ACE Study : health outcomes and child abuse

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is a major research study that compares current adult health status to childhood experiences decades earlier.

It is one of the largest studies of it's kind, and it has brought new startling evidence to the table, with regard to a number of inter-related issues. 

This is the core of the fire underneath a large smoke cloud. This is about root causes.

The study reveals, as it is ongoing, that there is a direct linkage between the number of incidences of adverse early childhood experiences and the development of health related issues, risk behaviours and pathologies that emerge over 50 years later. The data is so clear, as to be able to show that much risk behaviour (smoking, addiction, obesity, self-harm, suicide) could be described as a form of self-medication, albeit ones with serious risks in the future, that seeks to manage unresolved the feelings associated with adverse childhood experiences.

"A striking finding was that adverse childhood experiences are vastly more common than recognized or acknowledged. Of equal importance was our observation that they had a powerful correlation to adult health a half-century later. It is this combination that makes them so important."

The study found that within middle class society, fromwhich it drew it's first data from, the incidence of child abuse is at least one in four. The study demonstrates that the more abuse is encountered in a childs life, the more the risks of disease and risk behaviour will manifest, and that there is a perfect curve in all the comparisons that described this relationship  throughout.

 

Figure1. Graph shows relation between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Score and smoking status.

The ACE score is based on zero adverse childhood experiences, 1 adverse childhood experiences,2 etc etc... Thus the relationship between the levels of ACE's and health outcome are clear.

 

Figure 3. Graph shows relation between ACE Score and illicit use of injected drugs.

This has very serious implications, for Health Services, Social Services and Society in general.

"Intravenous drug use is a major public health problem. In spite of massive efforts to curtail it, little progress has been made. We found that IV drug use may properly be viewed as a personal solution to problems that are well concealed by social niceties and convention. For example, a male child with an ACE score of 6 has a 4600% increase in the likelihood of later using intravenous drugs. This relation to adverse childhood experiences is powerful and is graded at every step; it provides a perfect dose-response curve; and epidemiologically, these outcomes are nearly unique in magnitude."

and

"Beyond these few illustrations, we found many other measures of adult health to have a strong, graded relation to what happened in childhood: hepatitis, heart disease, fractures, diabetes, obesity, alcoholism, occupational health, and job performance. These findings are detailed in the original and subsequent articles and will further be reported in publications of the yet-to-be-analyzed prospective arm of the ACE Study. " 

and

"The findings ........ provide remarkable insight into how we become what we are as individuals and as a nation. The ACE Study reveals a powerful relation between our emotional experiences as children and our adult emotional health, physical health, and major causes of mortality in the United States. Moreover, the time factors in the study make it clear that time does not heal some of the adverse experiences we found so common in the childhoods of a large population of middle-aged, middle-class Americans. One doesn't 'just get over' some things."

The ACE Study shows clearly that a number of key issues must be addressed.

1. The current paradigm set out for Health Care needs to undergo a rapid transformation, in that it must address the roots of disease, and not merely the emergent symptoms. All those working within Health Care must actively enhage within Society as a powerful lobby for that change, and not wait for instructions on the matter, advice from 'think-tanks' or any other consultative 'Authority'. Get on with it!

2. Social Services and Politcans, Media and others with voices in Society must address their current overtly judgemental and hopelessly aggressive approach to 'management' of risk behaviours that emerge from within any given population or community. It's not the individuals fault. And it's not that there is something intrinsically wrong with the distressed indivdual. There are issues with the Society itself, with regard to illegitimate power of many operators to influence the situation of peoples lives at a distance, and adversely, and they must be dealt with.

3. Society must address the incidence, that is to say, the frequency of Adverse Childhood Experiences across the entire Society, and identify all those social factors that give rise to intergenerational trauma patterning such as deprivation, poverty, institutional racism, war and so on.

4. Survivors must be respected, and given the space to talk about their experiences. It is the silence, and the discomfort of those who find it 'difficult' to face the truths, that traps survivors, far more than their own discomfort at their own lived experiences. This respect must be visible throughout Society. 

5. Survivors, by telling their stories, release themselves from the binds of silence, and are free to grow again - though that said, it has to be recognised that 'getting over it' is about the practicality of living or of being cared for as best one can by Society, Community, Family. And it's not always easy.

"This is not a comfortable diagnostic formulation; it points out that our attention is comfortably focused on tertiary consequences far downstream. The diagnosis shows that the primary issues are well protected by social convention and taboo and points out that we have limited ourselves to the smallest part of the problem: the part where we are comfortable as mere prescribers of medication. Which diagnostic choice shall we make? Who shall make it? And if not now, when?" 

That taboo must be utterly broken.  The matter must be addressed in public, and in private, where appropriate, at all levels. 

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Huge areas of woodland to be sold by government

Headlines this weekend :  Forests for sale by UK Government!

Ian Duncan Smiths comments on the utility of buses, with regard to seeking gainful employment in an economy he and his colleagues are decimating!

Hang on a second! This is nuts!

Who caused  the major 'economic' problems?

The Bankers and The Economists and The Politicians, that's who.They MAKE policy. They see that it is enforced. Gold Command.

Oridnary Taxpayers did nothing other than live within the system the three Pillocks of Society built. Most of us are so not within the command structure. If we had a command colour it would be transparent. Null.

Yet the Ordinary Taxpayers are now being asked to watch whilst the very poorest, the long-term unemployed, the vulnerable elderly, the distressed, the unwell .... (all of whom pay quite a few taxes, apart from income tax, by virtue of their spending the most if not all of their 'benefits' back into the economy), are beaten into oblivion.

So who ought to pay?

I say transfer all Crown Land, Heritage Land and Private Estates immediately to the stewardship of The People, knowing as we do, as now accepted by virtue of the masses of peer reveiwed Science that proves the case, that permaculture, forest gardening and smallholdings can work better with the land than industrial farming, large estates or the few allottments that remain because those processes build in the fecundity of the soil and biota, year on year. Urban allottments ought to be an absolute priority.

It would also mean decent work for many millions of people, (and there would be many takers of the opportunity to decamp the cities) and not least the long-term strategic security of a more natural local based food cycle that is not damaging the habitat.

http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~christos/articles/cv_organic_farming.html - World Wide Data

http://transitionculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/CanBritain.pdf - UK Data

What's not to like about this? Long-erm employment for millions of happy people, happier children, long-term food security strategy all rolled up in one?

The fact that it cannot be done overnight ought not be seen as grounds for any objection. We could start now.

However none of this would benefit the 'economy of the bankers'. It is their 'economy'. The own it and they run it. The Ordinary Taxpayer is simply forced, by birth and circumstance, to live within in it.

Gross National Happiness is an irrelevance in State which has the dubious honour of hosting the unhappiest childhood experience of any 'developed' Nation. And is doing what it is doing in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. These are not happiness creation programmes.

http://www.itv.com/News/Articles/UK-kids-among-Europes-unhappiest-922828311.html

I say make the Bankers, Politicans and Economists personally liable for the itent and consequences of their decisions. I say intent, because in nature, results always indicate intent.

The poorest, most vulnerable folk in the UK are being targetted. By those who have most responsibility for the situation. Who will pay far, far less, in terms of relative wealth and in terms of stressing conditions imposed by the cuts to public services.

And they are ignoring the DATA regarding the environment, farming and stewardship.

Both acts are abusive, and criminal.

This cannot stand. 

And sometimes one has to somehow laugh at it all, to thwart the Bankers, Politicians and Economist dubious claims on intelligence. Or even common sense. These are partners, they go hand in hand. Though not whilst walking down Wall Street! Nor do they entwine themselves in the corridors of power. Clever is not neccessarily intelligent. It's cleverness that allows the environment to be degraded to the extent it has thus far. Criminal cleverness. Utter stupidity!

Unlike that old saying by George Carlin 'MILITARY INTELLIGENCE - two mutually exclusive words!" which is to say intelligence without common-sense empathy is lethal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dY4WlxO6i0 - George Carlin, Who owns Society?

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMzEIoRHUFg - Corneilius, Bears don't shit in the woods no more.

And after the laughter, comes resolve and action....

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Nurture the Nature : genes will respond

A baby in utero who is exposed to stress develops his or her hind brain more than his or her fore brain. The fore brain is the neo-cortex which deals with intelligence, perception and creativity, the hind brain deals with physicality, defence and stress situations. Thus the stressed baby emerges prepared for a stressed (violent) environment and the relaxed baby emerges ready for a relaxed (empathetic) environment.

These factors are compounded by life learning; thus adverse conditioning or adverse childhood experience(s) can increase the tendency towards violent and controlling behaviours, which are often the symptoms of brain damage caused by those experiences; and empathetic nurturing increases the tendency towards peaceful egalitarian non-controlling behaviours, as the child’s brain is nurtured according to it’s nature.

Babies in utero develop touch and volitional movement by 7 weeks, light sensitivity at 10 weeks, (even though the eyes are not fully developed until 26 weeks), sensitivity to pain at 12 weeks, taste at 14 weeks, hearing at 16 weeks (even though the ear is not fully developed until 24 weeks), and spend more time in dream state at 30 weeks than in awake state, awareness and response to the language of the mother is evident at 25 weeks.

* Consciousness at birth: The range of empirical evidence (1983/1987). In Thomas Verny (Ed.), Pre- & perinatal psychology: An introduction (pp. 69-90). New York: Human Sciences Press.

Evidence of birth memories indicate full cognitive abilities at birth, equivalent to an adults abilities...

What is also known and well understood is that the environmental conditions act so as to switch gene expression on or off and indeed 'writes' new genetics, which may then be passed on….another way to say this is that genes are responsive, though it's the RNA which initates the 'writing' of or 'ateration' new genes. There is an interplay between the structual instruction sets and the environment, and they affect each other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene%E2%80%93environment_interaction

The tendency towards obesity evident in the current epidemic of obesity arose first out of a generation of people who ate fast foods, processed foods, were exposed to toxic chemicals and who have experienced various societal stressors such as trans-generational trauma which is directly correlated to symptoms of distress (“it’s my wall of protection” or “life is shorter” given as felt explanations of their obesity by obese people) and we now see obesity emerging in very young children.

*  http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/winter02/goldtolead.html

Whilst there are genes that are 'related' to the incidence of obesity, it is the environmental experiential conditions that cause their expression in the first place. And those conditions are man-made with regard to obesity and many other health issues….

Seeking or promoting a ‘cure’ with first dealing with the environmental issues is a way of protecting the creators of those environmental conditions and of blaming those who become obsese, addicted, distressed as a result of those conditions. The 'cure' is aimed at the symptoms of the person distress, not at the conditions that give rise to that persons distress in the first place.

And it is the lack of prevention, implicit in the marketing of those toxic processed sweets and 'foods' precisely directed at those communities that experience most deprivation, and thus distress, that brings that tendency or genetic environmental reponse into material reality.

Essentialy, a massive act of control-freakery. Industrial civilisation tends towards the more violent controlling behaviours common to, if not essential to, Power Relationships.

To change the trajectory of the dominant civilisation, we have to treat ourselves and our children with far more empathy, detailed empathy, from conception onwards... to create the conditions that will support an emerging Empathic Society we have to examine Power Relationships carefully and make changes. And then we must continue, day by day, to build in the genetics of that natural empathy, in the path towards natural sustainability for all life on Earth.

Here's a classic example of the environmental factors being downgraded in importance, compared to genetic factors. They barely mention the fact that economic deprivation, cultural derpivation are often INTENSE as environmental operators, or signals capable of affecting the genes themselves, as much as the day to day behaviour - and they omit the knowledge that brain damage caused by trauma, adverse childhood experiences, toxic chemicals; thus slanting the focus on the genes.

http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/08/06/antisocial-behavior-linked-to-genes-and-environment/16513.html

Much of the info regarding a babies consciousness comes from the research of David Chamberlain :

http://rivershrink.com/cvchamberlain.html

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

There is a world of difference between Religiosity and Spirituality.

The roots of that divide are to be found in the ways in which natural child-mother bonding processes, which are biologically determined, are either nurtured or not.

The research of James Prescott, Phd back in the 70s into primate mother-child bonding and the emergence of violence indicated to some degree the dynamics of this.

However, the research he carried out on primates was not possible for human beings - separating a child from his or her mother and providing a surrogate for 'experimental' purposes was correctly seen as 'unethical' - though Social Services and Hospital Protocol dictate that this separation does indeed occur, and with alarming frequency... how else is a circumcision to be carried out (60% of males born in the US are circumcised....)

So Prescott decided he'd do the next best thing and started a cross cultural survey of all known Aboriginal Societies to see if there was any patterns that could be observed that would suggest that his learnings with primates applied to human beings.

Bingo.

Absolute proof, statistically solid, that the ways in which the child-mother bond are nurtured or not are an rock solid indicator of the emergence of violence, hierarchy, sexual repression, rigid gender roles, territorialism and religiosity.

The facts are that when the needs of the natural child for healthy development are not met, when natural empathic nurturance is not fully functioning, abuse flows as a direct result.

"David  Smail correctly points out, in his book The Nature of Unhappiness, that psychological theories rarely move beyond the power exerted within the family - where by the oedipal child or the tyrannical parent - and generally fail to see the importance of wider social structures. He widens the ‘power horizon’ to include the effects of politics, culture and class on personal relations, and the impact of ideology on family life and education.

If emotional and psychological distress is brought about by social and environmental powers which originate at some distance from those ultimately subjected to them, then it follows that the best therapy comes in the form of political, ethical and ideological change. We need to move beyond the microenvironment of the therapeutic space, and through our interaction with patients provide three essential things: comfort, through proximal solidarity; clarification, to undo the mystifications of power, by helping patients to remember, see and say; and encouragement to physically and materially alter their position in the world."

 from a review by Christopher Dowrick, Professor of Primary Medical Care, University of Liverpool,

Furthermore, the research carried out by David Chamberlain, Joseph Chilton Pearce and many others into developmental neuroscience with regard to peri-natal experience, birth experience and the first years of a childs life absolutely support Prescotts insights.

Religion wears the mask of empathy, yet demonstrates time and time again a complete lack of empathy.The same applies to much of Social Services and Governance.

It's  BELIEF that is imposed externally, whereas true empathy emerges from within.

It is indoctrination that typifies Schooling and much of University 'Education'. Whereas true learning emerges from unfettered and honest exploration of the world we live in.

We need no more Religion, no more belief.

We need, we are desperately crying out for EMPATHY.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

On Big Business

A letter from Big Business urging George Osborne owards with the 'cuts'.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/8069609/Osbornes-cuts-will-strengthen-Britains-economy-by-allowing-the-private-sector-to-generate-more-jobs.html

To all those who claim big business generates the taxes that the Government spends... WRONG.

Who buys the products with built in obselesence?

We do, consumers, families, on the pittance Big Business throws our way in compensation. Because we have no choice, as durable goods that last for many years are rare.

Who exposes their children to scientifically applied 'nagging' marketing?

We do, because there is no alternative. Big Business has seized all public space for it's propaganda. And is busily finding 'creative' ways to invade private space as well.

Who takes a slice of every transaction between food producers and our tables?

Big Business: through it's myriad of subsidiaries and shell companies.

Who makes processed foods that are a root cause of about 80% of degenerative disease, which costs the Health systems of all State so many billions - much of which is profit for those Big Business suppliers to State Health Systems..

Big Pharming. The simple and ugly elegance of this particular scam was outlined in some detail by Anne and Harvey Diamond in the early 80s in their soft-cover 'Fit for Life'. The data on this is now vast!

Who makes a profit out of 'care' and most often gets it badly wrong?

Private Care Homes. Who were foisted on our elderly, under the impression that private enterprise would upgrade the lived experience - well, Gerry Robinsons programme on that very subject last winter made it really clear that is NOT the case. And the Government chimed in with a policy that demanded that the elderly sell up and move into these homes (to fund the programme, thus converting their homes into someone elses profit)

Big Business functions to convert 'resources' into profits - the means to do this are the  sale opf mostly useless products and services, (80% of all consumer goods inthe USA are placed in a bin within 6 months of use - The Story of Stuff : http://www.storyofstuff.com/ ) and they are a morbid compensation offered to the majority in teturn for their toil in work that is not for their own benefit, and often not at all satisfying, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually.

The lack of adequate analysis and empathy in those who blow the trumprt of commerce is equal to those who blow the trumpet of what passes for corrupted Governance as we know it, be it centre, right or left - which is fundamentally the legalistic contractual licensing of Big Business to do as it will and earn those amassed profits at the expense of all but themselves, and the illegitimisation of any one who dissents and or provides an alternative vision of Society, and of course, with the added topping of  exercising that nasty urge to take an good hard kick at the under-dogs, the very much less well-off, the vulnerable, the damaged.

The unwillignness of Big Business and or Governance to honestly enagage with those alternatives in an open discourse on the best possible future for all our children belies the strength of their logic, practice and propaganda.

The truth is in this Society the many work for the opulence of the few, and the poor, damaged and vulnerable are fair game in the war to preserve comfort over dignity.

Big Bollocs! more like it. One has to have BIG BALLS of some kind to write such a letter under such circumstances where the people's debt is due to in large partt Government borrowing money from Banks to bail-out Banks, for conducting long term policies that have made nearly all people into debtors, finally stooping so low as to offer 'credit' to poor people in crap housing to buy the house and 'do it up', and than claiming that Society (apart from big business) and Nature must pay the costs, whilst the bankers suggest the price!

It's almost as good a con as the "God Loves you and HE NEEDS YOUR MONEY!" scam.

That both are frankly unbelievable is borne out by the formers imposition of it's creeds upon small defenceless chidlren, and in the latter case, by the walled enclaves and hired guns euphemistaclly called 'security contractors' of the super rich (Monsanto now OWNS  a good proportion of Xe, which was formerly known as Blackwater) and the existence of poverty itself.

Here's George Monbiots article on the list of quangos the media DID NOT Examine....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/18/conservative-financial-crisis-opportunity

It neatly disrobes the Emperor!

Kindest regards


Corneilius


Do what you love, it's your gift to universe