The Mind-Body Connection
For far too long, traditional medicine has treated the mind and body as separate entities. But nothing could be further from the truth (seems pretty obvious, right?). You see, your body responds to the way you think and feel. For example, if you’re feeling stressed, anxious, or upset, your body will react with high blood pressure, increased heart rate, or perhaps an ulcer. Even just thinking about an experience might “trigger” a physical response, like a panic attack or nausea.
This is your body’s response to your mind communicating that something isn’t right.
The body communicates with the mind, too, like when it reacts to a chemical toxin in the environment or feels pain. Interestingly, it’s been proven that we can reduce the intensity of physical pain (body) when we can fully express our emotions (instead of controlling them in our mind). More on healing the mind to heal the body later!
The Link Between Early Trauma and Disease
The landmark ACE Study is the most well-known for connecting childhood trauma with disease and riskier behavior in adulthood. The study, conducted between 1995 and 1997, involved giving over 17,000 adult participants a questionnaire about their adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). These ACEs (childhood trauma-inducing events) included experiencing/ witnessing abuse, violence, substance abuse in the home, mental illness of a family member, losing a parent to divorce, abandonment, or death, feeling like no one in your family loved you, feeling like you had no one to protect you, and other heightened emotional experiences. (Get your ACE score here.)
The number of “yes” answers to these questions were then compared to the measurement of adult risk behaviors, health status, and disease. They found a clear relationship between the number of ACEs, health risk behaviors, and disease.
The more ACEs a child had, the more likely they would suffer from alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, suicide, smoking, poor self-rated health, STDs, increase in physical inactivity, and obesity in adulthood. There was also a graded relationship between ACEs and ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures, and liver disease.
The study concluded a strong relationship between the number of adverse childhood trauma experiences and multiple risk factors for the leading causes of death in adults. But adverse childhood experiences aren’t the only way to experience trauma. Learn the causes of trauma here.
