> genetic-exacerbated substance abuse
Could you expand on this a bit? Not a concept I am familiar with
Could you expand on this a bit? Not a concept I am familiar with
Alcoholism rates among Native Americans is higher than most groups, which leads some to suspect a genetic reason. Currently, there isn't a ton of evidence supporting that idea.
I understand that historically it was used in some sense to control and indeed damage the Native Americans by the colonists? To what extent alcohol was completely new etc I do not know
You could tell the story as like, alcohol puts pressure on a population to evolve better responses, and with enough time the flush evolves and that helps limit drinking. But that's pretty just-so.
Arguably what has changed is the ABV of such beverages. Post-industrial alcohol percentages are way higher than what precolonial mesoamericans, ancient Greeks, and vikings we're drinking
OK, but Pine Ridge is in North America. There could have been enough isolation in pre-Columbian times for north American indigenous to evolve a different alcohol response from mesoamericans.
Like I said: I am not an expert, and I have no idea whether this hypothesis is true or not. I'm just not aware of any facts that would rule it out.
The "alcohol flush" reaction seems to be genetically conserved in Asia because it gives resistance to rice pathogens not because it protects against "alcoholism".
Drinking in northern Europe does have a way longer and more entrenched history than elsewhere though. Colonial men women and children all drank watered down rum and beer which were more hygienic than water. In China, by contrast, half of the population gets Asian flush and cannot tolerate alcohol, and there is a strong traditional culture of boiling water and drinking tea!
Having kids at 30 is historically very late. Late teens and early 20s was much more common. So perhaps not a few dozen, but certainly over a dozen.
Kind of a tricky question that is somewhat covered in my link. Alcohol was definitely brewed in the Americas pre-Columbus, but by the seventeenth century alcohol was largely unknown to the Natives interacting with the colonists.
The tarahumara people's have more alcoholic version called tesguino that is only drunk once per year as the preparation process is labor intensive, and the drink goes bad rather quickly
However, there’s a lot of propaganda that will pretend otherwise.
Background: Humans are highly unusual amongst mammals; our livers are more than ten thousand times IIRC better at burning off alcohol than any other known mammal, and this is a rather recent change evolutionarily. This may have been necessary to survive off old winter fruit during the ice age that just about took us out (reduced our population down to low genetic variation.)
Alcohol, in common with all other organic solvents save water, changes every single chemical reaction within our cells at least a little bit - esp the speed and frequency of given reactions. (Hence the cancer risk, etc, etc.) The change to neurotransitter reactions is just one of those changes, but one we find pleasing and distracting. Some genes protective re alcohol consumption reduce the effects/pleasure alcohol brings. Others may reduce habituation (so dose doesn't tend to increase.) Etc. My genes adapt me so quickly to alcohol that habituation/dosage escalates FAST. I and my relatives famously just shouldn't start since alcoholism is a quick result if we keep drinking.
Cultures which have cultivated alcohol for thousands of years (Asia) are less vulnerable to alcoholism; no doubt those kinda genes were culled sometime back. Europeans less so, less protected. Central American native populations cultivated alcohol but (at least in some cultures) restricted its use to the elderly. North American natives, not to my knowlege.
Selecting strongly for alcohol resistance has costs, off course, there are always tradeoffs. And where evolutionary selection has acted very strongly over a short period of time, the tradeoffs (downsides) can be extreme (particularly from copy-number variations, which are common under heavy/fast selection.)
If you're going to be a teetotaller anyway, you'd prefer to have Native genes on average (other confounding variables aside.) But if you're going to drink - and alcohol is obviously dangerous - well, maybe you don't want the otherwise more ideal Native/original genetics; maybe some alcohol-protective genes (with other downsides) would predict a longer and better life for you, on average.
>Could you expand on this a bit? Not a concept I am familiar with
Its profitable to pretend that personal choices have nothing to do with drug addiction. Then you can "treat" them forever collecting a monthly check from the government. I say this having grown up in a drug house and leaving as a 16yo teenager with nothing. I already regret this comment not because it isn't true but people detached from reality are going to get all bent out of shape.
That is true, and there are systemic issues we should fix.
However it is also true that some people will latch on to anything — “personal choices”, “systemic issues” — to justify callousness and lack of compassion. It’s an ugly way to live, always looking for some justification to spit on those who are in already in trouble.
native americans have it particularly bad, and have for centuries. colonist traders exploited it for profit, missionaries tried to stamp it out, Indian leaders often campaigned to keep rum out of their territories, etc.
However, these loci explain only a small proportion of the genetic variance. The “missing heritability” may be explained by other genetic mechanisms and gene*environment interactions
For example, your grandmother from your moms side technically made the egg cells that you were born from. That means that whatever your grandmother was going through could for example pass on all the way down to you.
That can't be right. Grandma gave mom a single cell. Mom's ovaries with grandpa's DNA too produced the egg leading to me. Or is there some element I'm not aware of that make it more like stated above?
So technically I don't think we can say the grandma is making the eggs directly, but has assisted in the fetus' creation, and then provided the nutrients/environment for the egg creation that the fetus itself makes (which yes, can influence things w/ the generational trauma science coming out...).
this passes on the structural features responsible for regulatory configuration
environment causes biochemical changes of the state of the DNA. methylation is a common phenomenon.
also, vertical transmission of DNA state facilitating transcription factor modulation of constituative expression. this one is a complex concept but is also a common example.
sums up to, physical state of DNA can be transferred and conserved, during replication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_i...
https://razib.substack.com/p/you-cant-take-it-with-you-strai...
That's a nice broad generality, but it doesn’t seem to be true. For instance, on the specific subject of thw thread, epigenetic changes related to chronic stress have demonstrated to have evidence of both (1) some intergenerational transmissibility, and (2) a role in alcoholism.
None of this is controversial.
Some particular multigenerational effects may be controversial, speculative, or even fringe, but that multigenerational epigenetic effects exist is not at all fringe.