Autoimmunity And Trauma

Your immune system doesn't just defend against invaders.

It records every experience since you were born,

Maintaining patterns of protection when your nervous system got stuck in dysregulation.

Hi,

I'm Dr.

Amy,

And welcome to this mini episode of the Biology of Trauma podcast,

Where we're diving deeper into the biology behind the autoimmunity that we discussed in our main episode.

128.

I can't believe it that we are already at podcast episode 128,

And it was on how attachment drives anxiety,

Autoimmunity,

And chronic illness.

This miniature episode is a question that came in from Melissa.

Melissa is a clinical therapist from Toronto.

And she wrote in and she said,

Dr.

Amy,

I'm a therapist working with clients who have autoimmunity.

And after listening to your episode on attachment trauma,

I'm wondering how can I better understand the mechanism that connects early emotional neglect to developing autoimmunity decades later?

And what do I do about it?

That's always the question,

Isn't it?

Not just the information,

But what do I do about this information?

In our main episode this week,

We explored six core attachment pains.

It started with hold me,

This idea that when we are first born,

We have the need,

A survival need to be held.

So the first attachment pain is hold me.

And that develops when,

As infants,

We don't receive the co-regulation that we need to feel safe to rest.

This will make us feel like we can never rest.

We always have to be active.

We always need to be stimulated because relaxing doesn't feel safe.

It can go back as far as that early childhood in pre-verbal times that we will not have explicit memory of.

Now,

My passion about autoimmunity and the.

.

.

Connection with early life really comes from my experience with my own discovery of autoimmunity.

And it came at a time in my life when I reached burnout.

And what happened is that I had spent so many years pouring into other people.

If you know my story,

You'll know that pouring into people especially meant my foster adopted son.

To my body,

Even if I had known how to listen to my body.

And so eventually my body gave out in the sense that it would not get out of bed one morning.

And that is when I discovered my own autoimmunity.

In this process,

This is where I found the work of Gabor Mate,

Who wrote a fabulous book called When the Body Says No.

And I was like,

Oh my goodness,

My body is saying no.

And it's what led me to know that I needed to do trauma work.

In order to help myself have a better life and better future with the autoimmune discovered.

In my book,

I start the first chapter with the story of Elena.

And you will see that Elena is in the car accident.

And that's how the book starts,

Elena and a Car Accident.

And after that car accident,

She developed a diagnosis of autoimmunity or lupus one year later.

Of course,

What she didn't fully realize was the precise biological mechanism of how her early attachment years had actually programmed her immune system for autoimmunity decades later.

So let's dive into the biology of that.

Aspect of the immune system literally being a window into one's life.

Now,

The connection between our nervous system and the immune system is so intimate that dysregulation in one creates dysregulation in the other.

What does that mean?

If we have a nervous system dysregulation,

It will cause immune system dysregulation.

And if we have immune system dysregulation,

Things like inflammation,

Things like.

.

.

Autoimmunity it will cause dysregulation in the nervous system.

And as I explain in my book,

Fear causes inflammation.

Being stuck in fear.

Programmed to see fear everywhere,

Programmed to live in fear.

This is nervous system dysregulation that will cause immune system dysregulation in the form of inflammation.

So immune system dysregulation for inflammation.

So fear causes inflammation.

This is so crucial for us to understand because when our body holds fear from our childhood,

We are at higher risk of autoimmunity.

So as we look at this important concept,

The immune system.

Is a window into one's life The immune system is a window into one's life.

Fear causes inflammation,

But.

.

.

The younger that fear started to be our reality.

Is how autoimmunity is programmed to develop years and decades later.

So the younger that we started to experience fear.

The more time that our immune system has had the opportunity to absorb that fear and kind of transform it into autoimmunity.

So here's what's happening at the cellular level,

Because I want to get into then what do we do about it?

When we experience early attachment fear,

Whether it was not being held enough as an infant or emotional neglect or feeling unsafe in our early environment,

Whatever the reason was,

This programs.

Are microglia in our brain,

And it primes them so that they are more sensitive to stress moving forward.

Microglia.

They get primed when we have early fear.

So these now primed microglia act as an overactive alarm system.

Microglia are part of the immune system.

And so here is just one more example of how nervous system dysregulation or early fear.

Causes immune system dysregulation.

And primed microglia don't go back to how they were before.

Just like trauma leaves a lasting impact on the body and our biology,

Primed microglia have crossed a line that they can never go back and be what they were before.

So they don't go back to being unprimed,

But what we do want them to do is go back to being in a resting state where they're not overactive with unleashing inflammation,

Signals,

But they are doing their jobs of taking care of our neurons,

Pruning our neurons,

Helping us with neuroplasticity and learning new habits and learning new things and memory formation.

Microglia are a part of all of those activities.

And so these primed microglia are going to be an important aspect for those with autoimmunity and those with autoimmunity who have symptoms of brain fog or decision fatigue or feel that the lights just go off in their brain at times.

This is the primed microglia having exceeded their capacity.

And they unleash brain inflammation.

When they exceed their capacity,

They get triggered.

And the word for triggering a microglial cell is called activated.

So they become activated.

They go from just being primed and in their resting state to now being activated or triggered.

And this happens in times of stress.

So what would stress be?

Well,

For our immune system and our brain,

Stress can even be waiting too long to eat.

Having a poor night's sleep.

Consuming a food that creates an immune response like a histamine response.

All of these are things that can activate or trigger these primed microglia.

Again,

Let me come back to this idea that this is a manifestation of immune system dysregulation.

It is not necessarily healthy.

It's not a flexible immune system to be able to wait to eat.

It's not a flexible immune system that it would get triggered if you have a poor night's sleep.

So if it's being triggered,

If these microglia are being triggered by these types of stressors,

Them.

Which means dysregulation in the nervous system.

But it does go deeper than just brain inflammation,

This connection between adverse childhood experiences or early attachment pains and autoimmunity decades later.

And what I want to share with you is that our immune system operates through three key signaling pathways.

And these pathways are what dictate to the body,

What are we doing here?

Are we in inflammation mode or are we in repair mode?

And that's how I would want you to think about it.

You have two options.

You have inflammation mode.

And you have repair mode.

You have An inflammation mode,

Which is really a shutdown mode because normally there are breaks in your immune system that would calm down that inflammation,

That would repair that inflammation.

And so you're either in fear and inflammation mode or you're in repair mode.

And so as we look at the three signaling pathways of the immune system,

These are where the leverage points are.

So Melissa,

Going back to your question,

This is what you can do.

You can provide education to your autoimmune clients about these three signaling pathways in their immune system so that they can route their immune system to one of regulation and repair and out of fear and inflammation.

What are these three signaling pathways for the immune system?

The first one is called NF-kappa beta.

Now,

This is a fancy term.

I understand that when I was studying my biochemistry and this was what I loved geeking out on.

So I love these words,

But I also understand that these are not necessarily words that you are going to resonate with.

NF-kappa beta.

This is your stress response in your immune system.

So when things are stressful,

Your immune system triggers the NF-kappa B.

Now what happens really is that this is your stress switch.

And so when stress happens,

And that can include emotional stress,

But also infection or injury,

It actually travels to our nucleus.

Changes which genes are being read,

Which then creates other proteins to be made.

And this is then what releases the inflammation.

So NF-kappa B is just a gene or DNA.

Signaling pathway.

It will go,

Once it's triggered by stress,

It will go to our DNA and say,

Okay,

We need stress proteins and an inflammation cycle to start.

So this is essentially the immune system getting stuck in on position when,

Because of ongoing stress,

We have NF-kappa B on.

But to balance this is NRF2.

Now,

Just like NF-kappa B,

NRF2 is just a signaling messenger for our DNA to tell it which proteins to make.

And in RF2,

Is what we want because this is your repair switch.

So NF-CAPB calls in the troops for inflammation.

NRF2 activates our body's natural repair crew.

And we want both.

We want to turn on the inflammation when we do have real stress,

Like an infection.

So we don't want to not respond to an infection.

That would also be a sign of dysregulation in our immune system when we get sick all the time because our immune system is not kicking in to fight infections.

But we want the balance between the two because we don't want to be attacking when there is no reason to attack.

And that is also what happens in immune system dysregulation.

So we want the balance between the two.

And I'm going to show you how to do that.

The third pathway involves something called arachidonic acid.

Now,

This is a fatty acid in our cell membrane.

And it acts as a messenger so that it's collecting information from outside of the cell or its environment.

Turning on one of two pathways,

Either an inflamed pathway or a repair pathway.

And so what happens is that when we have early attachment pain,

We've had fear that started early in our life.

Guess which pathways get turned on and get stuck in on.

The NF-kappa B pathway,

And the inflamed pathway of the arachidonic acid.

It does not have the balance that it would if we didn't have that early life fear.

So it's interesting that this is the same pattern of suppressing.

Suppressing or repressing just because we don't remember it,

Just because we don't feel it,

Just because we can disconnect from our body doesn't mean that it is not still affecting our immune system.

And so as we wrap up,

Let me go into some practical solutions for you.

What can you do?

Now,

There are some foods that help turn on these repair pathways.

There are lifestyle things and there are supplements.

Let me start with the foods.

You are going to want to think about antioxidants.

Antioxidants are those things that will help our body turn on those repair mechanisms,

Those repair pathways.

Some of the foods that have high antioxidants are going to be blueberries and broccoli.

So let's just ask the question,

How could you eat more blueberries and broccoli?

And yes,

Because we are talking about antioxidants,

I would want you to choose organic blueberries and organic broccoli.

How can you get more of those in your everyday?

What else can you do?

You can do omega-6 oils.

So omega-6 oils are ones that will promote the repair pathways in your immune system.

Omega-3 oils are the ones that you would get with a McDonald's meal or highly processed foods.

So instead,

We want to be eating,

Consuming a greater amount of omega-6 oils.

A fish oil,

A high quality fish oil is great for this.

Coconut oil.

What are you cooking your food in and are you cooking your food in such a way that it's not creating those oils to be inflammatory?

What else can you do?

Ah,

There are some supplements.

So for immune support,

Take chelated magnesium.

If you're trying to target those primed microglia that have gotten triggered by stress,

Then you will want to take magnesium trienate.

But there's magnesium glycinate.

There's magnesium alpha-ketoglutarate.

You can hear that every form of magnesium ends in eight.

That is how you will know it is a chelated magnesium.

That is going to be the best thing for your cells and your immune system because it's better absorbed in your gut when you take a chelated magnesium.

N-acetylcysteine is something of supplement that I've come to absolutely love,

Both for its brain inflammation and immune balance.

It actually will help your liver also make more of its glutathione,

Which is a natural antioxidant.

So I love N-acetylcysteine.

Finally,

One of the suggestions that I will bring up to you is red light therapy.

Get some red light therapy sessions in,

Even just 10 to 15 minutes once a week,

Twice a week.

Or you can go out and stand in the sunshine at sunset or sunrise.

Those are natural times when you can get red light therapy from the sun itself and it's free.

So while you're outside watching the sunrise,

Maybe that would be a good time to eat some blueberries or eat some broccoli.

And you will be doing your immune system so much good,

Especially if you have autoimmunity.

And especially if you have a history of early life.

Because that is.

.

.

Predisposing you.

To autoimmunity.

Or if you're a practitioner like Melissa,

It's predisposing your clients and your patients to develop autoimmunity.

Like my patient,

Elena,

Again,

In my book,

Chapter one,

It's the story that I started with.

If she had known this,

She could have been doing this repair at her biology level from earlier on.

But instead,

In her late 40s,

She's in a car accident.

And that was just the stress,

The straw that broke the camel's back autoimmunity a year later.

So for me,

This is a message of hope.

I hope that is what this is for you as well.

And autoimmunity is very strongly associated with.

.

.

Early attachment fear.

There's so much that I want to dig into,

But we have come to the end of this episode.

And so please keep your questions coming.

And this is a way for us to continue to learn the biology behind some of these mechanisms because it gives us the solutions.

It gives us something to do.

Like Melissa was asking,

What do I do about this connection?

Is this what I can just tell them?

This is what's expected.

You had a hard early childhood.

It's what's expected.

No,

There is repair that we can do of the body.

Want you to have the information on how to do that.