How Trauma Can Affect your Ability to overcome Mold Toxicity and most chronic illnesses.

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Mold toxicity is a very pervasive and challenging issue to resolve, because there's so many aspects that really need to be considered. One of the aspects that’s not considered all that much is the role of emotional trauma, and in particular what I’m referring to here is childhood trauma. Because we all have these childhood trauma pieces that we’re all carrying with us as adults. It’s important to recognize the importance of this, the severity, that some of us carry these wounds.

They're not always these big trauma pieces that we think of. But they inevitably have some conditioning and some of these things that are really just a part of growing up. And so, I really want to address this in the context of mold and hopefully it gives people a framework through which to look at their own situation.

I think the most notable study that’s been done was the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, the ACEs study. And this was done by Kaiser Permanente from ‘95 to ‘97, included over 17000 adults. And really, they just completed a very simple survey regarding their childhood experiences, as related to their current health status and their current behaviours as adults. The 3 categories were abuse, neglect, and household challenges. So, they just asked these 10 questions. Was there emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse? Emotional neglect, physical neglect, domestic violence, substance abuse, mental illness, parental separation, or divorce, or incarcerated parents?

ACE Questionnaire
So, in other words, as a child, did you experience any of these? And what they found was that 67% of the people that took that survey had at least one ACE, one adverse childhood experience that might be listed. And of course, probably the most common one is divorce or parental separation.

People with 6 or more ACEs tend to die 20 years earlier than those who have none. And that’s on average. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. It’s just what the data shows. And that 1/8th of the population have more than 4 ACEs

So, these ACEs, or this trauma, these wounds that we experience in childhood, are so hidden in our experience. And oftentimes, we don’t even recall them. So, it really is an important thing to reflect upon, to work with, even late in adulthood.

But what's even more surprising is things like heart disease. You have a double in the rate of heart disease from no ACEs to 1 to 3 ACEs. What they're showing is that, even despite behavioural changes, that all manners of chronic disease go up when we see a greater number of adverse childhood experiences.

There are studies about how our grandfathers, or grandmothers, or our parents, might have been survivors of the holocaust. That trauma, or that difficult emotional experience can then be passed on to us, and change our epigenetic switches, our epigenetic expression.

That this can actually change the way our genes are expressed, our neural biology. So, this is massive. And again, this wasn’t even trauma that we experienced. This is something that we inherited from our parents. Here is a chart to reference what I am talking about: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/images/acestudy/ace_pyramid_lrg.png?_=02021

Neuroception. This is an important concept. And this is the body’s inherent ability to read environmental cues. This is what allows us to feel whether a certain situation, or certain person, or a certain experience is safe, or if it’s somethings that’s dangerous or life-threatening. Our nervous system is highly attuned to pick up on these energies, or these perceptions of energies. And this is what's really dictating how our nervous system is functioning.

This brings us into kind of the core of really what I wanted to write about, is the nervous system function. Because when we want to clear mold, when we want to stay healthy, we really need good autonomic balance. And that means the parasympathetic and the sympathetic.

So, the sympathetic side is, it’s your fight or flight. That’s going to increase your blood pressure, your heart-rate. It’s going to move blood away from the core, into the periphery, into the feet, the hands, the arms, the legs (getting the body ready to run from the tiger). We’re not going to digest food. We’re not going to detoxify. We are in a sort of life-or-death situation, when it comes to the sympathetic. So, all the function is going to be geared toward the sympathetic.

The parasympathetic is really where all the healing happens. This is where the detoxification is really up-regulated. This is where we digest food really well. This is the rest, digest, and sex type of nervous system function. And that is really critical for any kind of healing from long-term chronic health.

And when we’re experiencing something like mold exposure, or we have heavy metal toxicity, or any chronic issue that we’re experiencing, we tend to be shifted into the sympathetic. The body’s always trying to sort of fight something or it’s always on alert. And so, any time that we can shift into the parasympathetic is going to be a good thing.

Now, what happens when we experience childhood trauma, and again, we all experience childhood trauma. It’s just to what degree. And to what degree have we resolved, or integrated, or healed that, so to speak. Childhood trauma actually shifts our nervous system function.

So that’s when things get really bad. And this is actually what you see with chronic fatigue. And you see this a lot of time with mold, is that the overwhelm at the sort of biological or even emotional level, is so significant that it’s just draining too much energy. So, the body starts to shut down, to sort of conserve the energy.

When we get that traumatic event, and it jacks up our nervous system so strongly, the sympathetic overdrive kicks in. And again, when that’s happening, we are not detoxifying. We’re not able to digest food very well. And so, you can see that as the traumatic event spikes up the nervous system into the sympathetic, now, from that point, we’re coming down, but we’re not actually coming back down into rest.

And this is what happens oftentimes for many of us that have experienced even a mild or a moderate amount of wounding in childhood, where it’s not like we were physically, sexually, or emotionally abused, but rather our needs weren’t met on a regular basis. We experienced some fairly significant events that created stress in our nervous system.

We’re always kind of heightened at the nervous system, at the emotional level even. And definitely at the thought-based level. So, we can’t quite shut off.

And so, if that’s the case, then many of us grow up in the situation where our nervous system is actually sort of offset to the sympathetic. And we’re running on a sympathetic overdrive as our norm. And even when we think we’re resting, we’re still slightly jacked up a little bit. And again, detoxification isn’t as good. Digestion’s not as good.

And so, we’re unable to clear the heavy metals. We’re unable to clear chemicals. We’re unable to clear things like mold or other infections, because we’re not able to do this biotransformation, this detoxification, this lymphatic drainage. All that kind of stops working as well, when our nervous system is jacked up.

And so, when you have this childhood trauma piece, you're going to be more likely to get infections, whether it’s mold, parasites, bacterial, what have you. We’re more open to those infections. Chemicals and metals, they become a bigger threat. EMF, same thing. And dietary inflammogens. Everything.

And then of course everything affects everything else. And this is a big one. And I think with mold in particular, EMF and metals are probably the two big ones that really come into play here. So, if we have an excess level of EMF in our environment that we’re dealing with, this is going to fundamentally change how mold behaves.

And there's a lot of research that has been done on this. Mold will essentially populate faster, and give off more mycotoxins in the presence of electromagnetic radiation. Particularly in specific frequencies that we deal with, when it comes to phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.

So, if you're dealing with mold infection, that is one area that I would highly consider altering. And simply turning off your phone, getting the phone away from you as much as possible, turning off Wi-Fi, especially at night when you're trying to sleep, these things can really make a difference when it comes to mold exposure. And same thing with chemicals and metals.

So what can we do to shift into parasympathetic?

One of the things that we can utilize is just our breath. And this may be the most free medicine that we can find. One of the easiest techniques to use is the 4-7-8 breath, or the relaxing breath. The simple technique is to inhale through your nose, with your mouth closed, for 4 seconds. Hold your breath at the top, for a count of 7. And then exhale completely through your mouth for 8 seconds.

And so, you're actually going to make this whoosh sound as you exhale for 8 seconds, and then you do it again. Inhale through the nose for 4, hold for 7, and release for 8. And you can do a number of rounds of this. And the more you do, the better, to be honest. It will start to put you to sleep. It is one of the easiest ways to relax the nervous system, to get you out of the mind, to calm your entire system down.

So, this is a fantastic practice before you eat meals, because it can get you into that rest and digest state. It’s fantastic for winding down, either sitting in bed doing this, or maybe an hour before, just to calm your system down. It’s great if any of you are trying to transition from one thing to the next, and you need to calm yourself. Using a couple of rounds of this really does shift your nervous system.

And what's interesting about this technique is that the more you do it, in other words, the more you bring this into your life, day, after day, after day, the more it seems to have an impact. And so, it’s a sort of cumulative effect on your nervous system. And it’s free. And it’s super easy.

I know this was a longer posting than usual but I think it’s a major factor in why some of us are more susceptible than others to mold and other environmental toxins.

So yes, it’s harder for those of us that need to address childhood trauma before we can truly heal in all aspects but if we want to live long and live well…it’s all worth the work!

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to me.

As always, take care of yourself and talk to you soon!

With love,

Melissa