Explore every episode of the podcast The Biology of Trauma® With Dr. Aimie
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stuck in Functional Freeze? Start With Small Doses of Safety | 03 Nov 2026 | 00:21:58 | |
You push yourself through every day, and the push never gets easier. What will surprise you is that the way out of functional freeze starts smaller than you think, and that safety itself can feel scary at first. In this solo episode, Dr. Aimie explains why the body holds on to a freeze response, why we cannot think our way out of it, and the order the body follows to come back out: safety, support, then expansion. She walks you through a one-minute microdosing safety practice, explains why too much safety too fast can bring rebound anxiety, and shares how to give your freeze short, planned time instead of fighting it. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
"For a nervous system that has been in fear its whole life, bringing it a moment of safety can feel scary." ~ Dr. Aimie Apigian If you are always pushing through and can't seem to rest, this episode is for you. RESOURCES:
This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.
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| How Do I Get Out of Freeze When I'm Afraid of It? | 27 Oct 2026 | 00:29:12 | |
You push through every day, and an exhaustion stays underneath. What will surprise you is that the fear of the freeze is often what keeps you in it, and that the way out starts with letting the body move through it. In this solo episode, Dr. Aimie answers a question she hears nearly every week: how do I get out of freeze when I'm afraid of it? She explains functional freeze, a trauma response that never completed, and how we override it with caffeine, busyness, sugar and stress. She shares how she lived in functional freeze as a resident physician, why pushing through drains the tank, how she learned to stop fearing her own freeze, and what to do if you are in a shutdown right now. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
"Freeze is one layer. The fear of the freeze is a second layer. And that second layer is often what keeps us stuck." ~ Dr. Aimie Apigian If you are always pushing through and always exhausted underneath it, this episode is for you. RESOURCES:
This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care. | |||
| Why Am I Lonely but Too Tired to Socialize? | 20 Oct 2026 | 00:26:01 | |
You can feel lonely and still not want to be around anyone. What will surprise you is that inflammation itself can create a feeling of disconnection, and loneliness feeds that inflammation back. In this solo episode, Dr. Aimie answers a question from a participant in her practitioner training: why do I feel lonely, but also not want to be around people? She explains the difference between being alone and feeling lonely, why healthy habits did not offset the health cost of loneliness in a study of 277,489 adults, and how stored trauma creates a part that hides and a part that craves connection. She walks through the loop between loneliness and inflammation, and what to do as the holidays come closer, whether you are with family, with friends or on your own: blood sugar, sleep, a containment hug and words of support for the lonely part of you. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
"I'm not trying to make the loneliness go away. I'm trying to make the loneliness know that it actually isn't all alone." ~ Dr. Aimie Apigian If you feel lonely but too tired to be around people, or you have stepped back from family on your healing journey, this episode is for you. RESOURCES:
This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.
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| Can Early Life Stress Show Up in My Gut? Dr. Emeran Mayer | 13 Oct 2026 | 00:31:09 | |
A hard start in life can still be shaping your gut decades later. What will surprise you is that your gut microbes can sense when you are stressed, and they change how they treat your gut wall. Dr. Aimie speaks with Dr. Emeran Mayer, gastroenterologist, neuroscientist and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA, about how early life stress reaches the gut, the immune system and the brain. He explains increased stress responsiveness, his term for how a difficult birth or childhood becomes biology, and why it does not mean you are doomed. They also talk about why brain fog may start in the gut, the mucus layer that protects the gut wall, and the foods that help it, from diverse fiber to fermented foods. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
"When a gut microbe is exposed to the stress hormone norepinephrine, it changes its genes and becomes more aggressive toward the bowel wall." ~ Dr. Emeran Mayer If you had a difficult birth or a stressful childhood and have lived with gut symptoms or brain fog for years, this episode is for you. RESOURCES:
This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.
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| Can I Safely Feel Emotions I Buried? Dr. Howard Schubiner | 08 Oct 2026 | 00:23:25 | |
Emotions held down for decades are still shaping your body. What will surprise you is that the way back can start very small, even with one finger. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation. Part 1 is here. ➡Trauma Pattern Quiz: https://draimie.co/4jIXc9V Dr. Aimie continues her conversation with Dr. Howard Schubiner, internist, Clinical Professor at Michigan State and an early mentor of hers. He describes what changes in the body when an emotion held down for decades is finally felt and expressed, and why safety and self-compassion make that possible. They talk about why neuroplastic symptoms are reversible, how compassion, curiosity and calm answer the question pain is asking, and where to start when your capacity is very low. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
"Sadness turns right into compassion. Anger gets expressed, and you let it go." ~ Dr. Howard Schubiner If you have held your emotions down for years and wonder whether it is safe to feel them, this episode is for you. RESOURCES:
This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.
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| Is My Pain Coming From My Brain? Dr. Howard Schubiner | 06 Oct 2026 | 00:20:02 | |
What will surprise you is that the brain decides whether to turn on pain, and it treats emotional danger from childhood or from an unjust world as danger. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation Dr. Aimie welcomes back Dr. Howard Schubiner, internist, Clinical Professor at Michigan State and author of Unlearn Your Pain. He describes how a child who learned to keep the peace grows into an adult whose brain still reacts to everyday stress as danger, and why he sees racism and injustice as sources of pain. They talk about why chronic pain, fatigue and POTS keep rising while the body has not changed, why neuroplastic symptoms are real and reversible, and how someone with rheumatoid arthritis can carry both structural and neuroplastic pain. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
“Not all pain is due to injury. It’s our job to sort it out because emotional pain can cause physical pain, and that’s a fact. And that’s how we’re wired.” ~ Dr. Howard Schubiner If you live with pain that no test has fully explained, this episode is for you. RESOURCES:
This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.
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| Where Do I Start With Flaring Mast Cells? Dr. Bruce Hoffman | 01 Oct 2026 | 00:27:23 | |
You react to everything. You want to find the cause and get rid of it. What will surprise you is that the most common place people start, binders, chelation or a mold detox, may be the very thing that makes a reactive body worse. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation. Part 1 is here: Apple · Spotify · show notes. Dr. Aimie and Dr. Bruce Hoffman talk about where to start when the body reacts to everything. Dr. Hoffman shares the order he used for 30 years with his most complex patients: safety first, then daylight and natural rhythms, self-regulation, POTS, and then calming the mast cells, with binders, chelation and mold treatment much later. They also cover which medications calm mast cells, why supplements alone rarely do, how to tell a Herxheimer reaction from a mast cell reaction, and why mast cell labs so often come back normal. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
"I never approached the toxic load until I've got them stabilized in the health cycle principles, self-regulation, POTS, and mast cells." — Dr. Bruce Hoffman If you have tried detox after detox and your body only gets more reactive, this episode is for you. RESOURCES:
This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.
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| Why Do My Mast Cells React to Stress? Dr. Bruce Hoffman | 29 Sep 2026 | 00:29:58 | |
[COMPANION GUIDE NAME]: Every term from this conversation explained in plain words, in the order it comes up. First it was one food. Now it is smells, supplements, heat and stress, and the list keeps growing. What will surprise you is that mast cells respond to your total load, and a sensitized system can react to the thought of a trigger alone. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. [Part 2 is here: EP 198 LINK]
Dr. Aimie breaks down the cell danger response, the footprint childhood trauma leaves as oxidative damage, and the two-way loop that keeps mast cells and the nervous system setting each other off. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
"You don't even have to have the threat. You can just think about it and your mast cells degranulate." — Dr. Bruce Hoffman If you react to more foods, smells and supplements every year and no one can tell you why, this episode is for you.
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| How long does it take to heal a dysregulated nervous system? | 22 Sep 2026 | 00:30:36 | |
➡ Full show notes + resources: In this solo episode, Dr. Aimie explains what dysregulation actually is and why it never exists on its own. She walks through the patterns of stored trauma that feed it, and the four questions you can use to tell whether your nervous system is healing. She also shares why children's nervous systems change faster than adults', what a patient in the ICU taught her about changing slowly, and why biology is the most neglected piece of nervous system repair. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN "The longer that the nervous system has lived this way, the slower that change has to go in order for the nervous system to integrate that change over time." — Dr. Aimie Apigian If you have been working on your healing for years and cannot tell whether any of it is working, this episode is for you. RESOURCES: Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Stored Trauma. Get a picture of your patterns now, so you have something to measure your healing against. This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.
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| Why Are My Autoimmune Symptoms Worse in Perimenopause? | 15 Sep 2026 | 00:24:53 | |
Your labs keep coming back acceptable. Your symptoms keep getting harder to hold. And you have probably landed on one of two conclusions: either something is wrong with you that nobody has found yet, or something is wrong with how you are handling it. I want to offer a third. Three things change at the same time in this decade, and each one is invisible on its own. Your immune baseline was set decades before perimenopause. Estrogen, which your immune system has been reading as an instruction every day for years, stops declining in a straight line and starts swinging. And cortisol, which is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory signals your body makes, stops being received even while your body is producing more of it. That third one is why a normal lab result can be a false negative. The all clear is being sent. It is not landing. In this episode I walk through all three, and I translate the research into language you can use with your own provider. I also tell you why I stopped calculating ACE scores, what a hazard ratio actually means when you read one about your own health, and what has to be stabilized before anything else will hold. Perimenopause does not create the autoimmunity. It does not create the pattern either. It removes the margin that had been holding that pattern quietly, which is why it feels like it arrived out of nowhere. In this episode:
Resources:
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| I don't ask about your past. Here's what I ask | 08 Sep 2026 | 00:29:46 | |
I do not ask about your past. I do not get out the checklist of adverse childhood experiences. I am not calculating your ACE score. And I know how strange that sounds coming from a physician who works with stored trauma. What I look at is the impact of your past on your today, because that is where it is still leaving its footprint. In this episode I walk you through the assessment I teach practitioners, so you can run it on yourself. Three domains, one repeating pattern, and the equation that decides whether a stressor stays a stress or tips you into overwhelm. Then I take you to the part that surprises people most. Trauma work runs on energy. If your body does not have the capacity, the work cannot integrate no matter how willing you are. Which means the most useful place to start is sometimes sleep, or brain inflammation, rather than the trauma itself. That is still trauma work. I also tell you about the pattern I carried for thirty years, and how it changed without me ever going looking for the reason. In this episode:
Find your pattern: Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Stored Trauma The book: The Biology of Trauma by Dr. Aimie Apigian This podcast is educational and is not medical advice. Consult your own physician about your health.
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| Why Depression May Be an Early Sign of Autoimmunity | 25 Aug 2026 | 00:30:32 | |
Your labs confirmed the autoimmune diagnosis. The hardest symptom turned out to be the one nobody prepared you for. Dr. Aimie goes solo on depression and autoimmunity, and which one actually comes first. The answer is less orderly than the one most people are given, and it changes what to do about it. ➡️ Full show notes and research: CLICK HERE Most people are told depression is a reasonable response to being ill. Dr. Aimie interrupts that conclusion with what the research shows: each condition carries close to double the risk of the other, depression turns up in the two years before a diagnosis is made, and roughly a quarter of the link between early adversity and autoimmune disease appears to travel through mental health on the way. She also walks through why this depression rarely feels like sadness, and why the medication may have underperformed. She was on two of them herself, and the hardest part was not the depression. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: "Depression is part of the road from I was healthy to I now have an autoimmune diagnosis." — Dr. Aimie Apigian If the antidepressant did not do much and you quietly concluded something was wrong with you, this episode is for you. RESOURCES: Take the FREE 2-Minute Assessment for Discovering Your Pattern of Stored Trauma: You cannot change a pattern you cannot see. Find your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much, then see how the other four show up. Get The Biology of Trauma: Disease is one of the five patterns of stored trauma. Nothing in this episode is a recommendation to change or stop a medication. Talk to the prescriber who knows your history. This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care. | |||
| Gut or thyroid first in chronic freeze? Dr. Amie Hornaman | 20 Aug 2026 | 00:21:49 | |
You have been doing the work. The therapy, the somatic practices, the self-care. And your body still will not come online. Here is what almost nobody tells you. The thyroid governs gut motility. When it runs low and slow, the bloating and the constipation you have been treating from the gut end may have been downstream of the thyroid the whole time. So you can do everything right, in the right order, and still be working the wrong end of the problem. This is Part 2 with Dr. Amie Hornaman, known as the Thyroid Fixer. She was misdiagnosed six different times in her twenties before anyone found it. In this episode she gets practical about selenium, about which system to start with, and about why she thinks adrenal fatigue is overdiagnosed. She also gives a number for how long before your energy and stress resilience actually shift, with the caveat that belongs beside it. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: The full show notes have the research behind the SIBO connection, every quote from the episode, the chapter list, and the optimal lab ranges to ask about. Read the full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/gut-or-thyroid-first-when-you-are-in-chronic-freeze RESOURCES: By listening to this podcast, you agree not to use it as medical, psychological, or mental health advice to treat any condition in yourself or others. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. Always consult your own qualified health provider. | |||
| Stuck in Freeze? The Thyroid Piece Nobody Checked | 18 Aug 2026 | 00:36:41 | |
You have been doing the work. You understand your patterns. And you are still waking up unable to face the day. When the body decides survival is the priority, it stops converting thyroid hormone into the form your cells can use. It produces an inactive version instead, called reverse T3, and that version blocks the active hormone at the cell door. The result is a body running low and slow. It is the same physiology I call chronic functional freeze. Dr. Amie Hornaman ranks reverse T3 as the single most important thyroid marker, ahead of free T3, and it is a marker almost nobody orders. She also holds that stress and trauma on their own can raise it. This is Part 1 of a two part conversation. ➡️ Full show notes, research and timestamps: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/can-a-thyroid-problem-keep-me-in-chronic-freeze WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
RESOURCES:
Part 2 releases August 20, 2026. | |||
| Can I Recover From Medical Trauma? Dr. Jim Jackson (Part 2) | 13 Aug 2026 | 00:23:14 | |
Most trauma has a place you can avoid. Medical trauma lives inside your body, so there is nowhere to go. Dr. Aimie sits down with Dr. James Jackson for the second half of their conversation on medical trauma. What will surprise you is how much recovery is available while the symptoms are still present. This is Part 2 of a two part conversation. Part 1 is here. ➡ Full show notes + resources: https://bit.ly/BOT190 Dr. Jackson works with people recovering after critical illness, and he is direct about something most clinicians avoid saying. Patients have been taught that recovery means every symptom is erased. That standard fails most bodies. He offers a different measure, along with the markers that actually move. Dr. Aimie also shares why she left general surgery residency after four years, and the one question she started asking her patients that changed everything about how she practiced.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: 02:55 — Why do you carry the source of a medical trauma with you? 05:35 — What is acceptance and commitment therapy? 06:37 — How can you be fine right now? 07:09 — Why did Dr. Aimie leave general surgery residency? 08:17 — What happens when you ask a patient what their diagnosis means to them? 11:40 — Why should no one else decide what counts as a big trauma? 13:33 — Why is overselling recovery a problem? 14:46 — What does a rich recovery actually look like? 15:32 — What are the objective markers that recovery is happening? 17:02 — How should we talk about post-traumatic growth? 20:22 — Why can no one recover from medical trauma alone?
"If the trauma happened in your body, you're carrying that around. You're carrying it around, and you can't avoid it. It's always there." — Dr. James Jackson
If you have quietly decided you are not recovering because something still hurts, this episode is for you.
RESOURCES:
This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care. | |||
| Medical Trauma Has a Name, with Dr. Jim Jackson (Part 1) | 11 Aug 2026 | 00:25:56 | |
A hospital saved your life, and now you plan your route so you do not drive past it. That has a name, and the name is medical trauma. Medical trauma is a trauma response that comes from a medical experience. It can follow an ICU stay, a hard surgery, or an emergency C-section. Post-intensive care syndrome, or PICS, describes new or worsened problems in thinking, mood, and physical function after critical illness. Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-do-i-avoid-the-doctor-now-medical-trauma-and-post-intensive-care-syndrome-with-dr-james-jacks Dr. James Jackson of Vanderbilt co-founded one of the first clinics in the country for survivors of critical illness. He sat on front porches across the South asking people what their life was like after the ICU, and he heard the same story hundreds of times. In this Part 1 conversation with Dr. Aimie, he names the one sign he watches for above all others, why so many doctors have never heard of PICS, and how long recovery actually takes. This is Part 1 of two. Part 2 is here: Take the free 2-minute assessment for stored trauma at biologyoftrauma.com/quiz. Find your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much. You cannot change a pattern you cannot see. The Biology of Trauma book: biologyoftrauma.com/book Reclaiming Your Life from Medical Trauma, by Dr. James C. Jackson, PsyD. Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-do-i-avoid-the-doctor-now-medical-trauma-and-post-intensive-care-syndrome-with-dr-james-jacks This content is educational and is not medical advice. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition. Always consult your own qualified health provider. | |||
| What Type of Anxiety Do I Have? Dr. Nicole Cain (Part 2) | 06 Aug 2026 | 00:29:16 | |
A new mom was losing weight without trying. Her heart raced. Waves of panic arrived without warning. Her doctor congratulated her on the weight and offered her something for the anxiety. Her anxiety had been doing its job the whole time. It was a message from her thyroid. In Part 2, Dr. Aimie and Dr. Nicole Cain, author of Panic Proof, walk through the last six of the nine body systems that can produce anxiety. Nervous system, endocrine, immune system, depressive, anger, and trauma anxiety. Each one leaves a different signature, and each one asks for something different. You will hear why anger rises as you come out of chronic functional freeze, and how trauma work shifted one woman's biology down to what showed up on objective testing.
In This Episode You'll Learn: 01:00 — What is nervous system anxiety?
Resources/Guides: Get the free guide, Is It Stress or Trauma? Discover your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much. Read Panic Proof by Dr. Nicole Cain. All nine types, with quizzes and checklists. The Biology of Trauma book. The biology underneath these anxiety types. Part 1 of this conversation covers cardiac, gut, and thought anxiety.
This episode includes a description of a child being physically hurt by a parent, and discusses SSRIs, benzodiazepines, and herbs. This podcast is for educational purposes and is not medical advice. Always consult your own qualified health provider before changing any medication, supplement, or herb.
➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: | |||
| Why Do I Feel Anxious for No Reason? with Dr. Nicole Cain (Part 1) | 04 Aug 2026 | 00:34:56 | |
You feel anxious. Nothing has happened. Nothing is wrong on paper. Dr. Aimie learned in the emergency room that anxiety is never one thing. Someone would come in and say the word, and her job was to work out why. It could be a hard week. It could be a heart attack. Same word, two entirely different bodies. She still runs that checklist on herself. Then she read Dr. Nicole Cain's book Panic Proof and found the same approach mapped into nine types, each one named for the body system driving it. In this Part 1 conversation, they cover the first three. Cardiac, gut, and thought anxiety. You will learn how to tell fear from anxiety from panic, why the first place you feel it is your best clue, and why the same word describes both high energy activation and shutdown. This is Part 1 of two.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
RESOURCES:
This episode includes a personal disclosure about thoughts of suicide connected to a food reaction. Content here is educational and is not medical advice. | |||
| Is Not Trying Laziness, or Survival? With Josh Trent (Part 2) | 30 Jul 2026 | 00:34:35 | |
You know the thing that would help. You have known for a while. You still have not done it. This is Part 2 of two. Part 1 is here: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-do-we-escape-instead-of-rest-josh-trent-on-emotional-epigenetics WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
RESOURCES:
Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-is-not-trying-a-survival-response-not-a-weakness-with-josh-trent-part-2 | |||
| Josh Trent on Why We Escape Instead of Rest (Part 1) | 28 Jul 2026 | 00:28:33 | |
You finally have an evening with nothing in it. Twenty minutes later you are on your phone. Josh Trent spent most of his life in a body that did not know how to rest. A clench in his stomach. A breath that stayed high in his chest. His first memory is of being a boy watching the adults around him be angry, unable to change it and unable to leave. The bracing stayed for thirty years. Dr. Aimie and Josh talk about why stillness can feel unsafe, what separates real rest from escape, and why so many practitioners hold grief in a diaphragm that will not drop. This is Part 1 of two. Part 2 releases July 30. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
RESOURCES:
Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-do-we-escape-instead-of-rest-josh-trent-on-emotional-epigenetics | |||
| Why Do I Crash Every Time I Finally Slow Down? | 21 Jul 2026 | 00:22:58 | |
Why do I crash every time I finally slow down? Maybe you feel fine all week, then crash on the weekend. Maybe an open Saturday fills you with a quiet dread. So you fill it. An early bike ride. A full list. Anything to keep moving. Many people call this high-functioning burnout. It has a name, and it has a cause. ➡️ Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/episode-184-why-you-crash-when-you-slow-down-the-pattern-of-depletion WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
Resources/Guides:
➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/episode-184-why-you-crash-when-you-slow-down-the-pattern-of-depletion | |||
| Grieving Is a Skill: HRV, Intention, and the Biology of Resilience with Dr. David Rabin (Part 2) | 16 Jul 2026 | 00:23:44 | |
Most of us were told to grieve, to rest, to be present. Nobody taught us the skill. In Part 2, Dr. Aimie and neuroscientist Dr. David Rabin get into heart rate variability and resilience, why anxiety masks itself as focus, and why grieving is a skill your body has to learn. Feeling safe enough to feel is where the work begins. ➡️ Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-grieving-is-a-skill-what-hrv-reveals-about-resilience-david-rabin
Resources/Guides:
➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-grieving-is-a-skill-what-hrv-reveals-about-resilience-david-rabin | |||
| Why Stress Was Never the Enemy, with Dr. David Rabin (Part 1) | 14 Jul 2026 | 00:18:21 | |
Stress was never the enemy. Your body was built to use it. What wears the body down is chronic stress with no recovery on the other side. Translational neuroscientist Dr. David Rabin splits stress into two forms. Eustress builds capacity. Distress, carried over time, moves the body toward disease. ➡️ Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/eustress-distress-difference-means-for-your-body-david-rabin In This Episode You'll Learn:
Resources/Guides:
➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/eustress-distress-difference-means-for-your-body-david-rabin | |||
| EP 181: What Your Food Cravings Reveal About What You Survived | Dr. Tian Dayton | 07 Jul 2026 | 00:32:14 | |
Cravings point to a need underneath. This episode covers the three unmet needs behind food. It looks at the childhood roots of reaching for it. And it helps you tell stress from something deeper. ➡️ Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/what-your-food-cravings-mean-nervous-system In This Episode You'll Learn:
Resources/Guides:
➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/what-your-food-cravings-mean-nervous-system | |||
| EP 180: Is Your Acid Reflux a Nervous System Problem? | Molly Pelletier | 30 Jun 2026 | 00:35:33 | |
An early read on your nervous system explains why reflux holds on. This episode covers reflux hypersensitivity, lost hunger and fullness cues, and the somatic tools that calm the gut, including diaphragmatic breathing after meals. ➡️ Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/nervoussystemandacidreflux-thegut-brainconnection In This Episode You'll Learn:
Resources/Guides:
➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/nervoussystemandacidreflux-thegut-brainconnection | |||
| EP 179: Why Do Adoptees Struggle With Addiction? | Lisa Coppola | 23 Jun 2026 | 00:41:26 | |
This is where adoption, attachment, and addiction meet. An early attachment rupture leaves the nervous system braced and hypervigilant. A substance can feel like the first relief from that noise. Drawing on her own recovery, Lisa Coppola names the four hidden losses adoptees carry. She shares why recovery asks for more than abstinence. It asks for safe connection. ➡️ Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/adoption-attachment-and-addiction-why-adoptees-struggle-and-what-recovery-really-ask In This Episode You'll Learn:
Resources/Guides:
➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/adoption-attachment-and-addiction-why-adoptees-struggle-and-what-recovery-really-ask | |||
| EP 178: What Your Eyes Reveal About Your Attachment & Stress | Dr. Bryce Appelbaum | 16 Jun 2026 | 00:57:28 | |
Vision is one of the primary signals your nervous system reads for safety or danger. Under stress, peripheral vision collapses and the body locks into central focus. Dr. Bryce Appelbaum walks through three eye exercises that begin retraining the eye-brain connection and the felt sense of safety. ➡️ Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/vagus-nerve-and-vision-how-your-eyes-signal-safety-to-your-nervous-system In This Episode You'll Learn:
Resources/Guides:
➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/vagus-nerve-and-vision-how-your-eyes-signal-safety-to-your-nervous-system | |||
| EP 177: Beyond Anxious and Avoidant: 6 Attachment Wounds Your Body Learned Before You Had Words | 09 Jun 2026 | 00:52:49 | |
Attachment is a survival imprint that lives in the body, encoded before you had language. In this episode, Dr. Aimie Apigian walks through the 6 hidden attachment pains, the adult symptoms each one creates, and why inner work alone cannot reach where the pattern lives. ➡️ Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/episode-177-6-attachment-wounds-chronic-symptoms In This Episode You'll Learn:
Resources/Guides:
➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/episode-177-6-attachment-wounds-chronic-symptoms | |||
| EP 176: Smart, Strong, and Still Crashing? Why Regulation Matters — 3 Women's Stories | 02 Jun 2026 | 00:35:23 | |
Information alone does not resolve nervous system dysregulation. The body comes out of stored trauma in a precise three-step sequence: Safety, Support, Expansion. Skipping the order keeps the system stuck. Three Biology of Trauma® professionals describe the same shifts emerging in the same order, across three different conditions. ➡️ Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/nervous-system-regulation-stories-why-the-sequence-matters In This Episode You'll Learn:
Resources/Guides:
➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/nervous-system-regulation-stories-why-the-sequence-matters | |||
| EP 175: What Fear Does to Your Immune System: 4 Adaptive Patterns | 26 May 2026 | 00:34:12 | |
Metabolic syndrome, long-haul syndromes, hypersensitivity, and autoimmunity are four ways the immune system adapts to a nervous system living in fear. Each one is the immune system adapting to a fear-driven nervous system. These are adaptations. The body is doing what bodies do. In this solo episode, Dr. Aimie walks through all four immune adaptive patterns. The fear pattern behind each one. What your diagnosis is actually telling you. And why hope lives in a simple fact: most immune cells turn over every three days. She also shares her own experience with all four. This is also her own story. Her work in repairing the Biology of Trauma® started here. ➡️ Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/what-fear-does-to-your-immune-system-biology-of-trauma In This Episode You'll Learn:
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➡️ Full show notes for resources and links: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/what-fear-does-to-your-immune-system-biology-of-trauma | |||
| EP 174: Grief Is a Verb: Seven Principles I'm Living After Losing Amada | 19 May 2026 | 00:52:12 | |
Grieving without getting stuck is possible. But most people don't know what that actually looks like from the inside. In this personal episode, Dr. Aimie shares seven principles she is living right now — attachment grief, heart shock, body holding, and toxic positivity. Not the theory of grief. The actual practice from inside it. If you have ever wondered how to grieve without shutting down — or why grief and the nervous system are inseparable — this episode is the most personal answer Dr. Aimie has given. ➡️ Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/episode-174-7-principles-for-feeling-grief-in-your-body-after-loss In This Episode You'll Learn:
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➡️ Full show notes with links and resources: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/episode-174-7-principles-for-feeling-grief-in-your-body-after-loss | |||
| EP 173: What Sugar, Bread, and Salt Reveal About Your Nervous System in Menopause | 12 May 2026 | 00:43:26 | |
Food cravings are not a willpower problem. They are messages from a nervous system trying to survive. In this episode, Dr. Aimie Apigian maps the cortisol, blood sugar, and inflammation patterns behind cravings, why menopause makes them louder, and how stored trauma in the body keeps the loop running. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| Mother Hunger: The 3 Qualities of Maternal Love with Kelly McDaniel | 07 May 2026 | 00:48:54 | |
Mother hunger is what the body carries when it missed one of three essential elements of maternal care: nurture, protection, or guidance. On this Mother's Day Bonus Episode, Dr. Aimie sits down with Kelly McDaniel — author of Mother Hunger — to map the biology underneath. They walk through how unmet nurture shapes adult eating patterns, how unmet protection leaves a nervous system that never learned to settle, and how unmet guidance can leave a daughter inheriting the wound her mother could not heal. This is not about blaming any mother. It is about giving language to what the body has been holding so the work of repair can begin. ➡️ Full show notes: Mother Hunger: What the Body Carries When Nurture, Protection, and Guidance Are Missing In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| The 3 Hidden Costs of Being the Strong One - Burnout's Real Biology | 05 May 2026 | 00:53:11 | |
You've been the strong one. The one who keeps everything running. The one others lean on when things fall apart. Your body has been keeping score. And the bill has three items. There is a specific biology behind the pattern of holding everything together. It is not a personality trait. It is a nervous system response — and it carries three hidden costs most people never connect to the same source. In this episode of The Biology of Trauma® Podcast, Dr. Aimie Apigian — double board-certified physician and author of The Biology of Trauma — takes you inside the biology of what actually happens when a nervous system crosses from stress into overwhelm, and names the three hidden costs of a body that never resets back to safety. One is the reason you cannot rest, even when you are exhausted. One is the reason you no longer recognize yourself. And one is the reason your body has stopped repairing the way it is built to repair. The episode ends with a map. Three phases. A sequence. And the reason the sequence matters more than any single tool. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| Is Your Chocolate Holding Your Marriage Together? | With Luis Mojica | 28 Apr 2026 | 00:36:15 | |
Three women walked into Luis Mojica's nutrition practice with the same chocolate habit. When he asked each one what would happen if they stopped, the answer was identical — "I'd leave my husband." That moment became the birthplace of food therapy. In this episode, Dr. Aimie Apigian and somatic nutritionist Luis Mojica break down the three unmet needs driving food choices — emotional, relational, and nutritional — and how stimulants, depressants, and balancing foods each shape the stress response. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| What If Safety Is What Your Body Was Taught to Fear? | 21 Apr 2026 | 00:33:47 | |
You learned to assess the mood of a room before you walked into it. To listen to the sounds in the house before you got out of bed. To become whoever was needed — quickly, automatically, without being asked. Your nervous system built that skill before you had language for it. And it has been running ever since. In this episode, Dr. Aimie Apigian explains what growing up in an emotionally unsafe or narcissistic household actually does to the developing nervous system — why hypervigilance, people-pleasing, and the inability to fully rest are biological adaptations rather than personality traits, why genuine safety can feel more threatening than the chaos the body learned to navigate, and what it takes to teach a body that has never fully rested that it is now allowed to. This is the biology behind something many people have spent years trying to understand about themselves. Not what happened to them. What happened inside them — and what it will take to change it. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| Is Your Body Still Running a Trauma Response? | 14 Apr 2026 | 00:49:45 | |
What if the anxiety that will not settle, the fatigue that sleep does not fix, and the chronic health conditions that appeared out of nowhere are not separate problems? What if they are the same pattern — the nervous system running a stored trauma response it was never able to complete? In this solo episode, Dr. Aimie Apigian walks through the biology of how trauma gets stored in the nervous system, why the event matters far less than what the body did with it, and what the body actually needs to begin to update. She covers the five physiological steps into a trauma response — from startle through shutdown — the four patterns stored trauma produces in daily life, what true resilience looks like in biological terms rather than the push-through performance most people were praised for as children, and the practical things that shift the biology: adrenaline discharge, magnesium, zinc, sleep, movement, and specific supplements that support what the nervous system is trying to do. In her study of somatic therapy participants, the group doing somatic exercises alone — before any supplementation — reduced depression by 30%. She also traces the origin of the ACE study — which began in Dr. Vincent Felitti's obesity clinic in San Diego when patients who were losing weight started dropping out, and shared that the overeating was not the problem. It was the solution. And what it was a solution to was the trauma the body had been holding long before the weight arrived. This episode is for anyone who has been managing symptoms for years and is ready to understand what the body has actually been holding — and what it needs. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| What Stored Trauma Does to Your Hormones? | 07 Apr 2026 | 00:41:16 | |
What if the anxiety, the depression, the rage, and the emotional floods did not begin with perimenopause and have been there all along? And menopause is simply when the body can no longer hold them? What if your childhood ACE score is one of the strongest predictors of how severe your menopause experience will be? In this episode, Dr. Aimie talks with Dr. Betty Murray, hormone metabolism expert and functional medicine PhD, to connect two things medicine has kept separate for too long: stored trauma and hormonal health. Estrogen has receptors on every cell in the body except two. When it declines, every cell registers it — and for women carrying decades of chronic stress and stored trauma, that decline removes part of the biological buffer that was holding everything together. Dr. Aimie brings the trauma biology (as referenced in the ACE research, the PTSD and estrogen study) and the Biology of Trauma® framework that explains why menopause is the moment when what the body has been holding finally surfaces. Dr. Murray's hormone science confirms what that framework predicts: how a trauma-informed approach can actually help, why bioidentical hormones and the right labs matter, what the 10-million-woman study actually found, and how the Women's Health Initiative misrepresentation changed women's care for decades. This episode is for every woman who has been handed a prescription instead of a conversation about her hormones. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| Did Attachment Trauma Start Before You Had Memories? | 31 Mar 2026 | 00:39:15 | |
What if the patterns you've called personality — the distrust, the hyper-independence, the certainty that your needs are too much — were never personality at all? What if they are the nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do before you had a single memory to show for it? Attachment trauma persists in the body as implicit survival programming — not as memory, but as an operating assumption the nervous system keeps running long after the original environment has changed. In this episode, Dr. Aimie Apigian traces the attachment and trust cycle — the precise biological sequence in the first year of life that either builds or disrupts the nervous system's capacity for safety and connection. When that cycle breaks down, the body adapts. Those adaptations don't feel like adaptations. They feel like identity. Using the Biology of Trauma® framework, Dr. Aimie unpacks why attachment trauma patterns feel like personality rather than learned survival strategies, how children lose themselves to preserve the bond — the attachment vs. authenticity tension — and what that costs the body decades later. She also addresses why adrenaline, not cortisol, is the real driver of the stress response, and what the biological link between early attachment trauma and adult chronic illness actually looks like in the nervous system. This episode is for anyone whose body has been holding patterns that predate any story they can tell about themselves. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| What Does Overwhelm Have To Do With Chronic Pain? | 24 Mar 2026 | 00:23:19 | |
If you have chronic pain, you've probably been told that stress is making it worse. But here's what the biology actually shows: by the time your pain is flaring, you're past stress. You've crossed into overwhelm — and that changes everything about what your body can do. In this episode, Dr. Aimie Apigian — double board-certified physician and author of The Biology of Trauma® — explains why chronic pain and chronic trauma follow the same biological pattern, and exactly how the body gets stuck in cycles that feel impossible to interrupt. Once the nervous system crosses the critical line of overwhelm, three survival strategies take over: dissociation, immobilization, and energy conservation. Healing goes offline. That's not a failure of your approach. That's a shift in operating mode — one where the body only has enough energy to survive. What determines whether a flare happens is neuroception — the nervous system's subconscious safety scan, running below conscious awareness at all times. When it reads threat, the physiology shifts. That shift is where chronic pain lives. What moves this pattern is building capacity through five specific nervous system skills — so the body spends more time below the line, where healing is actually possible. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| Is Being "Good" a Trauma Response? The Biology of Proving Worth | 17 Mar 2026 | 00:45:12 | |
What does your body do with guilt it can never undo? Have you ever done everything right — and still felt something unresolved living in your body? Maybe it's not a dramatic story. Maybe it's just a moment you can't stop replaying. A decision you can't forgive yourself for. A version of you that acted against your own values — and your nervous system never got the memo that it's over. That's what this episode is about. Gregg Ward accidentally took someone's life at 18. For 46 years, it lived in his body — flushed skin, tense shoulders, a loop that no amount of success, service, or self-improvement could stop. In this conversation with Dr. Aimie, he shares what moral injury actually is, why the body keeps reliving a story with no ending, and how movement became his nervous system's path through what therapy alone couldn't reach. This is not a story about grief resolved. It's a story about grief metabolized. And the moment the burden finally lifted — not when the pain disappeared, but when the purpose stopped being about him. If something in you has never fully quieted — no matter how much work you've done — this conversation was made for you. Gregg Ward is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Respectful Leadership. He is a global speaker, thought leader, and bestselling author. Gregg’s TEDx San Diego talk has been selected for TED Global publication. Resources/Guides:
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| Could Your Trauma Be Disrupting Your Metabolism? The Weight Health Conversation | 10 Mar 2026 | 00:48:00 | |
What if the reason your body is holding onto weight has nothing to do with what you're eating — and everything to do with hormones you may not have heard about? In this episode, Dr. Aimie talks with registered dietitian and author Ashley Koff to unpack the hidden world of weight health hormones: GLP-1, leptin, ghrelin, and more — and why optimizing them matters for everybody, not just people trying to lose weight. What you'll hear will change how you see your body — not as something failing you, but as a sophisticated ecosystem sending you signals worth decoding. Ashley reveals why 93% of Americans are metabolically dysregulated, how trauma and chronic stress directly suppress the hormones that regulate metabolism and body composition, and why "weight loss" as a goal is actually working against your biology. Whether you're curious about GLP-1 medications, perimenopause weight changes, or just why the scale never seems to match your effort — this conversation will shift everything. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| Growing Up With Addiction Left a Trauma Your Body Still Carries | 03 Mar 2026 | 01:08:50 | |
What happens when a child has to become the adult in the family? Dr. Tian Dayton, clinical psychologist and author of Growing Up with Addiction, joins Dr. Aimie for one of the most personal conversations on the podcast. Both share their own childhood stories of reading the room, managing a parent’s emotions, and the unspoken rules that shaped their nervous systems for decades. This episode reveals how children in unpredictable families redirect their brain’s resources from play to survival, how addiction’s rhythms become the child’s operating manual, and why chronic survival physiology leads to digestive dysfunction in midlife. Whether addiction was part of your family or not, these dynamics may be running your body today. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| Why Fixing Someone You Love Is Destroying Your Nervous System | 24 Feb 2026 | 00:41:42 | |
When someone you love is struggling with addiction, your nervous system absorbs what theirs numbs out. Relational trauma repair therapist Karen Moser joins Dr. Aimie Apigian to explain why the families of substance users often carry deeper nervous system dysregulation than the users themselves. This episode reveals the biological cost of trying to control another person's healing and what it takes to reclaim the parts of yourself that got lost along the way. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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| The Biology of Grief: Why Your Gut Holds What You Can’t Feel | 20 Feb 2026 | 00:13:32 | |
Grief, regret, loneliness, inflammation, pain. There are deeper layers than we are even aware of. Dana was a family physician who had managed gut issues for years. Constipation. Bloating. Acid reflux. She had every tool available to her. She rotated medications, over-the-counter laxatives, and antacids. She pushed through. Then one brave question changed everything. I asked her: what happened that should not have happened? Her posture collapsed. The tears came. And she made the connection — that was when my gut issues started. This is the biology behind what so many of us carry without knowing it. In the main episode this week, we explored how grief and gut health are connected. Now I’m taking you deeper into what’s actually happening in your body when grief goes unrecognized — and the three types of grief that are hardest to name. In this episode you’ll hear more about:
Grief is more than an emotion. It is a whole-body response. It creates overwhelm in a way that stress does not. When grief is stored, the gut holds it. The posture holds it. The throat holds it. Dana didn’t just need to grieve what happened. She needed to grieve the silence, the years of self-blame, and the cost to her health she hadn’t seen. Most of us carry grief we haven’t named yet. Resources/Guides:
→ Watch the video version on YouTube → Check out the main episode — EP 161: Dopamine and Depression: The Metabolic Link You Need to Know Try this practice this week: Notice when your gut clenches, your posture collapses, or a lump forms in your throat. Before you push through, pause. Put one hand over your belly. Give it a message: “I see what you’ve been holding. We don’t have to go there today.” Presence interrupts the pattern of pushing through. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. It helps others find trauma-informed care. | |||
| Dopamine and Depression: The Metabolic Link You Need to Know | 17 Feb 2026 | 00:55:40 | |
Dopamine doesn't just create pleasure. It signals unexpected experiences and primes the brain to learn. New research reveals that depression, anxiety, and ADHD have different metabolic phenotypes. Understanding your unique metabolic footprint explains why standard treatments work for some and not others. Mental health and metabolic health are inseparable. In This Episode You'll Learn: [01:00] How does peripheral nerve stimulation affect dopamine in the brain? Resources/Guides:
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| How Creativity Rewires Your Nervous System with Adam Roa | 10 Feb 2026 | 00:55:35 | |
What if the key to healing isn't more therapy—but creativity? Adam Roa's poem "You Are Who You've Been Looking For" reached over 250 million people. But before that poem existed, Adam spent 25 years emotionally shut down. He didn't remember his childhood sexual abuse until age 30. His journey reveals why creativity creates neurological safety for emotions that were once too overwhelming to feel. Creativity isn't about talent—it's about pattern disruption. When you turn pain into a poem or painting, you force your brain to view that experience differently. This episode explains why safety must come before expression and how the creative process rewires neural pathways when talk alone can't reach what's stored in the body. In This Episode You'll Learn: (01:00) What poetry has to do with your nervous system's capacity to heal Resources/Guides:
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| Can Stem Cells Accelerate Trauma Healing? | 03 Feb 2026 | 00:50:59 | |
What if we knew how to repair cellular damage from stress and trauma? Stem cells are your body's repair system—replacing 50-70 billion cells every day. But chronic inflammation from trauma creates what Dr. Dan Pardi calls a "noisy neighborhood" where repair signals can't get through.
Dr. Pardi is the Chief Health Officer at Qualia Life Sciences, where he researches what actually allows cellular healing to happen. In this episode, we explore why trauma accelerates biological aging and what creates the conditions for repair.
In This Episode You'll Learn: (01:00) Why understanding the Biology of Trauma® matters for cellular health (03:00) What "capacity" actually means—and how resilience changes across the lifespan (08:00) How Dan's own injury led him to study health optimization (15:30) Why Dean Ornish's lifestyle intervention worked when single interventions fail (19:30) What's missing from healthcare for trauma recovery (24:00) How stem cells function as the body's repair mechanism (28:00) Why inflammation from trauma blocks stem cell activity (32:00) How sleep and biological rhythms affect stem cell repair (36:00) Why college athletes needed 5.5 months to recover from extreme fatigue (43:00) What makes trauma recovery take longer than we expect (47:00) How to support stem cell health naturally
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| The Biology of Dopamine: Why We Can't Stop What Isn't Good for Us | 30 Jan 2026 | 00:13:59 | |
You know it's not good for you. You do it anyway. Then you ask yourself why. Late-night scrolling when you promised you'd sleep. Sugar after dinner when you said you'd stop. The fight you picked that you didn't need to pick. We call it lack of willpower. But willpower isn't the problem. This is the biology behind the main episode this week with addiction policy expert Dr. Kevin Sabet. He shared what we've been getting wrong about marijuana and addiction. Now I'm taking you deeper into what's actually happening in your brain when you can't stop doing what you know is harming you. In this episode you'll hear more about:
The craving isn't a character flaw. It's a signal. When dopamine is low at baseline, your nervous system will find ways to get it. The question is whether we repair the biology or white-knuckle through life. Resources/Guides:
→ Watch the video version on YouTube → Check out the main episode - Episode 158: Marijuana, Addiction, and the Body: What We've Been Getting Wrong with Dr. Kevin Sabet Try this practice this week: Notice when you're reaching for something to take the edge off. Before you act, pause. Ask: "Is my baseline dopamine low right now? What is my body actually looking for?" Awareness interrupts the automatic loop. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. It helps others find trauma-informed care.
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| Marijuana, Addiction, and the Body: What We've Been Getting Wrong | 27 Jan 2026 | 00:37:41 | |
➡️ Get the full episode breakdown at Biology of Trauma® Podcast - Episode Marijuana, Addiction, and the Body: What We've Been Getting Wrong If you've watched a family member struggle with addiction, you know how helpless it can feel. Treatment programs that don't work. Policies that seem disconnected from reality. Debates about legalization versus criminalization that never address what actually helps someone recover. Dr. Kevin Sabet has spent decades advising three presidential administrations on drug policy—watching decriminalization debates, marijuana legalization, and the opioid crisis unfold. He started asking a different question: What if we looked at what actually works? His book One Nation Under the Influence examines why current addiction policies are failing—and what Iceland, Portugal, and Hawaii figured out that we're missing. In This Episode You'll Learn:
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