The Biology of Trauma® With Dr. Aimie

Full show notes + resources
[COMPANION GUIDE NAME]: Every term from this conversation explained in plain words, in the order it comes up.
First it was one food. Now it is smells, supplements, heat and stress, and the list keeps growing.
What will surprise you is that mast cells respond to your total load, and a sensitized system can react to the thought of a trigger alone.
This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. [Part 2 is here: EP 198 LINK]

Dr. Aimie sits down with Dr. Bruce Hoffman, who spent 30 years treating highly reactive, complex chronically ill patients. He explains why stress, from early trauma or daily life, is the largest trigger of mast cell activation he sees, and why the trigger list grows as toxins, processed food and indoor living add to the load.
Dr. Aimie breaks down the cell danger response, the footprint childhood trauma leaves as oxidative damage, and the two-way loop that keeps mast cells and the nervous system setting each other off.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
00:00 Why are so many people reacting to everything?
02:52 How does early childhood trauma load the mast cells?
05:39 What is the cell danger response?
09:16 Why does childhood trauma show up as oxidative damage today?
12:32 Why does the trigger list keep getting longer?
14:39 What sets the threshold for mast cell activation?
17:58 Can mast cells react to a threat that is only predicted?
22:19 How do mast cells keep the nervous system on alert?
24:10 Why do people react to the supplements meant to help them?
27:21 Why does a roadmap create safety?
"You don't even have to have the threat. You can just think about it and your mast cells degranulate." — Dr. Bruce Hoffman
If you react to more foods, smells and supplements every year and no one can tell you why, this episode is for you.

RESOURCES:
Get the free [COMPANION GUIDE NAME]. Every term from this conversation explained in plain words, in the order it comes up
Get The Biology of Trauma book. Chapter 4 covers the cell danger response
Never Bet Against Occam by Dr. Lawrence Afrin


Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

➡ Full show notes + resources:
2 Min Assessment:
In this solo episode, Dr. Aimie explains what dysregulation actually is and why it never exists on its own. She walks through the patterns of stored trauma that feed it, and the four questions you can use to tell whether your nervous system is healing.
She also shares why children's nervous systems change faster than adults', what a patient in the ICU taught her about changing slowly, and why biology is the most neglected piece of nervous system repair.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
00:00 Intro: How Long Does Healing Take?
02:06 How the Nervous System Responds to Change
03:52 Overreacting, Underreacting, and Responding
06:26 Why Dysregulation Can't Create Health
08:14 The Five Steps of the Body's Trauma Response
10:57 Stuck in the Body Trauma Loop
12:35 Dissociation and Immobilization
15:03 Energy Conservation and Depletion
16:58 Why Dysregulation Never Happens Alone
18:49 The Fifth Pattern: When Trauma Becomes Disease
21:48 The Time Factor: Why Healing Takes Longer for Adults
25:53 Why Change Must Be Paced: A Lesson from the ICU
27:37 The Biology Piece: How to Accelerate Healing
29:35 Free Assessment and Closing
"The longer that the nervous system has lived this way, the slower that change has to go in order for the nervous system to integrate that change over time." — Dr. Aimie Apigian
If you have been working on your healing for years and cannot tell whether any of it is working, this episode is for you.
RESOURCES:
Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Stored Trauma. Get a picture of your patterns now, so you have something to measure your healing against.
Get The Biology of Trauma book. The fifth pattern, disease, is in Chapter 10, When Trauma Becomes Disease.
This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.

➡ Full show notes + resources:

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

Your labs keep coming back acceptable. Your symptoms keep getting harder to hold. And you have probably landed on one of two conclusions: either something is wrong with you that nobody has found yet, or something is wrong with how you are handling it.
I want to offer a third.
Full show notes
Three things change at the same time in this decade, and each one is invisible on its own.
Your immune baseline was set decades before perimenopause. Estrogen, which your immune system has been reading as an instruction every day for years, stops declining in a straight line and starts swinging. And cortisol, which is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory signals your body makes, stops being received even while your body is producing more of it.
That third one is why a normal lab result can be a false negative. The all clear is being sent. It is not landing.
In this episode I walk through all three, and I translate the research into language you can use with your own provider. I also tell you why I stopped calculating ACE scores, what a hazard ratio actually means when you read one about your own health, and what has to be stabilized before anything else will hold.
Perimenopause does not create the autoimmunity. It does not create the pattern either. It removes the margin that had been holding that pattern quietly, which is why it feels like it arrived out of nowhere.
In this episode:
Why a cortisol test can read normal while inflammation gets worse
The four immune control points estrogen sits at
Why unpredictable estrogen costs more than declining estrogen
What "seventy percent increased risk" really means
Why I stopped calculating ACE scores
What has to come first, and why most people start at the wrong end
Resources:
Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Stored Trauma: https://biologyoftrauma.scoreapp.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_audio&utm_campaign=ep195-autoimmunity-perimenopause&utm_content=show-notes
The Biology of Trauma by Dr. Aimie Apigian: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637746237?tag=draimie-20
Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/episode-195-why-autoimmune-symptoms-get-worse-in-perimenopause
Full show notes

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

I do not ask about your past. I do not get out the checklist of adverse childhood experiences. I am not calculating your ACE score. And I know how strange that sounds coming from a physician who works with stored trauma.
Full show notes
What I look at is the impact of your past on your today, because that is where it is still leaving its footprint.
In this episode I walk you through the assessment I teach practitioners, so you can run it on yourself. Three domains, one repeating pattern, and the equation that decides whether a stressor stays a stress or tips you into overwhelm.
Then I take you to the part that surprises people most. Trauma work runs on energy. If your body does not have the capacity, the work cannot integrate no matter how willing you are. Which means the most useful place to start is sometimes sleep, or brain inflammation, rather than the trauma itself. That is still trauma work.
I also tell you about the pattern I carried for thirty years, and how it changed without me ever going looking for the reason.
In this episode:
Why the word trauma gets in the way of finding trauma
The three domains I ask about, and the one pattern that runs through all of them
Your capacity against your stress load, and what happens when capacity is small
Where stress ends and overwhelm begins
Why perimenopause costs more capacity than most women expect
The nervous system dashboard, and the three things that feed it
Why I sometimes tell someone not to do the trauma work yet
How to find your biggest block without handing yourself the whole list
Find your pattern: Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Stored Trauma
The book: The Biology of Trauma by Dr. Aimie Apigian
Full show notes
This podcast is educational and is not medical advice. Consult your own physician about your health.



Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma

Your labs confirmed the autoimmune diagnosis. The hardest symptom turned out to be the one nobody prepared you for.

Dr. Aimie goes solo on depression and autoimmunity, and which one actually comes first. The answer is less orderly than the one most people are given, and it changes what to do about it.

➡️ Full show notes and research: CLICK HERE

Most people are told depression is a reasonable response to being ill. Dr. Aimie interrupts that conclusion with what the research shows: each condition carries close to double the risk of the other, depression turns up in the two years before a diagnosis is made, and roughly a quarter of the link between early adversity and autoimmune disease appears to travel through mental health on the way.

She also walks through why this depression rarely feels like sadness, and why the medication may have underperformed. She was on two of them herself, and the hardest part was not the depression.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

0:00 The hardest symptom of an autoimmune diagnosis

02:41 — Why is depression treated as the reasonable response to a diagnosis?

04:49 — What does double the risk actually mean for you?

07:58 — What is a dose-response pattern and why does it matter?

09:45 — Where does the childhood adversity evidence stop?

12:19 — What does it mean that depression mediates part of the link?

13:54 — What happens when your cells stop responding to cortisol?

15:55 — Why does this feel like the flu rather than sadness?

20:48 — Why has working on your thoughts not moved it?

22:55 — Why do antidepressants underperform here?

24:54 — What does the infliximab trial actually prove?

28:48 — Where do you start when both are running?

"Depression is part of the road from I was healthy to I now have an autoimmune diagnosis." — Dr. Aimie Apigian

If the antidepressant did not do much and you quietly concluded something was wrong with you, this episode is for you.

RESOURCES:

Take the FREE 2-Minute Assessment for Discovering Your Pattern of Stored Trauma: You cannot change a pattern you cannot see. Find your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much, then see how the other four show up.

Get The Biology of Trauma: Disease is one of the five patterns of stored trauma.

Nothing in this episode is a recommendation to change or stop a medication. Talk to the prescriber who knows your history.

This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.

Grab your copy of The Biology of Trauma