We know that trauma has a significant psychological impact, but it has long-term biological consequences as well.
In the past we’ve talked about how trauma affects the body, such as increasing chances for irritable bowel syndrome. This is another case that exemplifies this effect, but this time, using telomeres.
As we’ve mentioned before, telomeres are protective caps that stabilize the ends of chromosomes and help regulate cellular aging.
As we get older, our telomeres get shorter until our cells eventually die. They’re sometimes used in research to determine “biological age” and can be a good marker of overall health.
Led by Janice Humphreys, PhD, RN from the University of California in San Francisco, a team recruited 41 women who were never abused, and 61 women who had experienced varying levels of intimate partner violence.
Abused women completed a survey about the type(s) of violence they experienced. Researchers also measured telomere length in all of the women.
In this study, intimate partner violence was directly correlated with telomere length − formerly abused women had significantly shorter telomeres than women who had never experienced abuse.
Not only that, but the women who suffered abuse were more likely to smoke cigarettes, and had significantly higher BMIs (body mass index, the ratio between height and weight). Thirty-three of the abused women were obese, compared to only two of the non-abused women.
Researchers also found that the type of abuse doesn’t matter − it’s the duration of the abuse that contributes to shorter telomeres.
Since the study used a matched-control design and was not randomized, we can not draw causal conclusions, but the correlations do give us insight into trauma and its effect on the body.
It certainly suggests that abuse and trauma can influence our bodies at the cellular level, even shortening the protective components of our chromosomes that affect cellular life span.
If we know how to treat the trauma that results from abusive relationships, we can help heal the mind and the body.
To learn about the most recent findings in trauma therapy from the top experts in the field, check out our Treatments in Trauma Webinar Series
Have you treated a patient who was in an abusive relationship? Please share your story below. What kind of interventions did you use? What outcomes did you see?
I use mindfulness based CBT in working with clients who have experienced trauma So far it has been very effective.
I use mindfulness based CBT in working with post trauma patients So far it has been very effective.
I’ve experienced all kinds of abuse spanning 40+ years of my life from childhood, into adulthood, I’m currently 58 yrs old. I was diagnosed with CPTSD and chronic major depression spanning 30+ years. I’ve also done close to 35 years of counselling/psychology/self help work, consistently over this time.
In childhood I experienced fatigue and chronic stomach aches. After leaving my first violent and abusive husband, I developed Ulcerative Colitis, IBS, and CFS/ME, along with a plethora of other conditions. it took me 25 years of therapy to get my IBD/IBS in remission. so in the last 10 years I’ve had two times during periods of extreme stress, where my IBD flared up, I’m currently just getting over a major flare up again at the moment. I’m now unmedicated for depression as I no longer suffer this and my CPTSD is also in remission. I know there is a very strong link between abuse/trauma and ACE and a person’s physical health. My CFS/ME unfortunately is much harder to manage. As my mental health has improved dramatically, my physical health has also, but it’s a long, slow arduous process. I’m grateful that I’ve worked so long and hard on my mental health, for all the information available and for those of my therapists who have been excellent in guiding me on my journey.
sometimes skinny jeans are not comfortable to wear, i would always prefer to use loos jeans,,
Some really nice and useful info on this site,
as well I believe the style has got fantastic features.
I couldn’t aoffrd to treat both of us, and although I really can’t, I found a doctor who takes my insurance who believes in this protocol and does it for me. My son still sees the expert’, but so does her (my doctor’s) son win win!
It’s exciting to see hard scientific evidence for what we have known all along. It is indeed possible for a person to “turn gray” overnight, when an extremely traumatic event occurs. Just as a person will radiate youthfulness in the first bloom of love, regardless of their age. It is common knowledge that extreme loss or trauma “will cause a person to age ten years” in a matter of days or weeks. Research done long ago confirmed that cancer tends to occur about 18 months after a serious emotional stress.
But in reality, these physiological effects depend entirely on a person’s coping mechanisms. During the time I studied with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, I had the opportunity to witness first-hand (as I do now, with my own clients) how people who have the ability to express and release their emotions (especially anger and tears) are so much better able to cope with their loss and come more rapidly to a place of acceptance. Once this occurs, illness often falls away and the need to become numb, in the form of various addictions, completely disappears. People throw away their pain medications, and stop using drugs and alcohol.
I would speculate that unresolved trauma causes a shortening of the telomeres and hence premature aging, but those who have worked through their traumas (by whatever means available) have, if anything, longer telomeres (due to a deeper engagement in life and an enhanced ability to live their lives with pleasure).
I would like to see a follow-up study of victims of abuse who have resolved their traumas and no longer see themselves as victims and have reached a state of acceptance about whatever occurred to them.
I have come close to death several times. Yet somehow my survival strengths are also extremely developed. What i notice now, when extreme stress hits, triggers, on top of chronic stress, i cannot maintain a healthy eating pattern, nor bring myself to do my therapeutic discipline. I start eating junk, which my body cannot digest, adding to the stresstoxines already rampant. Having build resilience over many years now, i also notice that only last for a while and then i am naturally inclined to return to my healthy eating habits and discipline. I have come to trust this waving movement and am observing progress in transcending trauma’s when looking at a longer period.
I belief it would be more responsible when doing this kind of research, to look for the biochemical causes in cells, why disease happens, and to also research and share the findings on those who took up the challenge and became whole again.
What is written above always sounds so definitive, as if there is no way out and it is as it is. We traumasurvivors already incapable of seeing/feeling future, as i recently learned, and acknowledge from personal findings, are often beaten back into despair and powerlessness by this.
I found that when i take healthy eating to the extreme, my body immediately starts to heal. Having this experience again and again, causes me to return. Like the tides i am moving between trauma’s, triggered traumastates, and the shore of being a whole woman, who has finally succeeded in coming fully alive.
I just admire you. I thank you for sharing as it must be painful. The stories are helpfull to other women to realise they can make it alone.
Yours Dorothy
I look forward to knowing about abusive relationships so that I may be able to help someone in need. Thanks for opening up such a webinar.
I have worked with women and men who have suffered from early and enduring childhood abuse. I have found that most have medical problems, including physical pain, heart conditions, irritable bowel syndrome, relationship problems, addictions, panic attacks and feeling like they will die, allergies, obesity and an overall compromised immune system. Some have reported cancer. This matches what researchers have suggested is a result of chronic stress. I hope to learn more ways to address these issues. We can no longer ignore the physical effects of abuse.
“I began taking Product B in September 2010. The chaengs are both visible and invisible, but the biggest change is that I’ve lost all semblance of my age. If it weren’t for my driver’s license, I’d feel like I was 25. I have more energy, and every day I feel more and more alive.”– Peter Greenlaw, Isagenix Associate
Your comment on this process ‘giving us insight in to trauma effects on the body’ deserves some more exploration with perhaps a little more rigor. I work mostly with 65+ humans and would like to see some information on tests with this older population even though age does not seem to be a clear indicator for telomere length. I note however that older person trauma history is dense and complex clinically.
I’ve definitely seen anecdotal evidence of this phenomenon, however the women I’ve worked with all left the abusive relationships decades earlier, and rather than lifespan shortening, each of them seems to have developed extreme illness/conditions, from Cancer to Crohn’s Disease.
Another important issue not mentioned here is a gender reversal of the phenomenon. I have seen many men who withstand physical abuse from their intimate partners; either because they think they “should” be able to handle it, they’re embarrassed about letting it happen, they feel alone in their plight, or they think that letting their women partners attack them, they’ll get it out of their system and things will “get better” on their own. I think men being abused is perhaps a remaining taboo that we’re still not talking about.
We should all look for men whoe stay for the sake of the children, who are not believed when he says his wife is violent, or her violence is excused as tempory due to her mental health state. Think how often women take years to admit he is violent and later say ” I was more afraid to say and not be believed or say only to find people take his side, than to put up with it” Now consider how more difficult it is for a man to be believed.
I’m 68 and have know three possibly four abused men, without looking into professional case files, these are families known to me. How many are there?
Intereste in learning more methodology for working with trauma survivors.
Are those abused in adulthood more likely to have been abused in childhood? If so (and I believe statistics support that), then perhaps the several correlations referred to above are more related to sustained abuse (and the accompanying high stress) in earlier life than with the abuse during adulthood. That would fit with the findings of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study of recent years (which you may find by a web search for that name). In any case, the implications for curative action are the same: Increase awareness and treatment for abuse and support for abuse victims (and perpetrators as well); deal with social/economic causes of stress (a form of social system abuse).
As those of us (therapists, clients) begin to become aware of prior/longstanding abuse and our “part” in it (as a two-year-old, knowing it hurt + was not good for me, when fight/flight/freeze did not stop it, and I “chose” to “helplessly” stay rather than run away or die?!), anger and other emotions and conclusions are very helpfully dealt with by truly knowledgeable and compassionate healers. Bravo to Ruth + co. at NICABM and all of us who chime in to contribute to that.
In my own healing journey, especially in regard to self-regulation, I have recently been helped by the Nature wisdom and playful products of Kaitlyn Keyt. One especially timely message: As awareness is growing, be care-full to include its contents with compassion. It is too easy to jump to the small satisfactions of judgment and hate/petty dogma. What a relief to my continued healing to knowledgeably release that; and instead choose more nourishing food for my spirit.
“Since the study used a matched-control design and was not randomized, we can not draw causal conclusions, but the correlations do give us insight into trauma and its effect on the body.”-IF THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT FOR PATIENT -CLIENT AND LEADERS OF PREVENTION MEDICINE MOVEMENT -nothing else will.
We appreciate the education via webinar series.I hope that you could extend education and invites to Holistic Nursing Association. More studies are needed right?I will write to them today.If you did so already-
Thank you.