The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity—A Transformative Guide to Understanding Childhood Trauma and Health

by Nadine Burke Harris

Further work by researchers Aoife O’Donovan and Thomas Neylan compared the telomeres of people with PTSD with the telomeres of people in good mental health. What they found was that overall, those with PTSD had shorter telomeres than those in the control group. However, what was really interesting was that the people with PTSD who did not have early childhood adversity didn’t tend to have shorter telomeres. The good news is that even if you have shortened telomeres, maintaining healthy telomeres can protect you from further shortening. How do you keep your telomeres healthy? One important way is by boosting levels of telomerase, which is an enzyme that can actually lengthen the telomere. Once again, the science is new, but it suggests that even if you start out with shorter-than-normal telomeres, you can still slow decline by increasing your telomerase with things like meditation and exercise.