We’ve had sweat yesterday; we’ve had tears the day before; now all we need is blood, right?

Then they’ll sing to us about emotions – the spinning wheel of our existence….

Blood it shall be – the blood that gets curdled by fear.  Turns out that a good amount of fear does indeed increase the blood-clotting protein – factor VIII –  in your veins, making blood less likely to flow out in case your fear is justified and you find yourself bitten by that bear….. http://www.newsweek.com/horror-movies-can-be-bloodcurdling-406593

Don’t you love science?

Fear and anxiety are actually evolutionary adaptive, since they reduce risk taking and motivate us to take precautions. They also produce physiological changes in your body that help with the reaction to danger, the gift or light response. These feelings become problematic, however, when they are inappropriately intense in the face of non-threatening stimuli, if they last longer than necessary and if they interfere with daily functioning. Phobias come to mind, of something as harmless as public speaking, the wind, or birds, or spiders or, as in my case, turtles. Luckily, treatment of phobias is a success story.  It is not necessarily easy, but massively effective for most people who suffer from phobias. (Look who is photographing turtles….)

Anxiety disorders are another story.  We’re seeing a rough combination here of a high (and rising) prevalence and difficulties finding appropriate treatments. Medications have side effects, many are highly addictive, and the most promising approach of combining them with talk therapy is not easily available to many patients.

Some of the most exciting contemporary research in psychology is linked to problems with anxiety.  I am referring here to the field of epigenetics. People always wondered if a tendency towards anxiety is genetically transmitted, as in “Grandpa’s DNA carried the predisposition and you’ve inherited it.” It is more complicated than that (or perhaps we should say there are additional complications.)

We have discovered that methyl groups, a common structural component of organic molecules, attach to the outside of genes sometimes due to bad diet or hunger, or exposure to harmful chemicals, and they set of a cascade of cellular changes. Turns out that these changes can be passed down to the next generation. And we now know that they can be the result of traumatic experiences as well: severe stress of all kinds, be it persecution, child abuse, heavy drug use or anything else; these experiences  leave molecular scars, carved on the outside of our genetic skeleton, so to speak, and they can be passed on to future generations. You might have inherited your mother’s nose, but also her predisposition towards anxiety because she was bombed out as a child.

Before it gets all too depressing, let’s look at the bright side: a) epigenetic studies do no just find negative behavioral changes transmitted across generations.  People who lucked out to have ancestors with experiences that made them happy or resilient will benefit from that. And b): predisposition does not mean guaranteed experience as much research with identical twins has shown. Genes are not expressed all the time. They need to be turned on and if you’re lucky there is no trigger; you can also use cognitive tools to combat tendencies that make your life harder. You can literally reverse the change to your DNA that way. That, however, will be talked about in a week on thinking, not feeling……

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/10/epigenetics.aspx