004 - Autoimmune Disease and Adverse Childhood Experiences, with Marion Bachra

MARION R. BACHRA, MS, RD, LN, CECP

Specialties are Trauma-Informed:

Clinical Nutritionist, Traditional Chinese Herbalist, Certified Emotion Code Practitioner

Her Trauma-Informed approach is to help foster the Inner Healer that is within all of us and to help remove obstacles for the full manifestation of that Inner Healer within. She currently sees herself as a mediator and a guide to help her clients achieve their goals and reasons for their visits with her and whatever else unfolds.

As a Trauma-Informed Clinical Nutritionist:

Marion places an emphasis on metabolic imbalances, eating disorders, and weight loss which spans vast areas and includes the assessment of cardiovascular metabolism, blood sugar metabolism, digestive function & adequacy while considering the emotional and mental health challenges of each client, to help foster a healthy, balanced, and compassionate self-care while exploring what the potential obstacles are to this compassionate self-care.

As a Trauma-Informed Traditional Chinese herbalist:

Through the lens of Traditional Chinese Medicine she does an assessment that considers the client’s symptoms, signs, tongue and pulses, with the goal to help foster the Inner Healer and to help reestablish Inner Balance through the lens of different Chinese Organ Domain Patterns which are mostly functional and energetic and not so much structural and localized in one particular organ, but can include a particular organ, hence Organ Domain Patterns.

As a Trauma-Informed & Certified Emotion Code Practitioner:

The Emotion Code, developed by Dr. Bradley Nelson, is a very efficient method for tracking down trapped emotions and helping the person to release these trapped emotions to help foster that Inner Healer.  Trapped Emotions are those emotions that you have previously experienced but were overwhelming to you and so you have these stowed away. These trapped emotions can come from many sources: preconception (trapped before birth), prenatal (trapped or absorbed during pregnancy), inherited (from mom/dad/both), absorbed, or shared. 

 

Program Notes:
06:00… What is an Autoimmune Disease? What are some of the body’s responses? All diseases have an emotional component. Diseases being genetic versus epigenetic.
11:35… Different “more obscure” autoimmune diseases. Amy Myers, MD, and Bruce Lipton, PhD about epigenetics. Environment can turn-on and turn-off our genes. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) can affect our negative genes. 
17:45… Amy Myers writes about connection between autoimmune disease and leaky gut. Marion elaborates. She felt there was a huge piece missing; especially ACE’s. Explaining some of the work of Bessel van der Kolk, MD and his book The Body Keeps the Score. Somatic experiencing for many works better than talk therapy.
27:10… Michael Platt, MD’s book Adrenaline Dominance, highlighting fibromyalgia disorder. How are leaky gut and ACE’s connected? Dis-regulation of the autonomic nervous system affects everything through the vagus nerve. Jacobus talks about the brain (coach) versus the body (athlete) and how these two communicate through symptoms and cravings. Different stages of symptoms that keep aggravating and can turn into chronic disease(s).
38:54… Marion’s own story about autoimmune pancreatic disorder starting in 2014. As years have gone by she realized how complex the autonomic nervous system is to work with. Trying to figure things out intellectually instead of from the heart. You need to discover self-compassion for self-discovery and healing.
47:15… Adverse Childhood Experiences. Why can they be overwhelming? What is mis-attunement? Losing your authentic self, and losing your connection with your parents can affect one’s direction in life; emotional scars can affect our immune system. Trauma(capital-T) versus trauma (lower-t): trauma is not the event itself, but the feelings afterwards. Trauma is held in our nervous system. If mis-attunement is never restored it can turn into Trauma (Capital-T). Pre-verbal trauma.
57:35… Neglect and abuse: these are polar opposites. Poly-vagal perspective, Ventral vagal, or the Window of Tolerance (Hyper-Arousal, Hypo-Arousal, Optimal Window.) How is this affecting our digestion? Sympathetic: more risk of diarrhea; para-sympathetic: more risk for constipation.
1:11:59… Quick recap. “Energy” is vibration, which can create shape; dis-regulated energy can cause vibration/shape deregulation. Not everyone with leaky gut has autoimmune disease; nor does everyone with autoimmune disease suffer with leaky gut. Functional medicine practice and limitations.
1:16:35… Video from PolyVagal Institute about the Vagal System (1:26:02… end.)      J & M elaborate on the video
1:28:25… Importance of parents to keep continuing to “work” on themselves. Stephen Porges, Ph.D., developer of the Poly-Vagal Theory, head of NICABM (National Institute of Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine.)
1:33:20… Kaiser Permanente research study on Adverse Childhood Experiences (1995-1997, 17,000 participants). What makes this a hallmark study? Marion explains the possible effects of ACE’s on emotions, chronic diseases, and attempted suicides. www.AcesTooHigh.com.
1:45:10… Is this type of research actually applied? Counselors should actually do more continuous education about somatic/body trauma. We have drug-based medicine; the complexity of trauma is not really being taught. And how about Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).
1:51:07… Diagnosing an autoimmune disease is important, then we have to look for causes. Why can mis-attunement also be called invisible ACE? Classic form of mis-attunement is Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) according to Gabor Maté. But it should better be called Authenticity Deficit Disorder.
1:56:24… Where can people go for more information about these topics? www.NICABM.com, deep breathing, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)/Tapping; Somatic Therapy (Peter Levine, Ph.D.)/www.SomaticExperiencing.com. Book: “Parenting from the Inside Out” Dan Siegel, MD, www.DrDanSiegel.com