What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger? Examining Relationships Between Early‐Life Stress, Later‐Life Inflammation and Mortality Risk in Skeletal Remains

It is theorized that early-life stress, if survived, programmed a hyperinflammatory response to environmentally-mediated physiological perturbations which increased the chances of survival during subsequent development but also elevated later-life mortality risk. Findings demonstrate a complicated relationship between developmental stress and physiological shifts that helps to illustrate the adaptive significance of early-life programming and support the Thrifty Phenotype hypothesis.