The Later Life Health Effects of Childhood Trauma
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Smart, sharp, and slightly unhinged. Late night's fresh perspective. The Last Show with David Cooper. Adverse childhood experiences, you know, traumatic and difficult events when you're a young kid, they can lead to serious health problems later in your life. But there's some good news. It's not a sealed fate. There are things you can do later in life to work against negative outcomes if you had a rough childhood. I'm here with Laurel Vander Torn to discuss all this. She's a licensed therapist and runs Laurel Therapy Collective that serves California and Florida. Laurel, a joy having you back. Hi.
What are adverse childhood experiences and their impact on adult health?
So this is kind of wild that like having a particularly rough childhood can lead to health outcomes. At the commercial break, I said my brother used to slug me in the shoulder a lot as a kid. And now my shoulder aches as an adult. That is not what we're talking about.
No, we're talking about much more systemic processes.
Things like extreme poverty, extreme trauma, things like this.
Yeah. And not even extreme.
What good news exists for those affected by childhood trauma?
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.
OK, now we're talking about me again. Yeah. I had a pretty, I don't know, lonely, sad, rough, like emotions wise childhood. I didn't want for anything, but it really is the vast array of experiences. In what way can we as adults experience health outcomes that are kind of negative if we had a childhood like that?
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.
It can cause things like inflammation and long term inflammation can cause health problems. Like these are the mechanisms I'm thinking of. I'm sure there are others.
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. And that is going to lead to chronic health conditions.
Okay, so can you give me like an example of maybe contrived of like some experiences someone has as a kid and then what it can do when you're an adult?
Yeah, so let's say there's a kid who had, they've lost a parent either to death or incarceration or substance use as a kid. they are much more likely to develop an autoimmune disease, like let's say Crohn's disease or a thyroid condition or chronic pain, just because the early prolonged stress is not good for us. And now I say prolonged stress because actually short bursts of stress are quite good for us. They help spur tissue repair and all these things that are good for us. But this is in short bursts. If you are just having chronic stress, not good for us.
Not to mention coping. Like if I have short bursts of stress as a kid, I learn how to cope with them. And then when I have them as an adult, I'm well prepared. If I'm just coddled and sheltered and everything's always good growing up, I get my first bit of adversity at my first job. Yeah. And who knows how I'm going to handle it.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:36
2
What are adverse childhood experiences and their impact on adult health?
0:36–1:02
3
What good news exists for those affected by childhood trauma?
1:02–6:59
4
How can childhood trauma lead to chronic health conditions?
6:59–9:03
5
What systemic issues arise from childhood trauma?
9:03–10:00
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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