Neighborhoods that are low in social cohesion—meaning that people don’t know and trust one another—are bad for telomeres. This is true no matter what the income level. Children who are exposed to several adverse life events have shorter telomeres. Moving children away from neglectful circumstances (such as the notorious Romanian orphanages) can reverse some of the damage. Telomeres on the parents’ chromosomes in the egg and sperm are directly transmitted to the developing baby. Remarkably, this means that if your parents had hard lives that shortened their telomeres, they could have passed
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