The Dutch Hunger Winter

The Dutch Hunger Winter took place in the German-occupied part of the Netherlands during the winter of 1944-1945, near the end of World War II. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm areas to punish the reluctance of the Dutch to aid the Nazi war effort. After the Allied Forced landed in Europe, the conditions grew worse in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. The Allies able to free the southern part of the country, however they were not able to gain control of the bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem. Even after the embargo was partially lifted the canals froze and it became impossible to transport food supplies. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived because of soup kitchens. About 22,000 died because of the blockade Most vulnerable according to the death reports were elderly men.
There were made three noticeable studies. First of them was the observation of the babies born/conceived at the time of the Dutch Hunger Winter. This study showed that if the babies were well nourished during the time of conception and only malnourished for the last few moth of their pregnancies. The babies were likely to be born small and also the years of study showed that this person was unlikely to be obese and stayed small throughout his life. The babies there were conceived during that time were likely to be born big and stayed big throughout their life's. The other study was a study of schizophrenia. It was found that genetics plays major role if this illness will develop or no. Schizophrenia is tragically common. When two identical twins are born and one of them has schizophrenia, the other twin has a 50% chance of having it, too. The 3rd study was focused on abused children. Even if the child is taken away from them and put into another family that loves him. Sometimes everything works out for the child. Sadly majority of such kids who have suffered from abuse or neglect in their early years grow up with a substantially higher risk of adult mental health problems than the gen­eral population. All too often such a child grows up into an adult at high risk of depression, self-harm, drug abuse, and suicide.
Epigenetics is referring to all the cases in which the genetic code alone is not enough to describe whats happening, there also must be something else going on. Its like the surroundings around us even before we are born have an affect on us for the rest of our lives.