Laurel van der Toorn

No, we're talking about much more systemic processes.

Yeah.

And not even extreme.

I mean, childhood trauma can be as simple as you were a really sensitive, artistic kid and you were in a family of jocks.

Right.

That mismatch, that not feeling seen and understood can be experienced as traumatic.

Yeah.

So ACEs, these adverse childhood experiences, have a very strong correlation with chronic health conditions like autoimmune disorders, type 2 diabetes, asthma, heart disease, cancer, COPD.

fibromyalgia, you name it, these kind of chronic physical conditions that are considered somewhat systemic.

It's not just like your shoulder hurts, although I do like that example.

That's a very literal, right?

But what we are coming to understand and something that modern medicine is going to have to reckon with is that we really view things as

So siloed that like, oh, if you have a heart issue, you see your cardiologist and that's it.

Rather than like, OK, what's going on systemically, either psychologically or your kind of whole global medical picture that is contributing to this.

So even though we understand things are systemic, they're not treated that way anymore.

And the etiology of this, like the reason it happens is that we are systems and we have this whole internal ecosystem.

And if your early years are spent with that ecosystem in a state of heightened stress, we know heightened stress is not good for us.

Absolutely.

That's that's it.

And, you know, the more stress, the more aces you have, the more inflammation you're going to have.