It is well-documented that abuse and nneglect during childhood can have long-lasting and damaging effects, but new research has linked a lack of parental warmth and affection to the biology of babies and children in the form of developing multiple health risks later on in life.
When babies and children experience a lack of affection, their entire body's regulatory system are adversely affected and less able to cope with stress, making them more vulnerable to disease further down the road.
"Our findings suggest that there may be a way to reduce the impact abuse has, at least in terms of physical health," Judith E. Carroll, a research scientist at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA and lead author of the study, said in a press release. "If the child has love from parental figures, they may be more protected from the impact of the abuse on adult biological risk for health problems than those who don't have that loving adult in their life."
In the latest UCLA-led study, researchers observed 756 adults who had participated in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study, measuring 18 markers of their biological health, including "blood pressure, heart rate, stress hormones, cholesterol, waist circumference, inflammation and blood-sugar regulation."
After adding up their risks and creating "allostatic load" summary indexes from the data, the researchers then asked participants to fill out a scientifically validated self-report scale called the Risky Families Questionnaire.
In previous research, people with higher levels of "allostatic load" are more likely to develop heart attacks or stroke. While comparing individuals' multi-system health risks with their reported childhood emotional experiences and trauma, researchers found that individuals with low levels of love and affection during childhood and high levels of abuse had the highest multi-system risks.
However, those who suffered abuse but also had high levels of warmth and affection had lower multi-system risks, suggesting that affection during childhood is an essential way of protecting people from often harmful biological reactions to stress.
Researchers concluded that the toxicity of childhood stress boosts the arousal of individuals when faced with physical and emotional challenges, making it more difficult for such reactions to be shut off in the body. When there is nothing to combat such toxicity, such as kissing, cuddling or cooing, babies have a more difficult time adjusting biologically.
"Our findings highlight the extent to which these early childhood experiences are associated with evidence of increased biological risks across nearly all of the body's major regulatory systems," said the paper's senior author, Teresa Seeman, a professor of medicine in the division of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a professor of epidemiology at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health.
"If we only look at individual biological parameters such as blood pressure or cholesterol, we would miss the fact that the early childhood experiences are related to a much broader set of biological risk indicators - suggesting the range of health risks that may result from such adverse childhood exposures."
The researchers noted that the link does not imply causation, though they hope their new findings will help encourage "public policy support for early interventions" in at-risk families.
