Want Energy Like a 2 Year Old Again?

🐱‍🏍DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG…👣 AND YOU RAN EVERYWHERE YOU WENT…🏃‍♀️ AND YOU FELT GOOD DOING IT? 💃How would you feel today, if you could have energy like that again? What would it look like? What would you do? What would you do differently with your new-found energy? What about your mental energy… have you noticed that slowing down too? In today’s episode, we are going to explore some barriers that… have been… and likely… still are blocking your physical and emotional energy.

 🌟HIGHLIGHTS🌟

✅  02:41   Feeling Sluggish?
✅  08:19   What is causing low energy issues?
✅  10:20   Been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome?
✅  12:23   The root cause of Chronic Fatigue
✅ 13:40    Dr. Brian's Mantra: Inflammation is Synonymous with Immunity
✅ 15:35    Want energy like a 2 year old?

Dr. Brian's mantra:
 Inflammation is Synonymous to Immunity 

 Dr. Brian is a functional medicine practitioner with a subspecialty in epigenetics and nutrigenomics
If you have a question for Dr. Brian, please contact him at https://drbriangbrown.com/question

And if you are ready to take your life, performance, mood, and energy to the highest potential check out his FREE 5 day Gene Hack Boot Camp: https://drbriangbrown.com/genehack/bootcamp

Transcript

 The Long-Term Effects of Trauma - And What to Do About Them

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Trauma, childhood trauma, neglect, cortisol, study, diet, diabetes, monkeys, people, low glycemic, American heart association, memories, genetic similarities, genetic, emotional, epigenetics, health, inflammation, genes

Dr Brian G Brown  00:54

The mission is simple to help high achievers naturally eliminate emotional and physical obstacles, so they can optimize their life for higher achievement. Welcome, you just entered the Genesis zone. Good day and welcome to the Genesis Zone show. This is Dr. Brian Brown. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule on this beautiful Thursday. 

Did you know that brain trauma, whether it's physical trauma, like a head injury, or it's a survival, surviving a psychological trauma event in your life, can not only have a long-term impact on your emotional health, but it can also have a long term impact on your physical health as well? 

In today's episode, I'll share my insights about some recent studies and what we can do about these changes that occur because of trauma. Now, I think it goes without saying people who struggle with trauma probably deal with what we would call a sluggish brain, low emotional energy. Sometimes you could argue there's high emotional energy if they're agitated or irritated. But for the most part, it's low emotional energy. 

I've recently watched a movie called the Professor and the Madman. It's a great movie with Natalie Dormer, Mel Gibson, and Sean Penn. Now it's a true to life historical account of a fateful meeting between three people, and it's set in the late 1800s. Now, I won't share much more than that, because if I do, I'll spoil it for you. I'll give it all away. 

But the part that applies to today's topic is related to the character Dr. William Miner, that Sean Penn portrays in this movie. Now Dr. Monster in the movie struggles with crippling post-traumatic stress disorder. It's never labeled his out that because they didn't know what PTSD was back then. But he struggles with crippling post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that is treatable today. But back then they could have had you deemed mentally insane. And Dr. Miner’s case in the movie, that's exactly what happened. 

Well, today in the United States alone. In a health economic study that was just published this past week, researchers have concluded that the annual economic impact of PTSD is around $232 billion. Now, that's up until 2018, because we don't have much data, or at least we didn't for this study, they had to stop somewhere. And they stopped collecting data at the end of 2018. So up until 2018, about $232 billion spent on PTSD treatment in the United States alone. This doesn't even include the rest of the world. So, to say that it affects a lot of people is an understatement. 

In a nutshell, what PTSD is, the brain develops unhealthy associations between sensory stimuli and or memories and emotional stimuli or memories. In other words, things like smell, taste, sound or sights, the things we see, those memories are meant to be stored in a certain part of the brain that stores sensory memory, but emotional memories such as fear, joy, sadness, anxiety, stress, anger, agitation, they're supposed to be stored in an area all their own, totally separate from your sensory memories. But in post-traumatic stress disorder for reasons that we don't really understand fully, in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the wires get crossed, and the emotional memories get stored and attached to the sensory memories and they affect each other one can trigger the other.

Dr Brian G Brown  05:09

And this isn't good because now when you're going through your regular daily life with these wires crossed, and a sensory stimulus gets triggered. Say for example, you smell something that reminds you of something that occurred during a traumatic event, or you see something out of the corner of your eye, here's something, all of a sudden, it brings up this flood of emotions that you can't do anything about because it's this automatic response at that point. That's why there's a type of therapy called EMDR. That is very helpful in in in untangling the weeds and getting things separated back to where they should be. 

So, I've mentioned on previous podcast episode, it's probably a little over a year ago, that the ACEs study and ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Events. So, the Adverse Childhood Events study is the largest ongoing clinical trial of its kind. And it has determined that there are numerous health consequences for children who have experienced traumatic events and are now adults. So basically, they're assessing adults, they're assessing to see whether or not they had childhood adverse events or traumatic events. And there's a whole list of them. 

It doesn't only include physical and sexual abuse, it includes abandonment, and things like that; verbal abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, neglect, it includes a lot of things. But the interesting thing about that study is you would think that they would have captured a large group associated socio- economic diverse group, they didn't. The amazing thing was that because this was done through a private insurance company, there weren't any Medicare / Medicaid recipients that were captured. These are all middle class to upper middle-class people that were captured. 

In that ACEs study they started determining that there are a lot of health consequences to experiencing  traumatic childhood events. Well, that brings us to today; an independent study released just this week, proved that adults who went through any form of childhood trauma were significantly more likely to have high cholesterol. Now, this study was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. And it confirmed what the ACEs study has been showing for a little over a decade now. And it also affirms the findings from a previous study back in 2018, that the American Heart Association did that found that:

Adults who had experienced childhood trauma were significantly more likely to struggle with obesity, type two diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, 

Again, echoing everything that the ACEs study has been finding for over a decade now. But the American Heart Association study took one step further, and actually revealed that children who grow up in stable nurturing home environments actually have a lower risk for all of these issues. So back to the current study that was just released this week. They wanted to replicate the American Heart Association study and on multiple fronts, or on several fronts, not all of them, but they wanted to replicate those who experienced trauma versus those who didn't experience trauma and follow them and see what their health risk was. 

So, about a 50% of the participants in this group, in the 1000s. These participants, 50% of them reported having some form of abuse in their childhood. Now, about half of that amount about 26% said it was mild and occasional. And then the other 24% said that, oh, well, it was more severe and persistent. Here's the interesting thing, though, in this particular study, the severity of the abuse didn't  seem to matter with regard to the long-term health consequences that occurred. So, in fact, 26% of women and 35% of men who reported mild abuse in their childhood ended up having high cholesterol issues. And interestingly 81% of the men who reported mild child abuse in their developmental years, ended up having type two diabetes.

Dr Brian G Brown  09:53

That's, that's staggering people. So, if we look at 26 to 35% of people Are who've been abused, whether it's mild or severe, are going to have some cholesterol issues which can lead to cardiovascular disease as we know. And then 81% of men who had any form of abuse, but in this case, mild, are going to develop Type Two Diabetes. Those numbers are staggering from a community health standpoint. 

And, and dare I say, you know, you're talking about a foggy brain, you're talking about sluggish brain function, and sluggish energy functioning in your body period, develop type two diabetes, and tell me how much energy you have? Because type two diabetes is hands down an energy regulation disorder, okay? Because we're talking about blood sugar, which is the source of most of our energy, we can use fat for energy, but we're talking about blood sugar, and insulin regulation. But anyway, I digress. 

So in this particular study that was released last week, those that reported no abuse, this was the other 50%, those that reported no abuse had a 34% reduction in the risk of developing high cholesterol. So not only were they at the general population, but they were actually better than the general population, because they grew up in a nurturing environment. And there was a whole list of qualifications of what was considered a nurturing environment. But nonetheless, it actually boded well for those who didn't have any abuse and grew up in a nurturing environment, they have reduced risk and 34% reduced risk.

But guess what? This problem may not be isolated to childhood trauma. Another study that was just published this week, found that former college football players were five times more likely to report cognitive impairment diagnoses, and that was like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, those types of things, but reported cognitive impairment diagnoses later in life. Very, very interesting finding. 

But even more startling than that was the fact that they were 65% more likely to have cardiovascular disease. 

Now, I have a theory on what causes these things to occur in the first place. It's a two-pronged theory.  Part of this theory comes from some really old data. And the other part of this theory comes from some really new data. So, I'll give you part one, the old part first. An old study that I read years ago, I tried looking for it, I can't find it. But it was an old study that I read years ago, where they studied infant monkeys. These were monkeys were a year of age, and they abruptly or traumatically, separated them from their mothers, never to be reunited again, so they removed them from their mothers. Cruel if you asked me, but they traumatically separated them from their mothers in that first year of life. 

And what they noticed was that these baby monkeys had extremely high spikes in the stress hormone cortisol. So, they had a huge flood of cortisol that flooded their system. Now the issue was this, the cortisol levels never returned to baseline. Now, that's huge, they never returned to baseline. 

It gets even better than that. They follow these monkeys into their adulthood. These monkeys are living in captivity. So compared to those that live in the wild, only lived,10, 12 years; monkeys who live in captivity can live 20, 25, in some rare instances, up to 30 years, but the average is about 25 years. That was the case in this particular study. 

And guess what? They followed those monkeys over the course of their life. And their cortisol never returned. I mean, it was just validation. In the short term, they realized their cortisol wasn't returning to normal, but then they followed them for 20, 25 years, for decades. And they realized that their cortisol responses never returned to normal and that they were always quick to release cortisol under the least little bit of stress. So, the stress plays a huge role, regardless of whether it's emotional or physical. I think so. 

And I think the same thing happens in traumatic brain injury. We're prone to having these quick cortisol releases. We get these high floods of cortisol all the time, because if you think about it, when 

you're in an athletic event, especially a team sport, there's high impact. I mean, there's a lot of adrenaline going and if adrenaline rises, cortisol rises as well. So that's part one of my theory is that it's a cortisol issue and the cortisol issue doesn't go away. It stays with you over the course of your life. 

And to put another spin on it from a medical perspective, when your cortisol stays up, guess what happens? Your cardiovascular risk goes up, your cholesterol goes up, your liver enzymes go up because you you're more prone to developing nonalcoholic fatty liver, your insulin resistance goes up and your chances of developing Type two diabetes goes up. 

So, cortisol is not a good thing long term, we want those numbers to stay down. But in these particular incident instances, traumatized monkeys actually had higher cortisol over the course of their life. Now, the study did not bring out that health impact on these monkeys. But that would have been interesting to find out. Now, here's part two of my theory. There are and I believe this wholeheartedly because I see it clinically, there are genetic similarities among those who have these responses, these cortisol responses to stress and subsequently develop the health consequences later on down the road. Now, we just haven't figured out what those genetic similarities are,

Dr Brian G Brown  16:16

What I'm beginning to see clinically, and I started doing genetics and psychiatry, about 18 years ago. But this level of genetics from an epigenetics, nutrigenomics standpoint, is, is a little bit different, and, and have been doing it about three years. Because it's such a new field of science, that actually, nobody is doing. 

But anyway, with epigenetics, I'm starting to see patterns among those who struggle with certain conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression and anxiety, type two diabetes and high blood pressure. And the eerie thing is, they're very similar. If I have a person that's coming in with some psychological complaints, and I have a person that's coming in with just physical complaints, like type two diabetes, or prediabetes, things like that. They're very similar in their genetic profiles, it's really kind of strange. And I'm learning that it's not strange, because there's a physiological reason for why that happens. And a lot of times, it boils down to poor methylation, poor my mitochondria function, poor detoxification, poor inflammation management, and so on, so forth. 

So, to summarize my theory, early childhood trauma related distress or traumatic brain injury related stress. Both of these can lead to abnormal cortisol responses that rarely ever returned to normal on their own. But there are genetic, and I believe, emphatically, there are genetic similarities among these individuals, that once we're able to identify what genes they have, that are out of balance, that regulate proper stress management and cellular function, once we understand that, we can create interventions to support those genes so that they function better. 

So, what can we do about this? Well, I've always said you can't outperform a bad diet. And that is so true. And guess what the research actually backs me up this week, a study that was just released this week, proved that. And I quote, “A poor diet, irrespective of genetic risk factors, is associated with a 30% increased risk of diabetes.” Did you hear that? A poor diet, irrespective of genetic risk factors is associated with a 30% increased risk of diabetes. Now you're saying, Brian, well, you're talking about the benefits of epigenetics? What does this mean? 

Well, I'll interpret it for you. So, what this means is, you better believe that the right diet is important to your overall long term health outcomes. You better believe that hands down, we've got to be focusing on this, everybody rolls their eyes, and we say you got to get your diet right, because they hear it over and over and over again. But we actually have the genetic way to look and see what that is proper for you. 

That's where this comes in. This statement came from the fact that there were people who had no genetic risk for type two diabetes, they were eating according to their genetic dietary type. They just naturally gravitated toward that because that's what they like to eat. But when they deviated from that, their risk for developing type two diabetes went up by 30%. So, what does that mean for us? Well, that means that just like I always talk about we can modify your genes and support your genes and make them healthier. Well, guess what? You can modify your Genes and make them unhealthy. And that's exactly what happened in this particular study where these people weren't eating like they were supposed to, even though they had no genetic risk for type two diabetes, and they still developed Type Two Diabetes 30% of the time. So that's not a good place to be. But you need to know that. 

Definitely your lifestyle matters. And it doesn't matter whether you have good genes or bad genes. If you have good genes, you can still make them bad. But if you have bad genes, you just really got to be on your toes about all of that stuff related to what's out of balance genetically. So, it just makes it even more important.

Dr Brian G Brown  20:39

So, what can we do about all this? Well, first thing we do, and this is based on research,is lower your caloric intake. Now, again, everybody rolls their eyes at that, but there's a recent study that just came out two weeks ago, found that a calorie reduced diet can significantly delay the onset of type two diabetes, it can improve the gut microbiome or the balance in the gut, and it can bolster the immune system because of those improvements in the gut microbiome. 

Now, again, if you remember, I say immunity and inflammation are synonymous, okay. So, if a lower calorie diet will actually take care of and improve the immune system, guess what else it’s doing? It’s decreasing the inflammation. And it can also delay the onset of type two diabetes. 

Number two thing to do is focus on low glycemic foods. You're eating fruits, apples are great low glycemic foods, anything that ends in Berry is a good low glycemic food. Other than that, most fruits are pretty well-off limits, because they're just nature's candy. They're packed with a lot of sugar. Now, there are a lot of vegan, vegetarian people out there that would disagree with me. Especially as we age, we really have to watch the amount of sugar intake that we have in our diet. So, stick with apples, stick with fruits that end in Berry. 

And then make sure you're getting a ton of green vegetables, preferably cruciferous vegetables and vegetables like spinach into your diet. Really, really good for your skin health, your bone health, your muscle health, your ligament and tendon health, just good for your metabolism good for your GI tract, good for your brain, it's just amazing. But if you need to research actually shows that we can lower diabetes risk and other metabolic risk factors by simply supplementing occasionally with a good quality whey protein. 

Now, you're going to have to be one of those people that's not lactose intolerant. But a good quality whey protein can be very beneficial. I would say. Even though there's not a lot of support in the literature for it, I would say that if we supplement it with a plant-based protein, I prefer a hemp-based protein if you're gonna go plant base, because the flavor is really, really good.  Whey based proteins, they have an odd flavor, I don't really like them. But anyway, supplementing with an extra, a little bit of extra protein in your diet is very helpful. And staying away from carbohydrates. Carbs are really high and glycemic impact when it comes to your blood sugar and fat storage and things like that. 

So, the number three thing is focus on a Mediterranean type of diet. Now here's a hint. If you focus on a low glycemic Mediterranean style diet, where you get good healthy protein like fish and chicken, and you cut out the high fat and the high carbohydrates, you're pretty much automatically going to have a low-calorie diet. Okay, so that takes care of number one, by just being on your P's and Q's and an eating a low glycemic impact Mediterranean diet. 

Next, I want you to consider this as number four, take time to meditate or do yoga, or do therapeutic breathwork or start learning tai chi or Qigong. All of these things have research behind them that prove that they actually lower cortisol. We also have research between behind mindfulness and meditation, as I've spoken about in previous episodes, which shows that actually decreases inflammation as well. So, we want to lower cortisol, and my hunch is, is it lowers inflammation, because it decreases cortisol, but that's just a hunch. That's just another theory. 

And number five, lastly, get your genes checked. You know, we live in a 21st century now and no, it's not mainstream medicine yet. It will be I believe we're on the cusp of a paradigm shift. I don't know how long it's gonna take. They say things like this take 20 years to be assimilated into mainstream practice. We're still using techniques and strategies that are from the 40s.

Dr Brian G Brown  24:57

So, I don't know that I firmly believe it takes 20 years for new things to be adopted into mainstream practice. I will say this, it takes less than 20 years if Big Pharma’s involved because they got a financial interest to make sure that it gets the agenda gets pushed. 

But if there's no financial interest from Big Pharma, then it's probably going to take a while. So, but anyway, we live in the 21st century, we have available to us right now the ability to look deep inside your body, at the function of your brain at the function of this every cell in your body and or almost every cell in your body, and see how it's wired to function, at least from a detoxification, genetic methylation, mitochondria standpoint. And once we understand where the weak spots are, we can support those weak spots, so that they function better, stronger. 

That's all I've got for today.

I do have a favor to ask. The information I share here at the Genesis zone show has the potential to radically impact the lives of listeners in a positive way. But the only way other people can find out about this is if you helped me out. If you would go,  if you're on YouTube, if you're a YouTuber, get on YouTube, and hit the SUBSCRIBE button. That will help us out more than more than I can say and put into words. If you're an Apple user, or Spotify user get on Apple or Spotify, we use a lot of other platforms, like close to 30 Different platforms where we syndicate the podcast to, but Apple and Spotify are the biggies. And if we can rank there, just with a simple LIKE or a simple DOWNLOAD, go in and SUBSCRIBE to our feed on Apple or Spotify that helps us in rankings, believe it or not. 

And if you feel so inclined, leave us leave us a comment and/or a rating. Doing any of these will help greatly and I would greatly appreciate it. 

Well, that's all for today. As usual, tune in next Thursday at noon Eastern Standard Time. For our next in the zone segment, where I'll be sharing the latest research and mind sites about optimizing your health optimizing your brain optimizing your body and doing it holistically in a natural way. Most informed, most trusted and most grateful you spent this time with us today. Until next time, stay in the zone. I'm Dr. Brian Brown.