Speaker 1: Welcome to Go, ask Alli, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with iHeartRadio. When I have been with
Speaker 1: friends and that happened and I paid my pants, I
Speaker 1: did lose the room, they did leave. I saw her
Speaker 1: light up and I was like, I'm just going to work.
Speaker 1: But we are here until one of our last rips. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was just the one that was meant to take
Speaker 1: care of mamma. It's for me to remember every single
Speaker 1: day is that I always have a choice. Everyone always
Speaker 1: has a choice. Whenever somebody says no, you can't or
Speaker 1: there's no roles for you, or you have to look
Speaker 1: like this, I go. I'll show you. I'll show you.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Go, ask Alli. I'm Alle Wentworth. A few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, we did a podcast with doctor Lisa Damore
Speaker 1: about her new book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, and
Speaker 1: as we chatted, she mentioned a couple of times how
Speaker 1: trauma causes a concerning level in their well being. So
Speaker 1: we decided to do a very deep guy into childhood trauma,
Speaker 1: and we decided that what we need to really explore
Speaker 1: is aces, which is adverse childhood experiences and they can
Speaker 1: include poverty, domestic abuse, or maternal depression and can profoundly
Speaker 1: affect the development of the brain and cause a lifelong
Speaker 1: harm to children's physical, mental, and emotional health. And there
Speaker 1: is no better person to talk to about this than
Speaker 1: doctor Nadine Burke Harris. She's an award winning physician, researcher
Speaker 1: and was California's first ever surgeon General. She's a founder
Speaker 1: of the Center for Youth Wellness, and organization leading the
Speaker 1: effort to advance pediatric medicine, raise public awareness, and transform
Speaker 1: the way society responds to children exposes to adverse childhood
Speaker 1: experiences ACES. Doctor Burke Harris is ted talk how childhood
Speaker 1: trauma affects health across the lifetime has been viewed almost
Speaker 1: eleven million times. Her book, The Deepest Well Healing the
Speaker 1: Long Term Effects of Childhood Diversity was called indispensable by
Speaker 1: The New York Times. So, doctor Burke Harris, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being with me. I am going to
Speaker 1: have the audacity to call you Nadine during the rest
Speaker 1: of this podcast, because I want to be your friend,
Speaker 1: and the first way to do that is to call
Speaker 1: you by your first name. We're friends already, yes, we are,
Speaker 1: so you know, I think everything you're doing is so incredible.
Speaker 1: And I've done a lot of child advocacy, so I
Speaker 1: am fascinated by how childhood trauma affects us as adults,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to start. I was worked with Marion
Speaker 1: Wright Edelman in Washington, d C. With a Children's Defense Fund,
Speaker 1: and one of the things we did was we had
Speaker 1: an organization in a charity called Beat the Odds and
Speaker 1: a lot of times I would go through these files
Speaker 1: of kids that we were giving scholarships to to college,
Speaker 1: and we'd have to go through and assess who really
Speaker 1: beat the odds, which is kind of a crazy idea
Speaker 1: that we had to determine who went through the worst
Speaker 1: childhood traumas to be able to have this college scholarship.
Speaker 1: But anyway, my point is that I would read these
Speaker 1: stories that were just heartbreaking about childhood abuse, you know,
Speaker 1: and you'd have a child who lived in a car,
Speaker 1: who was raped by their father. I mean, just layer
Speaker 1: upon layer of trauma, and yet some of them still
Speaker 1: had a high grade point average. They went on to
Speaker 1: be you functional adults, and some did not. And to me,
Speaker 1: it is all about the childhood trauma. And you have
Speaker 1: gone even further and researched it because I think a
Speaker 1: certainly our culture tries to deal with it on a
Speaker 1: psychological way, like, oh, maybe if they have therapy, everything
Speaker 1: will be fine, and you basically say that's not exactly true.
Speaker 1: The ramifications are physical and neurological and biological, and so
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about all of this. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what we experience as children actually gets under our skin
Speaker 1: and changes our biology, and it can have a profound effect.
Speaker 1: I think most people recognize it when the effect is
Speaker 1: on behavior, but we recognize it a lot less when
Speaker 1: it shows up as asthma or diabetes or heart disease
Speaker 1: later on down the road. And that's important for a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons in terms of how it affects our health,
Speaker 1: our well being, our mental and emotional and behavioral health.
Speaker 1: But it's also really important in terms of how we
Speaker 1: structure solutions because when we approach it in terms of
Speaker 1: beating the odds, which I think a lot of us do,
Speaker 1: I mean in the United States but also globally, in
Speaker 1: terms of beating the odds, I think that's one thing.
Speaker 1: I think that's what we're able to do when we
Speaker 1: start recognizing the problem. I think my focus has been
Speaker 1: very much in changing the odds, right, So so that
Speaker 1: so that that's not like, yeah, it's not like a thing,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean of that association between childhood
Speaker 1: adversity and just really really difficult lifelong stressors. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what's amazing is that the real signature research
Speaker 1: on this was I think really came together in a
Speaker 1: study that was done by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente,
Speaker 1: and it was published in nineteen ninety seven, and it
Speaker 1: really showed that experiencing adversity and childhood like experiencing abuse
Speaker 1: or neglect, but even things that I think many of
Speaker 1: us who kind of don't consider ourselves to have like
Speaker 1: this incredibly tough childhood, but things like growing up in
Speaker 1: a household where there was divorce or where a parent
Speaker 1: struggled with mental health issues, or where there was intimate
Speaker 1: partner islands that these factors have a profound impact on
Speaker 1: our health. And actually, for an individual with four or
Speaker 1: more of these adverse childhood experiences, you know, we know
Speaker 1: that they're the risk of something like depression was four
Speaker 1: and a half times, for attempting suicide was over thirty times.
Speaker 1: But for things like heart disease. The number one kill
Speaker 1: in the United States was more than double. You know,
Speaker 1: heart disease, chronic lung disease, diabetes, kidney disease, all of
Speaker 1: these different things. And so we now understand that that
Speaker 1: experience of scary or traumatic things in our childhood affects
Speaker 1: our biology by activating our stress response, and then that
Speaker 1: affects our whole bodies, our brains, our hearts, our cardiovascular system,
Speaker 1: our neurologic system, our immune system. And so I think
Speaker 1: when we when we look at it and we kind
Speaker 1: of hear this information, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people it makes sense intuitively.
Speaker 1: But now that we understand that, it means that we
Speaker 1: can approach it very differently. So let me ask you
Speaker 1: a question in terms of degrees of trauma. So in
Speaker 1: your research, let's say we take a child from Yemen
Speaker 1: who right now is experiencing extreme trauma on every level,
Speaker 1: as opposed to a child right now who has food
Speaker 1: and shelter, but parents are getting divorced. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a huge gap between the level of trauma both these
Speaker 1: children are experiencing. Does that then equals the physical ramifications
Speaker 1: of the stress, meaning is this child in Yemen going
Speaker 1: to have heart disease whereas this child who's experiencing divorce
Speaker 1: will probably just need some antidepressants. That's a great question.
Speaker 1: There's two parts to that. So one, what we know
Speaker 1: is that the dose of adversity. As a doctor, I'm
Speaker 1: always thinking about things in this way. But the higher
Speaker 1: the dose of adversity, the greater the risk. And it's
Speaker 1: like anything else. It's like if you're exposed to radiation, right,
Speaker 1: Like the higher the dose, the greater the risk. If
Speaker 1: you are exposed a little bit, you have you know,
Speaker 1: you have an elevated risk by a little bit. If
Speaker 1: you're exposed to a lot, you have an elevated risk
Speaker 1: by a lot. And what we also know is that
Speaker 1: the impacts are cumulative throughout the lifetime. So for example,
Speaker 1: if you experience significant adversity in childhood, like this child
Speaker 1: in Yemen, you're going to have greater risk. And then
Speaker 1: if you so. One thing that's really important is that
Speaker 1: the doses also of safe, stable, nurturing, supportive relationships and
Speaker 1: experiences counteract that. Right, So it's this balance between the
Speaker 1: adversity that you experience the nurturing relationships that you experience
Speaker 1: that counteract that. And then there's a second component, which
Speaker 1: is our biology. So each of us has a different threshold,
Speaker 1: a different biological threshold, just like you know, we're each
Speaker 1: a different height, right. So you could even have two
Speaker 1: kids in the same family that are exposed to, you know,
Speaker 1: roughly the same dose of adversity, but have different outcomes.
Speaker 1: So I think those pieces are really important. But the
Speaker 1: other thing that it's important to remember is that the
Speaker 1: way that it shows up in our bodies also may
Speaker 1: be different. So for example, you may have again two
Speaker 1: siblings in the same household, or or one of the
Speaker 1: common things that I saw in my clinical practice is
Speaker 1: that you might have five kids in the same household, right,
Speaker 1: who are all experiencing high doses of adversity, and for
Speaker 1: one child the impact is on their behavior. For another child,
Speaker 1: they just have really bad asthma. For another child, they're
Speaker 1: not growing as quickly as they should, you know. For
Speaker 1: another child, it may be reflected in their weight, right,
Speaker 1: they might be really overweight or underweight. And so the
Speaker 1: way that it shows up in kids and then in
Speaker 1: us as we carry that forward into adulthood, can be
Speaker 1: very different. And the reason I mentioned that is because
Speaker 1: I often hear people say, oh, you know what, I
Speaker 1: experience a lot of adversity in my childhood and I
Speaker 1: didn't have any you know, symptoms or outcomes that you're
Speaker 1: aware of. So I literally had this conversation with a
Speaker 1: woman where she's like, oh, you got to meet my friend.
Speaker 1: She's amazing. She experienced a lot of these adverse childhood
Speaker 1: experiences that you're talking about, and she was so resilient.
Speaker 1: She overcame you guys got to connect, But don't call
Speaker 1: her now because she's in the hospital. She just had
Speaker 1: a major heart attack. Oh my god. Literally, I'm not
Speaker 1: making this up. This is an honest conversation that I
Speaker 1: had with someone. And so I think that when we
Speaker 1: do a better job in recognizing what all the potential
Speaker 1: outcomes are, it really helps us to think about to
Speaker 1: put systems in place right, to really invest in prevention
Speaker 1: right right that that prevention and early identification. When you're
Speaker 1: saying this, I'm thinking about I have two daughters, and
Speaker 1: when they came out, they were completely different, right, so
Speaker 1: just genetically personality was very, very different, And I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about how, you know, if they had experienced a lot
Speaker 1: of trauma, which I don't think they did, but you know,
Speaker 1: they might be telling their therapists something else. But I
Speaker 1: think that two of them would react to it very differently.
Speaker 1: I think one of them would internalize it, which I
Speaker 1: think would end up showing itself physically more quickly than
Speaker 1: my other daughter, who is an extrovert and lets everything
Speaker 1: out and lets people know what's going on and says
Speaker 1: I'm hurt, I'm angry. And so it seems to me
Speaker 1: that that does really show up in different degrees and
Speaker 1: at different times, like you said, depending on literally the
Speaker 1: person you are when you come into the world. Ali,
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you some real talk right now.
Speaker 1: So we just had something happen in my household. My
Speaker 1: husband built a go cart for my kids and kind
Speaker 1: of for himself, but purportedly for the kids. Well, at
Speaker 1: least he can build a go cart. My husband can't
Speaker 1: change a light bulb, so that's good. Oh oh, he's
Speaker 1: I mean, my husband tricked it out. It's an ev
Speaker 1: He even got an electric motive for it, and he
Speaker 1: they were all driving the go cart having a great time.
Speaker 1: And you know, it has like a chain, almost like
Speaker 1: a bike chain, and they're driving around sometimes a chain
Speaker 1: would fall off and the chain fell off and my
Speaker 1: husband was putting it back on and there was some
Speaker 1: horrible accident and he amputated like piece of his finger,
Speaker 1: like it got cut off, your husband, my husband. Literally
Speaker 1: this happened three weeks ago, and it was right there
Speaker 1: in front of the kids. Oh my god. And so
Speaker 1: that is like dramatic like it m So it was
Speaker 1: pretty you know, and of course, you know, I'm checking
Speaker 1: in with them, I'm doing all the things. And my
Speaker 1: ten year old was like, oh my god, Mom, I
Speaker 1: saw it. I saw the figure, I saw the finger, Bob,
Speaker 1: I saw it. I saw the blood, and he was
Speaker 1: really you know, and my seven year old was just like,
Speaker 1: you know, he just he kind of was like, I
Speaker 1: hope that doesn't happen to me when I grow up.
Speaker 1: But he otherwise like you wouldn't see anything on the surface,
Speaker 1: right and literally probably oh it was you know earlier
Speaker 1: last week maybe, And last week my ten year old
Speaker 1: says to me, Hey, mom, what's mental health? And I
Speaker 1: started explaining it to him and he said, I think
Speaker 1: I'm having some mental health because I'm feeling like I'm
Speaker 1: having you know, a hard time around daddy and his
Speaker 1: finger and it was amazing to see the ways in
Speaker 1: which the two of them just reacted so differently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I have to say, I'm super proud of my
Speaker 1: ten year old. And I literally was able to sit
Speaker 1: down and say to him, Hey, you know what, these
Speaker 1: are the things that make a difference when you are
Speaker 1: struggling with your mental health and when you are you know,
Speaker 1: because he literally said, he said, I think I'm traumatized.
Speaker 1: My ten year old said this to me though, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, here are some of the things you
Speaker 1: can do. You find somebody who you trust, who you
Speaker 1: feel safe with, and you just talk to them about
Speaker 1: how you're feeling and just, you know, really just share
Speaker 1: everything in your heart, the things that you're afraid of,
Speaker 1: the things that you're worried about, what the thoughts that
Speaker 1: are happening in your in your mind, and we just, like,
Speaker 1: you know, went through the whole thing. And he just said,
Speaker 1: you know, anytime you feel overwhelmed, getting connected with someone
Speaker 1: you feel safe with. And so literally we're in the
Speaker 1: middle of it right now in my household. Yeah. Wow,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to come after the short break
Speaker 1: and we're back. Well, let me ask you this. It
Speaker 1: sounds like you're saying, if you are able to verbalize it,
Speaker 1: if you're able to go to somebody that you trust
Speaker 1: and discuss it, is that sense of relief, way of
Speaker 1: physically helping yourself is at the first step towards healing.
Speaker 1: That is an absolute yes. And this is why it's
Speaker 1: so important for us to create safe spaces for young people.
Speaker 1: And this is one thing that I would say is
Speaker 1: that every adult has the opportunity to be that safe relationship,
Speaker 1: because this is not just a thing that like, oh
Speaker 1: it feels better. When we look at research that's done
Speaker 1: and it's you know, around the world, when kids have safe, stable,
Speaker 1: and nurturing relationships and environments, the risk of negative mental
Speaker 1: and physical health outcomes as a result of ACES drops
Speaker 1: dramatically by more than fifty percent. Wow. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: so these things really really do make a huge difference.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I that I also want to
Speaker 1: say about that is that the earlier you do that right,
Speaker 1: the better. So are there are things Some of the
Speaker 1: things that make a difference in addition to nurturing supportive
Speaker 1: relationships include things like exercise that actually just helped to
Speaker 1: metabolize stress hormones, right because stress hormones are going wild
Speaker 1: in your body. You get out there, you go for
Speaker 1: a long walk, you play some basketball, you do whatever.
Speaker 1: That also helps to metabolize stress hormones. Having good sleep
Speaker 1: hygiene and having a really good sleep schedule because stress
Speaker 1: disrupts sleep, but also lack of sleep increases stress hormones.
Speaker 1: So that's another thing. Being in nature. Like you know
Speaker 1: how when you get out in this really beautiful natural environment,
Speaker 1: how you kind of just you just like xmail, you
Speaker 1: kind of feel your blood pressure go down a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's actually being in nature helps to regulate the brain's
Speaker 1: stress response. Also, things like mindfuls like meditation, that also
Speaker 1: helps to regulate the stress response. So these are things
Speaker 1: that are actual interventions that are demonstrated to reduce stress
Speaker 1: hormones and reduce actually inflammation, so reducing some of that
Speaker 1: health damaging aspect of it, and then at increase some
Speaker 1: of the endorphins and healthy hormones that really actually protect
Speaker 1: us from the effect of stress. So in a perfect world,
Speaker 1: a world that you're managing, if I presented a child
Speaker 1: who has lived in poverty in the foster care system,
Speaker 1: Let's say there's been abuse emotional and physical and let's
Speaker 1: say she's eight years old and I presented her to you,
Speaker 1: would you first deal with the psychological things before you
Speaker 1: got into any kind of physical stuff that's beginning to
Speaker 1: grow within her body. So what you just described as
Speaker 1: the clinical practice that I had in Hunter's Point for
Speaker 1: a decade and a half, and what I would say
Speaker 1: is that we start with wherever the family and the
Speaker 1: child is ready to start. So in my practice, which
Speaker 1: was very low income, predominantly African American, Latino and Pacific Islander,
Speaker 1: some folks were ready to start with therapy and mental
Speaker 1: health interventions. Some folks weren't. Some folks were, you know,
Speaker 1: what they could do to start was really starting with
Speaker 1: joining a basketball team, you know, and having that nurturing,
Speaker 1: caring relationship be with a coach. Some folks were able
Speaker 1: to start by you know, parent and child going for
Speaker 1: a walk together, or caregiver, you know, foster mom and
Speaker 1: child going for a walk together every day and just
Speaker 1: beginning to build up those bonds of trust. But even
Speaker 1: before starting with an intervention, I think one of the
Speaker 1: most important things to do was to recognize what folks
Speaker 1: were doing right, because I think many of us have
Speaker 1: these innate you know, just survival skills, right, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: I had one patient who would just music was his
Speaker 1: meditation and he you know, he was in foster care
Speaker 1: and he was really struggling, but the place where he
Speaker 1: felt tuned in and that he felt at his best
Speaker 1: was in his music. And so really just figuring out
Speaker 1: how to number one really validate and be like, wow,
Speaker 1: you are knowing yourself and you are tuning into what
Speaker 1: really works for you, and let's do more of that,
Speaker 1: and let's figure out, let's let's layer on that. What
Speaker 1: is the next thing that we can do to help
Speaker 1: support you. And then just having these regular check ins
Speaker 1: and moving, you know, jointly setting a goal and so,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it was therapy, sometimes it wasn't. I
Speaker 1: will say that one of the most effective therapies that
Speaker 1: I've seen for little kids kind of under six is
Speaker 1: child parents psychotherapy, where both the caregiver and the child
Speaker 1: are doing therapy together as a diad. And you're talking
Speaker 1: about the caregiver or the parent. They're not the ones
Speaker 1: that were being abusive, right, You're not taking the abuse
Speaker 1: of Oh so you are, so you I'm going to
Speaker 1: say that. Yeah, So the number one thing, and I
Speaker 1: should have said this before. The number one, number one,
Speaker 1: number one thing is to establish safety. So people can
Speaker 1: talk about like oh, therapy and learning to manage your
Speaker 1: emotions and learning to dada. But if you're not safe,
Speaker 1: if you continue to be in this situation where you
Speaker 1: are threatened and your trauma response is being activated on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, multiple times a day, no amount of
Speaker 1: external intervention is going to solve the problem. So the
Speaker 1: number one thing is safety. So yes, definitely with the
Speaker 1: parent who is safe you when you're talking about doing
Speaker 1: child parents psychotherapy, But you know, surprisingly, ultimately we have seen,
Speaker 1: for example, if there's a situation where there's visitation or
Speaker 1: where the parent who has been the harming parent, we
Speaker 1: have seen situations where as part of trying to get
Speaker 1: their custodial rights back, you know, in that whole process,
Speaker 1: that that parent and the child have done child parents
Speaker 1: psychotherapy together. And it really because I'm just going to
Speaker 1: say this, I have seen a lot of parents who
Speaker 1: have been harming their kids, unfortunately a lot, and almost
Speaker 1: every single one was harmed themselves as a child. Yeah yeah, right,
Speaker 1: So when we do this work, what we also have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to do is break that intergenerational cycle and
Speaker 1: help that parent to see that they themselves have an
Speaker 1: overactive stress response, right right, so for them it does
Speaker 1: feel like life or death and for them and just
Speaker 1: being able to help them reregulate themselves literally helps the
Speaker 1: entire family and ultimate if that parent is able to
Speaker 1: successfully do that, right, Like, we're not for sure not
Speaker 1: going to put anybody in harm's way, but if that
Speaker 1: parent is ultimately able to successfully do that, then that
Speaker 1: is a huge breakthrough. Do you find that there's a
Speaker 1: correlation between the kind of trauma and how it manifests
Speaker 1: itself physically? You know, just based on my small amount
Speaker 1: of reading, a lot of times, if there's sexual abuse,
Speaker 1: there's abesity, or there's some kind of eating disorder, correlation
Speaker 1: does that exist in aces? So a lot of people
Speaker 1: have looked at that and studied trends, and it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's a little tricky because when you look at there
Speaker 1: is a strong association between sexual abuse and disordered eating,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, overeating or restricting or under eating
Speaker 1: or bulimia or any of the above. I think where
Speaker 1: it gets more tricky is that if you if you
Speaker 1: look at all of the people who are OBEs. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a smaller proportion that have experienced sexual abuse. So
Speaker 1: that being said, there's no like clear formula, right, I
Speaker 1: would say again, it's all it's filtered through an individual's biology,
Speaker 1: their experiences, their cultural norms, they're you know, all of
Speaker 1: the above. How do you deal with an adult who's
Speaker 1: had a lot of childhood trauma. Let's say an adult
Speaker 1: in their fifties, Is there hope for them? Is there?
Speaker 1: And they're dealing with all kinds of physical issues. Let's
Speaker 1: say they have, you know, gout, depression, suicidal thought, all
Speaker 1: those things. Is it possible to reboot that adult and
Speaker 1: deal with some of the childhood trauma that is causing
Speaker 1: all this? For sure? Good. I just want to say
Speaker 1: that that is a sounding yes. Great. So for that adult,
Speaker 1: one of the things that is really important is number one,
Speaker 1: just understanding what we're dealing with. So I think that
Speaker 1: for many people who are struggling with that depression or
Speaker 1: those suicidal thoughts, who are struggling with those those health
Speaker 1: conditions that seem to especially get worse and flare up
Speaker 1: when we're under stress or when we're experiencing conflict, and
Speaker 1: so many of those people have been told it's in
Speaker 1: their head, that it's you know, maybe that they're the problem,
Speaker 1: or they just they feel Oftentimes a person can feel broken, right,
Speaker 1: and I one thing that I want to say is
Speaker 1: is number one, they're not broken, They're injured and they
Speaker 1: can heal. And number two that actually what's happening in
Speaker 1: their body is actually the normal biological response to trauma.
Speaker 1: They've just experienced an abnormal amount of trauma, right, like
Speaker 1: an unhealthy amount of trauma. And so that piece of recognizing,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the things that I talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: in terms of sleep, exercise, nutrition, mindfulness, mental health, healthy relationships,
Speaker 1: and time in nature, they're as important for adults as
Speaker 1: they are for kids. Now they you know what they
Speaker 1: when we say that the announce of prevention is worth
Speaker 1: a pound of cure, like when we intervene earlier, when
Speaker 1: we identify these things earlier. Which is why when I
Speaker 1: was Surgeon General of California, we actually trained our healthcare
Speaker 1: workforce how to screen for average childhood experiences, and not
Speaker 1: just train folks, but paid them so we like actually
Speaker 1: made it reimbursable for healthcare providers to screen the earlier
Speaker 1: we detect the earlier we intervene. It's just like any
Speaker 1: other health condition. The easier it is to treat, the
Speaker 1: more likely the treatment is going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: have a major effect. Right, But for adults, I really
Speaker 1: want to say that it's never too late, and that
Speaker 1: these interventions first of all, understanding that they may have
Speaker 1: a disregulated stress response and that stress response can be
Speaker 1: impacting their health, their mental health, their behavioral health, their
Speaker 1: substance use, you know, any of that, and that there
Speaker 1: are effective treatments. And I think that piece is really important,
Speaker 1: really important, and it's time for a short break, welcome
Speaker 1: back to go ask Gali, what if the childhood trauma,
Speaker 1: let's say as a child they had to have their
Speaker 1: leg amputated, or being in a car accident, any you know,
Speaker 1: any one of those rights. Yeah, so there is really
Speaker 1: good data. You know, we look at the research around
Speaker 1: medical trauma and how that shows up, so you know,
Speaker 1: having a severe chronic illness or having an amputation or
Speaker 1: something like that, and the data actually shows that the
Speaker 1: outcomes are pretty similar. Really, they're they're pretty similar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do they hold trauma in their body? In other words,
Speaker 1: if you were in a car accident, you went through
Speaker 1: the windshield and you severely cut your head. Would the
Speaker 1: trauma live in that place? So they may have symptoms
Speaker 1: related to that place, or they may not cold. It
Speaker 1: could show up in any way. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that I want to recognize is that, for example,
Speaker 1: when a child goes through the windshield, or when someone
Speaker 1: goes through the windshield, the likelihood that that will be
Speaker 1: recognized as something traumatic and they will receive intervention can
Speaker 1: be a little higher, right, And that's an important component
Speaker 1: of it. But if it is not recognize, if it
Speaker 1: is not addressed, which is the case sometimes, then we
Speaker 1: see those profound impacts. But one of the key things
Speaker 1: that I want to note about the research on adverse
Speaker 1: childhood experiences is that so many of these outcomes speak
Speaker 1: to what happens when people don't receive the appropriate intervention.
Speaker 1: And that's why I want to say, over again, like
Speaker 1: when people do receive the appropriate intervention, when they have
Speaker 1: those nurturing relationships, or when they receive that mental healthcare,
Speaker 1: when they are able to do some of these interventions
Speaker 1: that help to reduce those risks, over and over and
Speaker 1: over and over again, we see these outcomes improving. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and would you say and I know that you've said this,
Speaker 1: but adverse childhood experience they are the single greatest unaddressed
Speaker 1: public health threat today. Absolutely, I think without a doubt,
Speaker 1: and in fact, you know, I've been saying that for
Speaker 1: some time, and I think that post pandemic, I think
Speaker 1: we're seeing that even more. I think that when the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen pandemic hit, what we saw was not just
Speaker 1: an infectious disease emergency, but also an emergency of adversity
Speaker 1: and stress. And we're seeing that now play out in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, record levels of mental health sees
Speaker 1: among our children and youth. Yeah, I say that every
Speaker 1: day we're in a mental health crisis. So I can
Speaker 1: only imagine the levels of crisis that children experience during
Speaker 1: COVID when they were locked in with abusive parents or
Speaker 1: not getting any of the mental health needs or facilities
Speaker 1: available to them. You know, it's a scary time. And
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that you do the work that you
Speaker 1: do because certainly in my parents time, they would have
Speaker 1: seen all childhood trauma as psychological and not put together
Speaker 1: the medical component at all. I've asked you a million questions,
Speaker 1: and certainly with our show notes where We are going
Speaker 1: to have lots of links and lots of information for
Speaker 1: people to read more, to dive into more and understand this.
Speaker 1: But before we end this podcast, you get to ask
Speaker 1: me a question anything you want. I failed biology. Nothing
Speaker 1: that made My question to you is how has your
Speaker 1: self care changed pre and post pandemic. Oh that's a
Speaker 1: great question. During the pandemic, when I was scared for
Speaker 1: myself and my family and we had no answers and
Speaker 1: we didn't know what was what was going on in
Speaker 1: the world, I self care went out the window. In
Speaker 1: other words, I was not doing anything physical. I was
Speaker 1: eating three scoops of ice cream every night and watching
Speaker 1: things like Below Deck, like Poison to the Mind television.
Speaker 1: And I have a tendency to, in my response distress,
Speaker 1: to abandon myself. And when I abandoned myself, I don't
Speaker 1: sleep well, I eat horribly, and so sort of the
Speaker 1: end of COVID, which I feel like we're still in
Speaker 1: the end of COVID. But when things opened up and
Speaker 1: my cholesterol was three fifty, and you know, I had
Speaker 1: clearly gone to war with my own body, I snapped
Speaker 1: two and I started walking. Now I walk seven miles
Speaker 1: a day, I eat a lot better, i have a
Speaker 1: lot more mindfulness, and I'm very clear on what I
Speaker 1: need to do to be a strong human being psychologically
Speaker 1: and physically. However, this goes with what we've been talking about.
Speaker 1: I do notice when I'm in a stressful situation how
Speaker 1: easy it is for me to self abandon So, for instance,
Speaker 1: my mother's in the hospital right now, and you know,
Speaker 1: I will come back to the hotel after a long
Speaker 1: day of being in the hospital and rather than meditate
Speaker 1: or maybe have a healthy salad, I want a hot
Speaker 1: budge Sunday. I'm too tired to brush my teeth. So
Speaker 1: those are things that I'm now very aware of and
Speaker 1: will stop myself. But I find that it is definitely
Speaker 1: the nature of so many people to self abandoned when
Speaker 1: they're in a stressful situation, And probably because I felt
Speaker 1: abandoned as a child, that this is my kind of
Speaker 1: go to place to be. But you also, like I
Speaker 1: want to I think you maybe probably know this already,
Speaker 1: but you also know that there are like real biological
Speaker 1: reasons why you crave that half edge sunday right tell
Speaker 1: me please, so. Cortisol, which is one of our bodies
Speaker 1: stress hormones, yep, they drive us to crave high sugar,
Speaker 1: high fat foods. Okay, So when we are experiencing, especially
Speaker 1: a chronic stressor, and back in the day, when you know,
Speaker 1: we were just developing, the major chronic stressor was famine. Right,
Speaker 1: So cortisol as a hormone was very evolutionarily adaptive because it,
Speaker 1: first of all, it media a little kind of cranky
Speaker 1: and mildly more aggressive. So you we were willing to
Speaker 1: fight and expend energy to get high sugar, high fat foods,
Speaker 1: which was associated with survival. Well, now that pint of
Speaker 1: hogandas it is not associated with survival, but that is
Speaker 1: kind of why we're wired that way, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of the way the stress response works that that
Speaker 1: kind of favors immediate survival at the expense of long
Speaker 1: term survival. So what's interesting about it is because I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people have that same impulse and
Speaker 1: it's so I find it so helpful to be able
Speaker 1: to recognize, oh, there's me craving high sugar, high fat foods.
Speaker 1: That's a sign of stress for me, and it means
Speaker 1: that my cortisol is going through the roof. And so
Speaker 1: one of the things that will actually help to bring
Speaker 1: that cortisol down. Is that if I go for you know,
Speaker 1: a walk around the block, or if I do my meditation,
Speaker 1: you know that that'll lower my cortisol. But just arming
Speaker 1: people with that information I think is really helpful. Is
Speaker 1: that the same with alcohol. I know I certainly have
Speaker 1: friends that were, you know, going through a bottle of
Speaker 1: wine a night during COVID. So stress impacts the part
Speaker 1: of the brain that is the pleasure and reward center,
Speaker 1: and that is the area that is activated by cocaine, heroin, sugar, alcohol,
Speaker 1: all substance of dependence, right. And what it does is
Speaker 1: that it makes it so that people get slightly less
Speaker 1: pleasure from activities that are typically pleasurable. It's it's counterintuitive,
Speaker 1: and as a result, people seek higher and higher dose
Speaker 1: it is of that thing that should be pleasurable in
Speaker 1: order to satisfy this part of the brain. It's called
Speaker 1: the ventral tech mental area in the nucleu succumbents. But
Speaker 1: this is like, yeah, real stuff. So if you had
Speaker 1: childhood trauma, you're much more susceptible to becoming an alcoholic
Speaker 1: or a drug addict. I would have said yes because
Speaker 1: of biological changes to this part of the brain. And
Speaker 1: this is what I tell people all the time, Like,
Speaker 1: you don't just suck, like you don't just have no
Speaker 1: willpower and you're whatever. When you look at the experiences
Speaker 1: that you've experienced compared to someone who hadn't had that experience,
Speaker 1: your biology is different. And what that means is that
Speaker 1: that we just we need to put some extra supports
Speaker 1: in place to support you to be able to live
Speaker 1: the healthy life that you want to live. But one
Speaker 1: of the most important pieces is just pulling out that
Speaker 1: shame in that blame. Right, Like you know, if someone
Speaker 1: if someone develops diabetes as so there's a strong someone
Speaker 1: who has experienced four more aces is almost twice as
Speaker 1: likely to develop diabetes. But if they develop diabetes, they
Speaker 1: don't sit there and going, oh, I suck my pancreas.
Speaker 1: It's the worst pancreas in the world. Right, They look
Speaker 1: in and say, oh, my gosh, this is awful because
Speaker 1: of this what happened to me when I was in
Speaker 1: my childhood. Now I'm dealing with this health condition. And
Speaker 1: I think it's a very similar thing when it comes
Speaker 1: to substance dependence or depression, or you an eating disorder,
Speaker 1: anything else. We just it's not what's wrong with you,
Speaker 1: it's what happened to you. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1: By the way, your ted talk on how childhood trauma
Speaker 1: affects health across the lifetime is a mussy for everybody.
Speaker 1: I know you already have eleven million views. I think
Speaker 1: it speaks to everything we've been talking about on this podcast,
Speaker 1: and I think it's helpful for everybody that has acknowledge
Speaker 1: or unacknowledged childhood trauma. So thank you, Nadine. Thank you
Speaker 1: for the work that you do. Thank you for speaking
Speaker 1: to me about this. And I said it before in
Speaker 1: our show notes. We are going to have a lot
Speaker 1: of links, particularly to your books, so people can really
Speaker 1: understand this even more. Thank you, Thank you. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1: It's great talking to you. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: go ask Allie. You know, there's a lot to think
Speaker 1: about with this episode, and one of the things I
Speaker 1: wonder is even the smallest amount of childhood trauma probably
Speaker 1: plays itself out in our adult life. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about my parents divorce and how you know, on the
Speaker 1: scale of trauma, it's not level ten, but certainly the
Speaker 1: stress of divorce has had an effect on me, which
Speaker 1: is why I reach for the hot Fudge Sunday. Doctor
Speaker 1: Burke Harris's book The Deepest Well, Healing the long term
Speaker 1: effects of childhood adversity. You can buy it anywhere you
Speaker 1: buy your books. And for a lot more information on
Speaker 1: what you heard in this episode, check out our show notes.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe, rate and review. Go Ask Aali,
Speaker 1: and follow me on social media on Instagram at the
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