If you've heard of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and have a low score (such as 1 or "zero ACEs"), you may still suspect that trauma has somehow affected your health but feel like your doctors and the research are missing something important. Or you may have a high ACE score and feel that ...
Treating Chronic Illness #3: Making Dietary Changes took 10 Years
As I described in 11 Under-utilized Tools for Treating Chronic Illness, dietary changes can be an important component for working with chronic disease. Changing how we eat tends to be underestimated and can also feel daunting and unclear. The process that lead me to make a drastic and proactive ...
Trauma Therapy for Chronic Illness: Video Example of Working With Fight, Flight, Freeze (Dog Whisperer Cesar Milan and “Kane”)
A gentle, spacious, insightful example of how helpful and straightforward trauma therapy for chronic illness can be and feel. Providing an overview of the what is done and why, the importance of going at a person's pace, and how it's about following the intelligence of the body. Using an example of ...
Can Trauma or Stress Trigger Chronic Disease? (Adverse Pre-Onset Experiences)
Have you ever wondered if stress can trigger the onset of chronic disease? Or if trauma, infection, or something challenging can put you over the edge and stimulate the onset of serious symptoms? If so you are not alone. Many of us with chronic illness had an onset after trauma or following a ...
Treating Chronic Illness #9: Intuition, and Why I Left Medicine
Intuition has helped me learn to trust the wisdom of my body and, ultimately, to begin to better understand and trust myself. By following my intuition through the doubts and fears, hanging out with the lack of clarity when I often see only one step ahead of me, I have found ways of working with and ...
Chronic Illness Christmas Lite – How Little Moments can Create a Sense of Joy
It's the holiday season and I want to play. I want to share pictures, drink eggnog, and feel Christmas Cheer. I want to counteract the stress that often comes with the holiday season - with chronic illness or without - and share moments from past Christmases that light me up. While the eggnog is not ...
Adverse Childhood Experiences and Rheumatoid Disease / Rheumatoid Arthritis (ACEs & RA)
My paternal grandfather developed rheumatoid arthritis as an adult. He lost his mother to suicide when he was only 6 years old. It appears from family lore that he was the one who discovered her. This is an example of the link between adverse childhood experiences and rheumatoid ...
Adverse Multigenerational Experiences (AMEs), Rheumatoid Disease and ME/CFS
My paternal grandfather had rheumatoid arthritis (RA). I discovered some secrets about his life when I looked into his story because there are links between multigenerational trauma and chronic illness. This is because trauma that occurs in our parents' or grandparents' lives or in their family's ...
Epigenetics and Chronic Illness: Why Symptoms May Be More Reversible Than We’ve Thought
This post introduces insights from links between adverse life events, epigenetics and chronic illness. It describes how this new science suggests that chronic physical diseases and other health conditions thought to be permanent may be instead be much more reversible than we've thought (("Metabolic ...