![]() What we didn’t know was that those new instructions could then be passed on to your children. And the system responds to changes in the environment, so when a traumatic event occurs, your body will react and write new instructions. If your genes are the ingredients list in a recipe, your epigenetics are the instructions for what to do with them. Surrounding your DNA is a complicated system of molecular tools that decide which genes will get turned on and off, when and where. While your life experiences do not affect your genetic code (what those 23 and Me results are based on), they do affect your epigenetics. Many studies have already used this idea to explain health issues observed in descendants of Holocaust survivors, refugees, veterans, and those who have endured poverty, racism, and natural disasters. A new form of transgenerational inheritance has now been suggested, in which the effects of trauma and stress in a parent’s life can actually be passed on to children in ways that shape their physical, behavioral, and cognitive health. Our behavior and health are certainly shaped by our lifestyles, but we can only pass these traits down to our kids through social and cultural means. nurture debate, we rely on the fact that our genetic code is unaffected by our life experiences. ![]() And yet, emerging evidence for the idea of generational trauma suggests that recent generations have not come out unscathed. I left thinking not just about my own family, but about how all families carry these incredible stories of survival, through forms of struggle that many of us will not have to experience ourselves. And there was one banishment to Siberia thrown in for good measure. Each life personally affected by two world wars. Parents lost children children lost parents. Teens sent on ships towards foreign lands to find work and send back money. I learned of big families on small farms. It started with the names and places we knew, but the tree quickly grew, and with each new branch came a series of characters and stories that were hard to believe. When my sisters and I found ourselves around a table with my parents and some time to spare, we decided to ask more about our family tree. Both of my parents were born in Poland so the results weren’t a complete surprise, but as we watched the site track generations of family history from a single spit sample, new questions came up. The 23 and Me craze has officially reached my family. The epigenetics behind “generational trauma”
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