➡ Full show notes + resources: 

2 Min Assessment:

In this solo episode, Dr. Aimie explains what dysregulation actually is and why it never exists on its own. She walks through the patterns of stored trauma that feed it, and the four questions you can use to tell whether your nervous system is healing.

She also shares why children's nervous systems change faster than adults', what a patient in the ICU taught her about changing slowly, and why biology is the most neglected piece of nervous system repair.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
00:00 Intro: How Long Does Healing Take?
02:06 How the Nervous System Responds to Change
03:52 Overreacting, Underreacting, and Responding
06:26 Why Dysregulation Can't Create Health
08:14 The Five Steps of the Body's Trauma Response
10:57 Stuck in the Body Trauma Loop
12:35 Dissociation and Immobilization
15:03 Energy Conservation and Depletion
16:58 Why Dysregulation Never Happens Alone
18:49 The Fifth Pattern: When Trauma Becomes Disease
21:48 The Time Factor: Why Healing Takes Longer for Adults
25:53 Why Change Must Be Paced: A Lesson from the ICU
27:37 The Biology Piece: How to Accelerate Healing
29:35 Free Assessment and Closing

"The longer that the nervous system has lived this way, the slower that change has to go in order for the nervous system to integrate that change over time." — Dr. Aimie Apigian

If you have been working on your healing for years and cannot tell whether any of it is working, this episode is for you.

RESOURCES:

Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Stored Trauma. Get a picture of your patterns now, so you have something to measure your healing against. 
Get The Biology of Trauma book. The fifth pattern, disease, is in Chapter 10, When Trauma Becomes Disease.

This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.

➡ Full show notes + resources: 

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

Your labs keep coming back acceptable. Your symptoms keep getting harder to hold. And you have probably landed on one of two conclusions: either something is wrong with you that nobody has found yet, or something is wrong with how you are handling it.

I want to offer a third.

Full show notes 

Three things change at the same time in this decade, and each one is invisible on its own.

Your immune baseline was set decades before perimenopause. Estrogen, which your immune system has been reading as an instruction every day for years, stops declining in a straight line and starts swinging. And cortisol, which is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory signals your body makes, stops being received even while your body is producing more of it.

That third one is why a normal lab result can be a false negative. The all clear is being sent. It is not landing.

In this episode I walk through all three, and I translate the research into language you can use with your own provider. I also tell you why I stopped calculating ACE scores, what a hazard ratio actually means when you read one about your own health, and what has to be stabilized before anything else will hold.

Perimenopause does not create the autoimmunity. It does not create the pattern either. It removes the margin that had been holding that pattern quietly, which is why it feels like it arrived out of nowhere.

In this episode:

• Why a cortisol test can read normal while inflammation gets worse
• The four immune control points estrogen sits at
• Why unpredictable estrogen costs more than declining estrogen
• What "seventy percent increased risk" really means
• Why I stopped calculating ACE scores
• What has to come first, and why most people start at the wrong end

Resources:

• Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Stored Trauma: https://biologyoftrauma.scoreapp.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_audio&utm_campaign=ep195-autoimmunity-perimenopause&utm_content=show-notes
• The Biology of Trauma by Dr. Aimie Apigian: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637746237?tag=draimie-20
• Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/episode-195-why-autoimmune-symptoms-get-worse-in-perimenopause

Full show notes 

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

I do not ask about your past. I do not get out the checklist of adverse childhood experiences. I am not calculating your ACE score. And I know how strange that sounds coming from a physician who works with stored trauma.

Full show notes

What I look at is the impact of your past on your today, because that is where it is still leaving its footprint.

In this episode I walk you through the assessment I teach practitioners, so you can run it on yourself. Three domains, one repeating pattern, and the equation that decides whether a stressor stays a stress or tips you into overwhelm.

Then I take you to the part that surprises people most. Trauma work runs on energy. If your body does not have the capacity, the work cannot integrate no matter how willing you are. Which means the most useful place to start is sometimes sleep, or brain inflammation, rather than the trauma itself. That is still trauma work.

I also tell you about the pattern I carried for thirty years, and how it changed without me ever going looking for the reason.

In this episode:

• Why the word trauma gets in the way of finding trauma
• The three domains I ask about, and the one pattern that runs through all of them
• Your capacity against your stress load, and what happens when capacity is small
• Where stress ends and overwhelm begins
• Why perimenopause costs more capacity than most women expect
• The nervous system dashboard, and the three things that feed it
• Why I sometimes tell someone not to do the trauma work yet
• How to find your biggest block without handing yourself the whole list

Find your pattern: Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Stored Trauma 

The book: The Biology of Trauma by Dr. Aimie Apigian

Full show notes

This podcast is educational and is not medical advice. Consult your own physician about your health.

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

Your labs confirmed the autoimmune diagnosis. The hardest symptom turned out to be the one nobody prepared you for.

Dr. Aimie goes solo on depression and autoimmunity, and which one actually comes first. The answer is less orderly than the one most people are given, and it changes what to do about it.

➡️ Full show notes and research: CLICK HERE

Most people are told depression is a reasonable response to being ill. Dr. Aimie interrupts that conclusion with what the research shows: each condition carries close to double the risk of the other, depression turns up in the two years before a diagnosis is made, and roughly a quarter of the link between early adversity and autoimmune disease appears to travel through mental health on the way.

She also walks through why this depression rarely feels like sadness, and why the medication may have underperformed. She was on two of them herself, and the hardest part was not the depression.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

"Depression is part of the road from I was healthy to I now have an autoimmune diagnosis." — Dr. Aimie Apigian

If the antidepressant did not do much and you quietly concluded something was wrong with you, this episode is for you.

RESOURCES:

Take the FREE 2-Minute Assessment for Discovering Your Pattern of Stored Trauma: You cannot change a pattern you cannot see. Find your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much, then see how the other four show up.

Get The Biology of Trauma: Disease is one of the five patterns of stored trauma.

Nothing in this episode is a recommendation to change or stop a medication. Talk to the prescriber who knows your history.

This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

You have been doing the work. The therapy, the somatic practices, the self-care. And your body still will not come online.

Here is what almost nobody tells you. The thyroid governs gut motility. When it runs low and slow, the bloating and the constipation you have been treating from the gut end may have been downstream of the thyroid the whole time. So you can do everything right, in the right order, and still be working the wrong end of the problem.

This is Part 2 with Dr. Amie Hornaman, known as the Thyroid Fixer. She was misdiagnosed six different times in her twenties before anyone found it.

In this episode she gets practical about selenium, about which system to start with, and about why she thinks adrenal fatigue is overdiagnosed. She also gives a number for how long before your energy and stress resilience actually shift, with the caveat that belongs beside it.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

The full show notes have the research behind the SIBO connection, every quote from the episode, the chapter list, and the optimal lab ranges to ask about.

Read the full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/gut-or-thyroid-first-when-you-are-in-chronic-freeze

RESOURCES:
Get the Stress or Trauma Guide
Part 1 of this conversation

By listening to this podcast, you agree not to use it as medical, psychological, or mental health advice to treat any condition in yourself or others. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. Always consult your own qualified health provider.

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

You have been doing the work. You understand your patterns. And you are still waking up unable to face the day.

When the body decides survival is the priority, it stops converting thyroid hormone into the form your cells can use. It produces an inactive version instead, called reverse T3, and that version blocks the active hormone at the cell door. The result is a body running low and slow. It is the same physiology I call chronic functional freeze.

Dr. Amie Hornaman ranks reverse T3 as the single most important thyroid marker, ahead of free T3, and it is a marker almost nobody orders. She also holds that stress and trauma on their own can raise it.

This is Part 1 of a two part conversation.

➡️ Full show notes, research and timestamps: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/can-a-thyroid-problem-keep-me-in-chronic-freeze

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

RESOURCES:

Part 2 releases August 20, 2026.

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

Most trauma has a place you can avoid. Medical trauma lives inside your body, so there is nowhere to go.

Dr. Aimie sits down with Dr. James Jackson for the second half of their conversation on medical trauma. What will surprise you is how much recovery is available while the symptoms are still present.

This is Part 2 of a two part conversation. Part 1 is here.

➡ Full show notes + resources: https://bit.ly/BOT190

Dr. Jackson works with people recovering after critical illness, and he is direct about something most clinicians avoid saying. Patients have been taught that recovery means every symptom is erased. That standard fails most bodies. He offers a different measure, along with the markers that actually move.

Dr. Aimie also shares why she left general surgery residency after four years, and the one question she started asking her patients that changed everything about how she practiced.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

02:55 — Why do you carry the source of a medical trauma with you?

05:35 — What is acceptance and commitment therapy?

06:37 — How can you be fine right now?

07:09 — Why did Dr. Aimie leave general surgery residency?

08:17 — What happens when you ask a patient what their diagnosis means to them?

11:40 — Why should no one else decide what counts as a big trauma?

13:33 — Why is overselling recovery a problem?

14:46 — What does a rich recovery actually look like?

15:32 — What are the objective markers that recovery is happening?

17:02 — How should we talk about post-traumatic growth?

20:22 — Why can no one recover from medical trauma alone?

"If the trauma happened in your body, you're carrying that around. You're carrying it around, and you can't avoid it. It's always there." — Dr. James Jackson

If you have quietly decided you are not recovering because something still hurts, this episode is for you.

RESOURCES:

This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

A hospital saved your life, and now you plan your route so you do not drive past it. That has a name, and the name is medical trauma. 

Medical trauma is a trauma response that comes from a medical experience. It can follow an ICU stay, a hard surgery, or an emergency C-section. Post-intensive care syndrome, or PICS, describes new or worsened problems in thinking, mood, and physical function after critical illness. 

Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-do-i-avoid-the-doctor-now-medical-trauma-and-post-intensive-care-syndrome-with-dr-james-jacks

Dr. James Jackson of Vanderbilt co-founded one of the first clinics in the country for survivors of critical illness. He sat on front porches across the South asking people what their life was like after the ICU, and he heard the same story hundreds of times. In this Part 1 conversation with Dr. Aimie, he names the one sign he watches for above all others, why so many doctors have never heard of PICS, and how long recovery actually takes. 

This is Part 1 of two. Part 2 is here: 

Take the free 2-minute assessment for stored trauma at biologyoftrauma.com/quiz. Find your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much. You cannot change a pattern you cannot see. 

The Biology of Trauma book: biologyoftrauma.com/book 

Reclaiming Your Life from Medical Trauma, by Dr. James C. Jackson, PsyD. 

Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-do-i-avoid-the-doctor-now-medical-trauma-and-post-intensive-care-syndrome-with-dr-james-jacks

This content is educational and is not medical advice. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition. Always consult your own qualified health provider.

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

A new mom was losing weight without trying. Her heart raced. Waves of panic arrived without warning. Her doctor congratulated her on the weight and offered her something for the anxiety.

Her anxiety had been doing its job the whole time. It was a message from her thyroid.

In Part 2, Dr. Aimie and Dr. Nicole Cain, author of Panic Proof, walk through the last six of the nine body systems that can produce anxiety. Nervous system, endocrine, immune system, depressive, anger, and trauma anxiety. Each one leaves a different signature, and each one asks for something different.

You will hear why anger rises as you come out of chronic functional freeze, and how trauma work shifted one woman's biology down to what showed up on objective testing.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

01:00 — What is nervous system anxiety? 

Resources/Guides:

Get the free guide, Is It Stress or Trauma? Discover your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much.

Read Panic Proof by Dr. Nicole Cain. All nine types, with quizzes and checklists.

The Biology of Trauma book. The biology underneath these anxiety types.

Part 1 of this conversation covers cardiac, gut, and thought anxiety.

This episode includes a description of a child being physically hurt by a parent, and discusses SSRIs, benzodiazepines, and herbs. This podcast is for educational purposes and is not medical advice. Always consult your own qualified health provider before changing any medication, supplement, or herb.

➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: 

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

You feel anxious. Nothing has happened. Nothing is wrong on paper.

Dr. Aimie learned in the emergency room that anxiety is never one thing. Someone would come in and say the word, and her job was to work out why. It could be a hard week. It could be a heart attack. Same word, two entirely different bodies.

She still runs that checklist on herself. Then she read Dr. Nicole Cain's book Panic Proof and found the same approach mapped into nine types, each one named for the body system driving it.

In this Part 1 conversation, they cover the first three. Cardiac, gut, and thought anxiety. You will learn how to tell fear from anxiety from panic, why the first place you feel it is your best clue, and why the same word describes both high energy activation and shutdown.

This is Part 1 of two. 

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

RESOURCES:

Full show notes

This episode includes a personal disclosure about thoughts of suicide connected to a food reaction. Content here is educational and is not medical advice.

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma