This content was created by Dr. Don Wood. This content was uploaded by Dr. Don Wood. This is a YouTube video titled "Burned Out, Anxious, and Disconnected? Here’s How to Take Your Life Back!" featuring a conversation between Dr. Don Wood and Janelle Bruland. The discussion, recorded on June 13, 2025, revolves around Janelle's new book 'Your Way Back to Happy', focusing on overcoming past trauma and its impact on mental and physical health. Dr. Don Wood shares insights from his studies on trauma, inflammation, and neuroplasticity.
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So you've got a new book out. Right. And it's phenomenal. I actually endorse the book. You also talk about what we do as well. But tell us the inspiration to your way Back to Happy is the name of the book. And you always seem happy. I think you had to get back to happy. I thought you just lived there.
Yes, well, I did and definitely want to help other people get back there. Well, the purpose of the book is really to help people overcome their past and turn the pain of their past into a future of freedom, purpose and peace. So that's your way back to happy. And there are many people out there today. When you have something in the past that has been a problem or a challenge, we're very good as these high performance leaders in just saying, I'm just going to just tuck that over here. Pain. What pain? I'm not going to really pay attention to that. So it could be something that happens in your childhood, it could be a challenge that happens in your adult life. And whatever it is, you tend to just kind of tuck it over here in this little box and you think that it's done. But as you and I both know, that's not the way trauma works. And it can become unresolved trauma within the body that's going to show up in one way or another. So how I came to write this book really came out of my first book. So the success lie. I talked about the lies that people buy into either the circumstances of their life or the pace in which they're living. And one of those lies is I can't get beyond my past. And that just. That just simply isn't true. Or you're not even facing it. So that book really delves into unresolved trauma and how it can show up in your life as. As it did in mine.
Yeah. And that. And that's one of the things that I talk about, you know, a lot. And one of the things I've just publishing two studies on. On exactly that. So people don't understand how much trauma is affecting them. They'll think, okay, yeah, I'm dealing with it. Or I get a little bit of anxiety or depression here and there's. But what I'm showing in this study is we have two defense systems for us as our body and our brain. We have an immune system that is designed to protect us from any viruses, bacteria, even cancer. Right. We've got these T cells floating around, these killer T cells to work on cancer. So that is the way the body protects itself through the immune system, the way the brain protects itself is through neuroplasticity, and that's his ability to rewire. So when something hits us, we're supposed to be able to rewire and build new neural pathways and basically adapt. But what I'm showing in the studies are that this unresolved trauma is actually increasing inflammation. So the genes that regulate inflammation upregulate, which means the genes that regulate your immune system downregulate. It's basically an allocation of resources. We're in fight or flight. We need to be focused on fight or flight, not maintenance. And so now the immune system's compromised. So now you're much more susceptible to things entering your system and you don't have the defense that you should have because it's compromised. And then all of a sudden, you know, you've got this huge gap in between the inflammation and the immunity and we get sick. So I use the analogy of take the US military, the greatest military in the world, but spread it out over 150 countries. And then we get attacked on our, on our homeland. We probably fall because we don't have enough defense, right? And then the neuroplasticity is that ability to rewire and reset. The genes that regulate neuroplasticity also are down regulated. So now your two best defense systems to protect you are compromised.
Right?
But when the trauma gets resolved, and what we're proving in the study is we're increasing immunity by almost 100%. And so the naive CD4 T cells, for example, increase, you know, one particular person 113%. Now those are the cells that basically are going to recruit and discover the cancer in your system and then start to train the system to fight it. But if you've got low naive T cells, chances are it's not going to recognize the danger. And so we're seeing that much of a change in immunity and the neuroplasticity we're seeing increase by as much as 46%.
Those are amazing statistics. That is really incredible. And, and the people that are stuck with this dysregulated system, you don't even really know that, that it's happening. It just becomes a pattern. It becomes something that you're used to. And I use a, a graph when I explain it. I talk about, you know, this is your nervous system in, in harmony. You go from the sympathetic when you're in action to the, the parasympathetic when you rest and digest and you just kind of have this really nice harmony in your system. But then when you continue to have these traumas, your body goes into that sympathetic and it stays. Stays up there. And you're just stuck in that area. And people don't even realize that they're stuck, like you said in that fight orf flight. And they're just operating that way. They're used to the suffering, if you will. And because it's comfortable, that's. That's what they know. Because it's just happened over and over.
