Szyf – intergenerational epigenetic changes – epidemiological evidence

So absolutely, stressful experiences of a parental generation can pass through such a mechanism to the offspring generation, and maybe down to the grandchildren generation. And there’s epidemiological data that suggests that this could happen. I mean interesting examples are the Dutch famine during World War II that now phenotypes are being seen in the third generation of mothers who were exposed to famine when they were pregnant. There are other examples where we have multi-generation transmission of responsiveness to stress. I believe it’s also an adaptive response because once environment changes, you want to send that signal down the line, life has changed and therefore we need another kind of genomic response to the environment. So perhaps it’s a mechanism by which one generation can send signal to the other generation. 

However, when the anticipated environment and the real environment are not the same, that becomes maladaptive, and you can get disease. So stressful behaviour is very useful in a war situation and adversity situation, but becomes useless in a peaceful situation. So when we have a misfit between the programming and the real world, then we have trouble. So we believe that disease is also associated with this process, but when there is a misfit between the adaptation and the real environment.