Believe Big Podcast

77-Dr. Aimie Apigian - The Biology of Trauma and Its Impact on Your Health

• Ivelisse Page & Dr. Aimie Apigian • Season 2 • Episode 77

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In this episode of the Believe Big podcast, Ivelisse interviews Dr. Aimie Apigian, a leading medical expert on trauma healing. 

Dr. Aimie delves into the biology of trauma, explaining how life experiences are stored in the body and how they can be effectively addressed through her unique methodology. Dr. Aimie offers insights into 

  • differentiating stress from trauma, 
  • the impact of stored trauma on the immune system, 
  • effective strategies for releasing stored trauma,
  • and practical somatic exercises to create a felt sense of safety and support. 

Tune in to learn powerful strategies for accelerating your trauma healing journey and improving overall health.

Learn more about Dr. Aimie Apigian:
https://www.traumahealingaccelerated.com/

Suggested Resources:


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Ivelisse Page:

Hi, I'm Ivelisse Page, and thanks for listening to the Believe Big podcast, the show where we take a deep dive into your healing with health experts, integrated practitioners, biblical faith leaders, and cancer thrivers from around the globe. Welcome to today's episode on the Believe Big podcast. My name is Ivelisse Page, and it's an honor to be with you today. I am so excited about our guest, Dr. Aimie Apigian. Dr. Aimie is the leading medical expert on how life experiences get stored in the body and accelerating the trauma healing journey through her signature model and methodology, the biology of trauma. She is a double board certified physician in both preventative and addiction medicine with a master's in biochemistry and a master's in public health. She is a leader, speaker, and founder of Trauma Healing Accelerated, where she not only continues to lead individuals in their own healing journey, but trains professionals around the world to do the same. Dr. Aimie is a functional medicine doctor with training and certifications in neuro autoimmunity, nutrition, and genetics for addictions, mental health, and mood and behavioral disorders. Dr. Aimie enjoys bridging the gap between what she sees happening in these trauma therapies and a person's biology and nervous system. Welcome to the show, Dr. Aimie.

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

Thank you so much, Ivelisse. I'm excited to be here today.

Ivelisse Page:

Well, we like to begin the podcast with a question our listeners love to find out about. And so what would you say is your favorite health tip?

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

My favorite health tip would be to make sleep a non negotiable and quality sleep. Make quality sleep a non negotiable, prioritize it, learn how to improve your sleep. And that would be my number one health tip.

Ivelisse Page:

Oh my goodness, I would agree with you a hundred percent. And before we get into our main topic today, because I'm sure people will say, okay, how do I do that? What would you say are three ways that someone can get good quality sleep?

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

Take magnesium at bedtime, use blackout curtains to make it very dark and cool in the bedroom.

Ivelisse Page:

Perfect. I love it. Those are three great tips. Yeah, sleep is so important for so many different functions, and I'm sure that will come up in our conversation today. In our discussion about how trauma affects our lives and our nervous system and so many other parts of our body, it can mean different things to different people. So how would you define a traumatic event in one's life?

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

That's a great question and coming from the perspective of a physician, a medical physician working with the body, I see it as the experience of the body. And it really has not as much to do with the event or what's happening outside of us as what's happening inside of us. And we see examples of this where two people can go through the same thing, maybe even are raised in the same family. One walks away traumatized and the other is like, eh, you know, it, it, it wasn't that bad. But yet we each have our own experiences, two veterans coming back, same experience perhaps, and yet what their body experienced inside was unique to them. And so trauma is what happens inside of us. It's not what happens outside of us. It's the response that our body has to anything that's going on. And a big part of what I do now is really teach on how much even our own biology affects us, speaking of sleep. And so we can have a response to what feels like danger inside of us, not just outside of us. And so trauma really is not an event. It is the response of the body to one specific thing, one specific word, and that word is, it's a response of overwhelm. And so a definition of trauma then is anything that for any reason at that time in our life, overwhelmed us and it created a specific trauma response in the body. And we can watch the science of that. We can watch the physiology. We can watch the neurobiology. There is a very specific biology change that happens when the body experiences overwhelm, and that's what we really want to be understanding as the difference between stress and trauma for each of us is, did it cause and create an experience and responsive overwhelm in my body because that has very specific downstream effects on our health because it affects our biology and physiology.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes, and we see it all the time. It's, it's what we do at Believe Big, which is helping patients through the overwhelming process of treatment and bridging that gap between conventional and complementary medicine. So, so many of our patients are in that overwhelm, per se. And so what do you mean by stored trauma? So we know what the significance and the meaning of the trauma that happens within us, but how is that actually stored?

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

That's a great question and an important question because people do need to understand that their body can store trauma, and we can recognize that it has stored trauma but what that means is that when we have these experiences of overwhelm it becomes a default pattern of responding to life. And depending on how early in our life we started to go into this physiology of overwhelm, it can even become the, the wired default pattern to anything stressful, anything uncomfortable, anything. And my body's already kind of giving that message of, um, yeah, we can't do that. We can't handle that. We're not big enough for that. We're not strong enough for that. We're not smart enough for that. We don't have enough energy for that. And all of those are reasons for the body then to go into this trauma response, because it's overwhelmed. And so that's how trauma gets stored into the body, is that it becomes wired into our nervous system, our nervous system being what runs our body, and creates what I call the operating mode. Most of us have computers these days. And so our computer has an operating system and that operating system dictates how well your computer runs, how well it will open up programs, how fast or how slow it will be. And this is the operating system for our body. We have three different operating systems and our nervous system is what decides which operating system it's going to run at the moment. And it will change how we're living, how we're talking, how we're thinking, how we're behaving based on the operating system. And so to know that there is a trauma operating system, there is a trauma operating system of the body that's different than the stress operating system. And that's different than the rest and digest and safe and secure operating system. Those are your three different operating systems And so trauma stored in the body will be that our body spends more and more time in this trauma operating system and having and experiencing the downstream effects of that operating system.

Ivelisse Page:

So how is it different than the trauma response versus a stress response because I know we all encounter stress and traumatic events are stress. And so they both affect the nervous system. So how are they different in how they affect us physiologically?

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

Wonderful. And so many people are thinking that overwhelm has been stress. And so here we come and we say, actually, overwhelm has been trauma, and I'm hoping that with that, it will help people take that sense of overwhelm more seriously, rather than just thinking, oh, I've got to do better self care, and and maybe do more of that in order to try to get out of the overwhelm. Stress is a specific physiology response of the body that is intended to move us to action. And when you think of if we were to go to the gym and work out, that is a stress. If we were to lift weights at the gym, for example, that is a stress on our muscles, but it doesn't hopefully cause a trauma. A trauma would be when our tendon snaps or breaks because the weight overwhelmed our capacity to lift it or hold it up. And as long as we stay in the stress zone, we grow from that stress. Our muscles get bigger. We feel better. We keep going. The consistency allows us to stay in, you could call it a positive stress zone. And we grow from stress. That's the purpose of stress is to move us into action that will take us from one place to the other and grow us in some way. And then there's this trauma, and so you could call it traumatic stress, but I really want to differentiate it. It's stress that crosses a critical line of overwhelm, and as we become more familiar with our own system, we can start to notice when we're approaching that critical line of overwhelm, and know, all right, I got to back it up, back it up, because I don't want to cross that line of overwhelm. But if we don't know that and we often will fly right past that line and then our body shuts down and what that feels like for us is we feel exhausted, we feel perhaps fatigue. Chronic fatigue, in fact, is one of the symptoms and patterns of recognizing stored trauma in the body. But we also will notice our thoughts that go to a place of, it doesn't make a difference what I do. It's, it's pointless. And that's an important aspect to recognize because when we're in that place, we're not taking action because our nervous system has perceived that why take action if it doesn't matter what I do, it's not going to make a difference. It's useless. It's pointless. It's helpless. All of those thoughts can go through our head. And that's how one of the ways in which we can recognize, Oh, like my body has crossed that critical line of overwhelm. And it's in a trauma physiology. I'm not growing from this experience right now. This is not a stress that I'm going to grow from. This is a trauma physiology.

Ivelisse Page:

Okay, that's so interesting and I thank you for sharing the differences because even on this journey that I've been on, on emotional healing through the summer, I, I kind of reached a point of burnout. And, you know, a course of two years of disappointments and, and things that had happened that I just kind of plowed through thinking, I'm, I'm okay. I can just, you know, muscle up the energy and keep on moving forward. And we don't realize the impact that it has on our body. So we may think we're okay, but our body knows and it needs that, that time to be able to restore and to repair. And those things really matter. And so that's why I'm so thankful that you're on to share with us today because so many people just keep going through life saying stress is just a part of life. And so what are some indicators that people can kind of keep an eye out for? Like I know in the cancer world, for example, colon cancer, these are the things to look out for, right? Breast cancer, you need to do your monthly check ins and making sure you're looking for those lumps and doing your annual checkups. All those things are important physically, but how do we emotionally put in those check ins or those things that remind us to say, how am I really doing emotionally? How is my body really handling the stress that I'm under?

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

You know, what an important question and I, I would actually bring it still back to our physiology and our biology because for me, that's one of the best ways to really know my body and to track my body. And when my body feels heavy and I am back in that place, like you mentioned, where I'm feeling like I'm having to push myself. Pushing is not what will be the experience when we are in positive stress. If we are in positive stress, we are literally lifted up by our energy, and taking action. And so whenever, whenever, whenever I feel like, uh, I don't feel like I have the energy to do that, but I'm going to push through. That's my cue now that I'm like, Aimie, Aimie, let's, let's pause and evaluate this. Has my body just gone into that trauma physiology where it feels heavy? It feels overwhelmed. It doesn't feel safe anymore. It feels alone. It may feel lost. It feels like I'm doing everything wrong and I don't know how to do it. These are all indications for me that, ah, my body has gone into a trauma physiology and the best thing for me to do right now in this moment is to is to shift my physiology. And we can learn how to shift that physiology very quickly. I mean, within seconds. And this would be the most helpful thing for someone's physical health then is to learn how to shift their operating system back into either stress or rest and digest. Either one of those is going to be better than the overwhelm because of the downstream effects on our health. And so the more time that we can spend in those places where it will be either a positive growth or I'm in recovery mode and I am burning the, the fuel efficiently in my system rather than burning through the fuel in my system. That is when we're going to be in our best health and be our best self. And so just noticing when I go to that place where I feel like I'm pushing myself is one of the best indicators for me and for many people that I work with.

Ivelisse Page:

That's, that's a great tip. And before we get into those strategies, I'd love for you to medically share with us the impact that stored trauma has on the immune system. I mean, I learned that the hard way, but how might this influence the body's ability to detect and combat cancer cells even?

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

Yeah, and you know, when the body adapts to stored trauma, it's not doing anything wrong. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do and when we can recognize that, then we can have a different relationship with our body and not hate how our body has become or what it's doing and align ourselves with our body for the healing journey. And so recognizing that yes, the immune system adapts to the nervous system. And then the immune system is going to affect the nervous system just as much as the nervous system affects the immune system. And as we experience more overwhelm in our life, the more the immune system is going to take on that dysregulation of the nervous system. And dysregulation is a word that refers to the physiology and the, and the balance and the health and our health needs to be what we would call homeostatic in, in medicine where it's, it's balanced. It has the right amount of blood pressure for what we need in that moment. Our heart rate is at the right rate for what we need at that moment. It's, it's regulated. And when that becomes dysregulated, meaning our responses are inappropriate, inappropriate, again. I don't like using that word because the body is doing exactly what it was designed to do, but our responses to reality are either overreactive or underreactive based on these trauma patterns that have become our default way of responding. Our immune system also becomes either overreactive or underreactive. It reflects what's happening in the nervous system with that stored trauma. Many people think that stress is what causes inflammation, and that's not true. And actually the stress hormones decrease inflammation, and so it's really the more time that our body is spending in that trauma physiology that leads to these adaptations in our immune system of either overreactive or under reactive, and there are different adaptations. I teach how autoimmunity is one of those adaptations of the immune system where the brakes are taken off and the immune system starts again, overreacting and attacking our own cells. Long haul syndromes are another way in which the immune system adapts to this dysregulation in the nervous system. And it can't recover after an exposure to a toxin, Lyme, mold, a virus, it becomes a long haul syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is another one of those adaptations where, again, we start seeing dysregulation of blood sugar levels, of insulin levels, and we have things like chronic pain that are another adaptation of the immune system and its interplay with the nervous system. What's fascinating, especially in regards to cancer, is the role with oxidative stress. And oxidative stress seems to play a significant role in cancer cells and their ability to either get back to a healthy state or even have the body eliminate those cells and the oxidative stress accumulates more when we are in that trauma physiology. And so again, coming back to what can a person do to either prevent or be able to maximize their healing, innate healing potential is to address the oxidative stress and shift their, their operating system out of that trauma physiology, out of the overwhelm so that they're not continuing to accumulate more oxidative stress. That again, we talked about this relationship between the nervous system and the immune system. It will feed back and keep our nervous system in a state of overwhelm because of all the inflammation, because of all the oxidative stress or because of the autoimmunity, because of the dysregulation that's in our biology, it will now continue to feed into creating experiences of overwhelm in our nervous system.

Ivelisse Page:

Fascinating. It's so fascinating to me. Wow. So how do trauma informed approaches differ from like the traditional medical or psychological treatments in addressing physical symptoms that people are experiencing?

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

Yeah. So once we start to develop physical health symptoms, it's no longer going to be enough to go to maybe a traditional talk therapist and just, and talk about events in your life. We've already established that trauma really wasn't the event. It was what happened in your body. And when we talk about something, it often brings us back to that emotional state of that event. Puts us back into the overwhelm that we experienced during that event, and yet doesn't always necessarily bring us to a resolution of that overwhelm. And that is really what we're looking at for, if you wanna say, changing these patterns or healing trauma. It's being able to resolve these experiences of overwhelm. And as they have been stored in our body, but as they come up in our present moment. And when we look at how often we can experience that overwhelm being able to know how to resolve and move through that and complete that what most people do because we haven't been taught how to how to do anything differently is that we just kind of sit there. We sit in that overwhelm, we linger there. We don't know what to do with it. And eventually it does seem to pass, but there's a lot of time being spent in that overwhelm rather than knowing how to move through that and complete that. But when we do that, it allows the nervous system to shift out of that and come back into what we would consider the parasympathetic operating system, where we feel safe and secure. And that is the most important thing that we can do for our health, is to actually have a felt experience of our body of safety and support.

Ivelisse Page:

So let's get into that because, you know, we, we hear all these amazing concepts of making sure we're releasing that and the oxidative stress that cancer can cause and, you know, not being in that stress mode or that traumatic mode. So what are some effective strategies or therapies for releasing and processing stored trauma from the body?

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

Yeah, there are a lot of different words and I don't want to get hung up on words and, uh, and, and what, uh, what those might mean. At the end of the day, right, like we're talking about what, what can we do? What do we do? Yes, yes. And the most important thing for people is to learn how to create that felt sense of safety for themselves within seconds within minutes. And how do we do that? You know, as a physician, I of course was working on the medical side of things and even helping people detox off of substances and alcohol and pain pills and anxiety pills and recognizing the wow, like the raw dysregulation of their nervous system coming off of a substance that they had been dependent on. And that's exactly what happens as we work with trauma, because trauma has become our habit. It literally has become a habit. And just like any other habit or coping mechanism, if you stop it, cold turkey, your nervous system, your body, ooh, like it, it goes into a not happy place and, and you feel that you may feel more anxiety. You may feel more depression, whatever that thing or habit was helping you with. And that's what happens with working with trauma is that as we're learning how to shift those patterns, we've got to learn how to create, uh, do that in a way that creates a sense of safety. And so that's the first thing that we do. And I teach seven different exercises, what I call somatic exercises to quickly create that felt sense of safety. And one of, one of the techniques that people can do that's very easy is just to grab a pillow and put it over their stomach. And I know this sounds so simple and a little crazy, and I would hope that people would just give it a try. Just grab something right now. And even if it's not a pillow, it's a purse, it's a bag, it's a shirt, whatever, but just put it over your belly and notice the difference. If you don't notice a difference after 30 seconds, then slowly remove it so that there's nothing in front of your belly again and feel that. And many times people who aren't as connected with their body, they don't really feel anything when they put something on, but then it's when they take it away that they're like, Oh, well, now I feel more exposed. Now I feel more vulnerable. And I didn't realize that that had created some sense of safety. So wherever people are at, you know, we walk around feeling insecure. We walk around feeling unsafe. We don't, uncertain. We don't know what tomorrow will bring. We don't know what the next phone call will bring. We don't know what the next doctor visit will bring. And so we, we walk around with always this degree of uncertainty and insecurity, feeling unsafe. And so when we can, throughout our day, create moments, I call them micro doses, we're going to micro dose safety. And the change in our physiology is significant. As I study the people who go through my courses in 21 days, they experienced a 26 percent decrease in daily physical pain. Some have gotten off of their pain medications. Others are experiencing 30 percent decrease in sleep issues, digestive issues, 30 percent decrease in fatigue, anxiety, depression, and this is just with microdosing specific felt senses of our body that they can learn how to do through these exercises. But it creates these moments of right here, right now, I am safe, or I am safe enough. And that's, that starts to change. Our biology starts to change our physiology as is evidenced by the studies.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. And, you know, I actually probably within the last two months started doing somatic physical exercises. They're like different ways that you stretch the body to release from, you know, traumas or emotional strain and things like that. And I had never heard of it until probably two months ago and probably through you. So can you explain to people how somatic, what is somatic exercises? The word somatic many people may have not even heard of yet.

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

Yes, this is true. Somatic is a Latin word that refers to our tissues. So literally we're working with the body. It's different than mental where we're working with the mind. Somatic means we're working with the body and this is the way in which we can work with the part of our nervous system where trauma is stored. Trauma is mostly stored in the Autonomic Nervous System. That's what runs our operating system. And so that's what we get to work with when we work with the tissues of our body. And somatic is going to mean that it's not just enough to connect with our body. People talk about the mind body connection. Well, it's not going to be enough to just connect with our body. You need to know what to do when you connect. You need to know what to do when your body is giving you a message. Otherwise we just kind of still get stuck there and just sit with that and not able to move things through. So the somatic work for me means I am I'm connecting, but then I'm also responding to what my body needs and intentionally creating these felt senses that will shift things from my body. So it's me putting my mind's attention on a place in my body. I'm not disconnecting my mind and saying, all right, mind, I'm just doing some body work right now. Take a vacation. I'm using my mind and I'm putting my mind's attention on, for example, my stomach. And how does my stomach feel? And now that I grab this pillow and I put it over my stomach, what changes in my stomach? And what does my body want to do differently? Does it want the pillow slightly to the right, slightly lower? Does it want more pressure? Does it want me to hug that pillow in or does it not like that? And it wants my arms off to the side so that we're at, we're actively engaging in a relationship with our body. And it's able to tell us, this is what I need. And we're able to give it what it needs. I think that most people need to know that their body can heal itself from so much when it has what it needs. We have not known how to give it what it needs.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. And would you can, would breath work be considered part of the somatic exercise, even though it's not really affecting quote unquote tissues, or is that just a practice that can help remove trauma and stress from the body?

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

Yeah. So breath work is working with the tissues. I mean, you're working with your lungs. That's true. you, you are working with your diagram. You are working with your tissues for sure. And I am, I'm gonna say something that perhaps may be unpopular, but breath work can be dangerous for those with stored trauma. And breath work is not a way to release trauma. What we want to do instead, somatic work for me is more about when I provide my body what it needs, it will indicate that with a change in my breath. So I use the breath as a sign of what I just did was helpful for my body. But if I am forcing my breath to breathe differently, I've taken that way to measure the effect on my body away. So the breath is the best, or, um, one of the best direct objective measures that we can use for knowing, did I just create a felt sense of safety or safe enough for my body? Or no, is my body still in fear? Because we can do breath work and not actually create a felt sense of safety. We can do breath work and still create a felt sense of fear because once again, we go back to this idea of I'm pushing myself. I'm pushing my breath to breathe differently than what it is designed to do in this operating system. And so when we are in the trauma operating system, the breath is naturally designed to breathe slower and more shallow. And so when I come in and I can give my body what it needs to shift out of the trauma physiology, then my breath will return and I will have spontaneous deep breaths. But if I come and my physiology is in that trauma physiology and I say breath, I'm going to force you to breathe as if you were in one of the other two operating systems. It now is a misalignment with my body's physiology and it's not helping. It's actually creating more of a sense of overwhelm as the body is, as saying, but I'm not, I'm not ready to breathe that way. That's not what's helpful for me at this time. And so we've got to be very careful how we're using breath work in the trauma space.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. And so that's really fascinating to me. So I've always used it. You know, my husband works with Navy SEALs and that's one of the tricks of the trade, I guess, that they use when they're in a stressful situation, they close their eyes, they put their hands just gently on their eyelids to activate the vagus nerve and they take breaths. And so if, what is a way that we can get into that relaxed rest and repair mode without a forced breath, as you're saying, then what would be a tool to do in that situation? I, I also use prayer. Um, and so I read scripture and that instantly brings me peace. So what are some ways that you teach clients if they're not forcing the breath to get back into that rest and repair mode?

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

Yeah, it's creating that felt sense of safety and support. And for you, it sounds like prayer does that for you, right? Which is wonderful to know that. And so that is a tool for you to shift that physiology into a place of, I feel safe and I feel supported right now. And there are different ways that we can connect with our body and provide support for our body in a physical way that will also promote that. One of the exercises that I teach, interestingly enough, is eye support, where we put some light pressure on our eyes because of the vagus nerve there. And yes, the Navy SEALs use that as well. So there are intentional, deliberate, physical ways in which we can engage our body that just because of the anatomy will help shift that physiology because it is creating a felt sense of safety. I can't tell my body that it should feel safe. I've actually got to create that felt sense and I have to know what, what does my body need for that felt sense? Many times I may not know until I start experimenting. And so part of what the somatic work does is it allows you to engage in that kind of relationship with your body. Then where you are seeing, how does my body experience safety? What does my body need? Because we, again, started the conversation with this idea that our mind can have one story and our body can have a very different story. And so perhaps going outside in nature, right? Like that's, that's often a, a huge resource for people and they will feel that shift in their body. And there are things that people can do just around the house. So let me just grab this for a second. I have, I have a weighted neck scarf and the pressure that this provides on the back of my neck because of the anatomy and the brainstem, it allows for a background sense of safety and support that even touches into our early attachment and relationship insecurities, perhaps. And so this is a way that I would consider this a form of somatic work because I'm directly engaging my body and providing what it needs to have a felt sense of safety and support.

Ivelisse Page:

I love it. Dr. Aimie, you are just such a wealth of information and we are going to actually put links to your website and to your trainings that you do for patients that are interested in diving a little deeper into these exercises and ways that they can truly heal from their overwhelm that they may be experiencing. And so I'm just so grateful for you taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us today and just grateful for the work that you do.

Dr. Aimie Apigian:

Ah, likewise, right back at you Ivelisse. Thank you.

Ivelisse Page:

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