The Link Between Childhood Trauma and Adult Health

I have worked with many clients over the years who came to Salt City Bodyworks feeling discouraged and confused. They had been living with significant health problems and had seen countless doctors and medical health professionals with little or no change in their symptoms. “I’m in chronic pain but my tests always come back ‘normal’” is a phrase I’ve heard countless times. Quite often this means the cause of the physical symptoms is not genetic, congenital, mechanical, bacterial/viral or from toxic environmental exposure. If it were, the traditional medical model would have made that determination since these are all measurable inputs. Instead, the root can likely be traced to a long-term accumulation of toxic stress (aka trauma) which is much harder to detect in standard tests.

Nadine Burke Harris is a Canadian-American pediatrician currently serving as the Surgeon General of California. She is well-known for founding Center for Youth Wellness and her public efforts to bring attention to the negative health effects of toxic stress. In this TED Talk, she highlights the connection between “adverse childhood experience” (trauma) and poor outcomes in adult health.

Follow this link to learn more about the Adverse Childhood Experience Study (ACES) and even take the quiz to find out how you score: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean