People feel like shadows of their former selves because of the impact of childhood trauma. No one is to blame for the pain and health consequences of victims of abuse.
A study of nearly 78,000 Norwegian women found that exposure to childhood emotional, sexual, and physical abuse may increase the risk of multiplesclerosis.
In a new paper, a team of medical researchers explains that abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction are extreme types of stress.
While chronic stress is linked to poor mental and physical health, and stressful life events cantrigger disease flares in people living with MS, a big unknown is whether traumatic experiences in childhood might years later manifest as a heightened risk of developing the disease.
A landmark study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that people who were abused as children were more likely to end up in the hospital later in life.
The immune system mistakenly attacks nerve cells, which can lead to chronic pain, muscle spasms, numbness, and even vision loss.
To investigate the links between the condition and childhood trauma, the researchers cross-linked data from a nationwide Norwegian study tracking pregnant women from 1999 to 2018 with hospital records and a national registry ofMS diagnoses in Norway.
The analysis found that women who were exposed to emotional and sexual abuse before the age of 18 had a higher risk of developing multiplesclerosis.
When recruited to the study, nearly one in four of the women reported a history of childhood abuse.
Women who have experienced sexual abuse are 65 percent more likely to developMS, and women who have been exposed to more than one type of trauma are between 66 to 93 percent more likely to developMS.
One way of interpreting the data is that people with an underlying susceptibility to the condition might be more likely to be traumatised as a child.
How so? Researchers think that trauma could cause the body to go into a heightened state of stress and inflammation that can lead to disease.
It is plausible that childhood trauma has been linked to chronic health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, and depression.
There are many possible causes of the disease, including a lack of sunlight, too much air pollution, diet of ultra-processed foods, genetics, and common viral infections.
Our younger years may be a critical window regardless of the risk factors.
Some of the most consistent environmental risk factors for multiplesclerosis, including low vitamins D levels and sun exposure, seem to have critical periods of susceptibility for multiplesclerosis in childhood and adolescence.
Better understanding of the risk factors and timing of risk exposures may open doors for prevention.
observational studies can only point towards associations between early life circumstances and disease, so it's important to note.
The effects of childhood trauma could make a world of difference if medical professionals were more aware of it.
Some people in the study skipped the part of the questionnaire that asked about childhood abuses because they were too traumatizing.
Smoking and being overweight are known risk factors of multiplesclerosis and other autoimmune diseases, which the analysis did try to account for.
The researchers had no idea how long the trauma lasted, what age it started, or how much emotional support people had as kids.
Exposure to abuse as a one-time incident could have different impact compared with repetitive abuse.
Given the growing global burden of multiplesclerosis and the lifelong impacts of childhood trauma, the study findings warrant further investigation into the links between the two.
It is a sobering reminder that we should all pay attention to how preventing traumatic experiences in early life gives kids a better shot at life.
The study was published in a journal.
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