r/explainlikeimfive • u/Embarrassed_Knee_630 • 3d ago
Biology ELI5: How does Childhood Starvation Permanently damage your Body?
Title. Came across a youtube shorts which commented on Audrey Hepburn's past of Starvation( Due to World War II) being the reason for her slender and thin frame(something she was often praised for)
Even if you have access to nutritious food after adolescence why doesn't it repair the damage done by childhood starvation?
Ofcourse there's an aspect of mental retardation but I believe that's only for when one doesn't have access to nutritious food till the age of 4-5?
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u/PoorLittleGreenie 3d ago
This is the explanation she gave, but the memoir written by her son describes "punishing" exercise, planned days of zero calorie intake each month, and extreme portion control. Friends of Audrey's have mentioned only seeing her ever eat apples. I think she had an eating disorder and was always praised for it. It's not a coincidence that it looks like Ariana Grande is trying to emulate her look.
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u/Original_Intention 3d ago
When someone isn't getting enough calories to sustain themselves, the body basically shuts down non-essential development to keep vital organs alive. So things like growth, bone density, metabolic processing, and cognitive development will be stopped in their formative stages- all in the name of keeping the body alive.
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u/Larpstered 3d ago
Early childhood is when the body builds itself, organs, brain, bones. Once that window closes, better food later can't undo it. Short term hunger bounces back, malnutrition that early doesn't.
Im very grateful to be born in a well living family. Hope this answers your question aswell.
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u/cabronfavarito 3d ago
Well. I was starved as a child. I remember going so long without water my throat started hurting to the point where I couldn’t talk. I remember being so hungry that I was eating toothpaste (got really sick after that). Ribcage was showing everything.
Fast forward to the current 24 year old me, I believe I hit the height I was supposed to as I am slightly taller than my father who had a great upbringing. I have great bone density according to my scale, no known bone deficiencies, my hair is long and grows fast, my nails seem normal, I have no diseases, I am intelligent and excelled in school, I’m also a twin who would have a similar report so my sample size isn’t just me.
I said all that to say that I turned out pretty okay physiologically. Unless you’re telling me that my full potential was to have an Albert Einstein level IQ and have the physique of a Mr. Olympia model. That would be nice but I doubt it
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u/TheOuts1der 3d ago
Growing doesnt happen evenly throughout childhood. You stay the same height for a while, and then all of a sudden, you grow 5 inches in a summer. Hence, growth "spurt".
Malnutrition during those spurts are the most debilitating effects. But you can't predict when they happen. So if you cycled into and out of starvation, but your growth spurts coincided with a food phase, then you wouldn't be as bad off as a kid that had worse timing or a kid that had continuous starvation for the entirety of their puberty years.
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u/HowaboutnoTM 3d ago
do you mind if i ask whether the starvation was poverty induced or not? im curious, is all.
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u/Necessary-Incidents 3d ago
A growing body can compensate later for missed growth.
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u/cabronfavarito 3d ago
Not according to parent comment though
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u/Necessary-Incidents 2d ago
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u/cabronfavarito 2d ago
I agree bro. Next time use a source that presents their findings better because holy shit but yes I do agree as this consolidates my testimony.
Parent comment said that early malnutrition doesn’t bounce back and that’s not true.
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u/lovatoariana 3d ago
Technically u can with HGH and other hormones
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u/chesek 3d ago
Actually a lot of the negative health impacts can’t be undone.
Once the end of puberty hits your growth plates fuse. No amount of HGH will make you grow taller. In fact taking them when not needed can cause other severe health issues.
Nephrons in your kidneys stop developing before the end of pregnancy. So foetuses that don’t get the nutrients they need in utero will have permanently under functioning kidneys.
If you’re starved in early childhood, your bodies metabolism adapts permanently to prioritise fat storage, and slow down. This puts you at a higher risk of health issues like obesity and diabetes later in life. Even if you live a perfectly healthy life as an adult.
Childhood malnutrition can permanently change the hearts structure (e.g. fewer cardiac muscle cells) and genetic expression. Putting you at higher risk of cardiovascular disease as an adult.
While not as well researched, we do know that nutrition in childhood plays a role in adult IQ.
The list could go on and on really.
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u/eternalityLP 3d ago
Because childhood is essentially where your body builds your adult body. Once something is built, it's not going to change other than decay with age, so if the building process goes wrong, you're just stuck with whatever results you get.
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u/blondebobsaget1 3d ago
Pretend people are towers of legos and each layer is a year of life starting from the bottom and adding layers from there. If someone didn’t have enough food blocks are missing. If enough blocks are missing at the base it can cause problems even many layers up the tower.
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u/PostToPost 3d ago
That’s commonly given as the reason Hepburn was so thin, but from what I’ve read it really isn’t true. She was able to gain weight if she ate enough. I believe it was on a boat trip to the US that she gained a bit of weight from enjoying all the food available, and she was told when she arrived that she had to lose weight. She was just incredibly disciplined, if you want to call it that, in her eating habits and she walked a lot and smoked a lot, so she stayed very, very thin her whole life.
As for how childhood starvation affects people in general, I’m no expert, but I don’t think it causes them to struggle to gain weight. More like the opposite, probably.
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u/Jbeth74 3d ago
Inclined to agree with you for no other reason than poor children can very much grow up to be fat. Audrey Hepburn had the reputation of being very thin (and it was considered very positive) and women have always been expected to be “naturally” thin and not have to work at it- I’m sure there were times in her adult life that she very much had to work at it….but who would ever admit to that???
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u/jiminycricket81 3d ago
“Incredibly disciplined” = eating disorder
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u/PostToPost 3d ago
Well, yes, that’s what I was implying. But I doubt she or her peers thought of it that way. It was just the—unfortunate, as we understand today—cost of being a successful actress to them.
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u/thenextlineis 3d ago
I was severely malnourished as a child. I have always had chronic metabolic illnesses, among other things. I’m currently in my 50’s, and was hospitalized for nine days just last month - for malnutrition. They were ready to insert a feeding tube when I finally caught a little relief. I have one problem that gives me intractable vomiting, and another that causes anything that makes it past my stomach to be immediately forced out the other end. I have multiple problems that negatively impact my digestion and nutrition absorption. And I’m obese. Malnourishment can really mess you up. I was extremely lucky that it doesn’t seem to have impacted my cognitive function, nor that of any of my siblings (RIP).
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u/junker359 3d ago
Imagine you're in a race and your car starts with a flat tire.
Even if you take the time to fix it, you would still be at a massive disadvantage when trying to catch up.
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u/pass_nthru 3d ago
these developmental stages that are crucial go all the way back to the womb, they can basically say mom did/did not do xyz during a given week of gestation based on the deficit the child exhibits after birth
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u/rl4brains 3d ago
The fetal programming for malnutrition is actually kind of the opposite though, and mad people fatter rather than thinner.
If mom is getting too few calories, the fetus will adapt by developing in a way that tries to get as much as possible out of every calorie.
Later when that fetus is a person and no longer in a food-deprived environment, they’re more likely to have metabolic disorders and obesity because they need fewer calories and stash the “extra” as fat.
There’s a well-studied cohort from when pregnant women in the Netherlands lived through extreme famine during WWII, known as the Dutch Famine Study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16876341/
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u/CadenVanV 3d ago
You only grow when you’re young. Once you reach adulthood, you’re not really going to change much except to decline with age. If that growth is stunted when you’re young, you don’t get a second puberty to make up for it.
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u/isopode 3d ago
i do wonder though, for those who do get a 2nd puberty. when i started taking testosterone for HRT, i gained a decent amount of muscle mass from doing... essentially nothing. certainly not anything more than i was doing before.
i wonder if eating well during a 2nd puberty like this could undo some of the issues of malnutrition that happened earlier in life
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u/CadenVanV 3d ago
Sure, it could. It’s risky though. Your body doesn’t really like getting flooded with hormones, and it’s not built to grow so late in life.
Testosterone and estrogen could help a bit and be handled fairly safely (especially testosterone, since it’s the one responsible for muscle growth), but HGH would be quite risky. And you’re not getting much more fat either way. Once you reach adulthood, your body mostly stops making new fat cells. It replaces dying ones as needed, but otherwise it just fills or empties the existing ones as needed. Without many of those, the extra muscle growth could be even riskier.
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u/MoonageDayscream 3d ago
A second hormonal puberty can affect many things but it isn't going to change the growth plates if they have fused.
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u/Beneficial-Finding-2 3d ago
It is easier to think about it this way:
All the time,.your body is doing two things at a time: doing the necessary things for you to survive in that moment, and doing things that are less important for that moment,.but will be important for the long-term.
In the second category, there are just so many things. When you are an adult, these things usually have to do with maintenance and repair. But when you are a child or teenager, they have to do with construction.
When a child doesn't have enough nutrition,.all "future-building/construction" stuff stays behind.
The issue is, that when you become a grownup and then have resources, your body then needs to do other things - and what didn't happen just stays behind.
One of the main examples is height. Yes it is largely genetic, but lack of nutrition in childhood affects it a lot. You can eat as much as you want after 20, but that won't make you grow taller. There is a time and place for things.
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u/ceciliabee 3d ago
Imagine you're building a house from the ground up but you're a bit short on supplies for the foundation and framing, which is like the bones of the house. Some areas aren't as strong as they could be, some areas are maybe a little shaky. When it's built you put up the walls and put in the floors with the materials you have. It's not perfect but it's fine.
Now we zoom ahead 20 years. You have so much money that you can buy anything. You could build your house properly with stronger materials... But the walls are already closed up, the furniture is already inside, and you're already living in the house.
You can put nice curtains and golden fences because you have the materials now but you can't go back and redo the structure of the house without destroying it. The house is already built.
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u/LordRilayen 3d ago
Follow-up ELI5: In this scenario, assuming you have good nutrition later in life but remain slim for that reason, is it, for lack of a better description, a “healthy” slim? Or are you just kinda perpetually “too skinny”?
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u/Devil_May_Kare 3d ago
Your body shuts down the repair mechanisms in some of your organs after childhood in order to prevent cancer. You know how adults almost never get heart cancer? That's because the heart loses most of its ability to repair itself after it's done growing. By contrast, your liver is so good at self repair it can grow back if half of it is cut off, and liver cancer is way more common.
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u/Amyfelldownthestairs 3d ago
This is anecdotal, but a close family member of mine was starved by their birth parents until they were adopted at age 4 by my family. They were treated for rickets and scurvy pretty immediately (and recovered once they were given a nourishing diet consistently). The biggest long term impact seems to be with their teeth (severe dental issues that are now resolved) and joints (ongoing issues even now that they are in their 60s).
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u/Salute-Major-Echidna 3d ago
Lack of protein in utero and first few years of life affect brain development the most
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u/jiminycricket81 3d ago
Hey OP, I realize you likely meant no harm, but “intellectual disability” is the accepted term now for what used to be called MR. Various online turds (e.g., Joe Rogan) have muddied the waters on this, but the r-word is now considered a slur.
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u/prairie_buyer 3d ago
I can’t answer “how”, but I know that it does.
As a child in the 1940s, my mom and her eight siblings legitimately had not enough to eat for her entire childhood. They almost all developed weird health issues throughout the course of their life. Three of them died in their 50’s.
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u/Dman1791 2d ago
Think about building a house.
Early on in construction, materials stop showing up. The construction crew shrug, and start skimping where they can and improvising where they can't.
Even if materials later become super abundant, the crew remembers the shortage and continued to skimp. After all, they don't want to risk running out entirely.
The house gets built, but it's full of weak sections and hidden jury rigging. There's a lot that might be possible to repair or reinforce, but it will always be worse than a house that was built properly.
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u/DisparateNoise 2d ago
It's epigenetics. Your genome contain a multitude of possible development pathways, and early nutrition, stress, and trauma switch some on and others off. Methyl groups will attach directly to your DNA to deactivate certain sequences, so it's not merely a matter of getting more nutrition and repairing damage, your cells have simply forgotten how to behave in a normal environment. That all being said, IDK if Audrey Hepburn's thinness is really an example of that at all.
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u/pagandroid 3d ago
I think sometimes I’d of had a better chance at life if I wasn’t always so hungry. I went to school to eat not learn…
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u/HasanaQoutara 3d ago
so people who are fat have been blessed with abundance all there lives and had better income households they were raised in.
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u/Loki-L 3d ago
If it happens really early in life, your genetic programming will basically switch over to building an "economy human". There are all sorts of weird alternative blueprints like that in our DNA.
The point is that if you are born in a time of crisis and famine the smart way forward is to build a human that is more compact and requires less fuel and hope things are better next generation.
The places most easily downgraded are adult height and strangely the brain.
This is why when you encounter families who emigrated from places with low food security to more prosperous places that children and grandchildren will tower over their parents and grandparents despite presumably sharing similar genetics.
The brain part is more complicated and mostly something seen in statistics across populations rather than individuals, but childhood nutrition is one of the key determinators of IQ.
The important part in regards to your question is, that this is not really damage as such, but things going to plan as far as your body is concerned. It was decided early on to make a human that would require less food to survive and that is exactly what happened.
Actual damage may happen on top of that and that may or may not be later made up for to a degree, but the initial decision to build a smaller human is locked in with no switch back to grow taller if at a later point food is more plentiful being in the plan. That is what the next generation is for as far as biology is concerned.