Can a Mother's Touch Prevent Drug Addiction?

January 03,2013

What is the reason for addiction? This question has floated around scientists, healthcare professionals, and community members alike for as long as addiction existed...

Can a Mother's Touch Prevent Drug Addiction?

What is the reason for addiction? This question has floated around scientists, healthcare professionals, and community members alike for as long as addiction existed. Many point their fingers at genetics, which in many studies, has been proven to have an effect on how prone a person may be to addiction. Those who have addiction in their ancestors, parents or grandparents, are at a slightly greater risk for addiction. However, a new study is indicating that upbringing may have a much higher impact on the possibilities.

A great variety of people become addicted to a substance. It doesn't matter whether a person is rich, poor, smart, stupid, black, white, Asian or any other dividing factor. Drugs and alcohol have made their way into enough categories of people to be unanimously affective. When closely scrutinized however, it has been found that certain groups of people are actually slightly more prone to becoming addicted to drugs or alcohol. These people are mainly those living in poorer areas and who suffer greater adversity in their lifetimes.

The recent study focused on a ˜mother's love' to her child, and how that affected the later grown-up child's possibility of becoming addicted to a substance. The research was done on lab rats. Two genetically similar litters of rat pups were tested with different levels of love received from their mother. One group was given the normal amount of love, and the other litter received extra attention. This was done by temporarily removing the extra attention group from their mother for a short period of time. Once returned the rat pups were given extra grooming and attention from their worried mother. This was continued until the rats matured and no longer needed the care and assistance from mom. The fully matured rat litters were then exposed to morphine and it was found that the extra attention group was substantially less prone to developing an addiction to the morphine.

Scientist found support for this claim in the changes in the brains of the animals. In the extra attention group of rats, an immune system molecule known to help resist morphine addiction was produced in greater quantities. This led scientists to believe that this extra production helped the rats avoid the addiction, although the entire litter did not completely remain unaffected by the morphine.

It isn't known yet how well this study translates to human implication. Since it would be unethical to conduct the same study with human babies, it is hard for scientists to be sure that the same reaction would occur. Although humans do produce the same immune system molecule as rats, it is highly suspected that production of it could be boosted in a similar way as the rat pups. But the idea is all the same: to make an innovative discovery which could possibly greatly lower chances of addiction in people.

It is suspected that they key to this study may be the link between high addiction rates amongst those suffering from poverty or who have been raised in broken homes. While it is still too soon to tell, many are hopeful that further research will yield to lower addiction rates.

________________________________________________________________

Reach out to us. At Florida Center for Recovery, our licensed therapists and certified counselors are dedicated to help you or your loved one recover from drug or alcohol addiction. Our premier substance abuse treatment center provides unique programs to help patients recognize the origin of the problem that caused them to self-medicate. Learning how to deal with these problems results in facing situations, instead of avoiding them; this also reduces the chances of relapsing. For more information on receiving drug or alcohol addiction treatment, you may contact us for free consultation at:

Florida Center for Recovery “ Addiction Treatment Center: 1-800-960-5041

Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Recovery

373

views

PDF Print Email Report

Contact

Florida Center for Recovery

800-960-5041

MARK KILLAR

Featured Sections