Dr. Betty MurrayHelping Women Navigate Menopause | Speaker, Author, and Advocate for Women's Health Over 40

New Insights on Childhood Trauma and Ovarian Aging

23 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:19

In this presentation, Dr. Betty Murray explains that the ovaries, being the most mitochondrial‑dense organ in the body, act as a biological "pacemaker" that influences the overall rate of aging. She outlines known accelerators of ovarian aging—smoking and alcohol—and highlights a less‑expected factor: trauma experienced in childhood. Referring to the Kaiser Permanent/CDC Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) questionnaire, she describes how high ACE scores (she reports a personal score of 9) are associated with dysregulated autonomic stress responses, leading to increased risk of autoimmune disease, disordered eating, poor metabolic health, and earlier ovarian senescence. The talk emphasizes that early‑life stressors can have a profound, measurable impact on reproductive aging.

Chapters

And so when I found out the ovaries are the most mitochondrial dense organ in our bodies, it makes sense that they set the pacemaker of aging. And we know based on research, the things that accelerate the aging of the ovaries, some of these are not surprising, right? Like smoking, alcohol use. And the other thing that I found surprising was trauma. So we look at adverse childhood events, and there's a, a joint venture from Kaiser Permanente and the CDC And anyone that's listening can go online. You can get access to this, this quiz, which is pretty quick. And when I trained in inner city Baltimore in the '90s, when we talked about trauma, we were talking about suicide, rape, murder. I mean, these are big things. We weren't talking about the subtleties to little t trauma. So abuse, neglect, substance abuse in the home as a child. And so as you kind of go through those, and you start looking at the research on how this influences the autonomic nervous system, how this regulates how we perceive stress. So these kids, if you're— if your score is high enough, mine is 9, which is quite high, you go through life at a disadvantage in terms of autoimmune conditions, disordered relationships with food, poor metabolic health, and earlier ovarian aging.