The Health and Life Events (HALE) trauma and Parkinson’s surveys build on the 10-item Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) questionnaire. They evaluate additional kinds of adverse experiences in risk for Parkinson’s disease (PD). Risk for experiencing effects of trauma, as well as intensity and severity of symptoms, is influenced by “dose” of adversity.
In using an animal to represent Parkinson’s I look for the possibility of an intelligent survival strategy in nature. The sloth has slow movements that may (or may not) have a resemblance to what many experience with PD. The sloth has the slowest metabolism of any mammal that is not in hibernation. I hypothesize that PD may reflect a body caught in states of freeze or hibernation at some physiological level, linked to a body caught in a prolonged threat response following trauma.
Taking these surveys can help identify events that may have been traumatic in your own life and validate hunches you have about your history. It may also suggest what you might work with in trauma therapy and with other approaches that support healing nervous system perceptions of threat.
Your survey responses are important for examining effects of adversity on Parkinson’s disease that have not been studied and where risk is not yet known.
These PD surveys ask you to register and login. This allows for comparing Parkinson’s disease specifically as they relate to different categories of adversity and to other chronic diseases. More surveys will be added.
Intro: Trauma and Parkinson’s Surveys
The new understanding of disease explains that life experiences interact with genes to influence gene function. This means that life experiences and other environmental exposures may play an important and under-recognized role in risk for Parkinson’s disease – AND that working with old traumas and healing old wounds may be helpful in stabilizing, reducing or possibly reversing these impacts.
Same Surveys as Elsewhere on the Blog
You can respond to these surveys even if you do not have PD. These are the same surveys as in other areas on the blog. I’ve put them on their own page for some Parkinson’s specific images and information, including in links at the bottom of the page.
Start Here ** Add Your Health Conditions **
This key survey, formerly called the Background Survey, enables you to enter Parkinson’s from a list of close to 200. You can also add other chronic illnesses, physical symptoms, emotional symptoms, pain conditions and experiences of cancer. Adding your health conditions – or that you are in good health – makes it possible to look at the role of trauma more specifically as it relates to Parkinson’s. You will have the opportunity to recommend any missing health conditions to this list.
- Get Your Health Conditions Score
- Learn about Dose and Adversity in your PDF Report
- See Results in Graph formats
- Explore tools that support healing trauma and chronic health conditions
- Receive an email with links to the other, companion, surveys
Parkinson’s Surveys
Adverse Babyhood Experiences (ABEs)
There is very little information about babyhood events in Parkinson’s. This is likely partly because age of onset is often in the 50s or 60s and it is more difficult to assess for influences from a long time ago. This survey explores what you know, have been told or remember about your early life. The survey asks about:
- Events before your 3rd birthday
- Your Baby ABEs – born cesarean? incubator care? sick?
- Your Mother ABEs – her pregnancy, labor, your birth and more
- Your Father ABEs – adverse events for your biological father if you know
- Get your ABE Score and Report in PDF
- See results and graphs
ACEs and Multigenerational ACEs
I’ve created this multigenerational version of the original 10 item Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) questionnaire to provide a better sense of the role of trauma from our lineage. This is because trauma can affect risk for chronic disease across generations. These may be risk factors for Parkinson’s diseases as they are for other chronic diseases.
- Get your ACE score out of 10
- Get your Parental ACEs & assess Multigenerational risk (or skip this part)
- Get a context for your ACEs & Multigenerational ACE Report in PDF
- See results and graphs
- See results and graphs
- My grandfather had Rheumatoid arthritis and I had some surprises in my family history when I learned more as part of my healing journey
Adverse Childhood Experiences Plus (ACEs+)
- This asks about events before your 18th birthday
- The survey has over 100 types of adverse events not included in the 10 ACEs
- After submitting your responses you can view all responses in Views & Graphs
- Look at new Adverse Childhood Experiences not in the original 10 ACEs
- Get your PDF report
Developmental Trauma: Adverse Childhood Relationship Experiences (ACREs)
Very little has been studied to my knowledge about developmental wounding, attachment, and complex PTSD in Parkinson’s disease. The research in other chronic illnesses suggests that your earliest experiences in relationship with parents or other primary caregivers has an influence on health, including risk for chronic health conditions. This survey asks about:
- Developmental trauma from experiences with caregivers in childhood
- Experiences such as emotional abuse or neglect
- “Invisible ACEs,” which are easy to overlook and greatly underestimated
- One of the most important contributors to chronic illness risk and symptoms
Adverse Pre-Onset Experiences (APOEs)
This adverse pre-onset experiences survey explores the role of adverse events in the period before the onset of chronic health conditions, which may affect risk as well as the timing of onset.
The survey asks about events such as injury, infections, loss, vaccines, hospitalizations and more. The survey aims to help better understand if, how and when such adverse events may have contributed to the onset.
The APOE survey includes a score for the number of different triggers you may have experienced before onset. A confirmation email provides information, links and resources along with a copy of your responses to the survey.
What is Helping on Your Healing Journey?
- Sharing what helps so that others can learn too
- What is helping on your chronic illness and conditions journey?
- Is there anything you wish you’d known?
Parkinson’s Surveys: Why Does it Matter?
Parkinson’s disease may be influenced by nervous system perceptions of threat following exposures to environmental stressors such as infections, chemicals, as well as physical and psychological trauma.
Research in epigenetics, brain development, embryology, the cell danger response, brain plasticity and more support a new paradigm that suggests symptoms of chronic diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, may have more possibilitiy of reversibility or stabilization than we have realized. This does not mean that symptoms are in our heads. It’s because life experiences become embedded in our bodies and affect how our genes function. This process, which occurs through epigenetics, has at least some degree of reversibility.
What You Can Do
The following posts offer tools that support healing from this new perspective of disease.
Therapies / Find a Trauma Therapist
Tips in Blog Posts for Working with Symptoms
Related Posts
My story of how understanding trauma and nervous system perspectives has been helping me on my journey with chronic fatigue (which may have similarities to states of hibernation).
Insulin resistance may be more common in Parkinson’s. Bears in hibernation are in a state of insulin resistance, which may be similar to states of trauma-related freeze in humans
Trauma and Autoimmune Disease: Adverse Babyhood Experiences Increase Risk for Type 1 Diabetes, RA, SLE, MS (and more) (Antibodies have been found in PD in one study)
16 Clues About Trauma,Triggers & Flares in Chronic Illness
The Cell Danger Response: The New Disease Paradigm (Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, ME/CFS and Beyond)