When Betrayal Hits the Body: Sleep, Stress, Hormones & Healing With Karyn Shanks, MD
Betrayal doesn’t just affect your heart and mind — it affects your body too.
In this compassionate conversation, Lora sits down with physician and functional medicine expert Dr. Karyn Shanks to explore the very real physical impact of betrayal trauma, chronic stress, and emotional overwhelm.
Together, they discuss how trauma affects sleep, hormones, inflammation, energy, digestion, nervous system regulation, and overall health — and why these responses are not signs that you’re weak or broken, but signs that your body is trying to protect you.
This episode also explores self-compassion, the stories women carry around productivity and worthiness, and how healing begins when we stop fighting our bodies and start listening to them with curiosity and care.
Betrayal trauma affects the entire body — including sleep, hormones, digestion, energy, and nervous system regulation.Your body is not betraying you. Many physical symptoms are intelligent survival responses.Healing does not require perfection. Small moments of rest, nourishment, support, and compassion matter deeply.“Your body isn’t broken. It’s trying to protect you.” “You don’t need to rush your healing. But you do need to take care of yourself first.”
KARYN SHANKS MD is a physician, author, and teacher who helps clients recover their lives from chronic complex Illness—a journey she’s walked herself. Her work integrates the sciences of directable human potential—epigenetics, neuroplasticity, systems-based functional medicine, and transformational psychology—with the lived wisdom that safety, compassion, and story are the true foundations of healing. Over four decades, she's learned one enduring truth: everyone can heal, and the best medicine comes from within. She is the author of Heal—A Nine-Stage Roadmap to Recover Energy and The Wisdom of COVID-19—How to Rejuvenate, Reclaim Hope, and Heal in the New Post-Pandemic World.
Links: KarynShanksMD.com, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn
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If you’re ready to Rise Up & Reign as the creator and queen of your life, let’s talk. I will walk by your side and give you the perspective, permission, and wisdom needed to turn your betrayal experience into something constructive, empowering, and transformative in all the right ways.
Learn more at www.loracheadle.com and follow me across all social!
Download your Sparkle After Betrayal Recovery Guide at www.BetrayalRecoveryGuide.com, a guide designed to help you take the first steps in feeling better, so you can reclaim your power, own your worth, and start putting yourself, and your life, back together again.
Lora Cheadle, JD, CHt is a betrayal recovery coach, attorney, TEDx speaker, and author of FLAUNT! and It’s Not Burnout, It’s Betrayal.
After uncovering her husband’s 15-year affair, she turned her own pain into purpose—helping high-achieving women reclaim their identity, power, and joy.
A trauma-aware coach, somatic therapist, and former attorney, Lora blends legal insight with emotional and spiritual healing for full-spectrum recovery.
She is the author of FLAUNT! Drop Your Cover and Reveal Your Smart, Sexy, & Spiritual Self (an International Book Awards Finalist and Tattered Cover Bestseller) and It’s Not Burnout, It’s Betrayal: 5 Tools to FUEL UP & Thrive. She also hosts the podcast FLAUNT! Create a Life You Love After Infidelity and Betrayal. Learn more at www.loracheadle.com and follow me across all social!
Get the support you need to find your footing, begin making sense of it all, and feel better fast. As an attorney, betrayal recovery expert, and survivor of infidelity I can help you find the clarity and confidence to create a life that you love on the other side of betrayal. Book Your Session Here: https://calendly.com/loras-schedule/coaching-session
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