Last month, Medical News Today investigated what the adult health consequences - both psychological and physical - of childhood bullying may be. Among the adverse effects linked with a history of being bullied, our feature briefly touched on some intriguing findings concerning physiological changes linked to bullying.
These included a 2014 study into the long-term health effects of bullying that posited bullying as a kind of "toxic stress," measurable by abnormal levels of C-reactive protein, which last into adulthood.
However, other studies have gone further - assessing the physiological impact that not only physical, but verbal bullying may have on brain development.
The notion that an experience external to the body - not something we have ingested, that has been affected by disease or damaged through physical injury - can measurably change the physical properties of an organ as intrinsic to our functioning as the brain is revelatory. But can we prove cause and effect?
[For more of this story go to http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/284341.php]
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