Time does not, in fact, heal all wounds. Sometimes they even compound themselves over time. Dr. Tracey Marks explains the damage that trauma does—the physiological presentation of “the axe forgets but the tree remembers”—and how to heal from that actual damage.

The science of healing

Trauma affects the mind and body (largely because the brain is, of course, both—and affects pretty much everything else), which can ripple out into all areas of life.

On the physical level, brain areas affected by trauma include:

• Amygdalae: becomes hyperactive, keeping a person in a heightened state of vigilance.
• Hippocampi: can shrink, causing fragmented or missing memories.
• Prefrontal cortex: reduces in activity, impairing decision-making and emotional regulation.

Trauma also activates the body’s fight or flight response, releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. These are great things to have a pinch, but having them elevated all the time is equivalent to only ever driving your car at top speed—the only question becomes whether you’ll crash and burn before you break down.

However, there is hope! Neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to rewire itself) can make trauma recovery possible through various interventions.

Evidence-based therapies for trauma include:

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): this can help reprocess traumatic memories and reduce emotional intensity.
• Trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): this can help change unhelpful thought patterns and includes exposure therapy.
• Somatic therapies: these focus on the body and nervous system to release stored tension.

In this latter category, embodiment is key to trauma recovery—this may sound “wishy-washy”, but the evidence shows that reconnecting with the body does help manage emotional stress responses. Mind-body practices like mindfulness, yoga, and breathwork help cultivate embodiment and reduce trauma-related stress.

In short: you can’t just “get over” it, but with the right support and interventions, it’s possible to rewire the brain and body toward resilience and healing.

For more on all of this from Dr. Marks, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

• PTSD, But, Well…. Complex.
• Undoing The Damage Of Life’s Hard Knocks
• A Surprisingly Powerful Tool: Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing

Take care!

Chronic fatigue is on the rise. A lot of it appears to be Long COVID-related, but whether that’s the case for you or not, one thing that will make a big difference to your energy levels is something that French biochemist Jessie Inchauspé is here to explain:

Mitochondrial management

Inchauspé explains it in terms of a steam train; to keep running, it must have coal burning in its furnace. However, if more coal is delivered to the engine room faster than it can be put in the furnace and burned, and the coal just keeps on coming, the worker there will soon be overwhelmed trying to find places to put it all; the engine room will be full of coal, and the furnace will sputter and go out because the worker can’t even reach it on account of being buried in coal.

So it is with our glucose metabolism also. If we get spikes of glucose faster than our body can deal with them, it will overload the body’s ability to process that energy at all. Just like the steam train worker, our body will try! It’ll stuff that extra glucose wherever it can (storing as glycogen in the liver is a readily available option that’s easy to do and/but also gives you non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and isn’t quickly broken down into useable energy), and meanwhile, your actual mitochondria aren’t getting what they need (which is: a reliable, but gentle, influx of glucose).

You can imagine that the situation we described in the steam train isn’t good for the engine’s longevity, and the corresponding situation in the human body isn’t good for our mitochondria either (or our pancreas, or our liver, or… the list goes on). Indeed, damaged mitochondria affect exercise capacity and stress resilience—as well as being a long-term driver of cancer.

The remedy, of course, is blood sugar management. Specifically, avoiding glucose spikes. She has a list of 10 ways to do this (small changes to how we eat; what things to eat with what, in which order, etc) that make a huge measurable difference. For your convenience, we’ve linked those ten ways below; first though, if you’d like to hear it from Inchauspé directly (her style is very pleasant), enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

• 10 Ways To Balance Your Blood Sugars ← this is the longer list she’s referring to in the video!
• How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver ← also relevant

Take care!