Listen now to the show on February 1, 2021 on @KPFA.org— 94.1FM, at 2PM.
My guest, Veronique Mead, reports: Dr. Vincent Felitti, co-investigator of the original and most well known ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) study spent over 25 years running a weight loss clinic. His team found that trauma is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes and also for bigger bodies. “Obesity,” it turns out, is a “biomarker.” Bigger bodies are an indication of stressful events in the past and a physiology that is no longer regulating in an optimal way for current circumstances.” (Wickrama, 2017; Felitti, 2010).” Veronique Mead says, “There is a profound and deeply shaming stigma assigned to larger bodies or having type 2 diabetes (T2D) in our culture.”
We’ll talk about how to reduce shame and blame and deepen our understanding of the connection between adverse experiences and disease.
Veronique Mead was an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and practicing physician at the New Hampshire-Dartmouth Family Practice Residency program when she changed careers and retrained as a Somatic Trauma Therapist. For the past 2 decades she has been integrating the science of adversity into a new model for making sense of chronic illness and has pulled together a database of more than 12,000 references. She also draws from her personal journey of gradual recovery from disabling chronic fatigue syndrome and emphasizes how effects of trauma are not psychological as is still often mistakenly believed. Veronique shares the science on her blog, ChronicIllnessTraumaStudies.com
