Early Trauma and Adult Chronic Illness — VoiceAmerica Talk Radio

Why do childhood traumas — like being frequently put down, losing a parent, living with a mom or dad who is depressed, or alcoholic, emotional neglect, and other early adversities — leave permanent physical “fingerprints” on our brains? In this VoiceAmerica Talk Radio interview, I share my thoughts with host Katherine Vox about the link between adverse childhood experiences and chronic adult illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune disease — and why this is especially true for women. http://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/86429/naacp-race-controversy-and-early-trauma-and-chronic-illness

How Adverse Childhood Experiences Affect Adult Illness

Hi All, Here is a recent video interview, in which I share my thoughts on How Adverse Childhood Experiences Affect Adult Illness, why our new understanding of this science must change the way we do medicine, and why I wrote my book, Childhood Disrupted. Produced by Studio4. Hope you’ll enjoy! Donna

Childhood Disrupted – Pub Date Has Arrived!

I can’t believe it’s finally here: Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal hit stores yesterday and has been steadily climbing on Amazon (as of this afternoon, it was the #1 best-seller in Developmental Psychology and #787 overall!) and gaining traction on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and various news outlets, including Aeon Magazine and Huffington Post. Even more rewarding for me are the comments that have been pouring in from readers about how much they’re enjoying the book, and how important this topic is to them. How many times can I say that I have the best readers on the planet?! Speaking of great readers, thank you to those of you who came to my reading (standing room only!) at the Ivy Bookstore in Baltimore last night; you made the event a huge success. I so enjoyed sharing the science in Childhood Disrupted with you all, and hearing your thoughts on the impact of childhood adversity on adult physical and mental health. If you couldn’t make it to the Ivy, stay tuned—I’ll be updating my “upcoming events” page soon with information about future readings and book signings in your area. I can’t wait to see you at my next event! As promised, here are the results of yesterday’s give-away: congratulations to Debbie Manahan and Mari McCarthy, who will be receiving signed copies of Childhood Disrupted! I hope that the book will be helpful to both of you. Even though the give-away is over, it’s not too late to sign up for my newsletter to receive occasional updates about Childhood Disrupted in your inbox, as well as resources on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)—like this infographic (below) that our team created to explain the relationship between ACEs, women, and autoimmune disease. Feel free to share with your friends on social media (#ChildhoodDisrupted), so that we can start a discussion on ACEs and help those facing the aftermath of childhood adversity move toward healing and transformation.

Is depression caused by inflammation?

Increasingly doctors are looking at depression as an inflammatory reaction, rather than a standalone neurological disorder — and in some cases depression may even be exacerbated by an allergic reaction. This theory could lead to never-before-prescribed methods that can be used in conjunction with traditional antidepressants to combat inflammation. This new understanding of depression could even help us to find new “cures” for depression. The relationship between inflammation and depression makes so much sense. Our body reacts to stressors by pumping stress hormones and inflammatory cytokines through the bloodstream. And it just so happens that people suffering from depression are loaded with high levels of inflammatory cytokines. This has led researchers to focus on fighting the inflammatory symptoms of depression, rather than the neurological ones. There may be some hope in the form of easily-accessible, over the counter methods, such as omega 3 and curcumin, that can help in conjunction with conventional depression treatment to improve symptoms (of course, never take anything without checking with your healthcare practitioner first!). If depression is an inflammatory disease, then doing everything we can to counter the effects of stress, including longstanding stressors from any early life trauma or Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) we might have faced (don’t know what ACEs are yet? You can learn more here) can make a tremendous difference. The good news is that this means there may be more ways than we ever thought possible to achieve recovery, and better brain health. Trauma-based approaches to healing — which I’ve detailed in Childhood Disrupted —  can all help counter inflammation and thus ease symptoms. One of the most beautiful and profound descriptions of depression I’ve ever read comes from writer Andrew Solomon’s book The Noonday Demon. Solomon (whose newest book, Far From the Tree, has just been released in paperback) shares his insight into depression in this powerful TED talk.

Come Join Me For Talks & Booksignings in July 2015 on Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal!

Hope you can come join me on Tuesday July 7th at 7:00 at Baltimore’s lovely Ivy Bookshop for a talk, chat, and booksigning! Tuesday, July 7th, 2015 7:00 p.m. Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal — a Discussion & Book Signing with Donna Jackson Nakazawa http://www.theivybookshop.com/ Or, come join me on Friday, July 17th at the Annapolis Bookstore for a talk, chat, and booksigning! Friday, July 17, 2015 7:00 p.m. Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal — a Discussion & Book Signing with Donna Jackson Nakazawa Front Page Hope to see you at one of these!

My Next Book! Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal

Every once in a while, as a writer, I sort of “disappear” — taking a break from blogging and social media to fully immerse myself in finishing a new book. I’m happy to say, in 2015, you’ll be able to see what I’ve been so busy working on (and why I’ve been so quiet)!

The Art of Doing Everything Twice

My mom said something recently that really stuck with me. She’s 82. “It used to be that we did everything once, and now we have to do everything twice!” I kind of brushed it off as a subtle sign of aging, but then I noticed, over the next forty eight hours: the washing machine/dryer repair man left (“all done!”) but the washer still won’t progress to the rinse cycle and the dryer drum still makes a clanging sound as if a rock band is hiding in the laundry room. So we called – the repairman is returning for round two.

Come Join Me on June 8th at Breathe Bookstore!

Hope you can come join me on Sunday June 8th at 1:00 at Baltimore’s lovely Breathe Bookstore and Cafe for a chat and booksigning! Sunday, June 8th, 2014 1:00 to 2:30 The Last Best Cure — a Discussion & Book Signing with Donna Jackson Nakazawa

What is the Green Solution for Toxic Thinking?

Is Someone Driving you Nuts? Fifteen insights on how to stop thinking about someone who’s driving you crazy. Have you ever found that you just can’t stop thinking about someone and what they did or said, and how bewildered or hurt you were by their actions? When someone hurts us, our children, or someone we love, gossips behind our back, or simply acts crazy in ways that confound us, we can get stuck thinking about it for hours or days. We’re washing dishes, we’re driving, or we’re walking the dogs and we can’t stop thinking about how unkind, untrue and self-centered the things they said were. Their image, their words, keep resurfacing to mind. Five hours, five days, five weeks later, there they are – we see their face in front of us, even when we haven’t seen them in all that time. (Just to be clear, I’m not addressing how we deal with trauma or abuse here — situations which require professional help and intervention — I’m talking about the day-to-day interactions we have with others that leave us mentally sputtering.) How can we stop feeling embroiled in other people’s craziness? How can we stop thinking about a person or situation — or what we should have, could have, done differently — when the same thoughts keep looping back, rewinding, and playing through our mind again and again? Or maybe, for you, it’s not about a person, it’s about what you got or didn’t get, what you need but don’t have, what just isn’t right in your life. (Usually, of course, there is a person involved whom you feel deserves blame for whatever is wrong.) Toxic cyclical thinking. Most of us know that this kind of ruminating is both emotionally and physically harmful to us. In fact, studies show that a ruminating mind, a wandering mind, is an unhappy and unhealthy mind. When our monkey mind is unhappily fraught with replaying altercations, resentments or losses, we marinate in a cascade of harmful inflammatory stress chemicals and hormones that are linked to almost every disease we can name. Increasingly, scientists can pinpoint how ruminating plays a role in disease including depression, cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune disease. The stress chemicals we wallow in are far worse for us than the thing that actually happened to us in the first place. Moreover, toxic thinking just doesn’t feel good. It’s like getting caught on a spinning, centrifugal-force ride at the fair that was fun for a few minutes, and now it just makes you feel sick and you want to get off. But you can’t. We work so hard to remove whatever is toxic from our lives. We buy organic, we avoid unhealthy foods, we remove chemicals from our home. We eat green, we clean green. We buy organic cosmetics. But we put very little concerted effort into trying to go green in our minds. When our thoughts are relentless and pervasive, how do we Green the Mind? What is the green solution for toxic thinking? In researching and writing my last book, The Last Best Cure, I developed a number of insights on how to stop myself from spinning stories, ruminating, worrying, and replaying thoughts about someone or something. These fifteen small but powerful sayings work for me – many are based on teachings from today’s leaders in mindfulness psychology and meditation. Choose the ones that resonate most with you. 1.  “Less said, More time” is my own personal motto. Saying less and letting more time pass when we’re dealing with a difficult, reactive person is almost always a smart move. It allows us to simmer down, and let it go, take the high road. Often, with time, the thing we’re annoyed about just falls away. 2. “Let’s just wait and see what happens next.” We often feel the need to respond and react to difficult people or situations right away, which is why we stew so much over what to say or do next. Buddhist psychologist Sylvia Boorstein suggests that instead we simply give ourselves permission to wait and see what happens next. 3. Move Away From the Blame Game. Picking apart past events and trying to assign blame (including blaming oneself) is rarely productive. Bad things and misunderstandings most often “happen” through a series of events, like a domino effect. No one person is usually entirely to blame for the end result. Sylvia Boorstein has a saying that helps to remind us of this truth: “First this happened, then that happened, then that happened. And that is how what happened happened.” 4. “Try not to fall into other people’s states of minds.” Another Sylvia Boorstein nugget that pretty much says it all. 5. “Deal with Your Biggest Problem First.” Buddhist meditation teacher Norman Fischer suggests that no matter what’s happened, the biggest problem we face is our own anger. Our anger creates a cloud of emotion that keeps us from responding in a cogent, productive way. In that sense, our anger really is our biggest problem. Deal with yourself – meditate, exercise, take a long walk, say less and give it more time, whatever it takes – before you deal with anyone else. 6. “When You’re Angry it Wrinkles the Mind.” This Sylvia Boorstein teaching follows along the same lines. “You can’t think clearly or be creative or thoughtful about how best to handle any situation when you’re mad. Anger wrinkles the mind. If you want to think clearly, you can’t be mad at anything.” 7. “Don’t Try to Figure Others Out.” This is another Norman Fischer teaching. Ask yourself, if others tried to figure out what you’re thinking, or what your motivations are, how right do you think they’d be? They probably wouldn’t have a clue as to what’s really going through your mind. So why try to figure out what others are thinking? Chances are extremely good that you would be wrong, which means that all that ruminating was a colossal waste of time. 8. Your

A Q. and A. with “Between the Covers” on What Compelled me to Write The Last Best Cure

I recently spoke with Melanie Brevis, blogger at Baltimore County Public Library System, and we had a great chat! Between the Covers with Donna Jackson Nakazawa Baltimore author Donna Jackson Nakazawa discusses her latest book, The Last Best Cure, on Wednesday, April 16 at 7 p.m. at the Perry Hall Branch, sponsored by the Friends of the Perry Hall Library. The award-winning science journalist and writer recently answered questions for Between the Covers about her book. Before The Last Best Cure, you authored another book about autoimmune diseases, The Autoimmune Epidemic. What insights or new knowledge did you gain between that book and The Last Best Cure? What was going on in your life prior to writing these books? The Autoimmune Epidemic focused on how modern chemicals in the world around us and in our diet are overwhelming the human immune system, contributing to rising disease rates and chronic illnesses. The Last Best Cure takes this research a step further and investigates “psychoneuroimmunology,” a new field of study that investigates how mind states, such as anxiety, fear, worry, rumination, anger and pain, can end up damaging our immune function in much the same way as environmental chemicals. Prior to this, I was struggling with my own health crises. The Last Best Cure is my chronicle of a one-year doctor/patient experiment to see if altering my mood state might shift my inflammatory markers and perhaps even improve my physical well-being.  The Last Best Cure has received much critical praise, described as a book that will offer hope for recovery, and change and save lives. What is the most important insight or piece of information you want readers to take away from your book? I want people to know that there already exists an understanding as to how we can activate the healing potential of the brain. Understanding how to do this gives us powerful tools, ways to change the messages our brain is sending to our cells and our body. Everyone deserves to live the life they want, and these tools can help us all achieve a greater sense of well-being, and even joy. You were already an award-winning science journalist and writer when you began writing these last two books. What was it like writing professionally about a topic that was also very personal to you? Were there any “aha” moments for your own life as you were writing? At first, I was only going to write about my personal experiences in the introduction to The Last Best Cure, but my editor thought readers would want to read more about how I also went on this transformational journey myself. She thought it would help convey to readers that we can all take this journey, no matter what physical or emotional health challenges we face. There was so much that I realized along the way about adversity, self-respect and how they play a role in adult illness. Now I’m profoundly grateful to have taken this journey: Life is sweeter, relationships are better and it’s a better, more meaningful way to live. In addition to being about healing and recovering personal joy, The Last Best Cure is a story about a health epidemic. What steps do we need to take now to secure a better health outlook for future generations? We need to absolutely, completely and radically change how we view the doctor/patient relationship. If we keep up the current “medical factory” model we’re going to see very little progress in managing chronic health issues. Right now, 133 million adults in America have chronic illnesses, not counting the 22 million with addiction – and these numbers are rapidly climbing. The tools to help patients participate in their own healing and facilitate greater well-being exist; it just requires that physicians incorporate new practices into their doctor/patient paradigm. In order to do this, we must change the way we as a society view treatment, health care and the doctor/patient relationship. Are there any new books in the works? Yes, one due out at the end of next year called Childhood Interrupted: How Adversity in the Past Writes the Story of Our Future – And How We Can Change the Script (Atria/Simon & Schuster). It’s a deeper, more extended study of how childhood adversity can create changes in the brain and in our immunology that impact our health long into adulthood – and what we can do to reverse those effects as adults. I’m telling cutting-edge stories of science, about how even very common forms of childhood adversity can reset our immune system to be more stress-reactive, sparking a state of chronic low-grade neuroinflammation for life. I want to help readers understand how the stress we meet in childhood can determine our lifelong “set point” for emotional reactivity, inflammation, disease and depression – and what we can do to reverse the impact of early adversity and trauma years later, in adulthood, to regain our physical and emotional well-being. How long has the Baltimore area been home to you? What do you like best about living in this area? My family moved to Baltimore four years ago from Annapolis; my mom and my husband’s parents were already living here, so it just made sense. What I like best about Baltimore is its people. Baltimoreans are real, genuine, honest, intellectual, creative, smart and energetic. They’re committed to their community and engaged in making this a better place to live. We love it here. It’s a vibrant place to be.