A study on 13-year-old children in Portugal found that kids who go through difficult or stressful experiences early in life may show signs of higher stress in their bodies during their teenage years. If they face more such experiences as they grow older, the impact becomes even stronger.
These difficult experiences are called adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). They include things like abuse, neglect, or growing up in a troubled home. For example, this could mean facing physical or emotional abuse, lack of care, domestic violence, or living with family members who have issues like addiction, mental illness, or separation.
Published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, the research used data from a long-term study in Porto, Portugal, which tracked children born in 2005 and 2006. While the study originally included over 8,600 children, about 3,787 were followed up until the age of 13, and their data were used for this research.
At ages 10 and 13, the children answered questions about their life experiences. At age 13, they also underwent health checks, including blood tests, body measurements, blood pressure, and heart rate. These tests helped researchers measure something called 'allostatic load,' which shows how much stress the body is under over time.
The findings showed that not all early-life stress had the same effect. While the overall number of difficult experiences by age 10 did not always lead to higher stress levels at 13, certain specific events, like parents separating or divorcing, did have a clear impact.
More importantly, children who experienced more stressful events by the age of 13 had much higher stress levels in their bodies. Events like parental separation, school problems, or living in a home with alcohol or drug issues between the ages of 10 and 13 were strongly linked to this increased stress.
The study also found that these experiences mainly affected the body's metabolism and immune system, showing how deeply early-life stress can impact overall health.
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