Donna Jackson Nakazawa - Childhood Disrupted- How your biography becomes your biology, and how you can heal

Praise for Childhood Disrupted

Childhood Disrupted masterfully captures the complexity of how early life adversity imprints on our biology and stalks our health into adulthood. Heartrending stories of hardship and triumph laced with medical facts and findings create a framework of practical advice for remaining unbroken in a challenging world.

Donna has once again taken a difficult medical topic and made it not only easy to understand, but a great read. Eye-opening and inspiring, Childhood Disrupted provides a paradigm-shifting road map for understanding how early stress is linked to later illness, and offers a must-read vision for how to begin healing at any age. This book will help readers, and especially women, better understand the biology of stress, and jump-start important new conversations about our health and well-being!

Childhood Disrupted is a timely book that summarizes the effects of childhood adversity, incorporating the current science in a very personalized and approachable way. The more we understand about childhood adversity and its imprint on our body and brain, the more we can help each other recover from its harmful effects. This is an important read for anyone looking to help those afflicted by childhood adversity, whether personally or in a caring role such as parents, teachers, and health-care workers.

In this stimulating book that eloquently describes the effects of ones biography on mind, brain, and body, Nakazawa guides us through a step-by-step path to recovery. This work represents an invaluable source of hope and inspiration for anyone who is suffering from the aftermath of early adverse experience.

If you want to know why youve been married three times. Or why you just cant stop smoking. Or why the ability to control your drinking is slipping away from you. Or why you have so many physical problems that doctors just cant seem to help you. Or why you feel as if theres no joy in your life even though youre successful. Read Childhood Disrupted , and youll learn that the problems youve been grappling with in your adult life have their roots in childhood events that you probably didnt even consider had any bearing on what youre dealing with now. Donna Jackson Nakazawa does a thorough and outstanding investigation of exactly how your childhood made you ill and/or joyless, and how you can heal.

Childhood Disrupted is a book of major significance that describes clearly and understandably what has been learned in recent years about the important subject of human development and how what happens in childhood affects our well-being, biomedical health, and life expectancy as adults. It will be appreciated by many.

Childhood Disrupted is a must-have book for every person facing mental or physical health challenges and their loved onesand an inspiring read for every health-care professional.

Note to Readers

This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, or any kind of personal professional services in the book. The reader should consult his or her medical, health, or other competent professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it.

The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

Names and identifying details of some of the people portrayed in this book have been changed, and some people portrayed are composites.

For Christian, for Claire

CONTENTS

This book explores how the experiences of childhood shape us into the adults we become. Cutting-edge research tells us that what doesnt kill you doesnt necessarily make you stronger. Far more often, the opposite is true: the early chronic unpredictable stressors, losses, and adversities we face as children shape our biology in ways that predetermine our adult health. This early biological blueprint depicts our proclivity to develop life-altering adult illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, and depression. It also lays the groundwork for how we relate to others, how successful our love relationships will be, and how well we will nurture and raise our own children.

My own investigation into the relationship between childhood adversity and adult physical health began after Id spent more than a dozen years struggling to manage several life-limiting autoimmune illnesses while raising young children and working as a journalist. In my forties, I was paralyzed twice with an autoimmune disease known as Guillain-Barr syndrome, similar to multiple sclerosis, but with a more sudden onset. I had muscle weakness; pervasive numbness; a pacemaker for vasovagal syncope, a fainting and seizing disorder; white and red blood cell counts so low my doctor suspected a problem was brewing in my bone marrow; and thyroid disease.

Still I knew: I was fortunate to be alive, and I was determined to live the fullest life possible. If the muscles in my hands didnt cooperate, I clasped an oversized pencil in my fist to write. If I couldnt get up the stairs because my legs resisted, I sat down halfway up and rested. I gutted through days battling flulike fatiguepushing away fears about what might happen to my body next; faking it through work phone calls while lying prone on the floor; reserving what energy I had for moments with my children, husband, and family life; pretending that our normal was really okay by me. It had to bethere was no alternative in sight.

Increasingly, I devoted my skills as a science journalist to helping women with chronic illness, writing about the intersection between neuroscience, our immune systems, and the innermost workings of our human hearts. I investigated the many triggers of disease, reporting on chemicals in our environment and foods, genetics, and how inflammatory stress undermines our health. I reported on how going green, eating clean, and practices like mindbody meditation can help us to recuperate and recover. At health conferences I lectured to patients, doctors, and scientists. My mission became to do all I could to help readers who were caught in a chronic cycle of suffering, inflammation, or pain to live healthier, better lives.

In the midst of that quest, three years ago, in 2012, I came across a growing body of science based on a groundbreaking public health research study, the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, or ACE Study. The ACE Study shows a clear scientific link between many types of childhood adversity and the adult onset of physical disease and mental health disorders. These traumas include being verbally put down and humiliated; being emotionally or physically neglected; being physically or sexually abused; living with a depressed parent, a parent with a mental illness, or a parent who is addicted to alcohol or other substances; witnessing ones mother being abused; and losing a parent to separation or divorce. The ACE Study measured ten types of adversity, but new research tells us that other types of childhood traumasuch as losing a parent to death, witnessing a sibling being abused, violence in ones community, growing up in poverty, witnessing a father being abused by a mother, being bullied by a classmate or teacheralso have a long-term impact.