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It is just before 9 a.m. when a loud bang makes passersby jump on a street in New Jersey. Only a few moments later, however, everything becomes clear: it was just the faulty exhaust of a car, and so people continue to flock to work, to the subway or to the shops.
Sarah Larsson is the only one who is still just standing there – rooted to the spot at a nearby intersection, her whole body shaking. The shock is written all over her face. The memories of the attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York, of the explosions of the planes hitting the Twin Towers – suddenly, they are there again. Just a bang from a defective exhaust was enough. What is most astonishing is that Sarah Larsson had not even been born at the time of the attacks.
Can feelings of extreme stress be inherited?
Fifteen years ago, Sarah’s mother, heavily pregnant, witnessed the terrorist attacks in New York. The fears, negative thoughts and negative associations ate deep into her genes – and even into the DNA structure of the unborn Sarah. In fact, New York neurologist Rachel Yehuda discovered in a study that the offspring of mothers who had witnessed the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 while pregnant developed abnormal stress reactions.
“It is obvious that traumatic experiences also leave traces in our genes,” explains Yehuda. But how can genetic changes like that be detected? Cell biologist Bruce Lipton believes: “When cells divide, they pass on environmental influences and ‘impressions’ that they themselves have inherited or experienced over the course of their lives – due to their lifestyle, even through their thoughts.” Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry have been able to prove this interaction between emotions and genes for the first time.
Our psyche and body are working as a unit
The researchers found that stress, for example, has a direct impact on biochemical processes in our cells – triggering measurable changes in the functions of our DNA. The process behind this is not a direct change in the DNA, but an adjustment of the genetic code with the help of special enzymes that can turn genetic information in our genome on or off (called DNA methylation). What sounds complicated is actually nothing more than scientific proof that psychological factors have a direct impact on our bodies.
But if thoughts and experiences can affect our genes and personality to such an extent that trauma can be passed on to our descendants, is it possible that we can change our DNA for the better through the power of thought? Researchers at the University of Calgary in Canada decided to find out. And they did: In an experiment, test subjects were able to use certain meditation techniques to manipulate the biochemical structures of their DNA in such a way that, technically speaking, they aged more slowly than study participants in a control group.
In addition, another study by the PRBB Parc de Recerca Biomèdica in Barcelona and the University of Wisconsin-Madison examined the influence of so-called mindfulness meditation on genes. It found that the DNA of the study participants had changed in such a way that anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving drugs worked better.
