A Closer Look At Childhood

Even when you’re exposed to stress, you can give your body the support it needs to recover, getting your cortisol and adrenaline levels back to within normal ranges for feeling good and preventing illness. Again, stress recovery is possible. So don’t give up if you had a rough childhood. Don’t give up if you feel helpless and caught in a loop of what seems like unending stress triggers. There’s a lot that you can do to help your body recover from stress. And if you, like me, are a parent, please know that there’s a lot that you can do to help your children recover from their childhood, too. Compared to children who experience abuse or a major crisis, my daughter has been exposed to a relatively low amount of stress in her childhood. Her father and I were divorced when she was young, which is considered a major stress, yet she has still been able to spend time with both of us, and we have attempted to provide her with an abundance of support, whenever it’s needed. Most people would consider this to be a common level of childhood stress in this day and age. Still, my awareness of and research into chronic stress exposure has caused me to rethink how I parent and how I can support my daughter through her stress exposure. When the child breaks those rules, the parents enforce consequences, without necessarily having a conversation with the child about why they made the choice they made and how to choose differently in the future. Seldom is there loving or compassionate support, especially during teenage years.

With Every Wish

Eventually, the teen distances themselves emotionally and physically from the parents and leaves home to create their own life. If the child does bring up traumatic experiences, it’s common for the parents to feel defensive and unappreciated after all they invested in their child. Thankfully, we have the power to react and respond differently today and to help curtail our children’s stress. It’s powerful for kids to be seen and heard, and this can influence both the health of the child and the parent. Instead of leaving your child to navigate hardships on their own, take every chance you can to check in with your kids to help them know that all of us have experienced events in childhood that have made us feel invalidated or abandoned. Reinforce that recovery is possible and support is a normal human need that parents can help their children receive. In doing so, you’ll change the trajectory of your health, your child’s health, and the health of future generations. And we’re less likely to receive the support and nurturing we need to counteract our past and to develop coping techniques for when our emotional stress is high. Ultimately, I believe that learning methods to help cope with stress ought to be part of elementary school education. It’s that essential for human health. Most parents aren’t familiar with these techniques for themselves, let alone their children. To truly shift the negative effect stress is having on our lives, we need to plan ahead and help both adults and children become masters at understanding and supporting themselves so that they can recover from stress of all types.

For Once In Your Life

What’s more, studies show that our stress timeline can begin before we are even born! And the stress that my father experienced when his father came back from the war is also in my cells. The toxins that my mother was exposed to on the farm where she grew up influence my body to this day. While this information shocks and amazes me, it is also a powerful call to action this. Studies indicate that just as stressful events, as well as diet and environmental factors, cause epigenetic changes that are inherited in the next generations, positive changes that can assist with stress recovery can be passed on as well.7 This is of particular interest for men and women who are planning to conceive. Many stresses, like those we inherit, are beyond our control, so we need to be aware of our baselines and work to reduce stress toward them. Studies show that meditation can help.8 So can prayer. Community support is also a plus. What if we choose to hold each other up in stressful times? We must choose nurturance over separation, connection and compassion over discrimination. We encounter numerous stresses every day that turn our genes on and off. We can, and should, be aware of them, limit exposure, and heal their damage to mitigate their effects on our adrenals.

Concentric Circles Of Ever Decreasing Size

For starters, toxins in the environment, whether on a farm, in the city, or in the suburbs, are a stress on our bodies. The liver is also responsible for detoxifying estrogens and toxins made by gut bacteria, in addition to medications and alcohol. For that to happen, the toxic metabolites must first pass through the second phase of liver detoxification, which involves biochemical pathways that further modify the toxins using antioxidants and nutrients, such as B vitamins. These pathways, including methylation and glutathione production, are also greatly influenced by both genetics and stress exposure. When these pathways are working well, the toxin metabolites are able to exit the liver in bile and pass through the gallbladder and into the intestines, where fiber helps them become part of feces. Essentially, the more stress and toxins we are exposed to, the less effectively we can detoxify pollutants that enter our bodies. Others simply assume our bodies can handle them. But if we can trace a direct effect from toxins, we’re more likely to open our eyes to their larger effects. For example, if you learned that your mattress was filled with flame retardants and causing vomiting, would that convince you that toxins were having an influence on your health? Or take, for example, what happened to one of my patients, who learned that water had been dripping into her wedding dress box in a closet for a long period of time.