The Dutch Famine

The idea

In the winter of nineteen forty-four to nineteen forty-five, a famine struck the western Netherlands, and researchers later followed the people who had been in the womb at the time. Prenatal exposure to the famine was linked to type two diabetes and heart disease in adulthood. The findings went a generation further. The children of women who had been exposed in the womb were larger at birth, and the children of exposed men were heavier as adults. That pattern suggests that an experience in one generation's prenatal life can leave traces in the next, through changes in gene expression rather than in the genes themselves. A second line of research points the same way within a single lifetime: adverse childhood experiences produce epigenetic changes in the brain's stress-response systems, with greater stress reactivity and a greater tendency toward depression and anxiety. Health care, exercise and nutrition may act in the opposite direction, as protective influences.