FAQ: Genes and stress

7 facts about how genes depends on how quickly the person is recovering after emergency situations.

In recent years there are more and more investigation of what symptoms affect human genes. Today we can say with certainty that genes influence almost everything. Moreover the fact of human existence as a living organism, is determined by genes, as recorded in the genes of any organism development program and the formation of the behavior. Although, in the genes and it is impossible to prescribe exactly how it will be a man, but they recorded how the body will react to certain environmental conditions.

1. Stress - is a common response to changes in environmental conditions that go beyond the usual, when you need some kind of search for a new answer or move the body in a more intensive mode of operation. If we imagine the human evolutionary past, when you had to run away from the saber-toothed tiger or some other danger, it becomes clear how the stress. He had to prepare a person to react, "fight or flight". Under stress the brain sends a signal the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline, first, and then cortisol. Adrenalin includes an immediate response - the body's mobilization of resources. In order to be able to very quickly and run away, or take some active work. And cortisol returns system on the mode of such an emergency, extreme, to a normal state.

2. If such transitions are too often occur when a person is in chronic stress, the body's systems are overloaded, it may cause failure of adaptation mechanisms on the principle of the weakest link. The weak link in each individual. Someone is the cardiovascular system, someone may have a stomach ulcer, stress is a trigger to increase the risk for certain mental illnesses. In other words, chronic or excessive stress are harmful to health, but also the complete absence of stress, too, is not optimal. As always, here you need some middle ground. To reduce stress just take Phenibut, Phenazepam, Afobazol or Selank.

3. The way a person reacts to stressful conditions, how well and quickly he recovers from the stress depends on the genes. There are some variants of genes that make the greater the risk of violations. For example, there is a disease, it is called post-traumatic stress disorder, which occurs after some catastrophic situations or misfortunes. Man all the while mentally scrolls through a traumatic situation, and trying not to think about it, all the same all the time it is returned. Sometimes the disorder can be so severe that the person is unable to work, it needs to be treated, and there are different methods of treatment.

4. Some genes are more likely to make the appearance after traumatic situations PTSD. It is the genes that control the immune and nervous systems. It has been shown that dopamine receptor genes, or serotonin, and other genes that control the transmission of nerve impulses, influence the force with which a person experiences a traumatic situation, and how he recovered well after that.

Not only the transmission of nerve impulses is important in order to cope with stress, and especially the immune system. There is research that shows that people with genetically determined a stronger inflammatory response at high levels of stress are more susceptible to diseases with an inflammatory component. This cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases and some mental disorders, there is the work of the immune system also contributes.

5. The study of molecular mechanisms of stress response allows us to understand why some people are more resilient and recover quickly, while others are more sensitive, and it is difficult to recover from traumatic events. This understanding is necessary in order to develop drugs, but in addition, it allows you to keep track of stress reactions. Not only congenital genetic characteristics affect resistance to stress, but also features of the genes, which are formed after birth.

The fact is that after the birth occurs fine tuning operation of the genetic apparatus under the conditions of the environment. And stressful conditions also cause this adjustment. If early in a child or animal is shown in the study, such as rats or mice, there are stress, its level of genes change their activity. And this change can be maintained for life. Developed several models for the study of stress in laboratory animals. For example, for a little rat is a lot of stress separation from the mother. And if for a few hours Krysenko taken from the mother, and then return, it changes the level of cortisol and body's response to stress, and these changes persist for life. It turns out that stress in early before the genes that are involved in stress response, DNA "hung" special chemical labels. These marks are the result of methylation of DNA attachment to the methyl groups. And the activity of "tagged" genes decreased life is shown in laboratory animals.

6. The study of the molecular mechanisms of stress response was conducted on humans. We studied the situations which have arisen in life itself. In particular, children who grew up in single-parent family where the parents are divorced or one parent is dead, the level of cortisol receptor gene methylation higher than children who grew up in an intact family. That is, the intensity of gene work in these children reduced. This leads to the fact that people react differently to stressful situations. More detail is studied, again on laboratory animals, such research is conducted ethically work with laboratory animals. It has been shown that early stress in rats leads to a reduced capacity to certain types of learning. Prosperous rats, in contrast of stressed, proved more successful students. When have become adult animals stressful situation, wealthy were, on the one hand, are more resistant to this stress, ie they showed less physiological changes, but on the other hand, when strong stress those rats who had experience in early childhood and were less successful pupils, proved more resistant to the destruction of the skills that they already have all the same there.

7. Who conducted very interesting research, which combines genetic analysis, psychological questionnaires and methods of mapping the brain - what is called in English neuroimaging. This makes it possible to lift the veil on how a person perceives the world, why different people react in different ways, as it is associated with gene characteristics, with education, with the brain work. These studies will help answer why some people happy and others - not, at all levels, from the molecular to the social.

Carriers of different variants of genes responsible for the transmission of nerve impulses, it appears, give different answers to the question of how often they encountered difficulties beyond their control, they can be as effectively cope with all their responsibilities. And it is surprising that the genetic features of this influence. It remains unknown what exactly influenced by genetic characteristics: the fact that people are more difficult to cope with their responsibilities, or easier to talk about these difficulties, but the results of the survey on the level of stress turns out that stress levels in people with certain genotypes is higher. Can we say that these people have bad genes? No. You can not, because at lower levels of the stress gene carriers of these variants are more successful. That is to say that all people are different, they have different genes, and some are more successful in one setting, the other - in the other. And this is a very valuable quality of mankind - the genetic diversity, which allows it to survive in many different conditions.