COVID lockdowns may have caused teenagers’ brains to age prematurely, research suggests. This accelerated maturation was particularly pronounced in young girls, with potentially irreversible structural changes seen in all areas of their brain.
The restrictive measures introduced between 2020 and 2021 played an important role in curbing the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. However, these lockdowns came at a cost: the disruption of daily routines and social activities. These disruptions are thought to have been particularly harmful to teenagers, who rely on social interactions to develop their sense of self-identity and control.
“We think of the COVID-19 pandemic as a health crisis, but we know that it produced other profound changes in our lives, especially for teenagers,” said Patricia Kuhl, senior author of the new study and co-director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS), in a statement.
In 2018, Kuhl and her colleagues at the University of Washington embarked on a longitudinal study with 160 teenagers between the ages of 9 and 17 to evaluate the changes in brain structure during typical adolescence. In particular, the team set out to explore changes in the outer layer of the brain called the cerebral cortex, which is known to get thinner as we age.
However, in 2020 it became clear that the teenage experiences of these participants would be far from “normal.”
PLUG PODCAST: Deprogramming With Grace’s Dad.
BIO: Scott Schara, host of Deprogramming With Grace’s Dad, realized he had been programmed to believe a litany of things that weren’t true after the medical murder of his daughter Grace. Grace Schara, a beautiful 19 year old with Down syndrome died on October 13, 2021 in a hospital after being given a lethal combination of meds.
On the final day of Grace’s life, after the doctor proclaimed how well Grace was doing, he unilaterally labeled Grace as DNR before administering a combination of IV sedatives and narcotics over a short timeframe that no one could survive, especially if already in respiratory distress, as Grace was.
After extensive research and an investigation into the hospital’s COVID protocols and financial incentives, Scott Schara determined that the hospital had decided that Grace Schara was worth more dead than alive to them, noting that the hospital recorded COVID-19 pneumonia “as the second cause of death in order for the hospital to receive the killing bonus from the government.”
The tragic experience opened Scott Schara’s eyes to reality that so much of what we have been programmed to believe isn’t so. His podcast is aimed at helping others deprogram themselves, by opening their eyes and hearts to the truth.
