Epigenetics - 1

So much information comes pouring in, even when I’ve just been chasing the grandkids across the beach at low tide. I don’t turn on this computer as much any more, because, like most people these days, it seems to be too big and slow compared with all of the mobil devices that I take with me in a plastic bag. Still, so man new, exciting things are happening -- as well as the constant flow of repetitive atrocities and financial manipulations. 

Some of the new information came over the weekend in the very low-tech way, through newspapers.  Because of the glitch in the analogue delivery system we received three papers, one from New York, one from Boston and an extra from Cape Cod.  The Cape Cod gave us local facts and weather, and also a story and picture of a woman who had gone to high school with my son.  She was doing well here on The Cape, except she still had loads of student debt.  Too bad; student loans were another good attempt to put a band-aid on a severed leg. The unintended consequences  soon were mixed with a bit of good old American fraud and deception, and now it’s a crisis.

The NYT Magazine had a lead article by Susan Dominus about two pairs of identical twins who were somehow mix-up 26 years ago and raised as fraternal twins by the two different families.  The four men found each other through a series of connections and are being studied by geneticists and also epigeneticists.

The article focuses mainly on the reactions of the young men, and how they responded differently to the very confusing situation.  It raises the questions of who we are, and what it is that shapes us.  All that nature/nurture stuff.

Although this happened due to a drastic error in a rural medical system, it is relevant  now due to the increasing amount of ways in which families can be formed.  These days, with different kinds of marriages, and so many step-families, and people changing sexes, or just having difficulties having children, the laboratory is an increasingly major factor in the creation of people.

Repeatedly, over my long years of doing psychotherapy I have often  been frustrated by  feeling that I am working with someone whose emotional reactions to certain situations are way beyond what should be expected, even given some difficult situations.  I spent hours working with Lady R, who was very anxious, and saw possible danger in everything.  She did well in therapy, as she was thoughtful and very open to reassurances.  Long after we stopped our visits she would call me after a bad night of fears.  I would spend about fifteen minutes on the phone with her and she would be fine for six months. But i always had the impression that she was being knocked over by the waves of her life, even though they never came up as high as her knees.

By contrast, I have seen people who had awful family histories of physical and emotional abuse, as well as living in poverty, and yet these people were workers and survivors.  It was not as if their lives were without struggles or limitations, but they had developed coping mechanisms that held them steady when the waves of their lives where twelve feet high and threw them against the rocks.

Obviously, we all have genetic differences that shape our personality.  Since the turn of this millennium there has been an amazing amount of work sorting out the kinds of genes that play a part in predisposing each of us toward various emotional sensitivities, or lack of them.  The results of the Human Genome Project, and all the technology that has been developed to explore those areas has opened up vast new ways of adding dimensions to what influences how we all think feel and act.

However it has, somewhat surprisingly,  been discovered that this connection of genes to behavior is much more complex, and much less cause and effect than what was anticipated at first. It has become very clear that even if genes are identical in two people, their behavior has not been determined to be the same.  That is what this articles finally illustrates.  This is what the newer field of Epigenetics is all about. We are learning that Epigenetics is as important as our DNA.

I am now reading Nessa Carey’s book called “Epigenetic Revolution” which begins to explain how changes occur between the time that our DNA, which designs the formation of proteins, and the actual formation of those proteins.  It turns out that, contrary to what was expected ten years ago, a lot happens.  Slight changes occur which affect exactly how and when these proteins are formed. This leads to changes in or bodies, which leads to changes in our thoughts, feeling and behaviors. 

The result of all this is that what happens in your life influences how your genetic script gets played out.  But, it is also still true that what your genetic script is has a major influences on what happens in your life. One cannot overplay the other ( except in extreme cases).

The study of Epigenetics is to determine what affects the expression of our genes. this includes considerations of prenatal development, nutrition, toxins, air quality.  Also, physical and emotional factors play a strong roll, nurturing, family dynamics, structure, safety, stress, and all the other psycho-social elements that psychologists have focused on for years.

The point of this extra long explosion of a post is just to express my enthusiasm about how new science is revealing the complexity of human life.  Our millions of years of evolution have not produced a simple creature that responds to simple solutions.  Our mind, however you define it, comes to us as the result of the flow of many forces all interacting with each other all of the time. 

That is why perfect parents often have problem children.  That is why moral people can be corrupted and great leaders are awful individuals.  That is why happiness comes and goes, and difficulties can be rewarding. As the atmosphere changes, or our food intake changes, or relationships change, or the temperature gets hotter, or we get an infection, we can become different people.

We should, and we will, develop better ways of sorting out what forces help us express our better natures, and what and how to apply them.

Still, as Newton himself found baffling, when there are more than two, or maybe three moving parts interacting at the same time, the possible results increase exponentially and predictions become almost impossible.  With humans, the number of important influences are still being counted.

As I chase the two and four year-old across the beach, I hope that their obvious glee will help them feel that the world is a fun and exciting place to live. One wave may knock them over scare them, and it all could change.  Or they could learn that they can bounce back up and that their family can provide support and safety.  We are all working and hoping for the best.

I am OK -- but..

I am OK.  In fact I am doing surprisingly well. This has been a great summer.  I am in good shape and healthy.  My eye is better, my knee is better.  Nothing really hurts.  I have been very active kayaking, biking and chasing my grandgirls -- only one of whom can actually walk, so it's not that hard -- but the one who can walk loves to run away.

I like hot weather, so the summer has been good to me.  We go off to the beach house and play.The kids have been coming and bringing their kids. Friends have been coming. We discuss how the world is  falling apart while sitting in great comfort.

Then I go to work and things are different.  but that is the nature of what I do.  People very rarely come to me to tell me how happy they are, or how excited they are about the interesting, creative, fulfilling things they are doing.  That happens occasionally, but that means it is the last session.

But I have been doing this for years.  I can deal with depression, even terrible depressions.  Anxiety; hey, everyone I see is anxious, also I can be helpful for loss, loneliness, confusion, stress, relationship problems, addictions, even violence. Hey, let's talk about it. My kind of therapy at least doesn't have side effects.  It won't make you constipated or gain weight.

But you know what upsets me.  Dealing with people who have chronic, physical pain.  I mean pain that has lasted years and comes from degenerative diseases.  Diseases that not only resist treatment, but that the treatments for them seem to create other painful conditions.  The drugs lead to passing out, or digestive disorders or kidney failures.  Pain raises blood pressure, the drugs for that causes dizziness, people fall down, cut themselves and go to the hospital and pick up a staph infection. The antibiotics for the staph infection cause colitis, which leads to a colostomy.  But still the pain, from the degenerating bones, or the pressure on the nerve from the back injury, or whatever it was that began the whole process goes on, and no one can really find it, and if they find it they rally can't do much about it.

Part of why it bothers me is that I am getting older, my friends are getting older and my clients are getting older.  For me, I can no longer run and jump.  For me, who played basketball for 25 years with the same group of guys it is a loss.  But I can cope.

What i know is that more is coming.  More of my friends have had knees replaced, hips and shoulders too.  They are on all kinds of meds because this or that number comes up too high. I take one little pill. Other friends have stents in their bodies, or have difficulty getting out of chairs, or even, are dead already.

So far, most of my friends and family are basically OK.

I plan to be immortal, until I am dead.

Smart?

There is an article in one of my magazines that is based upon a few long-term studies about human longevity.  The conclusion of the article is that there is a strong correlations between intelligence and longevity.  While I certainly am not surprised at this conclusion, I feel that this finding is a bit of a tautology.

My profession, Psychology, especially here in the US of A, has always made a big deal out of "intelligence"   It was the attempt to determine who was smarter than whom that first brought Psychology to prominence, as it was Psychologists who tested young men who were drafted in WWII to help pick the ones who seemed more qualified to be trained as officers.

America, more than other cultures I think, feel that "intelligence" is something you are born having more or less of, and that it is not something that can be trained, enhanced, or improved upon. Most Psychologists take it as a given that this quality, intelligence, is distributed across the population on a bell-shaped curve, with most people grouped in the middle, which is average, and the very smart, and very lacking, out at the edges.

My experience with all kinds of people has brought me to a different conclusion. I feel that there are some very few people with some very special abilities, and that their are some others who clearly, for clear biological reasons are lacking, but almost everyone has a wide range of talents that are unknown and untapped. I feel that most people could exhibit much more "intelligence" if they find a way to learn how to think more clearly.  They can be taught by clever teachers, they can learn from watching clever parents or friends, or they can learn on their own, from seeing what works, and what doesn't.  Usually, they have to be either pushed, encouraged, or somehow find themselves in a position in which they have to persevere  to solve problems.  To me, it is this trait of learned perseverance that really distinguishes who gets to called "smart" and who doesn't .

There are many things about our current culture that move people, especially kids, away from learning how to persevere.  This includes labelling a kid as either smart, or not so smart, and also giving kids a diagnosis such as ADD or ADHD.  Any time you put into someones head that they have some reasons to not succeed at something, anything, you diminish their chances of success.

For generations it was assumed that girls were not good at math and science and boys couldn't sew straight.  But these things are not true.  While it is true that everyone is born with a different brain, and some brains can more easily concentrate than others, and some can learn more quickly to spell,  I feel that in all but the most extreme cases, very extreme cases, that people can learn how to best use the brain they have to get where they need to go in ways that is best for them.

  Really, the whole concept of intelligence can be summarized in four words: "the ability to anticipate."  Smart people are the ones who can see what is happening, and from that, figure out what will happen next. Really smart people are the ones who can see what is happening, figure out what will happen next, and from that, have some fairly good idea of what will happen after that.  It is this third stage where most people fall down.

But, the point here is that the best overall indication of intelligence is survival.  The whole purpose of having all the different skills that make up "intelligence" is to survive, and to have your babies survive.

I really bothers me when someone tells me that someone is "really smart" but never got his life together, and is living in his parent's basement.  To me, either this guy is "really smart" in that he found a way to not care about the traditional trappings of success and is happy and content doing whatever he is doing in that basement. Or else, he is not really "that smart" because for some reason or other he could not figure out good answers to the puzzles of life.

Knowing what Shakespeare meant, knowing all the answers to Jeopardy, and being facile with calculus are certainly valuable and helpful skills, but it doesn't really make you "intelligent" in my opinion. Having those other skill could be very helpful, but not sufficient.

Being able to take good care of yourself, form and maintain good relationships, derive some real satisfaction from work and play, are better indications of being smart.   They will also raise your likelihood of living a longer, happier, more fulfilling life.