The Mystery Known as Depression, Part 7/12

7. THE IMPORTANCE OF TELOMERES

Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Apel in Nature (11 Oct. 2012). (Blackburn & Epel, 2012) reported on a number of studies of telomeres: in 2004 a study compared white blood cells of mothers with chronically ill children with those mothers with healthy children. Mothers of ill children had shorter telomeres. It is likely that stress is a factor. And that means increased cortisol levels with possible shorter telomeres. It is not short term stress that is the culprit but enduring stress; what could be more enduring than the imprint?
What cortisol may do, inter alia, is increase the enzymatic action of telomerase which affects the function of telomeres. To be clear: what that enzyme may do is get busy fighting deterioration taking place with the input of primal pain. This, it seems, increased telomerase happens to prevent further neuro-biologic damage to the system. A research team led by Owen Wolkowitz of the University of California, San Francisco, has been studying telomeres and depression. (Wolkowitz, Reus, & Mellon, 2011) What telomerase does ordinarily is help maintain the length of the telomeres, even lengthen them. They are protective. And they go up when depressives take antidepressants; they also go up in animals where it is associated with increased nerve cells in the hippocampus. It appears that the hippocampus deals with the facts of feeling and the memory of it. It is seriously affected by depression. The longer the depression the shorter the telomeres, and it becomes a life-or-death matter. They have found, for example, the very serious pancreatic cancer, is associated with shorter telomeres in blood cells. These people were also studied before the onset of cancer so we cannot say that telomeres shortened because of the onset of cancer. Telomeres maintain the stability of genes; it may be that unstable individuals equal unstable telomeres. There are other cancers associated with shorter telomeres, as well. (There is a book soon to be published by Ed Park, M.D on telomeres). Imprinted pain has a lot to do with depression and with later serious illness. We will study this among our patient population.

Telomeres are shorter in chronic depressives, and that fact is crucial. Why? We can to assume that there is an imprint of early trauma to set up the depression, in the first place. That means pain. There may be a great amount of imprinted pain in depressives. This seems to be also true with immune disorders, as depression affects the immune system adversely. Chronic depressives have shorter telomeres. That can mean imminent serious illness and early death. I believe that a feeling therapy that attacks the imprint is life-saving. We are beginning to see why. One problem we have is that when patients get to earlier brainstem
imprints the pain is serious; but if they stay with it, it does not last, and makes for great changes throughout the system. I often tell patients, I didn’t put the pain there, I am charged with taking it out.
When cortisol is chronically high and telomeres short there is a much greater chance of suffering from certain cancers, including the deadly pancreatic cancer. What causes this cancer? Likely also, early trauma that is imprinted and endures may play a role. Thus a brainstem imprint means a brainstem reaction, and that may mean deep physiological responses, including such afflictions as colitis. Another effect is the appearance of dementia in those with shorter telomeres. Again, we need to look at very early trauma, even in gestation, to find the answer to the questions, what causes cancer? What causes dementia?
When you have a constant pressure and tension on the organs due to the imprint it makes sense that they will give in and break down. The organs are saying, “I can’t hold on any more. It is more than I can handle, all too much.” It is surprising to me that they do continue to hold their integrity as long as they do.

There is an article in PloS One that underlines the importance of anxiety to damaging the telomeres. It is an important study in which the researchers took blood samples from 5200 women ages 42-69 enrolled in the Women’s Health Study. (Okereke, et al. 2012) They analyzed telomere length among them. Those who reported frequent anxiety attacks (phobias) had significantly shorter telomeres. They implied that it would deduct six years from their lives. They conclude that chronic anxiety in childhood leads to premature aging and, of course, a shorter life. Anxiety will kill us; which is why it is so important not to leave the imprint untouched in psychotherapy. Telomeres may soon be the key marker for not only how long we live but how many years a feeling psychotherapy can add to our lives. If we leave it untouched and unchanged the therapy can be a failure.

Stress erodes telomeres very early on, according to late research. So children who spent time in orphanages from birth on had shorter telomeres. I think the evidence is there in so many dimensions; early trauma damages the system in every way possible. We need to pay attention when we carry a baby in the womb and we need to pay real attention to our birth practices which are too often deleterious.
The research emphasizes that the early stress carries on into adulthood. It follows us everywhere and anywhere until we acknowledge it, face it fully, and relive the damage. Paradoxically, as we experience the imprinted damage it goes away, and with it there is a normalizing of many vital signs. Here is supporting evidence for the imprint even if not stated. Why else does it endure and shorten telomeres? Why cannot they make the equation that early trauma stays fixed in the system and drives behavior while shortening our lives? I believe that the earlier the stress, the carrying mother smoking early in pregnancy, the more harmful it will be later on. Lets teach about pregnancy in school so that adolescents understand what pregnancy means for a human life.