If you’ve experienced trauma in your past, know that you’re not broken, you’re a survivor. Our past experiences can lead to chronic debilitating conditions but they don’t have to be a life sentence. Dani Williamson suffered from a number of chronic lifestyle diseases related to her adverse childhood experiences, and now she’s on a mission to help people understand how your diet can either heal you or kill you, and how you can overcome what you’re suffering from with six steps to living wild and well. [1:05] Adverse experiences and the physical issues that come up from them are contributing to an explosion of depression, disorders, and suicide. Phone calls to suicide crisis headlines have gone up 800% since the beginning of the pandemic. Age 10 to 24 is the fastest growing demographic for suicide. [2:45] Dani grew up in a storm of chaos. Her grandfather died by suicide and her mother attempted to kill herself many times. Dani suffered from chronic diarrhea for years from the stress and 15 years later she was in a bad marriage, diagnosed with lupus, and was on the road to committing suicide. [4:15] Dani’s kids were her reason for choosing to continue to live. She packed up and moved and decided to become a nurse practitioner. Despite the improvement in her relationships, Dani was still suffering from several conditions and it wasn’t until one doctor, in particular, asked her about her diet did things start to change. [6:20] Checking her food sensitivities changed the trajectory of her career completely. Dani had seen four gastroenterologists before the age of 40 and not one of them asked Dani what she was eating. [6:45] Changing her diet turned her world around. She no longer needed to take medication for lupus or IBS, and she healed the inflammation in her body and now she’s on a mission to help other people do the same. [7:35] You can reverse whatever it is that you’ve turned on from years of chronic dysfunction. [8:30] Adverse childhood experiences don’t define us, but they do impact us. Those kinds of experiences can affect the very wiring of your brain. Dani’s mother’s second marriage was to a child molester who preyed on Dani when she was younger. [9:45] Dani’s ACE score was 6. If you have a score of 4 or above, your risk of dying from stroke, heart attack, or suicide goes way up. In Dani’s practice, she made the realization that almost all of her patients were suffering from some sort of childhood trauma. Dani now uses the ACE evaluation with every patient in her office. [11:40] Dani recently had a patient with an ACE score of 10 and at the age of 60. [12:35] Dr. Vincent Felitti was an internal medicine doctor and in 1985 noticed that 50% of the participants in his weight loss clinic were dropping out. One day he asked a patient how old they were when they first had sex, and this lead him to the realization that many of his patients had incredibly adverse childhood experiences. [15:00] Dr. Felitti started asking more related questions and developed them into the ACE test. He took the test to a number of different academies and was generally rejected until a person from the CDC recognized the importance of the test and they started one of the largest studies ever on childhood trauma. [16:45] What happens to you before the age of 18 can set you up for a lifetime of chronic lifestyle diseases, depression, suicidal thoughts. Every single chronic lifestyle disease risk is increased by a higher ACE score. [18:30] Every school missed the effect of adverse childhood experiences. Adverse childhood experiences are the single largest public health crisis in the United States and every single pediatrician should be offering this questionnaire.. [19:30] Women are 50% more likely to have an ACE score higher than 5. Your ACE score is directly linked to stress and the hormone cortisol. When cortisol is high chronically, we know that you have a much higher risk of developing an autoimmune disease. [22:50] Dani goes over the 10 ACE questi