Why are empaths more susceptible to experiencing trauma than most?

Are you a sensitive person? Are you an empath with a more sensitive and perceptive system?

What is happening is that our nervous system is more sensitive, receiving information that others don’t, feeling things that others don’t, which means having an uncontrollable body response to imperceptible changes in the environment.

Like being in a noisy crowd and not able to turn it off, our sensitivity can lead to overwhelm. Which leads to the hard truth, while being sensitive may be a superpower sometimes, it more often than not is overwhelming for our system and causes a trauma response in our body. Pretty soon we can be having emotional meltdowns, or physical health symptoms that are embarrassing or ones that we think are random.

In this episode, I chat with Dr. Judith Orloff to explore the ways in which this can lead to a greater susceptibility to trauma, as well as how to embrace the unique gifts that heightened sensitivity brings.

Dr. Orloff is a UCLA trained psychiatrist and has been called “the godmother of the empath movement”. She synthesizes traditional medicine with cutting-edge knowledge of intuition, energy, and spirituality, and believes in the power of integrating this wisdom.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why highly sensitive people are more prone to trauma 
• The different types of overwhelming situations an empath might encounter 
• The hidden needs of empaths
• Why empaths are more vulnerable to physical health symptoms 
• How this level of sensitivity can actually be a superpower
• Practical strategies for empaths, like sensory inventories and boundary setting, to not just survive but thrive

For more information and show notes, please visit our website: https://biologyoftrauma.com/biology-of-trauma-podcast/

What can we do about the brain inflammation that holds us back in fog, fatigue and trauma responses? 

To help answer that question and share brain inflammation with you is my guest, Dr. Austin Perlmutter, is a board-certified internal medicine physician, New York Times bestselling author, published researcher, and the executive director for Big Bold Health, a food-as-medicine company focused on helping people rejuvenate health through better immune function.

In the evolving field of trauma therapy, we're increasingly recognizing that healing isn't just about processing memories or changing thought patterns. The application of The Biology of Trauma lens is that it is just as much about addressing the impact trauma has had on our biology, which now keeps us stuck in our trauma responses. 

One crucial aspect of this biological impact is brain inflammation. It is one of the most common yet most overlooked gatekeepers of trauma healing. Brain inflammation creates many of the symptoms that people attach to their trauma responses, yet often is what is triggering those trauma responses. Yes, you heard me right. It is not just people, places that can trigger our trauma response. It is also a specific immune cell in our brain - microglia. 

In this episode, you’ll learn why:

• Good insights from therapy seem to fade by the next day
• Small stresses feel overwhelming to your brain
• What you eat affects how well you can process emotions
• Relationship conflicts leave you mentally exhausted
• Your diet can dysregulate you just as much as your partner
• Your mind feels clearer in nature than in therapy

For more information and show notes, please visit our website: https://biologyoftrauma.com/biology-of-trauma-podcast/

As you know, this is a very special episode. We're both at the two year anniversary and the 100th podcast episode, and what a milestone. I'm even surprised and shocked at how much content I've been able to put out into the world through this podcast, and I'm very grateful and humbled and honored that I get to do that.

To celebrate this special episode, I wanted to bring in some amazing women around the world who have really been doing this inner journey and work with their nervous system. And I invited these three because they are both so unique and different from each other, and yet, they've all had incredible shifts and insights as they have learned about their nervous system and learned how to work with it, develop a very different relationship with their body and have tools for repair that has allowed them to experience more regulation in their life, and we're going to hear about how that's opened things up for them.

For more information and show notes, please visit our website: https://biologyoftrauma.com/biology-of-trauma-podcast/

Why should medicine consider trauma as a diagnosis of inclusion and not just when nothing else is found wrong?

The failure to recognize and treat the stored trauma that drives many patients' health challenges has profound and far-reaching consequences. It perpetuates a cycle of ineffective care. It worsens patient outcomes and undermines the overall effectiveness of the healthcare system. As a medical physician and also one who has been this type of patient, this episode and the Trauma-Informed Medicine Project coming out of this was really important to me. 

One of the key problems is that trauma manifests in diverse ways across multiple bodily systems, making it difficult to identify as the common thread. Patients may present with a range of symptoms such as migraines, chronic pain, digestive issues, sleep problems, and mood disorders. 

Rather than recognizing these as interconnected signs of nervous system dysregulation stemming from trauma, the medical system often compartmentalizes the symptoms, referring patients to various specialists to treat each one in isolation. This leads to a "medical merry-go-round" where patients bounce from one provider to the next, undergoing test after test, without ever getting to the root of their issues. 

Which is why I bring in Dr. Jorina Elbers, a board certified physician in neurology with a masters in epidemiology and former assistant professor and pediatric neurologist at Stanford University. She has authored over 25 research articles and book chapters, and really focuses on what's going on in the nervous system in regards to stress and trauma and how to recognize it. She is currently the director of the Trauma Recovery Project at the Heart Math Institute and runs her own trauma sensitive neurology clinic. 

In this episode, you will hear Dr. Elbers journey of how she discovered the critical link between trauma, stress, and neurological disorders. You will hear how she started asking better questions of her patients, uncovering stories of family trauma from her patients and just what to do especially when labs and tests show nothing wrong.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to ask better questions that lead to discovering the true causes behind seemingly inexplicable diagnoses
• What tools can healthcare practitioners integrate into consultations to uncover patient’s trauma history and why this is so important 
• The importance of including trauma in differential diagnoses, especially when conventional medical tests don’t reveal a clear cause.
• How to move away from treating symptoms on a neurotransmitter level and into treating the whole nervous system
• The autonomic nervous system and heart rate variability
• Medical trauma from procedures and treatments that actually contribute further to symptoms and chronic conditions

For more information and show notes, please visit our website: https://biologyoftrauma.com/biology-of-trauma-podcast/

In this episode, I want to teach on an important topic that is either commonly misunderstood or just missed, muscle bracing patterns that have their origins in our attachment style. 

I am teaching on how to recognize attachment bracing adaptations to answer the one question How does our attachment create bracing patterns in our body to protect us from pain? 

This is important because these same bracing patterns will affect both our breath and our freeze response - our shut down in the face of certain emotions. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to recognise bracing patterns
• Which emotions bracing helps protect us from
• How bracing patterns developed during our attachment years to protect our physiology
• How bracing patterns affect the breath
• The relationship between bracing patterns and the freeze response

For more information and show notes, please visit our website: https://biologyoftrauma.com/biology-of-trauma-podcast/

How do we restore the gut microbiome that has been affected by trauma, stress and nervous system dysregulation?

In this episode, we’ll focus on how we can get our gut and nervous system back into a space where they can feel safe enough to relax and process the trauma and stress our body is carrying.

Steven Wright is my guest for this episode. Because of his story and life experience with trauma, stress and nervous system dysregulation since infancy affecting his gut, he has had to learn solutions to fight for his health. He is truly a health engineer to understand nervous system and gut connection and solutions. and founded a business based on what he has learned.  

I really wanted to have Steven on because he really had to go to a deeper level than most have ever needed to in order to find solutions for a gut impacted by trauma and nervous system dysregulation. Being born with a birth defect that resulted in something called visceral hypersensitivity, he has experienced anxiety, panic attacks and depression, obesity and IBS… and is here to share his story and what he learned that can help us with our gut and nervous system connection. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How early life experiences program survival mechanisms into our nervous system 
• How those survival programs become health dysfunctions
• The 3 nutrients that are power houses for the gut-nervous system connection
• The optimal ways, types and dosages for the body to absorb these supplements properly
• Why you still may be struggling with gut issues despite a clean diet 
• How to choose properly functioning digestive enzymes 

For more information and show notes, please visit our website: https://biologyoftrauma.com/biology-of-trauma-podcast/

Does the overwhelm and experience of trauma create a pre-existing state in our nervous system that sets the stage for chronic pain conditions?

In this episode, we will be talking about chronic pain as a message from our body. Part of an unconscious protective response learned by nerve pathways rather than a physical abnormality.

While chronic pain can be traced back to an injury or event, the science suggests  chronic pain is caused by our brain’s attempt to protect us from unbearable emotions. In fact, this purpose of protection is at the root of many common complaints, including back pain, sciatica, migraines, fibromyalgia and many other symptoms. 

I have an incredible guest for this episode, Georgie Odlfield, a physiotherapist and chronic pain specialist, who has been a real leader in this space. Georgie is a TEDx speaker and the author of Chronic Pain: Your Key to Recovery. She is a woman, steady and strong in her leadership in trauma-informed care for chronic pain. 

I first came across her work when I sought out training in psychosomatic medicine while in preventive medicine residency. I had just switched out of general surgery and knew that I wanted to lean in more into the root cause of conditions that I had only previously been taught to treat with a pill or surgery. This is how I came across these leaders in the space, and have been happy to see Georgie provide such value and community for those with chronic pain and practitioners who work with chronic pain.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How chronic ongoing pain or recurring symptoms can actually be neuroplastic mind body symptoms
• How to ask questions that will help you get to the root of your chronic pain symptoms and release them 
• Why somebody is more likely to develop chronic pain after having an acute injury and the predisposing factors for this
• How chronic pain can be the body’s protective response to keep us from falling apart emotionally
• How to communicate with your body, and not just hear but also understand the answers it’s giving you

For more information and show notes, please visit our website: https://biologyoftrauma.com/biology-of-trauma-podcast/

Does trauma affect our methylation process and our body's capacity to detox?

Trauma doesn't just live in our minds; it resides in our cells, influencing fundamental biological processes. One of these processes is detoxification, our body's natural ability to eliminate harmful substances. When trauma is stored in the body, it affects the biology of our detoxification pathways, making it harder for us to rid ourselves of toxins.

A build-up of toxins can impede our progress in trauma therapy and healing. It's a two-way street: trauma affects our ability to detoxify, and toxins affect our ability to process and release trauma. 

I am very excited about our guest today since he has been a leader in implementing mental health nutrition at the clinical level. It is hard to be a leader, and I want to acknowledge the effort he has put in to create a different experience for his patients.

Albert Mensah has been a family practice physician for over twenty years now. He received his medical degree from Finch University of Health Sciences, Chicago Medical School, and then completed his residency at Swedish Covenant, leading him to follow a very different path than conventional medical, making his approach to body and biochemical imbalances very unique. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The science behind trauma-toxin connection and provide practical insights on what to do about it 
• Learn to recognize methylation imbalances and its health issues
• Understand how to support your body's detox pathways
• Learn nutritional and diet tools

For more information and show notes, please visit our website: https://biologyoftrauma.com/biology-of-trauma-podcast/

How can we better manage anxiety by decreasing adrenaline levels through our food and eating habits?

In this episode, we will be talking about the major hormone of stress and trauma - adrenaline.  This episode will help you better understand the important role of adrenaline in stress, dsyregulation and stored trauma. Moreover, it will give you knowledge of how to learn more about your adrenaline levels based on your eating habits and the nutritional tools for balancing adrenaline. 

My good friend Luis Mojica, a somatic therapist, nutritionist and a musician is my guest for this episode. 

Like me, he started noticing how his biology and nutrition were affecting somatic work, got curious and started asking questions and testing his theories on himself. 

Luis came into this work through personal experience, having endured a lot of relational trauma in his personal life, he realized he used to binge eat thousands of calories in one sitting just to suppress his anxiety and social fear, until one day, by mistake, he played the guitar. 

This is when he discovered co-regulation and parasympathetic response, and he set off to research other modalities that could also create the same feeling of safety and was led to the type of trauma work he does now. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• To track cravings back to childhood when we used food for internal regulation 
• How eating certain types of foods can help us metabolize adrenaline   
• How compulsive eating helps us regulate our nervous system
• What foods lead to experiencing perceived threats and chronic PTSD because of their effect on the adrenal glands
• How can we metabolize excess adrenaline using food
• Somatic practices that can help with accessing stored trauma in our stomach, managing cravings and digestive issues

For more information and show notes, please visit our website: https://biologyoftrauma.com/biology-of-trauma-podcast/

Can lithium influence nervous system dysregulation?

In this episode, we are looking at lithium’s role on the nervous system. You will find that it needs to be central to the conversation for mental health, addiction, and the trauma healing journey, particularly its stabilizing effects on the nervous system.

I have brought in a guest whose work I have high respect for and helped me see the possibilities beyond mood medications for myself. Dr. James Greenblatt has been in clinical practice since 1988 and is the founder and pioneer in the field of integrative and functional psychiatry.

In this episode, you’ll learn the role of lithium in helping a dysregulated nervous system become more flexible, regulated and stable:

• Lithium's role in impulsivity 
• The interface between lithium and the immune system
• The use of lithium for depression, suicidal thoughts and addiction
• Why you should understand your family’s mental health history prior to considering lithium treatment
• What other symptoms might indicate the need for a lithium treatment
• How lithium interacts with other minerals like copper and zinc

For more information and show notes, please visit our website: https://biologyoftrauma.com/biology-of-trauma-podcast/