Mama Says: "Happiness Can be Inherited"-Is Mama Right?

[jimmydasaint]

I have just seen Waterboy with Adam Sandler for the umpteenth time especially the famous scene with the Col. Sanders lookalike professor where the Waterboy is ridiculed for references to his Mama's sayings.

 

Then I read this and wondered if he wasn't correct all along:

 

Dr. Halabe Bucay suggests that a wide range of chemicals that our brain generates when we are in different moods could affect 'germ cells' (eggs and sperm), the cells that ultimately produce the next generation. Such natural chemicals could affect the way that specific genes are expressed in the germ cells, and hence how a child develops.

In his article in the latest issue of Bioscience Hypotheses, Dr Alberto Halabe Bucay of Research Center Halabe and Darwich, Mexico, suggested that the hormones and chemicals resulting from happiness, depression and other mental states can affect our eggs and sperm, resulting in lasting changes in our children at the time of their conception.

 

Can Happiness Be Inherited?

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090514101937.htm

 

So, apart from the mechanical forces on the cells changing gene expressions (tensegrity) happiness also passes on genetically from Mama to you... how many people believe this?

[darshanchande]

"happiness" can not be inherited, because only physical characteristics can be.

[jimmydasaint]

"happiness" can not be inherited, because only physical characteristics can be.

 

But if you read the link, it suggests that gene expression can be changed in germ cells by the stresses of the mother. I don't know if I believe it but I don't think this is pseudoscience (yet!).

[Glider]

"happiness" can not be inherited, because only physical characteristics can be.

Physical characteristics like the propensity to produce higher or lower levels of dopamine or 5-HT or receptors for such transmitters and so-on?

[cetus]

people are affected by lots of things that make happyness

eg weather can affect peoples moods

[Psycho]

To an extent this could be true however it would still be based on the fact that the idea of happiness is subjective, if someone is generally a "happier" person due to the way they live there life, would they not feel sad at a level that another person would class as feeling happy.

 

I think my point is that if it were true how would you go about testing it to give a reliable quantitative result.

[cetus]

as i said it is affected by what is happening around you and whats on your mind at the time

[Psycho]

as i said it is affected by what is happening around you and whats on your mind at the time

That isn't even close to what I said though.

[cetus]

but it is relivent to the subject on hand

[jimmydasaint]

I take the points above on board. However, I was merely suggesting that the way we produce chemical mediators of what we call happiness may be inherited. So, if your mother's moods during pregnancy affect 'master' gene switches in her eggs, depending on the chemicals her body makes as a result of her environment during pregnancy. Some may be switched in the 'On' position and some in the 'Off' position, thereby causing a predisposition in the newborn child (neonate) to happiness. So it doesn't come down to:

the quote in 'Waterboy' where Adam Sandler says:

 

mama says that happiness is magic rays of sunshine that come down when youre feeling blue

- or does it?

[Iris]

I do think mood such as happy, depressed... COULD be inheritated. As I learned, there are certain genes in your body can control and can pass out on generations. Let's take Abraham Lincoln as an example, he and his family known for great depression past from great grandparents to grandparent, his parents, uncles, aunt. Almost everyone in his family had history of depresion. However, the living enviroment can affect to your mood, that's for sure. In any case, i can potentially wrong.

[Theophrastus]

Physical characteristics like the propensity to produce higher or lower levels of dopamine or 5-HT or receptors for such transmitters and so-on?

 

That's the only context' date=' in which I can see this as a realistic possibility. After all, idea, mood, and emotion, from a scientific point of view, are really a by- product of chemical interactions; which are material and physical (I do personally find science to generally agree with the materialistic school). Thus, one could assume that if there are certain parts of genes which have an impact on these interactions, to an extent, happiness (yay dopamine!) can be inherited, and for those don't inherit it in a great enough propensity, there are always [b']supplements[/b] !

[GDG]

I don't know about happiness, but anxiety has a demonstrated effect on cognitive ability. See M. Mennes et al., "Developmental brain alterations in 17 year old boys are related to antenatal maternal anxiety" Clin Neurophysiol (2009) 120:1116-22.

[Mr Skeptic]

In his article in the latest issue of Bioscience Hypotheses, Dr Alberto Halabe Bucay of Research Center Halabe and Darwich, Mexico, suggested that the hormones and chemicals resulting from happiness, depression and other mental states can affect our eggs and sperm, resulting in lasting changes in our children at the time of their conception.

 

So he's saying happiness is an epigenetic phenomenon? He may be right and I do recall the opposite being true -- that parental stress left offspring ready to deal with said stress (um, in plants I think).