A transcript excerpt from a YouTube video by Robert Whitfield MD explaining how higher Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) scores are associated with greater likelihood of autoimmune, metabolic, hormonal, and mental-health problems, while noting individual variability due to resilience and prior trauma work. The speaker frames unresolved trauma as a toxic burden stored in the body—comparable metaphorically to herbicides, pesticides, heavy metals, or microplastics—emphasizing that clearing biochemical toxins is more linear and testable, whereas unpacking chronic stress and embodied trauma is complex, non-linear, and essential for healing when relevant.
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The higher your someone's ACE score, the more likely research shows to be diagnosed with autoimmune problems, metabolic issues, hormonal problems, mental health issues. Of course. And again, you could have, someone can have a high ACE score and they have very high resilience and very low epigenetic, you know, physiological factors, the psychological factors are not really manifesting in their life so much. Right. It's a piece of the puzzle, but not significant. Maybe they've done a lot of trauma work already and we're, and they've dealt with the mental, emotional stuff by the time they've met us, but it's still part of their story. And for some people, it's still living in their body very much just as much as a physiological toxin, like, just as much as like herbicide or pesticide or a microplastic. Their unresolved trauma, that toxic burden is living in their body as well. And you have to detox, if you will, both. But it's a lot more linear, prescriptive, straightforward for us to say, yeah, this herbicide, pesticide, heavy metal, whatever, my microplastic that we find high on labs, let's implement a protocol to clear that out and retest it. It's a lot more complex, non linear to unpack things like chronic stress and unresolved trauma stored in the body. You can't just say, you know, don't have that trauma anymore or let's like detox that trauma. It's a lot more complex to unpack, but it's one that's very much, you know, is, is a necessity if it's a piece of the puzzle for you to heal.
