JJ Virgin4x NYTimes Best Selling Author, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness Hall of Famer

The Biology Of Trauma

3 Sept 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:22

In this brief interview segment, JJ Virgin and a co‑speaker discuss the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study and its profound influence on modern medicine by foregrounding trauma. They critique the ACE questionnaire for its inability to capture subtle, relational disconnections—such as a caregiver’s lack of eye contact—that are not easily remembered or quantified. The conversation highlights that the ACE score reduces complex trauma histories to a single number, which can be misleading. JJ Virgin shares a personal example of having a zero ACE score yet still experiencing bodily signs of trauma, questioning why trauma can manifest even when the questionnaire suggests none. The segment underscores the need for broader, more nuanced assessments of trauma beyond the ACE metric.

Chapters

So let's talk about what that is, the adverse childhood events, and then how you would look at, how you'd be able to evaluate trauma in someone.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences study changed medicine completely by even bringing the topic of trauma into the conversation. And where it is now, it's still focused on what happened or what did not happen for you in your childhood, which There are so many things that you just can't quantify. There's so many things that a person will never remember. They're not going to remember all of the subtle disconnections, like my mom was busy and she was never able to take the time to actually sit down with me and look in my eyes. And yet we know that a child does not feel that they exist unless someone is looking into their eyes. But how do you— how do you ask that on a test, right? That's not what's being asked on the Adverse Childhood Experiences test. So what has— it's created this again, almost like a label and a diagnosis of, well, what's your score compared to someone else's score and justifying the amount of problems and dysfunction and health problems that someone has when they have a high ACE score. But yet someone like me who has a zero score— you have a zero score? Why does my body seem to hold trauma?