A woman lies in a built-in computer tomograph (CT) in an emergency vehicle, supervised by an emergency doctor. Family break-up increases likelihood of stroke in later life, says a new study. — ANNETTE RIEDL//dpa
There have been volumes of health and psychological studies picking through effects of divorce on children and on how the fallout is sometimes felt decades later.
But children whose parents split up can sometimes be affected physically – and not just while young.
Researchers in the United States and Canada have found indications that pensioners whose parents divorced decades ago are more likely to have a stroke than peers whose father and mother stayed together.
“Even when taking into account common risk factors of a stroke, such as smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, diabetes, depression, income and education, older adults whose parents divorced when they were children were much more likely to have a stroke than their counterparts whose parents were not divorced,” said Philip Baiden of The University of Texas at Arlington.
“As a long-time researcher of adverse childhood experiences and social determinants of health, I believe this study provides additional information on the long-term impacts of childhood trauma on the adult brain,” said Baiden, who worked with researchers at Tyndale University and the University of Toronto to pick through data covering 13,000 over-65s in the US for a paper published in the medical journal PLOS One.
The findings are the latest to explain how a healthy childhood is important for well-being later in life and follows items published last year on how children who do not get enough sleep appear more likely to become drug addicts when older and on how “strong bonds” with parents help children upset by material on social media.
And while not discussing issues such as family make-up, a University of Oxford-led team recently published findings in the journal Nature Medicine in which they explain how environment and lifestyle, including in childhood, play a bigger role than genetics in determining health and risk of early death as people get older.
“Early life exposures are particularly important as they show that environmental factors accelerate ageing early in life,” said Oxford Cornelia von Duijn. – dpa
