Did you know that trauma and past childhood experiences could be the root cause of some current health issues you could be experiencing? 

There’s no doubt that stress can wreak havoc on your health, especially chronic stress. It is interesting that childhood traumas or other major life events that occurred years and years ago could potentially put your body into a fight or flight mode. 

When a fight or flight response occurs there is a cascade of chemical and physical reactions that take place. This directly impacts the HPA Axis or the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal axis. This axis is triggering chemicals and systems in the brain all the way down to the adrenal glands. This enables the production of cortisol, and in turn, suppresses the immune system, increases blood sugar, and increases blood pressure. 

Oftentimes a single event, such as an adverse childhood experience, can shock the body initially and start the domino effect of a slew of health issues. These adverse life experiences during developmental years in life can have a profound impact on adults’ physical and mental health. 

It is also worth noting that almost always a person who has experienced some sort of traumatic event in their life or stressful period in their life will end up diagnosed with Hashimoto’s autoimmune disease. 

Early traumas make it hard to turn off the stress response in the body. Chronic and unpredictable stress in childhood consistently floods the body with stress hormones and keeps it in a hyper-vigilant inflammatory state. With time, this interferes with the body’s ability to turn off the stress response. 

For some people, this might be hard to understand, but if you think about a body that has been shocked with stress multiple times in younger years and never fully recovered from that it becomes more and more sensitive to little stressors over time. 

A disagreement with someone, a little road rage encounter, a restaurant that is too loud, or an unexpected bill that comes along for someone who had a stressful childhood can create a metabolic environment that contributes further to illness. These illnesses include, but are not limited to:

• Hashimotos
• Chronic Pain
• Heart Disease
• Cancer
• Fibromyalgia
• Chronic Fatigue
• Digestive Disorders
• Migraines
• Asthma
• Obesity 

So, how do you assess whether or not you have experienced chronic childhood stress? The first step is by taking the ACE test and seeing how you score. Researchers studied the effects of childhood stress on later health in the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, developing a short quiz to look at the relationship between childhood trauma and disease risk. 

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Here are some actionable steps to further address your childhood traumas and chronic health issues:

• Work with a functional practitioner who can help begin to assist you on a healing journey 
• EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique or Tapping
• Meditation
• Mindfulness Practices
• Neurofeedback
• EMDR or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing
• Cognitive Therapy 
• RTT or Rapid Transformational Therapy 

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Source:

Cumulative Childhood Stress and Autoimmune Diseases in Adults