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

telomeres protect DNA strands, making sure that every time it is replicated by cells, the copy is true to the original. Telomeres are very sensitive to the environment, which means that, like good car bumpers, they always take the first hit. Anything biochemically harmful (like stress) is going to damage the telomeres much more than the DNA. When the telomeres are hurt, they send signals to the rest of the cell letting it know that the bumpers have taken too many hits and that the cell should respond. The cell reacts in two major ways. The first is that when the telomeres get too short (too many bad parallel-parkers in the neighborhood), the cell can become senescent, which is a science-y word for old. This means the cell retires and doesn’t do its job anymore. Take collagen (the protein in skin that makes it supple and prevents wrinkles). If too many of the fibroblast cells that are supposed to be making collagen hit the road to play shuffleboard at Del Boca Vista, you’re left looking a decade older than you actually are.