| Popis: |
Lasting stress (physiological as well as psychological) does not affect people as “islands.” As we have seen, stress and the stress response can in numerous ways affect people beyond their own scope of action; this applies even in the sense of transgenerational transmission of pathologies resulting from chronic and overwhelming stress exposure. In this chapter, we enter a relatively young strand of science to discuss the role of epigenetics in stress research. In particular, we focus on detrimental health outcomes related to stress, where epigenetics may be shown to come into play, according to research findings in a variety of fields. We start this chapter by giving a clear and concise definition of epigenetics and by presenting a few well-known examples where epigenetic changes found to occur in prenatal and early postnatal life can cause a predisposition to certain diseases throughout life. In addition, our examples show that the triggers causing such epigenetic changes can be linked to the experience of poverty. This aspect will be discussed thoroughly in Chap. 8. |
