WASHINGTON: Having supportive relationships in midlife can counteract some of the adverse health risks – including premature death – caused by childhood abuse, a study has found.
“This is one of the first studies to provide evidence suggesting that experiences long after exposure to abuse can mitigate the mortality risks associated with early abuse,” said Jessica Chiang, postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University in the US.
Research has linked childhood abuse to many adverse health outcomes in adulthood,, but according to new research, linked to childhood abuse. lead author of the study.
Given the serious health consequences of childhood abuse later in life, such as heart disease, stroke and some cancers, researchers wanted to examine whether there’s anything that can be done to compensate or reverse these effects.
“Many of the diseases associated with childhood abuse typically emerge in middle and later stages of adulthood -decades after the abuse actually occurred,” said Chiang, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
“We were curious as to whether social support during this ‘incubation’ period or interim could offset health risks associated with much earlier experiences of abuse,” she said.
Using a sample of more than 6,000 adults in the US, the researchers examined whether adult self-reported social support decreased mortality risk associated with self-reported exposure to three types of childhood abuse: severe physical abuse, modest physical abuse and emotional abuse.
Social support was associated with a lower mortality risk, which the researchers expected given prior research.
“The magnitude of the reduction in mortality risk associated with midlife social support differed between the individuals who reported childhood abuse and those who reported minimal or no childhood abuse,” Chiang said.
“More social support was associated with a 19 to 26 per cent lower mortality risk depending on abuse type – severe physical abuse, moderate physical abuse or emotional abuse – in those who reported childhood abuse,” said Chiang.
“It was associated with a more modest 7 to 8 per cent lower mortality risk in those who reported minimal or no exposure to abuse,” she said.
Chiang said the findings are hopeful, adding that it will be important for future work to replicate and build on their findings. (AGENCIES)
RESEARCH-ARCTIC-PERMAFROST
Arctic permafrost may unleash carbon within decades: NASA
WASHINGTON, Mar 6:
Permafrost in the coldest northern Arctic will thaw enough to become a permanent source of carbon to the atmosphere this century, with the peak transition occurring in 40 to 60 years, a NASA study warns.
The region was formerly thought to be at least temporarily shielded from global warming by its extreme environment.
The study, led by Nicholas Parazoo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, calculated that as thawing continues, by the year 2300, total carbon emissions from this region will be 10 times as much as all human-produced fossil fuel emissions in 2016.
Permafrost is soil that has remained frozen for years or centuries under topsoil. It contains carbon-rich organic material, such as leaves, that froze without decaying.
The study found that warmer, more southerly permafrost regions will not become a carbon source until the end of the 22nd century, even though they are thawing now.
That is because other changing Arctic processes will counter the effect of thawing soil in these regions, researchers said.
The finding that the colder region would transition sooner than the warmer one came as a surprise, according to Parazoo.
“Permafrost in southern Alaska and southern Siberia is already thawing, so it is obviously more vulnerable,” he said.
“Some of the very cold, stable permafrost in the highest latitudes in Alaska and Siberia appeared to be sheltered from extreme climate change, and we did not expect much impact over the next couple hundred years,” said Parazoo.
As rising Arctic air temperatures cause permafrost to thaw, the organic material decomposes and releases its carbon to the atmosphere in the form of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.
Parazoo and his colleagues assessed when the Arctic will transition to a carbon source instead of the carbon-neutral area it is today – with some processes removing about as much carbon from the atmosphere as other processes emit.
They divided the Arctic into two regions of equal size, a colder northern region and a warmer, more southerly belt encircling the northern region.
There is far more permafrost in the northern region than in the southern one.
Over the course of the model simulations, northern permafrost lost about five times more carbon per century than southern permafrost.
The southern region transitioned more slowly in the model simulations, Parazoo said, because plant growth increased much faster than expected in the south.
Plants remove carbon dioxide from the air during photosynthesis, so increased plant growth means less carbon in the atmosphere.
According to the model, as the southern Arctic grows warmer, increased photosynthesis will balance increased permafrost emissions until the late 2100s. (AGENCIES)
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