Trauma and Autoimmune Disease: A Functional Medicine Approach
Autoimmune disease and autoimmune disease flare-ups can have a number of triggers. Often,
these triggers are physical. But sometimes the autoimmune trigger may be a traumatic event or
events in your life. Trauma can play a role in developing an autoimmune condition like lupus or
rheumatoid arthritis—and it can make autoimmunity worse.
In this blog post, I’ll answer the question “Can trauma cause autoimmune disease?” If trauma is
standing in the way of your healing, I’ll show you what you can do about it.
What Exactly Is Trauma?
A lot of people don’t realize they’ve experienced trauma because they don’t know what it is or
how to identify it and so they don’t realize that it relates to them.
Trauma isn’t only major life-threatening events like being in combat, experiencing a natural
disaster, or physical abuse that cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Trauma also can
result from situations like feeling neglected and unloved, going through a divorce, or being the
victim of bullying as a child.
What’s traumatic to one person might not be traumatic to another. There is a wide variety in
how someone responds to a traumatic event. Whether something is traumatic for a person is
based on their perception and the state of their nervous system when the trauma happens. The
two main states are: “Fight, Flight or Freeze,” (prompted by the sympathetic nervous system)
or “Rest, Digest and Heal” (initiated by the parasympathetic nervous system).
If a person’s body is already in a high-alert state and then it goes through something traumatic,
it’s going to have a bigger impact– even if it’s a minor trauma. That’s because the body is
already primed to react. Contrast this to somebody who is in a nice safe environment when the
trauma happened. That person might be able to handle the trauma a lot better because he or
she comes from a place of calm and collection. A lot of how we handle trauma and how it
affects us, is more about perception.
How Trauma Triggers Autoimmune Disease
There’s a quote I like from Canadian physician and trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté: “Trauma is
not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result.” In other words, it’s not
about the event that happened, but about how the nervous system or the body responds to
what happened.
Trauma disrupts the normal communication that we have between our brain and body. There’s
a brain-to-body connection. When the brain senses that there’s some kind of danger it puts us
into a survival mode and the body reacts to that. This is how trauma can lead to a chronic
disease like an autoimmune disease.
Trauma dysregulates the nervous system. After trauma, the nervous system establishes a
heightened sensitivity. In this case, little things come along that can send you into a full-blown
flare up, even though they are not harmful. The nervous system has learned that your
surroundings aren’t safe, it maintains that state of high alert, and it can be more reactive when
bad things happen.
Trauma sends signals throughout our body that the environment we’re in isn’t safe. Trauma
tells our immune system to be on guard and it changes our physiology to match that survival
mode.
Trauma also affects our hormones. It affects our adrenal gland function, which are involved in
the stress response, metabolism, and blood pressure. The adrenal glands produce many
hormones, especially the stress hormone, cortisol. Trauma affects our energy production
because our body is thinking it needs to go into fight-or-flight. Trauma starts to change our
physiology.
Other Physical Effects of Emotional Trauma
When the body’s under chronic stress from going through an unresolved traumatic experience,
it creates chronic inflammation. We also can see leaky gut problems start to happen from stress
altering the gut microbiome and gut integrity.
And then of course the immune system is getting upregulated because it thinks it’s not safe and
it needs to react to things that would normally be harmless. That’s why we start to see other
issues like food sensitivities pop up or allergies.
A lot of times, autoimmune disease pain issues could even be a result of some unprocessed
trauma. If you’re stuck in fight-or-flight mode you may not heal as well. You can’t be in Fight,
Flight or Freeze mode and Rest, Digest and Heal mode at the same time. So people often find
their healing is impaired when they have chronic unresolved trauma.
And when trauma is left untreated, it continues to have effects on us, including triggering
development of an autoimmune disease.
Research Supports the Autoimmune-Trauma Connection
Conventional medicine doesn’t usually acknowledge trauma’s role in autoimmune disease. Yet,
studies support the connection between autoimmune disease and trauma. Here are some of
the findings from published studies:
- A study involving over 15,000 adults found a link between autoimmune disease and childhood
trauma. Individuals who experienced childhood trauma had a significantly increased risk of
developing autoimmune diseases in adulthood. The study suggests that early-life stress may
lead to long-term immune dysregulation, increasing susceptibility to conditions like rheumatoid
arthritis, lupus, and multiple sclerosis. - Research indicates that individuals with PTSD have a higher risk of developing autoimmune
diseases compared to those without PTSD. A study found that PTSD is associated with increased
levels of proteins known as pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as IL-17A, which may contribute
to the development of autoimmune conditions like inflammatory bowel disease and
rheumatoid arthritis. - A large-scale Swedish study found that individuals diagnosed with stress-related disorders,
including PTSD, had a significantly higher risk of developing autoimmune diseases. The study
emphasizes the importance of stress management in preventing autoimmune conditions. - A study found a dose-response relationship between PTSD severity and the risk of
autoimmune diseases. Patients with more severe PTSD symptoms had a higher likelihood of
developing conditions such as thyroiditis, lupus, and Sjögren’s syndrome. - A systematic review of medical studies answers the question, “Can stress cause lupus to flare
up?” The review highlighted the role of traumatic stress as a potential trigger for autoimmune
rheumatic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus. The
review suggests that psychological trauma may initiate or worsen these conditions through
immune system dysregulation.
Resolving Trauma with Therapy
If trauma is holding back your healing journey, it’s best to work with a specialist to resolve the
emotional issues. For some people that might mean talk therapy. Others may want to talk to
their therapist about eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a type of
psychotherapy used to treat PTSD. In EMDR, the patient briefly focuses on the traumatic
memory while performing eye movements that reduce the intensity of the traumatic
memories.
You can also ask your therapist about a type of therapy known as internal family systems. This
type of therapy helps people recognize and heal the different parts of their psyche to address
trauma.
A Functional Medicine Approach to Trauma
Functional medicine can help to heal the body’s physiology by putting it into the “Rest, Digest
and Heal” state. That helps the nervous system and the body go into a relaxed state that is ideal
for calming down the autoimmune response.
A functional medicine doctor may recommend mindfulness meditation, breath work, and yoga
to regulate the nervous system. Therapies to help the vagus nerve, which in turn support the
nervous system, are also helpful. The vagus nerve is the main nerve of your parasympathetic
nervous system, which controls bodily functions such as digestion, heart rate, and immune
system. Stimulating the vagal nerve puts the body into a relaxation state.
A functional medicine practitioner can ensure your body has what it needs to heal and repair.
The goal is to fix the physiology that has been disrupted by the trauma. Treatment strategies
may involve:
- Making sure you’re getting enough nutrients
- Checking for infections standing in the way of your healing
- Detecting hormonal imbalances
- Making sure your adrenal glands are working
- Healing and supporting the gut and the microbiome
As we work to heal those factors, we remove the forms of stress that are keeping the body in
the Fight, Flight or Freeze state. Without the stress, the body can begin healing and repairing.
The immune system calms down and the autoimmune process stops.
Healing Autoimmune Disease From Trauma
Working with a functional medicine provider is important to restore your autoimmune health
after trauma. At the Caplan Health Institute, we have extensive experience dealing with
unresolved trauma and autoimmune disease.
The first step? Schedule a free 15-minute discovery consultation, by phone or video.
If you decide to come on board as a practice member, we can take a complete medical history
and order testing. We will look for and address potential root causes of autoimmune diseases
such as trauma, diet, hormonal imbalance, adrenal dysfunction, and underlying infections. We
call our patients practice members because they take an active role in their health. In addition,
our Caplan Health Institute coaches will help you stick to your plan. Working with our
integrative healthcare team is a comprehensive way to make sure that past traumas don’t
stand in the way of your future healing.
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