(Stillness in the Storm Editor) It’s a well-known fact that newborn infants will die if they don’t get enough physical affection. A recent study looked at the genetic effects of infant affection, demonstrating that without it, life long issues are likely.
At the deepest levels of human experience, life is all about information processing. Experience is the act of absorbing information in your life, guided by your focus or attention. Psychologically, this is described as the exploratory mechanism or play process.
Simply put, the best relationship with reality is one of playfulness. Play allows us to explore and contend with the unknown in a positive constructive way. Play, neurologically, is superior to fear, because we cognize or map out the world better when we’re in a playful mood and state of mind.
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But in order to play you need a safe space. If you don’t have a safe space, you don’t contend with the unknown in a playful fashion, at least children don’t. You contend with the unknown from a state of fear and survival.
The precursor to play for babies is by being held by their parents.
The child goes from the womb, where everything is safe, to the real world, where everything is new and unknown. We’re hardwired to “fear” the unknown—unless, we activate the play psychology in our brains.
A cascade of developmental processes play out during the first few hours after birth, wherein an infant is learning how to deal with the big world around them. A parent’s physical body acts as a stabilizing force for the child, especially the mother’s body. The mother’s heartbeat, smell, and somatic signature are recognizable by the child, which implicitly makes babies feel safe and secure in their mother’s arms. In this way, a baby develops the courage and capacity to play with the unknown because a deep pair bond of trust is formed with the parent.
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Studies show, when children lack this critical pair-bonding time, behavioral issues are often the result.
Psychologically, when we don’t know how to deal with fear, our brains increase stress levels to keep us alert. So what happens when the first few weeks of life lack this trust with reality bond imparted by being held as an infant? Life long stress and resulting complications are the results.
Fear induces stress in the body. Stress changes the biochemical environment of the body, especially within the cells.
Thankfully, these early childhood traumas can be addressed and healed with the right protocol. It is not easy and often takes many months or years of consistent effort to heal. But it can be done.
I contend a great source of unrest in our world are adverse childhood experiences. In time, hopefully we’ll work together to change the cultural influences so that better childcare methods can be employed en masse, for the benefit of parents, children, and society as a whole.
– Justin
by David Neild, October 12th, 2019
The amount of close and comforting contact that young infants get doesn’t just keep them warm, snug, and loved.
A 2017 study says it can actually affect babies at the molecular level, and the effects can last for years.
Based on the study, babies who get less physical contact and are more distressed at a young age, end up with changes in molecular processes that affect gene expression.
The team from the University of British Columbia in Canada emphasises that it’s still very early days for this research, and it’s not clear exactly what’s causing the change.
But it could give scientists some useful insights into how touching affects the epigenome – the biochemical changes that influence gene expression in the body.
During the study, parents of 94 babies were asked to keep diaries of their touching and cuddling habits from five weeks after birth, as well as logging the behaviour of the infants – sleeping, crying, and so on.
Four-and-a-half years later, DNA swabs were taken of the kids to analyse a biochemical modification called DNA methylation.
It’s an epigenetic mechanism in which some parts of the chromosome are tagged with small carbon and hydrogen molecules, often changing how genes function and affecting their expression.
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The researchers found DNA methylation differences between “high-contact” children and “low-contact” children at five specific DNA sites, two of which were within genes: one related to the immune system, and one to the metabolic system.
DNA methylation also acts as a marker for normal biological development and the processes that go along with it, and it can be influenced by external, environmental factors as well.
Then there was the epigenetic age, the biological ageing of blood and tissue. This marker was lower than expected in the kids who hadn’t had much contact as babies, and had experienced more distress in their early years, compared with their actual age.
“In children, we think slower epigenetic ageing could reflect less favourable developmental progress,” said one of the team, Michael Kobor.
In fact, similar findings were spotted in a study from 2013 looking at how much care and attention young rats were given from a very early age.
Gaps between epigenetic age and chronological age have been linked to health problems in the past, but again it’s too soon to draw those kind of conclusions: the scientists readily admit they don’t yet know how this will affect the kids later in life.
We are also talking about less than 100 babies in the study, but it does seem that close contact and cuddles do somehow change the body at a genetic level.
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Of course it’s well accepted that human touch is good for us and our development in all kinds of ways, but this is the first study to look at how it might be changing the epigenetics of human babies.
It will be the job of further studies to work out why, and to investigate whether any long-term changes in health might appear as a consequence.
“We plan to follow up on whether the ‘biological immaturity’ we saw in these children carries broad implications for their health, especially their psychological development,” said one of the researchers, Sarah Moore.
“If further research confirms this initial finding, it will underscore the importance of providing physical contact, especially for distressed infants.”
The research was published in Development and Psychopathology.
A version of this article was first published in November 2017.
Stillness in the Storm Editor: Why did we post this?
Psychology is the study of the nature of mind. Philosophy is the use of that mind in life. Both are critically important to gain an understanding of as they are aspects of the self. All you do and experience will pass through these gateways of being. The preceding information provides an overview of this self-knowledge, offering points to consider that people often don’t take the time to contemplate. With the choice to gain self-awareness, one can begin to see how their being works. With the wisdom of self-awareness, one has the tools to master their being and life in general, bringing order to chaos through navigating the challenges with the capacity for right action.
– Justin
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