Obesity? Blame the Highland Clearances, says NHS professor
IT is one of the most infamous episodes in Scottish history – the forced eviction of thousands of families during the Highland Clearances.
People were driven from their homes to make way for more profitable sheep-farming, with cottages set alight when any residents resisted.
Now it has been claimed that, despite the passing of more than 200 years, the events may be to blame for modern health problems in the Highlands, such as obesity, heart disease and depression.
NHS Highland’s director of public health argues that large-scale catastrophes within a local population can trigger genetic changes which are then passed down the
‘Events traumatic enough to leave a legacy’
generations in the form of illnesses and poor health.
Writing in the board’s annual report, Professor Hugo van Woerden claims ‘the Clearances may have had a lasting impact’.
He added: ‘Changes in the way genes are expressed can be passed on to future generations.
‘Even though one person may not have directly experienced the stress and trauma, they may inherit genetic predisposition to ill health due to factors that affected their forebears.
‘Long-term consequences have been linked to heart disease, obesity, and schizophrenia. This pattern has been extensively studied in large groups of people who all experienced the same trauma, such as a famine.’
Starting in the 18th century and continuing into the mid-19th century, landowners threw people off their farms to make way for sheep.
In his 2018 annual report, entitled Adverse Childhood Experiences, Resilience and Trauma Informed Care: A Public Health Approach to Understanding and Responding to Adversity, Prof van Woerden says: ‘Each person is made up of billions of cells, each containing genes unique to that person.
‘The expression of genes can be turned off or on by certain environmental factors. Experiences that leave us satisfied, happy and content and experiences that cause us stress, such as malnutrition, can change the expression of genes in brain cells.’
Prof van Woerden’s report says: ‘When women are exposed to stress in their early pregnancy, their babies show the effects on their health in contrast to the babies of women who are not exposed to these experiences, and affected children go on to have significant health difficulties in comparison to their healthy siblings. These events may have been traumatic enough to leave a legacy in the biology and psyche of communities across Highland and Argyll and Bute.’
Official figures suggest some health conditions are more prevalent in the region. Figures from last year suggest primary one children in the Highlands are more likely to be obese than the Scottish average.
A report from NHS Highland in September suggested the suicide rate in the north of the region was ‘significantly higher’ than average.
Charity Birchwood Highland says one in three people experience mental illness each year, compared with one in four in the UK.
However Tam Fry, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: ‘Though there are indeed many genetic influences on obesity the only way of tackling the problem is to eat fresh food, eat less of it, exercise to burn off excess energy and stick with that routine.’