Hashimoto’s and Emotional Trauma

Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

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Okay, so today we’re going to talk about emotional trauma because we were just, ’cause we were just conversing about the consistency that we see in emotional trauma on the intake forms that we get and the insanity of so much of it.

It just blows me away as to what’s going on out there today; as far as emotional trauma goes. And how it’s connected to Hashimoto’s, and I practice functional neurology as well as functional medicine.

I think most of you probably know me as a functional medicine practitioner. But I was functional neurology before I became a functional medicine practitioner. And the whole world of functional neurology was built around, ultimately it’s built about correcting imbalances in the brain and giving people.

.. The functional neurologist were the first brain rehab guys and giving brain exercises and stuff. It was really built around chronic stress. It was really built around what a lot of people know about today, which is this chronic fight-flight mechanism.

And it shuts down your gut and it shuts down your stomach and it causes you to have all, then it’s off to the races of leaky gut and all that type of stuff. And how, how that can cause that. It’s one of most common causes of constipation.

If you have small intestine bacterial overgrowth and you have stress, it’s screwing up your gut. Good luck in getting rid of it. So that’s what functional neurology really was a lot about, it still is.

But one step up on that is emotional trauma because emotional traumas, we’re talking about physical trauma versus emotional trauma and physical traumas: “Okay, I got in a car accident and everything went south.

” Car accident is a trigger that trigger goes away. It’s usually triggering something that’s there, like you already have the genes to get MS. Or you already have the genes to get Hashimoto’s or rheumatoid arthritis and in an injury like that can set off enough of an immune response, inflammatory response to set off an immune problem.

For those of you who’ve had that happen. Emotional trauma is a little bit different. I mean, you can have an emotional trauma that is my husband was beating me up for five years. That was a physical trauma.

But across the board, across the board, emotional traumas are… It’s just stunning to me, the spectrum of types of situations that people can encounter in your younger lives and throughout life. That set off the fear center in their brain.

And it’s different than fight-flight. It’s different than, “Ooh, there’s danger here. “I gotta run away from this danger, “or stop and face the danger.” And then that puts you into fight-flight.

And then that sets off a certain amount of chemicals that causes your heart start pounding. And again it shuts down your stomach. It shuts down your intestines in such. Then your bladder, ’cause you don’t need to be peeing or pooping while you’re fighting or fleeing.

And so that’s how the nervous system is set up. But emotional traumas can put you in that, into that state, literally 24 hours a day. Because that state is a state of baseline human survival. There’s danger.

My brain puts my system into a certain situation to where I now have more energy. I have more strength. I have more oxygen. I have more blood sugar going to all my muscles and my brain and all that type of stuff for a short period of time to get me out of an acute situation.

Emotional traumas create chronic situations. And the difference is, is that the emotional traumas, I mean getting raped. Being a police officer and watching your partner get shot. These are people who’ve come into my office.

One lady whose husband was shot in front of her who comes home and finds her husband dead on the floor. Who’s been raped, who has been beaten, whose parents were alcoholics who didn’t care about them, who, you know, oh my God.

It’s like, these things are egregious to our sensibilities. And basically we have this part in our brain called the amygdala. Most people are somewhat familiar with this today. Which is great because it’s the fear center of your brain.

It does some other things. But it’s the fear center of the brain. It’s like, oops, there’s danger, survival. I gotta get out of here. But when you have emotional trauma it’s so horrible.

It’s so agreeable to that person’s sensibilities that your brain literally, that amygdala, literally programs it. And literally it programs into your brain. Like you would program a computer. It’s like, it’s saying, I don’t want you to be unaware of this ever happening again, because it’s so bad.

And it affected your physiology so bad that I’m gonna make you aware of it, 24-7. I’m gonna make you aware of it all the time. And this person’s gonna have chronic anxiety. They might, they’re gonna have panic attacks.

But at the very least, they’re gonna be chronically affecting their gut. And they’re gonna… People come in here and they have Hashimoto’s, we’re looking for triggers to trigger my…

One of the big triggers of course is a lot of gut things. You know, gut triggers are like leaky gut and food sensitivities and small intestinal bacteria overgrowth and celiac, and all sorts of stuff. All these old trigger Hashimoto’s.

Well, you’re not gonna fix the gut, if 24-7 your brain is continually in fight-flight. And it’s continually putting out stress hormones, cortisol, adrenaline, epinephrine, your heart’s pounding.

(Dr. Martin gasps) You’re breathing hard. You have anxiety. Try to get a patient better when all that’s happening. It’s almost impossible. So on my intake forms we have, have you experienced emotional trauma? It’s almost never do I see, no.

Almost never do I see no. Ever. It’s like, you know, it’s varying degrees, but it’s always there. Then what we do is try to determine, okay, how much of a player is it? Is it here, is it a 10? If it’s a 10, I mean, herbs and botanicals only go so far.

I mean, I might have to give the person so many herbs and botanicals that they won’t be able to afford to take care of anything else because they’re taking so much a day. And so, in that area, look, don’t, don’t, don’t start throwing things at me now.

I mean in that area, it might be like maybe some Xanax or Zoloft might be a good thing. Maybe a benzo might be a good thing. In the beginning to calm that person down so that the rest of their physiology will respond to what you’re doing as an alternative medicine, functional medicine practitioner.

You know, at that point, I might even send somebody to counseling. Well I work with the clinical hypnotherapist. I work with counselors who do different types of counseling. I work with a functional psychiatrist.

So I mean, when it gets up there, like when it gets up there like that, you need to calm that down. I’ve had people literally take a Xanax and go my stomach feels better. And be shocked that their stomach is feeling better.

It’s like, because you have this thing that’s going on and it won’t stop. So the point I’m making there is you have to kind of gauge it. Some people it’s slow. It’s like on a scale of 1 to 10 maybe there I get two or three, and maybe it won’t interfere with what’s going on in the rest of your physiology and your pain and all that type of stuff.

And maybe what’ll happen is as we’re getting the other things under control the chemistry gets better. Your brain starts working better. And it actually starts to be able to handle that better.

But at the other end of the spectrum if you’re seven, eight, nine, or 10 something’s gotta be done immediately. I have a case right now. I just wrote an email to them this morning. And this gentleman if we have to break through his we have to break through his emotional trauma and we have to break through his substantial depression and anxiety.

That’s our first battle. That’s our first battle for him. There’s a high, if you’ve watch me enough on this, there was a hierarchy to care. And the hierarchy is if somebody got severe emotional trauma and they’re in chronic fight-flight like this all the time.

Not happening. You are not taking care of them with herbs and botanicals and diet and lifestyle. That’s not gonna happen. You have to work with that. And, and so that’s where the functional neurology part of my training comes in.

And that’s where things like counseling come in. And that’s where things like medications are you kidding me? The, I mean, would you rather be like anxiety and panic attacks, or, “I’ve never wanna take a medication “’cause it’s ruining my, “’cause it’s gonna be a chemical and it’s gonna ruin me.

” It’s like, it’s not going to ruin you, like having cortisol or epinephrin and adrenaline and norepinephrine or adrenaline running through your body, 24 hours a day. Trust me. Look at somebody that you know that’s like the most stressed out person that you know.

And they don’t look very good. Because those chemicals are really killing you. Like 24-7. So that’s my take on it. I’m here trying to fix people. I don’t have a complete, like okay, it’s gonna be all, you know, boom, drugs bad.

I know the medical system is collapsing as we sit here, I think. But you have to keep things. You have to keep perspective on what it’s gonna take to stop the downward progress for you, reverse your progress and get you help on it.

If it’s a combination of medication in the early going and then being able to strip it off and do supplements later on, fine. Sometimes you need to stay on the medication; if you’ve had so much damage by the time you get to the point that somebody like me sees you, it’s a pretty good trade off under the right circumstances.

So emotional traumas, huge, just absolutely huge. They are probably one of the two or three biggest triggers and perpetuators and they are up there. They are the one or two most important things to take care of early on, in treatment when you’re treating autoimmunity.

So I think that pretty much covers it. So emotional trauma. I hope that helps. I get a little carried away on that one because it’s a little emotional and for me to see it and for me to experience it through these patients that come in, it’s really, really crazy.

So I hope that’s helpful to you. If you’re wondering if that problem that you had back when you were 12 years old and you’re now 55: could it be a player? It could. And you need somebody who to help you to evaluate that.