How much a baby is touched leaves measurable effects on DNA methylation (2017)
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Re: How much a baby is touched leaves measurable effects on DNA methylation (2017)
#2Hmm...
I have three children - and all are intelligent, beautiful well adjusted kids. 5, 7, and 15.
One thing I made a point of as each was born - I maintained as much physica contact with each immediately after birth. I didnt allow them to leave or be examined without me there, touching them.
I did it not for the posted reasons, but just beacuse it felt right to me.
ALso - I would hum and sing to them a tune while they were still in the womb.
As soon as they came out, I held them and sang and hummed the same tune to them. It immediately calmed them - with my first, she immediately relaxed and stopped crying whil the nurse took her vitals, measurements and pricked her heel.
It was magical.
Re: How much a baby is touched leaves measurable effects on DNA methylation (2017)
#3I think there is a high chance that is 100% bullshit.
Most likely has to do with confusing cause-and-effect.
It could be just as well that highly methylated babies cry more and could be more demanding or parents with highly methylated babies are themselves less tolerant to crying thus end up handling babies more.
The problem, they way it is being reported, and they way it lines up with pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo groupthink makes it stink. That's why it is newsworthy. People want to believe that handling a baby will change their DNA.
Same bullshit like papers like this:
- Scientists Say They’ve Found a Code Beyond Genetics in DNA - https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/science/25dna.html
Re: How much a baby is touched leaves measurable effects on DNA methylation (2017)
#4This interview sounds like unpublished bullshit, it would never stand reviewing. To claim this from the survey they conducted is just wrong. Every science student learns about the difference between causation and correlation.
Re: How much a baby is touched leaves measurable effects on DNA methylation (2017)
#5I think there is a high chance that is 100% bullshit. Most likely has to do with confusing cause-and-effect. It could be just as well that highly methylated babies cry more and could be more demanding or parents with highly methylated babies are themselves less tolerant to crying thus end up handling babies more. The problem, they way it is being reported, and they way it lines up with pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo g…
scientific study: "The importance of touch in development", Brain Research Centre and Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2865952/#__ffn_...
(as commented elsewhere)
Re: How much a baby is touched leaves measurable effects on DNA methylation (2017)
#6I think there is a high chance that is 100% bullshit. Most likely has to do with confusing cause-and-effect. It could be just as well that highly methylated babies cry more and could be more demanding or parents with highly methylated babies are themselves less tolerant to crying thus end up handling babies more. The problem, they way it is being reported, and they way it lines up with pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo g…
One thing that we know from decades of twin studies is that childhood family environment explains a vanishingly small percent of long-run adult outcomes.
Contextualizing this single study's result against the much larger, more established evidence from twin studies strongly suggests that one or more of the following is true.
- The results are spurious and won't replicate.
- The results are true, but the association is not causal, and is simply proxying correlation with an upstream factor.
- Lack of touch does lead to methylation in the short-term, but by adulthood there's strong reversion to the mean.
- The methylation has no significant impact on any actual metric that we care about like success, health, personality or wellbeing.
Re: How much a baby is touched leaves measurable effects on DNA methylation (2017)
#7Wait... Does our DNA change as we age??
If so, to only sample the DNA after the study and not before seems crazy.
Re: How much a baby is touched leaves measurable effects on DNA methylation (2017)
#8Wait... Does our DNA change as we age?? If so, to only sample the DNA after the study and not before seems crazy.
The article is talking about methylation, which I always interpret to mean they're referring to the epigenome. It doesn't change our DNA, so much as the expression of it.
Re: How much a baby is touched leaves measurable effects on DNA methylation (2017)
#9I think there is a high chance that is 100% bullshit. Most likely has to do with confusing cause-and-effect. It could be just as well that highly methylated babies cry more and could be more demanding or parents with highly methylated babies are themselves less tolerant to crying thus end up handling babies more. The problem, they way it is being reported, and they way it lines up with pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo g…
scientific study: "The importance of touch in development", Brain Research Centre and Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2865952/#__ffn_... (as commented elsewhere)
That study is only reference to the existing consensus, not the actual study from the OP.
I don't have the time to dig out the actual study but it looks like [1] it's originating in Canada (not NIH/USA) based on the publication of the press release.
Original comment of thread doesn't understand how much research is behind this idea (touch linked to higher outcomes long-term). I'd strongly recommend the commenter to read tribler's citation as that's scientific consensus at this point. If you want to read the recent study on DNA affects of touch, then below is that source of research.
1 - https://www.med.ubc.ca/news/holding-infants-or-not-can-leave...
Re: How much a baby is touched leaves measurable effects on DNA methylation (2017)
#10I think there is a high chance that is 100% bullshit. Most likely has to do with confusing cause-and-effect. It could be just as well that highly methylated babies cry more and could be more demanding or parents with highly methylated babies are themselves less tolerant to crying thus end up handling babies more. The problem, they way it is being reported, and they way it lines up with pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo g…
This article is terrible and did the grave disservice of not mentioning the work that has been done on this front using rats. Obviously, we cannot ethically reproduce the RCTs in humans to establish cause and effect, but there's sufficient evidence to form hypotheses and spur investigation in humans. I'm having trouble finding the exact primary literature that I wanted to cite just now, but here are a couple of things worth looking over: