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The Legacy of Trauma: Can Experiences Leave A Biological Imprint? : Short Wave Descendants of trauma victims seem to have worse health outcomes. Could epigenetics help explain why? Bianca Jones Marlin and Brian Dias walk us through the field of epigenetics and its potential implications in trauma inheritance.

You can follow Ariela Zebede on twitter @arielazebede. Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

Short Wave

The Legacy of Trauma: Can Experiences Leave A Biological Imprint?

The Legacy of Trauma: Can Experiences Leave A Biological Imprint?

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Can the epigenetic effects of experiences be inherited? Eternity in an Instant/Getty Images hide caption

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Eternity in an Instant/Getty Images

Can the epigenetic effects of experiences be inherited?

Eternity in an Instant/Getty Images

Descendants of trauma victims seem to have worse health outcomes. Could epigenetics help explain why? Bianca Jones Marlin and Brian Dias walk us through the field of epigenetics and its potential implications in trauma inheritance.

You can find Bianca @bjmarlin, Brian @DiasDigresses, Ariela @arielazebede, Brit @bnhanson, and host Maddie @maddie_sofia on Twitter.

As always, you can email us at shortwave@npr.org.

This episode was produced by Brit Hanson, fact-checked by Berly McCoy, and edited by Viet Le. The audio engineer for this episode was Daniel Shukhin.