Toxic Stress: A Slow Wear And Tear

A. Our bodies are built to respond when under attack. When we sense danger, our brain goes on alert, our heart rate goes up, and our organs flood with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. We breathe faster, taking in more oxygen, muscles tense, our senses are sharpened and beads of sweat appear. This combination of reactions to stress is also known as the "fight-or-flight" response because it evolved as a survival mechanism, enabling people and other mammals to react quickly to life-threatening situations. The carefully orchestrated yet near-instantaneous sequence of hormonal changes and physiological responses helps someone to fight the threat off or flee to safety. Unfortunately, the body can also overreact to stressors that are not life-threatening, such as traffic jams, work pressure, and family difficulties.

B. That's all fine when we need to jump out of the way of a speeding bus, or when someone is following us down a dark alley. In those cases, our stress is considered "positive", because it is temporary and helps us survive. But our bodies sometimes react in the same way to more mundane stressors, too. When a child faces constant and unrelenting stress, from neglect, or abuse, or living in chaos, the response stays activated, and may eventually derail normal development. This is what is known as "toxic stress". The effects are not the same in every child, and can be buffered by the support of a parent or caregiver, in which case the stress is considered "tolerable". But toxic stress can have profound consequences, sometimes even spanning generations. Figuring out how to address stressors before they change the brain and our immune and cardiovascular systems is one of the biggest questions in the field of childhood development today.

C. In 1998, {[two researchers, Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda, pioneered in publishing a study demonstrating that people who had experienced abuse or household dysfunction as children were more likely to have serious health problems][3]}, like cancer or liver diseases, and unhealthy lifestyle habits, like drinking heavily or using drugs as adults. This became known as the "ACE Study," short for "adverse childhood experiences." Scientists have since linked more than a dozen forms of ACEs - including homelessness, discrimination, and physical, mental, and sexual abuse - with a higher risk of poor health in adulthood.

D. Every child reacts to stress differently, and some are naturally more resilient than others. Nevertheless, the pathways that link adversity in childhood with health problems in adulthood lead back to toxic stress. As Jenny Anderson, senior reporter at Quartz, explains, "when a child lives with abuse, neglect, or is witness to violence, he or she is primed for that fight or flight all the time. The burden of that stress, which is known as 'allostatic load or overload,' referring to the wear and tear that results from either too much stress or from inefficient management of internal balance, eg, not turning off the response when it is no longer needed, can damage small, developing brains and bodies.{[A brain that thinks it is in constant danger has trouble organising itself, which can manifest itself later as problems of paying attention,][11]} or sitting still, or following instructions - all of which are needed for learning".

E. Toxic is a loaded word. Critics say the term is inherently judgmental and may appear to blame parents for external social circumstances over which they have little control. Others say it is often misused to describe the source of stress itself rather than the biological process by which it could negatively affect some children. The term, writes John Devaney, centenary chair of social work at the University of Edinburgh, "can stigmatise individuals and imply traumatic happenings in the past".
Some paediatricians do not like the term because of how difficult it is to actually fix the stressors their patients face, from poverty to racism. They feel it is too fatalistic to tell families that their child is experiencing toxic stress, and there is little they can do about it. But Nadine Burke Harris, surgeon general of California, argues that naming the problem means we can dedicate resources to it so that paediatricians feel like they have tools to treat "toxic stress".

F. The most effective prevention for toxic stress is to reduce the source of the stress. This can be tricky, especially if the source of the stress is the child's own family. But parent coaching, and connecting families with resources to help address the cause of their stress (sufficient food, housing insecurity, or even the parent's own trauma), can help. Another one is to ensure love and support from a parent or caregiver. Young children's stress responses are more stable, even in difficult situations, when they are with an adult they trust. As Megan Gunnar, a child psychologist and head of the Institute of Child at the University of Minnesota, said: "When the parent is present and relationship is secure, basically the parent eats the stress: the kid cries, the parent comes, and it doesn't need to kick in the big biological guns because the parent is the protective system". That is why Havard's Center on the Developing Child recommends offering care to caregivers, like mental health or addiction support, because when they are healthy and well, they can better care for their children.

Fear of the Unknown

American companies fear that innovation is the secret of success-and that they cannot innovate

A.In the small Umagic office in midtown Manhattan, a team of 30 computer programmers are working on setting up websites that will allow subscribers to feed in details about themselves and their problems and to receive advice from ‘virtual’ versions of personalities regarded as experts in their fields: for example, a well-known dietician, a celebrity fitness trainer, a psychologist well known in the media for here work on parent-child relationships . Umagic Systems is a young firm and it’s hard to predict how far they’ll go .hl ten years’ time, consulting a computer about your diet problems might seem natural or it might seem absurd. But the company and others like it are beginning to seriously worry large American firms, who see such half-crazy new and innovative ideas as a threat to their own future success.

B.Innovation has become a major concern of American management. Firms have found that it is increasingly difficult to redesign existing products or to produce them more economically. The stars of American business tend today to be innovators such as Amazon (the internet bookstore) and Wal-Mart (the supermarket chain) which have produced completely new ideas or products that have changed their industries.

C.Over the past 15 years, the firms which have achieved the greatest profits have been the ones which have had the most innovations. But such profits aren’t easy to come by .One of the reasons for the increasing number of mergers between companies is a desperate search for new ideas. And a fortune is spent nowadays on identifying and protecting intellectual property: other people’s ideas.According to the Pasadena-based Patent & License Exchange in the United States , trading in intangible assets such as intellectual property rose from$15 billion in 1990 to $ 100 billion in 1998,with an increasing proportion of the rewards going to small firms and individuals.

D.And therein lies the terror for big companies : that innovation seems to work best outside them. Many of the large established companies have been struggling to come up with new products recently.' In the management of creativity ,size is your enemy,’ argues Peter Chemin ,who runs Fox TV and film empire for News Corporation. "One person managing 20 movies is never going to be as involved as one doing five movies .'He has thus tried to break down the studio into smaller units ,even at the risk of incurring higher costs.

E.It is easier for ideas to develop outside big firms these days. In the past, if a clever scientist had an idea he wanted to commercialise ,he would take it first to a big company. Now, with the banks encouraging individuals to set up new businesses through offering special loans, innovators are more likely to set up on their own. Umagic has already raised $5 million and is about to raise $25 million more. Even in capital-intensive businesses such as pharmaceuticals, entrepreneurs can conduct profitable, early- stage research,selling out to the big firms when they reach expensive,risky clinical trials.

F.Some giants, including General Electric and Cisco, have been remarkably successful at buying up and integrating scores of small companies. But many others worry about the prices they have to pay and the difficulty in keeping hold of the people who dreamt up the ideas . Everybody would like to develop more ideas in-house. {[Procter & Gamble is now changing the entire direction of its business from global expansion to product development; one of its new aims is to get innovations accepted across the company .Elsewhere ,the search for innovation had led to a craze for ' entrapreneurship ’ -giving more power to individuals in the company and setting up internal ideas -factories so that talents staff will not leave.][1]}

G.And yet innovation does not happen just because the chief executive wills it. Indeed ,it is extremely difficult to come up with new ideas year in, year out, especially brilliant ones. Underneath all experts' diagrams , lists and charts ,most of the available answers seem to focus on two strengths that are difficult to impose: a culture that looks for new ideas, and leaders who know which ones to back. Companies have to discredit the widespread view that jobs working on new products are for ‘those who can't cope in the real business'. They have to change the culture by introducing hard incentives, such as giving more generous bonuses to those who come up with successful new ideas and, particularly ,not punishing those whose experiments fail.

H.Will all this reorganization and culture tweaking make big firms more creative? David Post, the founder of Umagic, isn't so sure:’ He also recalls with glee the looks of total incomprehension when he tried to sell his 'virtual experts ' idea three years ago to firms such IBM , though ,as he cheerfully adds,’ of course, they could have been right'. Apparently, innovation -unlike diet,fitness and parenting -is one area where a computer cannot tell you what to do.