This splinter story is an APOE metaphor, a term I have coined as "adverse pre-onset experiences" aka APOEs. This builds on the term for our knowledge that ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) influence risk for chronic illness. This is about how chronic illness starts for many of us within weeks or months of a stressful or traumatic event. And how we think, very normally, that this particular event is the cause...

Juleus Ghunta’s empowering book Rohan Bullkin and the Shadows—A Story about ACEs and Hope , vibrantly illustrated by Rachel Moss, is a much-needed story of a boy who experiences Shadows that interfere with his ability to read because they make his mind “flicker like a hurricane,” go blank, and sometimes race and “refuse to shut down.” This is an affirming, normalizing contextualization of how bad events and scary experiences, now understood from the science of adverse childhood experiences...

Spring in my garden is a riot of color. I caught the above pic of my poppies just past their peak after deciding to replace them and wanting to document the process. Because uprooting a cheery, bright colored plant that makes me happy in order to take the chance that something else might do an even better job can feel, as a friend of mine once quipped, "fraught with peril." And that's what it can feel like when we are in the process of healing. When, instead of believing that this is the...

I created a downloadable Healing Fact Sheet in response to a reader who asked if I could create a simple guide that she and others could give to friends, family, neighbors, landlords, lodgers, acquaintances and others. Someone had recently disbelieved her and put her down when she had set a healthy boundary to support her body and her health, and she had felt despair. As so many of us with chronic illness have experienced, this kind of emotional conflict and lack of understanding can be very...

Adverse babyhood experiences (ABEs) are a new construct derived from large bodies of evidence that identify a different group of risk factors from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). ABEs occur before a child’s 3rd birthday to influence infant and maternal morbidity and mortality. ABEs are also risk factors for chronic illnesses and other chronic conditions in the child as well as symptoms in parents.

When I first learned about the ACEs I thought my ACE score was zero even though I'd been researching the effects of adversity on risk for chronic illness for a few years by then. In addition, none of the illnesses in that first study seemed to apply to me. I was experiencing increasingly disabling fatigue that would eventually be diagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). This illness, still often thought to be psychological, had already contributed to my leaving my career as a family...

Fatigue comes in many shapes and sizes, especially these days. It is common with and after Covid, and for Covid long haulers. Fatigue is also a common symptom for many people with chronic illnesses and autoimmune diseases. It affects 4 out of 5 people with fibromyalgia and is the hallmark of chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), which is the disabling chronic illness I've had for over 20 years and that I've been gradually improving from using trauma perspectives and approaches. Fatigue is also...

These are the books, resources and therapies I wish I'd known about when I was a family doctor and when I first started getting sick with what would turn out to be a disabling chronic illness. This compilation adds to traditional approaches with the most helpful resources I’ve found over the past 20 years of learning about the science of adversity, why it's not psychological and how to heal the effects of trauma.

ACEs science is waking the world up to the role of adversity - big and small, overt and covert, from acts of commission as well as acts of omission - as one of the most important non-genetic risk factors for chronic illness and other conditions that keep people from reaching their full potential. It is also paving the way for recognizing the role of other categories of adversity that shape health. Here are 7 additional categories of adversity that shape and influence health and more

Dan Fleshler's autoimmune type 1 diabetes was triggered by an adverse event when he was 7 years old, which is something I’ve been seeing for all kinds of different autoimmune and other chronic diseases as I have been integrating the research literature for more than 20 years. I call these Adverse Pre Onset Experiences (APOEs).

Over 90 Speakers. Talks on Racism. Increasing resilience in the immune system during Covid. Healing trauma, freeze, chronic illness, and the cell danger response. Guided meditations. Yoga. Functional Medicine. The difference between stress and trauma.

Free Online Summit June 1-10. This talk June 3rd focuses on how trauma is a common risk factor for chronic illness, complex PTSD (attachment trauma) and PTSD - and how the science is helping us realize that even chronic illness has more reversibility than we've realized. Includes epigenetics, the cell danger response, recent study showing effects of cesarean sections on risk for autoimmune diseases 40 years later, as well as Anti-ACEs, resilience and prevention.

Free Online Summit June 1-10 on Healing PTSD with over 30 speakers specializing in trauma and healing, from somatic experiencing (SE) to emotional freedom technique (EFT aka "tapping"), to complex PTSD and chronic illness, and more

In a tiny, unexpected moment that I had slowed down enough to be available for, my world tilted a little on its axis. Something inside of me had shifted so that it was able to TAKE IT IN. To receive. To FEEL... This is how we thaw out of freeze or fight and flight states and come more fully back into our lives. Into who we are underneath the layers. This is how we metabolize the intensity of a crisis in the present moment and minimize the chance it will be traumatic,

The most common reactions I get when I mention the word "trauma" to other people with chronic illness are shame, fear or rage that stem from having been told - by our society, by a doctor, by a family member or friend or coworker - that it means symptoms are all in their heads. I still regularly read or hear from people with chronic diseases of all kinds that their physicians, nursing staff or other health care professionals have disbelieved or belittled them, or whispered behind their backs...

If you have a chronic illness, research showing that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) increase risk for chronic illness may help begin to make sense of your symptoms. They explain why it's not your fault. And why it's not in your head. What Are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)? ACEs refer specifically to 10 types of trauma examined in an initial 1998 study conducted by Dr. Vincent Felitti, an internist at Kaiser Permanent in San Diego, and Dr. Robert Anda, an epidmiologist with the...

I was first inspired to create a fact sheet summarizing the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) after reading a comment in “Got Your ACE score?” A reader wished she had a form to give her doctor that documented the vast body of evidence explaining how early trauma increases risk for chronic physical and mental health conditions and much more. I could relate.

This blog post emerged as I saw that it's not always clear what can be done to heal from the effects of trauma. I'd never heard of any of these approaches when I was a family physician and have discovered others over time. The tools I introduce here include books and therapies for healing the effects of many different kinds of trauma. While I focus specifically on chronic illness, these books and approaches are also helpful for mental health conditions and other symptoms including PTSD,...

Can stress or trauma cause chronic illness? Or trigger onset? Answers are still hard to find despite links between stress, trauma and chronic illness that have been observed for millenia. For example, people have been sharing their stories for almost 2000 years about how type 1 diabetes (T1D), the less common autoimmune form of the disease, started after a serious life event. Research from the past 40 years has also suggested that severe life events can induce the disease and is not just a...