Doctors see disease and they think about genes and germs, molecules and chemicals. But there’s a new recommendation from the neuroscience lab: Think about human relationships too. It’s turning out that babies’ earliest attachment relationships help set their lives’ paths toward disease or health.
Lifelong health, as it turns out, is powerfully shaped during a critical 1,000 days. These are the days of the third trimester of pregnancy and the next two years. During this time, brain growth is exploding. And the brain needs social experience in order to grow. In fact, social experiences — especially in intimate relationships like mother and baby — actually turn genes on and off. The last three decades of neuroscience research have built solid evidence for this. Many of these genes activate and organize brain growth in the regions responsible for regulating emotion, energy and arousal states.
According to neuroscientist Dr. Allan Schore, from UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, disruptions in these processes lead to most psychiatric disorders — including depression and anxiety. And social interactions that teach emotional flexibility lay the foundation for a lifetime of well-being.
[For more of this story, written by Miriam Voran, go to http://www.vnews.com/opinion/1...s-strong-attachments]
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