childhood trauma Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Healing Childhood Trauma

The AHA! Team — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 09:46:39 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #590) and blog, I talk about how adverse childhood experiences can make us focus on the negative, and how we can manage this and heal the mind, brain and body. This is a replay of a Neurolive webinar I did on my app. For the full webinar AD-free, please see Neurocycle.app look for Neurocycle on the App Store or Google Play. In the early 90s, researchers embarked on a landmark study of over 17,000 individuals and asked them about negative experiences in childhood and their current physical and mental health. They found was that when children are exposed to toxic stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, this can have a dramatic impact on their minds, brains and bodies. This study later became known as the Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACE study. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are traumatic events that children may be exposed to while growing up that include abuse, neglect, domestic violence, substance misuse or mental illness. Long-term exposure to childhood trauma has been linked to everything from heart disease and diabetes to alcoholism, depression, and suicide. While there is no denying the reality and impact of adverse childhood experiences on our mental and physical health, just focusing just on the negative alone, or the bad that happened to us, may actually slow the process of our healing down. Research on the mind-brain-body network shows that an overly negative focus without balancing with the positive can distort our perceptions and potentially hamstring our ability to work through what we have gone through in a way that doesn’t keep us trapped in the past. Why? The mind-brain-body network is all about balance and restoring balance when it is upset. Focusing only on the negative will add to an already overloaded amount of toxic stress from the adverse experience. This is why it is important that while we do the work to find the root causes of our distress and process and reconceptualize what has happened to us, we also make sure we have some positive, balancing checkpoints in place on our healing journey or we risk the danger of getting stuck in a cycle of pain and victimhood. In fact, there is exciting research that shows that positive childhood experiences (PCEs) can actually help buffer against the negative health effects caused by exposure to ACEs. PCEs can also promote healing and recovery through activating our resilience. This shows that all of a child’s experiences—positive and negative—matter, so we shouldn’t just be considering the bad of what has happened to us but also the good, and how all these experiences affect our mental health as adults. Some research even shows that people with some exposure to ACEs, if they reported 3 to 5 positive childhood experiences, had 50% lower odds of adulthood depression or poor mental health, and those who reported 6 to 7 PCE’s had a 72% lower chance of adult mental health challenges. These findings demonstrate that positive childhood experiences can have a cumulative effect on life-long mental health outcomes and play an important role in our healing. The 3:1 Ratio Although we definitely need to work on what we experienced growing up, at the same time we need to leave room for the positive, and a great way to do this is what I call the “3:1 thought ratio”. This is one technique I often use this to balance myself and find it extremely helpful when things seem overwhelming. All you have to do is to intentionally focus on the positive to balance out the negative in a 3:1 ratio. And this can be used for any negative situation, not just for ACEs. For every negative thought that comes to mind, along with its emotions, behaviors, and perspectives, counter it with three positive thoughts. This will help to maintain a balance in energy (quantum) waves in the brain so you can think clearly, build your resilience, and rewire healthy thought patterns! When you practice the 3:1 ratio, this means that each time you have a negative thought, you don’t suppress it, but rather use it as a prompt to think of three positive childhood experiences. This doesn’t mean you are ignoring what has happened to you; rather, you are maintaining the balance of your mind, brain and body so that you can heal what has happened to you rather than remaining trapped in the past. You are essentially using the negative thought as a habit loop trigger to help you recognize what to change WHILE “padding” or mitigating the effects this negative event has on your overall wellbeing. This is not swapping the negative for the positive. It is using the positive to help us face and overcome the negative. For more on managing the effect adverse childhood experiences have on your health and wellbeing, listen to my podcast (episode #590). Podcast Highlights 2:16 What ACEs are & how they impact our mental health 7:28 Our childhood experiences are not a life sentence! 11:55 Why we need to balance the negative with the positive 13:46 What PCEs are & how they can help us heal 20:07 How to use the positive to deal with the negative This podcast and blog are for educational purposes only and are not intended as medical advice. We always encourage each person to make the decision that seems best for their situation with the guidance of a medical professional. To read the original article click here.

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Study Expands Link Between Childhood Stress and Chronic MS Symptoms

The AHA! Team — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 08:46:29 +0000

Duke Health – DURHAM, N.C. – Childhood stress may predict pain, fatigue, and mental illness in adults with multiple sclerosis, according to a study led by a Duke Health researcher. The findings, appeared online in the journal PLOS ONE, support efforts to integrate trauma-informed care and screenings for stressors into clinical practice. Childhood stress and adversity has been linked to numerous adult health outcomes This could help providers better conceptualize patient backgrounds and potential disease trajectories to create personalized approaches to patient care. “Since the original Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study in the late 90’s, childhood stress and adversity has been linked to numerous adult health outcomes, including many of the leading causes of mortality in the U.S.,” said lead author Carri Polick, Ph.D., a clinical associate in the Duke University School of Nursing. “This is, in part, due to the physiological stress response and how it sets the tone for how people experience stress and cope over their lifetime.” Researchers analyzed data from 719 adults with MS who responded to an online self-report survey deployed by the National MS Society. Researchers analyzed data from 719 adults with MS Stressors were categorized into emotional stressors, physical stressors, and environmental stressors. They were then analyzed with hierarchical modeling to show accumulation while retaining insight into specific types of stressors. This study is unique in that it moves beyond stressors that are traditionally measured, such as abuse and neglect, to capture environmental factors such as housing instability, discrimination, and the impact of living in an unsafe neighborhood. This is also the first study to include nuanced stressor data like duration and severity of exposures within the context of clinical symptoms of MS. The study found childhood emotional and physical stressors were significantly associated with the presence and severity of both fatigue and pain in adulthood. Environmental, emotional, and physical stressors were significantly associated with mental health challenges including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other psychiatric disorders. Environmental, emotional, and physical stressors were significantly associated with mental health challenges “From a preventative perspective, teasing out which stressors are potentially most impactful during childhood is important to help inform intervention and policy efforts to decrease the stress experience and promote healthy trajectories from childhood into adulthood,” Polick said. Additional authors of the study include Robert Ploutz-Snyder, Tiffany Braley, Cathleen Connell, and Sarah Stoddard. The study received funding support from the National Institutes of Health (T32NR016914). To read the original article click here.

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Researcher Discovers Gene Mutation That Contributes to Addiction

The AHA! Team — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 07:00:00 +0000

University of Oklahoma via EurekAlert – “Early-life adversity doesn’t make everyone an alcoholic,” Lovallo said. “But this study showed that people with this genetic mutation are going to have a higher risk for addiction when they had a stressful life growing up.” OKLAHOMA CITY – In the field of addiction research, one question looms large: Why do some people face a higher risk than others for alcoholism and drug abuse? A researcher at the OU College of Medicine, William R. Lovallo, Ph.D., recently published one of the field’s few studies focused on how a person’s genes contribute to addiction. Lovallo’s research showed that a tiny genetic mutation can put people at higher risk for alcohol or drug addiction. His research was published in the world’s leading journal on alcoholism, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Many people ask whether addiction is caused by person’s genes or their family environment. The short answer is that it’s both. However, Lovallo’s research zeroes in on specific gene and how it responds to a person’s environment. COMT is the name of a gene that helps the body manage dopamine, a chemical that is released when a person drinks alcohol or takes a drug like amphetamine. Lovallo’s research focused on a small mutation of COMT. What he discovered demonstrates the interplay between a person’s genetic makeup and adversity during childhood. People with this mutation of the COMT gene are more vulnerable to the effects of stress in their early lives, such as divorce or emotionally distant parents. That heightened vulnerability often leads to consumption of alcohol and drugs younger than age 15, which is one of the biggest independent predictors of addiction. “Early-life adversity doesn’t make everyone an alcoholic,” Lovallo said. “But this study showed that people with this genetic mutation are going to have a higher risk for addiction when they had a stressful life growing up.” Because the COMT gene is involved with how well dopamine works in the brain, the behavior of the genetic mutation is especially revealing. “This one random mutation makes a difference in how the COMT gene works fine in one person but not as well in another person,” Lovallo said. “There is no such thing as a gene for addiction, but there are genes that respond to our environment in ways that put us at risk. You have to have the right combination to develop the risk factors.” Lovallo’s discovery is a top achievement in his 20 years of well-funded research in this area. As a senior research career scientist at the VA Medical Center, he has conducted studies on veterans with alcohol addiction. However, those studies, like many others, concentrated on people after they became addicted to a substance. He knew he wanted to shift his research toward understanding the causes of addiction and how to prevent it. “Many of us know people who drink alcohol moderately and never have any problems. And we know people who drink a little and then go down the path toward alcoholism,” he said. “What’s the difference between going down that path and not going down that path? Now we have a better understanding that it’s not just exposure to alcohol or drugs that leads to problems; there is a genetic component. “Addiction is a real health problem, and to be making progress toward understanding it is one of the most exciting and worthwhile things I’ve ever done,” he said. To read the original article click here.

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