• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Can Old Wounds & Injuries Be Inherited?

D

Dick Turpin

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Mar 28, 2018
Messages
1,027
It’s a funny thing to ask and it may seem like a daft question, but I have wondering this for a few months now. Can wounds obtained in life be passed down genetically to your Children or even your Grandchildren??? The same way I guess that other medical ailments can.

I ask because when my Dad was 18 he got into an altercation with a gang of Teddy boys, and got stabbed in the right leg – just under the buttock to be precise. He was in hospital for a few days, but he was back on his feet within a few weeks.

As he got older however the old wound started giving him a bit of gip, and as a kid I remember him getting frustrated when the wound played up, which prevented his mobility, and even his work, as on some days he could barely move the leg at all – which meant he couldn’t work so didn’t get paid.

Back in the early summer, I started to notice that my right leg was becoming painful at times, and for the most part the pain was just under the right buttock. The only exercise I do these days is walking, and I know I haven’t had an accident or pulled a muscle etc.

Also back in the summer I was chatting to my two brothers, and I mentioned that I have been getting pains in the right leg, just below the buttock, only for both my brothers to say the same thing.. My nephew ( only 20 years of age ) was also chatting with us, and said that before he plays football he has to stretch his right let out much more than his left, otherwise he gets a bit of muscular pain and again just under the right buttock.

Strange eh..?

If anyone on here with a medical background feels the above query is impossible, then feel free mods, to put this one into the coincidence thread :D
 
The basic 'scientific' answer would be, "No, the wound / injury can't be passed on genetically, but a genetic or behavioral predisposition to problems with a particular body part or area could be (genetically) inherited or (behaviorally) adopted."
 
Years ago, I knew people who believed this to be true, based not on evidence but rather on a chain of reasoning based on assumptions I did not accept. This assumption set was that everything one experiences or thinks is captured forever in one's morphogenic field or akashic records, and is transmitted to future generations through linkages to one's DNA. New Age books and Rupert Sheldrake are the genesis for many of these types of beliefs. Dick Turpin, I am not suggesting that this is what you are thinking.

Side note: since I was very ill with covid in August 2020, many, but not all, old injury sites from my childhood have reactivated in unprecedented and weird ways: swelling, redness, excema, hurting. WTF. My body has apparently remembered the old injuries, and is responding. These old injuries were broken bones, very deep cuts, and blunt force trauma. My vague provisional hypothesis is that these injuries resulted in permanent cellular changes at the injury site, and my immune system suppressed the symptoms all these years; then when I was ill with covid, my immune system was no longer capable of suppressing the symptoms and so they reappeared.
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
Years ago, I knew people who believed this to be true, based not on evidence but rather on a chain of reasoning based on assumptions I did not accept. This assumption set was that everything one experiences or thinks is captured forever in one's morphogenic field or akashic records, and is transmitted to future generations through linkages to one's DNA. New Age books and Rupert Sheldrake are the genesis for many of these types of beliefs. Dick Turpin, I am not suggesting that this is what you are thinking.

Side note: since I was very ill with covid in August 2020, many, but not all, old injury sites from my childhood have reactivated in unprecedented and weird ways: swelling, redness, excema, hurting. WTF. My body has apparently remembered the old injuries, and is responding. These old injuries were broken bones, very deep cuts, and blunt force trauma. My vague provisional hypothesis is that these injuries resulted in permanent cellular changes at the injury site, and my immune system suppressed the symptoms all these years; then when I was ill with covid, my immune system was no longer capable of suppressing the symptoms and so they reappeared.
Click to expand...
I've got my eczema back, after 40 years of not having it.
Wonder if I've had Covid without any obvious symptoms?
 
Mythopoeika said:
I've got my eczema back, after 40 years of not having it.
Wonder if I've had Covid without any obvious symptoms?
Click to expand...
I don't know, but it is possible. BTW, before last year, I never had eczema. Do you have any other symptoms, Myth?
Edit: I now realize I have once again taken the discussion off-track. Mods, please move if appropriate.
 
Dick Turpin said:
It’s a funny thing to ask and it may seem like a daft question, but I have wondering this for a few months now. Can wounds obtained in life be passed down genetically to your Children or even your Grandchildren??? The same way I guess that other medical ailments can.

I ask because when my Dad was 18 he got into an altercation with a gang of Teddy boys, and got stabbed in the right leg – just under the buttock to be precise. He was in hospital for a few days, but he was back on his feet within a few weeks.

As he got older however the old wound started giving him a bit of gip, and as a kid I remember him getting frustrated when the wound played up, which prevented his mobility, and even his work, as on some days he could barely move the leg at all – which meant he couldn’t work so didn’t get paid.

Back in the early summer, I started to notice that my right leg was becoming painful at times, and for the most part the pain was just under the right buttock. The only exercise I do these days is walking, and I know I haven’t had an accident or pulled a muscle etc.

Also back in the summer I was chatting to my two brothers, and I mentioned that I have been getting pains in the right leg, just below the buttock, only for both my brothers to say the same thing.. My nephew ( only 20 years of age ) was also chatting with us, and said that before he plays football he has to stretch his right let out much more than his left, otherwise he gets a bit of muscular pain and again just under the right buttock.

Strange eh..?

If anyone on here with a medical background feels the above query is impossible, then feel free mods, to put this one into the coincidence thread :D
Click to expand...
I wonder whether your dad had some underlying condition that was aggravated by the stab wound and as Enola says this condition has been passed on to you and your siblings. Intriguing idea though.
 
Dick Turpin said:
It’s a funny thing to ask and it may seem like a daft question, but I have wondering this for a few months now. Can wounds obtained in life be passed down genetically to your Children or even your Grandchildren??? The same way I guess that other medical ailments can.

I ask because when my Dad was 18 he got into an altercation with a gang of Teddy boys, and got stabbed in the right leg – just under the buttock to be precise. He was in hospital for a few days, but he was back on his feet within a few weeks.

As he got older however the old wound started giving him a bit of gip, and as a kid I remember him getting frustrated when the wound played up, which prevented his mobility, and even his work, as on some days he could barely move the leg at all – which meant he couldn’t work so didn’t get paid.

Back in the early summer, I started to notice that my right leg was becoming painful at times, and for the most part the pain was just under the right buttock. The only exercise I do these days is walking, and I know I haven’t had an accident or pulled a muscle etc.

Also back in the summer I was chatting to my two brothers, and I mentioned that I have been getting pains in the right leg, just below the buttock, only for both my brothers to say the same thing.. My nephew ( only 20 years of age ) was also chatting with us, and said that before he plays football he has to stretch his right let out much more than his left, otherwise he gets a bit of muscular pain and again just under the right buttock.

Strange eh..?

If anyone on here with a medical background feels the above query is impossible, then feel free mods, to put this one into the coincidence thread :D
Click to expand...

This was one of the central planks of the 18th Century biologist Lamarck’s theories: The inheritance of acquired characteristics.

lt’s been comprehensively debunked.

maximus otter
 
Victory said:
Some people believe that some birthmarks and scars are from former lives.
Click to expand...

Ian Stevenson's research was rigorous, intriguing, and ultimately judged by Dr. Stevenson himself to yield evidence which was not conclusive. He accepted for himself that reincarnation was the mechanism, but that he could not produce conclusive evidence.
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual...ploads/sites/360/2016/12/STE39stevenson-1.pdf

Edit: the mechanism for this was reincarnation, not Lamarckian inheritance.
 
Last edited:
Dick Turpin said:
It’s a funny thing to ask and it may seem like a daft question, but I have wondering this for a few months now. Can wounds obtained in life be passed down genetically to your Children or even your Grandchildren??? The same way I guess that other medical ailments can.

I ask because when my Dad was 18 he got into an altercation with a gang of Teddy boys, and got stabbed in the right leg – just under the buttock to be precise. He was in hospital for a few days, but he was back on his feet within a few weeks.

As he got older however the old wound started giving him a bit of gip, and as a kid I remember him getting frustrated when the wound played up, which prevented his mobility, and even his work, as on some days he could barely move the leg at all – which meant he couldn’t work so didn’t get paid.

Back in the early summer, I started to notice that my right leg was becoming painful at times, and for the most part the pain was just under the right buttock. The only exercise I do these days is walking, and I know I haven’t had an accident or pulled a muscle etc.

Also back in the summer I was chatting to my two brothers, and I mentioned that I have been getting pains in the right leg, just below the buttock, only for both my brothers to say the same thing.. My nephew ( only 20 years of age ) was also chatting with us, and said that before he plays football he has to stretch his right let out much more than his left, otherwise he gets a bit of muscular pain and again just under the right buttock.

Strange eh..?

If anyone on here with a medical background feels the above query is impossible, then feel free mods, to put this one into the coincidence thread :D
Click to expand...
You've got a lot of muscles in your leg (I don't mean YOU you, I mean generally). So there could be a family predisposition to a weakness in that particular muscle, and your dad's injury may be purely circumstantial.

The pain he felt in later life may have been from the muscle weakness too and have had nothing to do with the injury.
 
catseye said:
You've got a lot of muscles in your leg (I don't mean YOU you, I mean generally). So there could be a family predisposition to a weakness in that particular muscle, and your dad's injury may be purely circumstantial.

The pain he felt in later life may have been from the muscle weakness too and have had nothing to do with the injury.
Click to expand...
That's what I'd say. Also, there might be a family habit of noticing certain aches and pains.

As with the ailments some cultures seem to suffer but not others; for example, the French belief in 'liver attacks'.
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
Side note: since I was very ill with covid in August 2020, many, but not all, old injury sites from my childhood have reactivated in unprecedented and weird ways: swelling, redness, excema, hurting. WTF. My body has apparently remembered the old injuries, and is responding. These old injuries were broken bones, very deep cuts, and blunt force trauma. My vague provisional hypothesis is that these injuries resulted in permanent cellular changes at the injury site, and my immune system suppressed the symptoms all these years; then when I was ill with covid, my immune system was no longer capable of suppressing the symptoms and so they reappeared.
Click to expand...
I know whereof you speak. I once pulled a muscle in the sole of one foot while chasing someone at work* and for nearly 30 years it has started to ache again if I'm going down with something. Often it's the first sign I have of a cold or virus.
It's eased off with time to just a twinge but it's still there.

*For their own protection, I might add. It was that sort of job.
 
escargot said:
That's what I'd say. Also, there just be might be a family habit of noticing certain aches and pains.

As with the ailments some cultures seem to suffer but not others; for example, the French belief in 'liver attacks'.
Click to expand...

!!! I just looked it up. I would have said that the sufferers are hung over after too much alcohol. I used to be French when I was younger, but it went away some decades ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/06/13/archives/french-ills-of-the-liver-held-a-myth.html
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
!!! I just looked it up. I would have said that the sufferers are hung over after too much alcohol. I used to be French when I was younger, but it went away some decades ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/06/13/archives/french-ills-of-the-liver-held-a-myth.html
Click to expand...
A book I read about placebos years ago had many entertaining illustrations, including one of a cheerful Frenchman holding his chest open to facilitate the healthy hosing of his liver. :chuckle:

Wish I could read that book again. Taught me a lot.
 
There were folk beliefs that a pregnant woman might pass on injuries or experiences to her unborn child, e.g. a horseshoe-shaped birthmark might be caused by one's mother being frightened by a runaway horse.

My own mother had injections during pregnancy (I seem to remember being told they were into her abdomen but can't think why that would be) which she swore caused the two large pale patches on my back. They don't tan and apparently look like ghostly eyes from a distance.
 
Also there's the possibility of growing up with a father who's always had 'a leg' and therefore may walk with a particular gait might cause an unconscious copying of the walk and therefore exacerbation of any intrinsic weakness, and a propensity for noticing 'the leg'.

Right, that's it, that's my big words for the day...
 
I’d guess that the explanation is that everyone knows about Dad’s leg injury, so when anyone experiences the everyday aches and pains we all suffer from, it’s forgotten about except if it’s in “Dad’s leg”. ln that case it’s mentioned to everyone, thus reinforcing the legend.

A bit like a gambling addict only recalling and talking about his wins.

maximus otter
 
There are certain stressful experiences that can be 'inherited' thanks to epigenetics. For instance a significant cohort of children suffered developmental stress from being born during and shortly after, the 'Hunger Winter' in the Netherlands during World War II, when supplies were cut of for many months. This is despite the fact that these children were never themselves exposed to famine after their birth, but they shared cellular signals from their mothers that prepared them for hunger.

Note,however, that epigenetic processes and stresses are almost exclusively passed on from the mother, since the embryo shares an environment (and cellular material) with the maternal line. It is difficult to see how stresses of this kind could be inherited from the father.
 
eburacum said:
There are certain stressful experiences that can be 'inherited' thanks to epigenetics. For instance a significant cohort of children suffered developmental stress from being born during and shortly after, the 'Hunger Winter' in the Netherlands during World War II, when supplies were cut of for many months. This is despite the fact that these children were never themselves exposed to famine after their birth, but they shared cellular signals from their mothers that prepared them for hunger.

Note,however, that epigenetic processes and stresses are almost exclusively passed on from the mother, since the embryo shares an environment (and cellular material) with the maternal line. It is difficult to see how stresses of this kind could be inherited from the father.
Click to expand...
I find this stuff to be fascinating. I don't recall the websites where I read it, but apparently the ratio of boy to girl births in European countries changed a lot in the decade after WW11 when many more boys were born. After a few years, the ratio slowly returned to the near 50:50.

If anyone can direct me to a good site for reading up on this, I would be grateful.
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
I find this stuff to be fascinating. I don't recall the websites where I read it, but apparently the ratio of boy to girl births in European countries changed a lot in the decade after WW11 when many more boys were born. After a few years, the ratio slowly returned to the near 50:50.
Click to expand...

The human "secondary sex ratio" is usually cited as normally being 105 / 100 (boys-to-girls). A variety of (mainly nation-specific) studies have pretty consistently shown an upward bump in the secondary sex ratio during and following wars, with the ratio eventually settling back to the normal value.

However, there remains a minority view that the bump reflects issues with the data and isn't a real effect.

There's no consensus on what causal factor(s) may explain this phenomenon.

One of the most cited recent research papers on the subject is this one, which involved a statistical analysis of data from 10 industrial nations ...

J. Graffelman & R. F. Hoekstra
A statistical analysis of the effect of warfare on the human secondary sex ratio
Human Biology, 2000 Jun; 72(3): pp. 433-445.

Abstract
Many factors have been hypothesized to affect the human secondary sex ratio (the annual percentage of males among all live births), among them race, parental ages, and birth order. Some authors have even proposed warfare as a factor influencing live birth sex ratios. The hypothesis that during and shortly after periods of war the human secondary sex ratio is higher has received little statistical treatment. In this paper we evaluate the war hypothesis using 3 statistical methods: linear regression, randomization, and time-series analysis. Live birth data from 10 different countries were included. Although we cannot speak of a general phenomenon, statistical evidence for an association between warfare and live birth sex ratio was found for several countries. Regression and randomization test results were in agreement. Time-series analysis showed that most human sex-ratio time series can be described by a common model. The results obtained using intervention models differed somewhat from results obtained by regression methods.

SOURCE: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10885189/
 
eburacum said:
Note,however, that epigenetic processes and stresses are almost exclusively passed on from the mother, since the embryo shares an environment (and cellular material) with the maternal line. It is difficult to see how stresses of this kind could be inherited from the father.
Click to expand...

This study shows that epigenetics can be a vehicle for what is passed from fathers to children in mice:

https://www.brainfacts.org/brain-an...eightened-stress-vulnerability-to-kids-060721
 
I'm prepared to believe that some degree of learned behaviour gets passed on as 'instinct' - I suspect most breeders of working dogs would agree.

Can't see it for the actual injury, but could memory of the injury be passed on? And we know that people can make themselves ill by believing they are ill without actually catching anything - after all, that's how voodoo 'works'.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top