The Brain.
I was recently recommended a book called The Last Best Cure: My Quest to Awaken the Healing Parts of My Brain and Get My Body, My Joy and My Life by Donna Jackson Nakazawa. I, of course, looked it up and purchased it right away. The reason I purchased it is because the title and description talked about getting back joy. Yes! I want to know how to do that!
As I read through the book I had a million aha moments and was completely entranced by it. It was so much more than I anticipated. The premise of the book is about her journey to get some of her life back. She is riddled with autoimmune illnesses and even had to relearn to walk twice so far in her life because of it. She meets a new doctor at John Hopkins who has a theory that might help her regain some of her joy. They decided to set out a plan for the next year on practices she would do. After the year is up they would retake all the same tests and see where she was at.
The journey starts in the doctor's office where Dr. Anastasia Rowland-Seymour asks her about ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences). She states that a harmful brain-body stress cycle can be set in place during childhood trauma. This could also be triggered by present stressors or come from both of them. So it's important to rewire the brain-body connections and quiet the stress-induced inflammatory response, calm down the immune system, and let the body be able to heal. In Donna's case, her father passed away suddenly when she was 12-years old. And after that her family life was never the same as her mother became quite depressed.
They've done several studies on ACEs and what it's impact can be. They've come to find that early trauma affects you on a cellular level. So the stress you face now can spark that same stress response and inflammation cascade that was turned on in your childhood. They've created a test to calculate how many ACEs a person has experienced before they turned 18. Some of the items on the list are death of a loved one, physical or emotional abuse (whether it's to you or anyone else in the family), and divorce. So after seeing those listed it's not that shocking to hear that more than two-thirds of the study participants had experienced childhood adversity before the age of 18. One-sixth had a score of 4 or higher. This group of people in the study were an average age of 57. Knowing this makes me wonder if that the percentage would be much higher if you sampled a younger group of people. Divorce rates of parents would be higher if sampled from a group that was a decade younger. But thankfully it's trending downward due to people waiting until they're more established to marry. Good job, millennials!
Trauma has more of an impact on a child because their brains are still developing. It activates an early pattern of inflammation and cellular aging. The more ACEs you experienced the higher the risk for autoimmune disease, depression, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and headaches. Donna has an ACE score of 2, which meant her chance for developing autoimmune illness increased by 40%.
The good news is that by practicing a number of brain-body approaches we can change those cellular patterns. We can alter our PIN response (psycho-immu-neurology). You're intrigued, right? We all know that feeling joy and well-being is good for us. But it's not always as simple as saying "I'm going to be happy right now". Though we wish it was! In our modern life we've come to regulate stress more as life-or-death, when really it's not. In doing so our fight-or-flight response turns on which sets us into a hyperarousal state. We were intended to be able to release that state of stress. So we can then recover and restore our balance. The problem is that we often don't. We don't physically release that stress letting our bodies know. We keep it in, hide it in our muscles, and suppress our feelings. So it's still there and can be reactivated quickly. This is activated by our sympathetic nervous system (SNS). By activating our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) we can balance it back out. We'll learn more about this later.
When our SNS is constantly stuck on it is extremely hard on the body. This is why many people suffer from high blood pressure, digestion issues, heart disease, anxiety, depression, and autoimmune disease. When we're in a fight-or-flight state our body flows oxygen out to our limbs... you know in case we need to be ready to do something physically heroic. So if it's going out to our limbs, what's going on in our stomach? Nothing. The blood flow shuts down and the oxygen moves out. This will give us the feeling of "butterflies". So now that we know that, it's not shocking how many of us deal with digestive issues.
Scientists have found that when we are young and still developing, the sensation of fight-or-flight does more than just send a toxic floating brain cocktail to the rest of the body. This causes biophysical changes in the young brain through a process called epigenetics. This is the expression of our genes. Gene methylation, an epigenetic process, adheres small chemical markers to other genes and silences them. So when someone experiences an adverse event in childhood those chemical markers attach to genes that regulate production of stress hormone receptors in the brain. By silencing these genes the brain isn't able to moderate stress. This is why people get stuck in chronic hyperarousal or constant flight-or-fight mode. Which means inflammatory hormones keep surging through the body. Fortunately, studies do show that nurture can lighten this pattern. So if you are comforted and supported after experiencing a trauma at a young age, it can mitigate the gene methylation.
Another interesting piece is that ACEs can alter our hippocampus, the area that processes our emotions and memories. They've found it's about 6 percent smaller due to hormones being released excessively while it's still maturing. The damage affects how we react to stress and process our emotions.
Though this all sounds quite depressing, there is hope. Our bodies are miraculous. By creating a more positive floating brain we can change our epigenetics, which will alter our renewed cells. To do this, Donna sets out to practice mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and acupuncture. Did you know that every 5-7 days we create a new stomach lining? White blood cells are renewed every few days and red blood cells every few months. So just think of what's possible.
I'm going to end that there and do separate posts on her discoveries and some of my own experiences. I have practiced these things, but not consistently and never all at once. Learning all of this I realized a lot about my own self and many other people in my life. I've never put much thought into my childhood before, other than telling people I once broke both my arms at the same time. I honestly wasn't asked much about it until a year ago when I started going to therapy. And it wasn't until now after reading this book am I making more connections about who I am and why. The thing is, I do love who I am. I just don't show myself that love as much as I should. And though there was some trauma in my childhood (that I honestly never really thought about), I only remember it fondly. I remember farming with my dad, going to Flandrau and Happy Joe's as a family, spending weekend afternoons driving the countryside (which always included checking out crops or driving through a car or farm machinery dealership), being silly together, hugs and more hugs, and an overall sense of warmth. When you go through a tunnel there's always light on the other side. That's how I choose to view what I'm going through. I'm still in the tunnel, but I know there is light at the end and somedays I can see a glimpse of it.
Love to you all!
Ash
As I read through the book I had a million aha moments and was completely entranced by it. It was so much more than I anticipated. The premise of the book is about her journey to get some of her life back. She is riddled with autoimmune illnesses and even had to relearn to walk twice so far in her life because of it. She meets a new doctor at John Hopkins who has a theory that might help her regain some of her joy. They decided to set out a plan for the next year on practices she would do. After the year is up they would retake all the same tests and see where she was at.
The journey starts in the doctor's office where Dr. Anastasia Rowland-Seymour asks her about ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences). She states that a harmful brain-body stress cycle can be set in place during childhood trauma. This could also be triggered by present stressors or come from both of them. So it's important to rewire the brain-body connections and quiet the stress-induced inflammatory response, calm down the immune system, and let the body be able to heal. In Donna's case, her father passed away suddenly when she was 12-years old. And after that her family life was never the same as her mother became quite depressed.
They've done several studies on ACEs and what it's impact can be. They've come to find that early trauma affects you on a cellular level. So the stress you face now can spark that same stress response and inflammation cascade that was turned on in your childhood. They've created a test to calculate how many ACEs a person has experienced before they turned 18. Some of the items on the list are death of a loved one, physical or emotional abuse (whether it's to you or anyone else in the family), and divorce. So after seeing those listed it's not that shocking to hear that more than two-thirds of the study participants had experienced childhood adversity before the age of 18. One-sixth had a score of 4 or higher. This group of people in the study were an average age of 57. Knowing this makes me wonder if that the percentage would be much higher if you sampled a younger group of people. Divorce rates of parents would be higher if sampled from a group that was a decade younger. But thankfully it's trending downward due to people waiting until they're more established to marry. Good job, millennials!
Trauma has more of an impact on a child because their brains are still developing. It activates an early pattern of inflammation and cellular aging. The more ACEs you experienced the higher the risk for autoimmune disease, depression, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and headaches. Donna has an ACE score of 2, which meant her chance for developing autoimmune illness increased by 40%.
The good news is that by practicing a number of brain-body approaches we can change those cellular patterns. We can alter our PIN response (psycho-immu-neurology). You're intrigued, right? We all know that feeling joy and well-being is good for us. But it's not always as simple as saying "I'm going to be happy right now". Though we wish it was! In our modern life we've come to regulate stress more as life-or-death, when really it's not. In doing so our fight-or-flight response turns on which sets us into a hyperarousal state. We were intended to be able to release that state of stress. So we can then recover and restore our balance. The problem is that we often don't. We don't physically release that stress letting our bodies know. We keep it in, hide it in our muscles, and suppress our feelings. So it's still there and can be reactivated quickly. This is activated by our sympathetic nervous system (SNS). By activating our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) we can balance it back out. We'll learn more about this later.
When our SNS is constantly stuck on it is extremely hard on the body. This is why many people suffer from high blood pressure, digestion issues, heart disease, anxiety, depression, and autoimmune disease. When we're in a fight-or-flight state our body flows oxygen out to our limbs... you know in case we need to be ready to do something physically heroic. So if it's going out to our limbs, what's going on in our stomach? Nothing. The blood flow shuts down and the oxygen moves out. This will give us the feeling of "butterflies". So now that we know that, it's not shocking how many of us deal with digestive issues.
Scientists have found that when we are young and still developing, the sensation of fight-or-flight does more than just send a toxic floating brain cocktail to the rest of the body. This causes biophysical changes in the young brain through a process called epigenetics. This is the expression of our genes. Gene methylation, an epigenetic process, adheres small chemical markers to other genes and silences them. So when someone experiences an adverse event in childhood those chemical markers attach to genes that regulate production of stress hormone receptors in the brain. By silencing these genes the brain isn't able to moderate stress. This is why people get stuck in chronic hyperarousal or constant flight-or-fight mode. Which means inflammatory hormones keep surging through the body. Fortunately, studies do show that nurture can lighten this pattern. So if you are comforted and supported after experiencing a trauma at a young age, it can mitigate the gene methylation.
Another interesting piece is that ACEs can alter our hippocampus, the area that processes our emotions and memories. They've found it's about 6 percent smaller due to hormones being released excessively while it's still maturing. The damage affects how we react to stress and process our emotions.
Though this all sounds quite depressing, there is hope. Our bodies are miraculous. By creating a more positive floating brain we can change our epigenetics, which will alter our renewed cells. To do this, Donna sets out to practice mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and acupuncture. Did you know that every 5-7 days we create a new stomach lining? White blood cells are renewed every few days and red blood cells every few months. So just think of what's possible.
I'm going to end that there and do separate posts on her discoveries and some of my own experiences. I have practiced these things, but not consistently and never all at once. Learning all of this I realized a lot about my own self and many other people in my life. I've never put much thought into my childhood before, other than telling people I once broke both my arms at the same time. I honestly wasn't asked much about it until a year ago when I started going to therapy. And it wasn't until now after reading this book am I making more connections about who I am and why. The thing is, I do love who I am. I just don't show myself that love as much as I should. And though there was some trauma in my childhood (that I honestly never really thought about), I only remember it fondly. I remember farming with my dad, going to Flandrau and Happy Joe's as a family, spending weekend afternoons driving the countryside (which always included checking out crops or driving through a car or farm machinery dealership), being silly together, hugs and more hugs, and an overall sense of warmth. When you go through a tunnel there's always light on the other side. That's how I choose to view what I'm going through. I'm still in the tunnel, but I know there is light at the end and somedays I can see a glimpse of it.
Love to you all!
Ash
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