Ashok Gupta explains how trauma dysregulates the nervous system and weakens immunity. A Kaiser Permanente study found people with trauma histories were twice as likely to develop chronic conditions. The nervous system and immune system work together, and dysregulation can be recovered from.
A dysregulated nervous system reduces our immunity, reduces immunity, reduces the effectiveness of our immune system. And a study by Kaiser Permanente looked at people who had a background of trauma versus not and then followed them for many years. And they found that people who had a background of trauma were twice as likely to get one of the chronic conditions that we are talking about. And now why would that actually happen in those circumstances? Well, what I want to do is introduce you to two aspects of these defensive systems in the body that we're going to talk about. So I want to introduce you to the nervous system, which is all the nerves in your body as directed by your amygdala. And that is going to be defended by or your nervous system is represented by your army. Okay, so you have an army that is defending Kyle. All right, so this is our little army guy here. You can see the little army guy, there he is. All right, so the army is your nervous system and the army is designed to protect you from threats in your environment. But this army guy, if he has been experiencing repeated threats, he can sometimes become traumatized by war. And that's how war veterans in war situations, they come back to civilian life, but they're still traumatized. And so in a similar way, your nervous system can become traumatized by repeated experiences or traumatic experiences. And he is joined by your navy. Yeah, we don't know if this is a he or a she, but your navy is your immune system. And your immune system is there to also be defensive, but more against biological threats. So your immune system defends you against biological threats, viruses and bacteria, toxins. Whereas your nervous system is protecting you against other types of threats. So those can be threats in terms of needing to run away, the fight or flight response. Now these two systems work together hand in hand. Your army and your navy, your nervous system and your immune system. Alright, so those are the two systems in your body. And what then happens is if you've had repeated experiences of trauma, traumatic events, then these two parts of your defense system are over triggered. And they start fighting wars over here. And they start fighting wars over here because they think they're under threat. All these fake wars going on around you. But what that actually then does, it reduces the effectiveness of your immune system. Because your immune system isn't just about being on or off, it is about is my immune system refined, is it operating at the optimum level? So your immune system can't be fighting lots of wars and be overstimulated, it has to be hyper efficient. So that's how background trauma can actually reduce our immune system. Therefore, that's something to be aware of. But the good news is that once again, people do overcome their dysregulation. So just because you've had a background of a dysregulated nervous system, it doesn't mean that that can't be overcome.
