This podcast episode (Dr. Aaron Hartman) argues that the nervous system is a central driver connecting diverse chronic conditions—chronic Lyme, mold illness, post-concussive syndrome, long COVID, autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, IBS, inflammatory bowel disease—and that trauma (both 'Big T' and repeated 'little-t' stressors) can lock the nervous system into a non-healing state. Hartman introduces the long compound term "psychoneuroimmunogastroendocrinology" to describe mind-body interactions, emphasizes the "triangle of health" (gut health, stress, sleep) as leverage points for recovery, and uses patient and family anecdotes to illustrate how trauma prevents full recovery. The episode also promotes Hartman’s book Uncurable and directs listeners to UncurableBook.com for free resources.
Chapters
One of the things I learned in my career, I started seeing patients with chronic Lyme mold illness, post concussive syndrome, long Covid autoimmune issues, chronic fatigue, fibro ibs, inflammatory bowel disease. I mean all these seemingly unrelated things, the one thing that connects all of these is actually your nervous system.
I want to keep on giving you little wisdom droplets of things you can do to help with your health care and those of your loved ones that you may not have heard of before or may not have taken a deep dive into. We do discuss this in uncurable from hopeless diagnosis to the final odds. I do devote a chapter to it. But I want to talk about the concept psychoneuroimmunogastroendocrinology. Yes, I know lots of big words confusing. You can actually get a PhD in this field now. When am I talking about the mind body connection? And I want to specifically talk about trauma, big T trauma and little T trauma. One of the things I learned in my career, I started seeing patients with chronic Lyme mold illness, post concussive syndrome, long Covid autoimmune issues, chronic fatigue, fibro ibs, inflammatory bowel disease. I mean all these seemingly unrelated things, the one thing that connects all of these is actually your nervous system. And the whole psycho neuroimmuno gastro endocrinology word that I said starts with your mind connecting all of these things. And so one of the things we've learned is how your nervous system being in a state of rest and digest, a curative state, a healthy happy state, enables you to have more restorative sleep. It enables your hormones to readjust more normally from month to month, also allows your cells to turn over more easily when you're not stressed. There's this thing called apoptosis, which is controlled cell death, where your body recycles old cells, turns them into new cells. Or if you've heard of senescent cells or zombie cells or whatnot, that is when that whole thing breaks down and those cells get stuck. A great example, that is some of the stuff we've seen with long Covid and people having the virus or spike proteins in their body for, you know, six months or whatever that phenomena actually is the monocytes not turning over, holding onto the spike protein and keeping inflammation going even if the virus has left your body. So and we see this with things like Lyme disease as well. We see with the whole, even cancers are an extreme, extreme version of cells that don't recycle and become eternalized. Your nervous system is an Important thing through the thing called the cell danger response that helps your body heal and self repair. And if you have trauma, it stops that entire thing. I started working with patients and you know, I get people 60% better, 70% better. They get to a point, they plateau, they get stuck. And I was all, you know what? Why are you stuck on, you know, wash and repeat, repeat things. And one thing I learned where there are three things where people's ability to self heal and self repair were getting blocked. I named that the triangle of health, but it's gut health, which includes diet and a whole host of things. Stress and then sleep. The stress part is something that was ignored in my medical training. Even now, learning about trauma, it's like you can't, you know, find a trauma therapist, find someone who does EMDR tapping, who does somatic work, who does family dynamic therapy. Like these are all different kinds of trauma therapies that aren't covered by insurance. And so people tend not to learn about it in their training unless they go out. And most therapists, the good. It's not an absolute statement, but the trauma therapists I've run into actually had their own store of trauma story of trauma that they had to work through. What I found with my patients is their body gets so much better and gets stuck because their nervous system is just kind of stuck. So open my eyes to this Wells, you know, my wife, my family, and just talking about different case, different kids with her whose parents would be traumatized because of care, special needs. And sometimes these children will almost die a couple times a year. They go to the ER every month or two. And that traumatizes the mom, so it traumatizes the families. And I started thinking about with my own family, with my son almost died when he was 8 years old. He got crushed in the elevator. And the result of that was my wife. Every time he would disappear for a few minutes, she would have a trauma response. And even when he popped back up, she would stay stressed, hyperventilating, couldn't calm herself down for hours. I started realizing we said this is an extreme. Is there a milder version of this? You know, I was actually reading a book about the Battle Psalm and World War II. And I was talking about, I get, you know, according to the book, the mud was so bad you had these planks to go to the front line in the morning. People go to the front line, come back in the afternoon. It was raining, it was really thick. When the mud was so thick in that part of France, if you fell off the Planks into the mud. You could not get pulled out. And you would. It's almost like quicksand. You'd slowly sink. So people would literally sink all day long. Couldn't get pulled out. If you try to pull your buddy out and you got pulled in, guess what? You were stuck then going down. And so they go out to the front, come back in the afternoon, and they'd be like, up to here, up to their neck. And within hours, they're going to be suffocating and dying. And the people actually were going insane. They lost their marble, so to speak. And that stressor of slowly sinking, knowing your death is imminent and you're gonna suffocate, which is a horrible way to die. It literally drove some people mad. And just to realize, like, there are forms of torture in which you do that. Water torture, where a little small drip, drip, over time can break even the toughest of people.
Have you ever lost trust in your own body or in the doctors who were supposed to help you heal? It happens to millions of people who are stuck in the cycle of prescriptions, taking tests, and more questions than answers. That's why Dr. Aaron Hartman wrote his new book Uncurable. As a physician and a parent, he's lived through the pain of being told there's nothing more we can do. But instead of accepting that, he built a new path, one that combines traditional and functional medicine to uncover what's really driving illness. Uncurable is more than a book. It's a roadmap to help you find the root causes your doctor might have missed, reactivate your body's natural healing systems, and finally believe in what's possible again. If you've lost hope or trust in the system, this book will help you take back control. Go to UncurableBook.com and grab your copy along with Dr. Hartman's free resources to help you start your healing journey today.
How is that transfer? And that's one of the things I do with translational medicine, is thinking all these nuances. And how does this apply my patients? We're realizing that having your own chronic health issue for years and years and years gives you your own trauma. I saw with my wife when she started getting better, if any symptoms came back, the smallest amount of symptoms, she would spiral. Oh, my gosh, I'm going back to the way I was and see that with patients as well. You know, one patient I'm working with right now with chronic Lyme, actually, she had the diagnosis in her 30s of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and about three years ago, I diagnosed her with Lyme. She gets feeling great, she's doing awesome. But every time there's a little tweak in her health, she's like, am I going back to the way I was? And so we're at the stage now where she's doing great, but every time there's a little headache, body ache, a labs off, where her mind goes is, oh my gosh, am I going back there? And to see how that impacts people's healing process. So what's happened is working with trauma, talking about trauma, big T trauma is like the big stuff we all agree on. Sexual, physical, emotional trauma, being a war, PTSD kind of stuff. But then there's the little T trauma, which can be just daily stressors going on, care of a loved one with Alzheimer's, dementia care of a kid with special needs. I've also learned that being in a family with a narcissist like that chronic stress of someone who you're trying to get their approval and you can't quite get it and you also wondering, are they going to disapprove? And when they get their approval, they lavish love. You're the most amazing person ever. You know, never, you know, when they do bad things, they have remorse, I'll never do this again, da, da, da. But because they themselves are stuck on themselves and because it's a personality disorder and they don't see it, you know, like people who are depressed realize they're depressed. People are narcissists, don't realize they're narcissist. The point thing is that that by itself I've seen multiple patients who their trauma is their mother, their father, their sibling, their spouse was a narcissist. And being in a relationship for years gave them a little T, you know, drop, drop, drop, water torture kind of thing that now they other things trigger them. And so that's one of the things that, you know, having the family I have, you know, interviewing different people, talking to different people, seeing patients and learning from patients helped me realize that trauma. Your mind is one of the places where people's healing gets stuck. And so we kind of put together a whole thing connected health where we actually have gut stress and sleep and we utilize those leverage points to help people's bodies start to self heal and self repair. Which if you're listening to this right now, there's a links and you can follow it to learn more about that. But the point is like if you're stuck in your healing or some of your loved ones are you know, guts, sleep. But is there a trauma stress piece? They've been sick for a long time. If I was a betting man, I'd bet yes. So hopefully it's helpful. We have lots of resources, actually free resources. Within the book proper. We have dozens of free resources available. Some of them do discuss trauma and a bunch of other things. Please utilize those resources. We put them there for you to help you get you back on your track to healing and health and wholeness. Take care and we'll talk to you soon.
If you've lost trust in your body or in the system that was supposed to heal you, don't give up. Dr. Aaron Hartman's book Uncurable will help you rediscover what's truly possible. Visit UncurableBook.com to get your copy and start your healing journey today.
