Stress Adaptation and the Resilience of Youth: Fact or Fiction?

The young are resilient! This age-old adage refers to the ability of the young to adapt to changing stress in the environment. The origin of these stressors can be physical (pollution, nutrient status, infections) or psychological (trauma, parenting, home environment). Resilience is the ability to adapt to a changing environment, and this adaptive stress response (also known as allostasis) is crucial for survival. Every organism–plants, animals, humans– have developed a number of mechanisms to adapt to these stressors to ensure growth, survival, and reproduction. Our ability to adapt is controlled by both nature (genetic predisposition, epigenetics) and nurture (prenatal/early life and/or later life experiences). Of these, genetic variations or mutations are “hardwired” into our DNA and are not affected as we age. Conversely, environmental stressors have a long-lasting effect on our ability to adapt, depending on the intensity of the stressor and the stage of life at which they are experienced. These stressors are sensed by the brain and are translated into a series of epigenetic changes in multiple tissues, activation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and structural changes in specific brain