's not about blame. It's all about circumstance. I had a great childhood and was loved. Not that great in my mom's womb though. A lot of stress due to circumstances of mom's life at the time, and to add insult to injury, I was a breach birth and should have been born dead because of the trauma involved with my birth. The trauma was such that the odds of both mom and child surviving were minimal (small town, no doctor) but we both made it.

Nobody to blame.....just a matter of circumstance.

I lost my first baby during child birth....cord wrapped around her neck. I was a nervous wreck with my second pregnancy. Had a healthy baby girl 12 months later....however, she had very bad colic, and has always been the nervous type...still is. I'm not to blame. Again, a matter of circumstance.

[pegleg]

I will add you two to my "Strong Women I Am Privileged to Know!" Like it or not, we are all products of both our genetic map and our environment (both social and physical), and keep reading to see if I qualify as having intergenerational trauma.

My past is not perfect either. Mom married dad at 16 (He was 23), and I was born about 1 1/2 years later. Dad was a bad alcoholic, so mom was constantly under stress. Her second child was a full-term stillborn, and then my brother came 4 years later. Dad was a gasline welder; he made good money, but had to move all over the U.S. to get it, and - of course - work was seasonal. I was in several schools in one grade level. (Talk about stressful! Just making friends, then having to move. We lived in an 8' X 42' trailer, which was pulled behind us more than it was parked and considered to be "home."

I have thought about my genetic mapping and wish the science of genetics had been up to snuff in dad's era. He had a number of small TIA's and a light stroke, and he died at 67 from accidental smoke inhalation from trying to stoke the fireplace during the blizzard of 1993.

He had a neurological problem that will forever remain undiagnosed. Everybody thought it was from his drinking for so many years, but it may have been Parkinson's. He remained sharp as a tack until the very end.

Fiona - the article you shared is so very interesting, especially the part about the cortisol theory. Quoting: " If a PTSD sufferer’s cortisol level is low and genes make cortisol,. . . ? It is something called “methylation” Genes are geometry and make cortisol by transcribing RNA that is a perfect mirror image of the chemical. But it turns out that when the transcription process unzips to recruit the elements of cortisol, it can also recruit methyl compounds that are geometric matches to the allele for making cortisol. The methyl compounds lock on and prevent the manufacture of cortisol. This methylation process endures and becomes a part of a PTSD sufferer’s body chemistry, at least until some successful intervention reverses it."

Since I had no intervention and most likely was stressed enough to have a "PTSD body chemistry (post traumatic stress disorder), then I now know why I have strong tendencies to become easily depresssed and/or anxious.

Good heavens! I didn't mean to write all of that! Maybe some professional out there can psychoanalyze my "environmental mess!"
Peg

[moondaughter]

[QUOTE=Fiona;700844]Ok, I decided that this is too important to risk getting buried in the blame thread, because...it ain't about blame.

Here is an article:

The biochemistry of generational trauma
By Richard Manning | Published: June 29, 2009

a few quotes...

"...First, understand the complicated role of cortisol. It is indeed present in people under stress in higher levels, but it is there for a reason. Cortisol helps us shut down fight and flight, that is, returns the body clenched by stress to a normal state, and this is precisely what people suffering from PTSD or developmental trauma cannot do. Further, we now understand that these people can’t do this, at least in part, because their bodies do not produce cortisol..."

"...The mother was responding to her stress by being overprotective, which was exactly the source of stress Yehuda discovered in second-generation holocaust survivors. Traumatized mothers were frightened mothers, behavior that in turn traumatized their children. One can trace this across generations with low cortisol, as researchers did indeed do with the rats..."

"...Now for the interesting and sobering part for those of us who battle inter-generational trauma. This faulty biochemistry can be inherited by infants in utero. The inheritance is not genetic. It is epigenetic, but physical, hard-wired inheritance, nonetheless. Immediately, this reshapes our story and offers some pretty firm marching orders in regards to how we treat infants of mothers with PTSD..."

Read the whole piece:
http://www.goodworksintrauma.org/blo...tional-trauma/

Your responses, please?[/QUOTE

"FEAR" as a verb means to have reverential awe of...isn't it interesting how science is tracing the mechanism of disease to fear -cure that we cure pd? then we have to bring the subconscious to the conscious...we have the opportunity to do that every day...why wait for a cure? .. the heart is a mysterious organ indeed

EXCELLENT topic Fiona ....more later
md

[Bob Dawson]

"It is not in hearing of a thing one time that we can understand it. We must hear of it many times to understand it."

- e-mail from a Shaman

[Fiona]

bluedahlia, Peg, md, Bob Dawson, thanks for all your comments, contributions, reminders, and for sharing your personal stories....

This is fascinating stuff - I'm wondering what some of those who have been so interested in cortisol before make of this material.

I think 'modern medicine' (need a better term now and don't have one) has obviously contributed hugely to our lives - yet in some ways - through many elements of diagnostics, testing/evaluation, mechanisms of treatment, socio/culturally shaped focus, etc. - it also can contribute to the engine of fear that underlies some of the reasons we become ill and remain ill.

It can be challenging to think of ways that understanding the role of cortisol can help those of us with PD significantly. With the way the medications we have function -especially the longer we take them - our minds and bodies become so accustomed to a very dosage-specific reality. No one can really understand how that feels until one has been in that reality. Yet I think it structures in part our expectations for the shape of The Cure. We think of it in almos dosage-specific terms - if we could just define that one thing that makes the cells not function properly...

I think the first step is to get people out of the jail of fear, fear of this silent, secret attacker, the one called Parkinson's Disease. I am working on this one. I was reading a lot this summer about Nelson Mandela's time spent in prison, and despite privation - hard labor, incredible isolation, threat of violent treatment, lack of proper food and clothing for so many years - somehow he was able to keep his integrity and personal center, and imagine and plan for the renaissance of his country and the integration of its peoples during that time. He kept his inner strength intact through circumstances custom-made to enhance fear and PTSD in anyone. I am thinking a lot about this these days, and how it might be applicable to our situation.