Starting longevity in childhood: what do/would you do with your kids?

#61

@DeStrider and others… Check your kid’s blood pressure:

Higher blood pressure (BP) at age 7 years is associated with an increased risk for premature cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, according to a study published online Sept. 7 in the Journal of the American Medical Association to coincide with the American Heart Association Hypertension 2025 Scientific Sessions, held from Sept. 4 to 7 in Baltimore.

Alexa A. Freedman, Ph.D., from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues analyzed data from a prospective cohort of children born to women enrolled in the U.S. Collaborative Perinatal Project between 1959 and 1965 at 12 sites to examine the association between BP at age 7 years and CVD mortality.

https://www.diabetesincontrol.com/elevated-bp-at-age-7-years-linked-to-premature-cvd-mortality/

3 Likes
#62

Stanford Medicine magazine reports on chronic disease prevention, diagnostics, care

By Patricia Hannon

The new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine explores advances in diagnostics, prevention and therapy that are lifting the burden of chronic conditions. Stanford Medicine magazine reports on chronic disease prevention, diagnostics, care

  • Infection connections: Researchers are discovering that acute infections early in life, like Epstein-Barr virus, can lead to neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis in later years and are investigating how this happens.

  • A taste of health: A collection of stories about the food-health connection — from research into how our diet affects our physical and mental health to factoring nutrition into medical education and patient care.

5 Likes
#64
2 Likes
#65

Related to this thread:

“Cumulative social advantage is really about the depth and breadth of your social connections over a lifetime,” Ong said. “We looked at four key areas: the warmth and support you received from your parents growing up, how connected you feel to your community and neighborhood, your involvement in religious or faith-based communities, and the ongoing emotional support from friends and family.”

Full story here: A lifetime of social ties adds up to healthy aging (Cornell)

2 Likes
#66

This definitely makes sense. But I also reckon a large part of it is how you handle stress. I see this in university students - some will rise to the challenge, and the stress is a motivating force. But other kinda get crushed under any sort of pressure.

2 Likes
#67

Scientists studying tiny roundworms have uncovered how the secrets of a long life can be passed from parents to their offspring — without changing DNA. The discovery shows that when certain cellular structures called lysosomes change in ways that promote longevity, those benefits can travel from body cells to reproductive cells. This information is carried by histones, special proteins that help organize DNA, allowing the “memory” of those changes to be inherited.

1 Like
#68

A new study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis provides some answers. Published Sept. 15 in Nature Mental Health , it mined an enormous set of data collected from pre-teens and teens across the U.S. and found that social conflicts—particularly family fighting and reputational damage or bullying from peers—were the strongest predictors of near- and long-term mental health issues.

3 Likes
#69

Thanks for sharing this one. I believe this is going to be the most important post so far. Mental health seems to be the one thing that is the hardest to deal with. Getting your kids active, establishing good habits etc is relatively “easy”. But building good mental health seems like a really difficult thing where it’s hard to track the progress. I’ve seen a lot of smart and capable students just completely wrecked by mental health issues, when they can’t even get out of bed, can’t face the world. Or they end up bipolar, flying high with massive achievements and then crashing and burning soon after. I would VERY much like to avoid that with my own kids.

4 Likes
#70

Work hard to prevent / avoid ADHD in your children:

Early life adversity and adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): Pathways to persistence and adult susceptibility

recent studies have highlighted the contribution of environmental factors to ADHD pathogenesis. Early Life Adversity (ELA), through the impact of chronic stress, disrupts critical neurodevelopmental processes, leading to alterations in brain networks involved in attention. Viewing ADHD through ELA-shaped neurodevelopment reframes the disorder from a largely inherited liability to a partly preventable, stress-programmable phenotype, prioritizing early detection and mechanistic interventions across sensitive periods.

ELA encompasses a spectrum of traumatic and stressful experiences during key developmental periods, such as childhood and adolescence, ranging from war and natural disasters to various forms of abuse, malnutrition, and adverse caregiving practices. These adversities exert profound and enduring effects on psychological and neurobiological health, targeting critical periods of neurodevelopment and disrupting neural, endocrine, and immune systems (Malave et al., 2022, Wade et al., 2022, Cross et al., 2017). A substantial body of correlational studies has demonstrated a significant association between ELA and the onset of ADHD (Brown et al., 2017, Walker et al., 2021).

ELA imposes chronic and cumulative stress that fundamentally alters the architecture of stress regulation mechanisms (Baram and Birnie, 2024). The effects of ELA are characterized by chronic and time-dynamic processes, making them challenging to observe directly in human studies. Encouragingly, numerous animal models of ELA have been established, providing a foundation for elucidating the underlying mechanisms (Benmhammed et al., 2019).

Conclusion and future perspectives

Extensive clinical investigations and animal studies have demonstrated that ELA profoundly disrupts developmental processes, creating a cascade of neurobiological changes that significantly contribute to the persistence of ADHD into adulthood or increases susceptibility to the disorder during adulthood. ELA-induced HPA axis and chronic stress reactivity reshape stress response systems, leading to lasting impairments in prefrontal-limbic connectivity.

Highlights

  • • Early-life adversity maintains ADHD into adulthood by dysregulating HPA and epigenetics.

  • • ELA promotes oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and aberrant myelination in ADHD.

  • • ADHD circuit dysfunction across prefrontal, cingulate, basal ganglia, and cerebellum.

  • • Non-invasive treatments represent the promising therapeutic approach.

Paywalled paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763425004373

Related:

1 Like
#71
2 Likes