Stress & Immune System: How Trauma Impacts Women's Health

6 Dec 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:05

Dr. Doni Wilson explains that stress and unresolved trauma raise stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline), which affect the immune system by shifting it toward inflammation and possible autoimmunity and increasing susceptibility to infections such as high‑risk HPV that can lead to abnormal or cancerous cells. She recommends that people who test positive for high‑risk HPV or have abnormal cells focus on supporting immune function and optimizing cortisol/stress recovery.

Chapters

No one teaches women how stress affects our immune system. You see, when we're exposed to stress and trauma, it affects our stress hormone levels including cortisol and adrenaline and that cortisol then has a ripple effect onto the immune system. While our immune system in a healthy state will help protect us from infections including high risk HPV virus, when we're under stress and have unresolved trauma, that shifts our immune system over into the direction of inflammation, potentially autoimmunity and risk of infection, as well as risk of susceptibility to high risk HPV causing cancer cells. If you're testing positive for high risk HPV and potentially abnormal cells, I encourage you to start thinking about how you can support your immune system to shift back into the version of the immune system that can protect you from the infection. And at the same time, we want to help you to recover from stress and optimize your cortisol so that that stress and cortisol doesn't keep throwing your immune system back into su acceptability mode.