Dr. Don WoodResolving Your Trauma-Based Challenges So You Can Unlock Peak Performance

Trauma's Effect on Athlete Energy

6 Jul 2024 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:58

Dr. Don Wood explains that unresolved psychological trauma impairs mitochondrial function and cellular ATP, reducing body energy in athletes. He claims that resolving trauma restores energy because the mind stops diverting energy into a trauma loop; this trauma loop also dysregulates heart rate variability (HRV), explaining unexpected HRV changes at rest.

Chapters

Unresolved trauma actually affects the mitochondria, the energy in the cell. And so what happens is when an athlete has got this unresolved trauma, the mitochondria, which is the cell and the energy in the cell, the ATP in the cell is actually compromised to a degree. So when we resolve the trauma we actually increase the energy in the body because the mind has been pulling some of that energy for this trauma loop. So, so when I mentioned that, one of the gentlemen who's a neuroscientist stopped me and he says, you just blew my mind. They measure heart rate variability which is a way to measure how they're performing through their heart rate. And so he said we never understood why these athletes, their heart rate variability would change even when they were at rest. What you're telling me is it's a trauma loop that's running in the background that's dysregulating their heart rate variability. And I said yes. He goes, that's amazing. We never knew.