TY - JOUR
T1 - Holistic Rehabilitation
T2 - Biological Embedding of Social Adversity and Its Health Implications
AU - Snyder-Mackler, Noah
AU - Snyder-Mackler, Lynn
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Physical Therapy Association. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/1/1
Y1 - 2022/1/1
N2 - Human health is affected by lived experiences, both past and present. The environments we encounter throughout our lives, therefore, shape how we respond to new challenges, how we maintain a healthy immune system, and even how we respond to treatment and rehabilitation. Early in life and throughout adulthood, social experiences-such as exposure to various forms of adversity-can alter how cells in our body function, with far-reaching consequences for human health, disease, and treatment. This Perspective highlights studies from an ever-growing body of literature on the social determinants of health, with a focus on exposure to social adversities, such as social isolation, discrimination, or low social status, experienced both early in life and adulthood and how they variably impact health. By focusing on recent observational studies in humans and experimental studies on social nonhuman animals, this article details how social adversity can become biologically embedded in our cells at the molecular level. Given that humans are social animals, it is no surprise that social adversity can negatively impact our health, and experimental animal studies have helped us to uncover some of the causal mechanistic pathways underlying the link between social adversity and health outcomes. These molecular consequences can have far-reaching implications and, when combined with our growing knowledge on the social determinants of health, should inform how we approach treatment and rehabilitation.
AB - Human health is affected by lived experiences, both past and present. The environments we encounter throughout our lives, therefore, shape how we respond to new challenges, how we maintain a healthy immune system, and even how we respond to treatment and rehabilitation. Early in life and throughout adulthood, social experiences-such as exposure to various forms of adversity-can alter how cells in our body function, with far-reaching consequences for human health, disease, and treatment. This Perspective highlights studies from an ever-growing body of literature on the social determinants of health, with a focus on exposure to social adversities, such as social isolation, discrimination, or low social status, experienced both early in life and adulthood and how they variably impact health. By focusing on recent observational studies in humans and experimental studies on social nonhuman animals, this article details how social adversity can become biologically embedded in our cells at the molecular level. Given that humans are social animals, it is no surprise that social adversity can negatively impact our health, and experimental animal studies have helped us to uncover some of the causal mechanistic pathways underlying the link between social adversity and health outcomes. These molecular consequences can have far-reaching implications and, when combined with our growing knowledge on the social determinants of health, should inform how we approach treatment and rehabilitation.
KW - Genomics
KW - Molecular
KW - Rehabilitation
KW - Social Determinants of Health
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85123648605&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85123648605&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/ptj/pzab245
DO - 10.1093/ptj/pzab245
M3 - Article
C2 - 34718801
AN - SCOPUS:85123648605
SN - 0031-9023
VL - 102
JO - Physical Therapy
JF - Physical Therapy
IS - 1
M1 - pzab245
ER -