Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 790: Everyday Trauma: Remapping the Brain's Response to Stress with Dr. Tracey Shors
Transcript
- 0:10Right. Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gamiferson.
- 0:14My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to be human,
- 0:19to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
- 0:23who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
- 0:27authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
- 0:33about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
- 0:37That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. Here we go
- 0:43five four, three, two and one. Our folks, welcome back to
- 0:48the podcast. I am very excited to have as my guest today, Doctor
- 0:51Tracy Shor's Tracy welcome, Thank you, nice to be here. Awesome.
- 0:57So. Doctor Shores is a distinguished professor in Behavioral and Systems neuroscience in the
- 1:00Department of Psychology and the Center for Collaborative Neuroscience at Rutgers University. She has
- 1:07about one hundred fifty scientific publications and has recently written a popular book titled Everyday.
- 1:12Trauma Research Program studies how our brains ruminate on trauma related memories and how
- 1:19this process can interfere with our everyday lives while making still more memories. Doctor
- 1:23Schortz is also focused on identifying effect of tools for reducing repetitive thoughts that reinforce
- 1:30our everyday traumas. Our brain fitness program known as MAP that's MAP Trained My
- 1:37Brain combines mental and physical training with silent meditation and aerobic exercise to decrease trauma
- 1:42related and competitive thoughts, as well as symptoms of depression and anxiety. WHOA,
- 1:51that's a lot. That's a lot, but very impressive. Thank you
- 1:53so much for being here today. Yeah, you're very welcome. Before we
- 1:57get going, Tracy share with the listeners where you're from originally and where you
- 2:01are currently. Originally, I actually lived all over the country and to some
- 2:07extent, the world, because my dad traveled a lot when I was young.
- 2:10I I was born in Illinois, but I lived in Alabama. I
- 2:15lived in Connecticut, I lived in Belgium. I lived in California, but
- 2:20I've been in New Jersey for like more than twenty years, closer to thirty.
- 2:24Actually, awesome, Awesome, I think I'm almost like a native now.
- 2:29Yeah, awesome. So look, your bio is crazy, the impressive
- 2:35of what you do. How did you get to this point. What started
- 2:38this interest in the work you do? I mean I was always interested in
- 2:46science. My brother's a scientist, and so I had my dad's an engineer,
- 2:52so you know, I kind of grew up in a very science oriented
- 2:53family. And then you know, coupled with that, I was just interested
- 2:58in people, like why they do what they do and so fascinating. And
- 3:02you know, back when I went to school, it was a little bit
- 3:06more difficult to merge those two, to merge uh kind of biology and science
- 3:12with psychology, and so I majored and eate both. I majored in biology
- 3:17and psychology, and then at some point I went back to graduate school and
- 3:22majored in what it was then called physiological psychology. I mean, now we
- 3:28would call it behavioral neuroscience. Yeah, so that's what I've kind of how
- 3:32I got into it. Okay, so from there, what did you What
- 3:38positions did you take early on? In terms of employment. I was at
- 3:43USC for a long time, at University of Southern California. That's where I
- 3:45got my pH d. And then I actually was really fortunate I met a
- 3:49really esteemed professor scientist by the name of Richard Thompson. I just serendipitous,
- 3:57you know. I met him on the way to go to the bathroom he
- 4:00once. So I always telling my students, you know, like go for
- 4:02it because I saw him, I knew of him, and I was like,
- 4:05should I talk to him? And I was like, yeah, I'm
- 4:09going to talk to him. And so anyway, he eventually offered me a
- 4:14job, a postdoctoral fellowship in his lab, and so that really, you
- 4:17know, kind of catapulted my my career because he was super well known,
- 4:24but also, you know, we had similar interests and views on the things.
- 4:30But anyway, I worked for him for a long time, and then
- 4:32I went to Princeton for a while. I worked there for seven or eight
- 4:38years, and then I moved to Rutgers. Wow, so when and how
- 4:45did your interest blossom in the field of trauma subject of trauma. Yeah,
- 4:50I mean when I was working for this person, I started working on stress
- 4:55and how stress affects memory more at the kind of what we would call like
- 4:59a labs you know, situation, So looking under the microscope or recording from
- 5:02neurons and trying to see like how does the brain at a cellular level response
- 5:09to stress and trauma. We would call it stress. You know, these
- 5:13are laboratory studies obviously, So I did that for a long time, and
- 5:19at some point, like in the nineties, I became interested in looking at
- 5:26female brains. You know, at that time, no one was really looking
- 5:29at female brains. Almost all the laboratory studies were done in male brains.
- 5:32Interesting. Yeah, so they were like, what was the reasons for that?
- 5:39Well, I mean they thought that that the female brain was just a
- 5:43male brain with some estrogen, you know, kind of thrown in okay,
- 5:46which is ironic because it's really the opposite. You know, the default really
- 5:50is the female and then exposure to stosterone is what differentiates the male and the
- 5:57female brain. But anyway, it was also I think the people scientists thought
- 6:03that the estras cycle, which is like a menstrual cycle, would would contribute
- 6:09to variability. It just became it just became the status quo. And so
- 6:15at some point I thought I would look at female brains. I had heard
- 6:18something unusual about them, and we found a completely ridiculously interesting I think phenomena
- 6:28where if you stress, these are in rodents. You know, these are
- 6:30rats. So if you stressed a male they would learn better, and if
- 6:34you stressed a female, they couldn't learn. And so it wasn't just that
- 6:39they were different, they were actually you know, responding in opposite directions.
- 6:43So I actually investigated that for a long time and and found that, you
- 6:47know, it's accompanied by these different responses at the cellular level, at the
- 6:51anatomical level, at the connections between neurons. Yeah, so, you know,
- 6:59I and one of the reasons I was so intrigued by this line of
- 7:04research was that we know that women are much more susceptible to stress and trauma
- 7:11related experiences. You know, they're much more likely to have post traumatic stress
- 7:15disorder. You know, women are diagnosed three times as much as men with
- 7:20PTSD, They're twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression, they're much more
- 7:27likely to be diagnosed with anxiety. Obviously, eating disorders are super prevalent in
- 7:30women. So you know, I kind of started thinking, maybe that's part
- 7:35of it. You know, that the brain is just inherently different and it's
- 7:39responding to these experiences in such a way that they become like vulnerable to these
- 7:46these disorders. So what is it specifically that differentiates or uh maybe allows the
- 7:57female brain to be more receptive to stress. God, I wish I knew.
- 8:05I mean, there's there's so many things, you know, Like I
- 8:09think now twenty years later, more than that. Actually, now there's a
- 8:13much more work on the differences between the male and female brain. In fact,
- 8:18the National Institute of Health has mandated it so that every experiment now that's
- 8:22done has to have both sexes unless you have a good reason not to.
- 8:26Wow. So now it's like kind of burgeoning out of control. Like there's
- 8:30so many differences that are being documented. So I don't think it's just one
- 8:35thing. And I also want to be careful because it's not necessarily that that
- 8:41we're born differently, although we are. There are some changes that are even
- 8:46a detectable in utero in humans, so while you're still in the womb.
- 8:52But then our experience also changes our brain, right, how we're treated,
- 8:56how we respond to how we're treated, and so the differences are many,
- 9:03but the causes there are as just just as many. Now let's just kind
- 9:09of take a pause here, and I want to ask you how you define
- 9:13trauma, because we've been using kind of the word stress and you've been implying,
- 9:18well, I think the implication has been that, you know, maybe
- 9:20it's not a continuum, right, and on the fore edge of the continue
- 9:24will beginning to trauma. How do you define trauma? Yeah, you know,
- 9:28my book is entitled every Day Trauma, So I've actually heard thought about
- 9:35this a lot. You know, trauma is the response. You know,
- 9:41sometimes people think of trauma as the experience or the event, but it really
- 9:45is the response to the event. You know. One way to think of
- 9:50it is it's it causes damage. You know, the trauma comes from the
- 9:54word wound, which kind of means, oh, there's there's been a wound,
- 9:58there's been some kind of damage. And so I kind of like that
- 10:03way of thinking about trauma. You know, stress is doesn't have to cause
- 10:07damage necessarily. We have all kinds of stressors in our lives. You know,
- 10:11even good things are stressful. They cause a stress response in our body.
- 10:16And so it is to some extent a continuum. You know, you
- 10:20go from something being moderately or not that stressful to being very stressful, and
- 10:26it's very stressful. Then it starts to get into the the trauma. You
- 10:30know, world trauma, I think, to some extent has long lasting repercussions
- 10:39more so than stress. You know, many things that are stressful we kind
- 10:41of forget. Trauma tends to to to kind of activate those memory systems in
- 10:46our brain more so more so than a stress, a stressor so you know,
- 10:52everything that's traumatic is also stressful, but everything that's stressful is not necessarily
- 10:58traumatic. I mean, there are, as you I'm sure are well aware
- 11:03of, there are a lot of different definitions, especially now in our culture.
- 11:07I mean, some people say anything that is disruptive can be traumatizing whatever.
- 11:16I mean, people can have their own definitions. But the one that
- 11:22I think I'm pretty well familiar with and it has a certain element to it,
- 11:26and I want to ask you about it, and that is that trauma
- 11:31is an experience that so disrupts our nervous system and it kind of shakes our
- 11:37world in a sense. How does that land for you? Yeah, I
- 11:43mean I think that's a good way of like describing it in terms that people
- 11:50can understand. I do, but you know, I also like to think,
- 11:56well we could find a way to kind of describe it more mechanistic,
- 12:00like what is it? You know, what is that threshold when something becomes
- 12:05destabilizing? To the point where it's you know, you become dysfunctional. I
- 12:09mean, in my book is entitled every Day Trauma, and I do go
- 12:16into some detail about how to think about that word. You know, we
- 12:22often think of trauma trauma experiences as these big events. You know, you
- 12:26have this big event, it's an earthquake, it's a rape, it's a
- 12:28violent attack, something like that, and then you have these repercussions and those
- 12:33can go on day after day. So that's in a way in everyday trauma.
- 12:37Right The event itself is acute and short, but the repercussions and our
- 12:43memories and our feelings and our emotions, those are maybe every day we think
- 12:48about it. And then there's other traumas that really do do last every day
- 12:54or conceivably every day. Discrimination, poverty, homelessness, you know, chronic
- 13:01illness, taking care of someone who's chronically ill. You know, those are
- 13:05also everyday traumas. So I don't think there's you know, one really clear
- 13:11definition. I also agree with, you know, some experts in the field
- 13:15who say, we can't lame call everything trauma, you know, just because
- 13:18we don't like it or just because it bothers us. It's it's not necessarily
- 13:22traumatic, so I agree with that, but it's very personal. You know,
- 13:28you ask somebody and someone gonna have almost what seems like the same experience,
- 13:33and one person's like, Eh, no big deal, and another person's
- 13:35like, wow, I have never gotten over the right. Let me just
- 13:39positive from it. We're speaking with doctor Tracy Shores that we're going to be
- 13:43talking about her her book every Day Trauma, Remapping the Brain's response to stress,
- 13:48anxiety, and Painful Memories for a Better Life. Let's pause here to
- 13:52thank our sponsors. All right, so talking about this book here. Why
- 14:01did you write the book? Why did I write the book? I'll tell
- 14:05you. I you know, as I mentioned, and I had a laboratory
- 14:09for many years, successful laboratory. You know, did a lot of I
- 14:13think important things. And you know, at some point I was like,
- 14:20wow, I just can't keep all this information to myself. You know,
- 14:24are my peers. It's just I feel like people should know more about how
- 14:28the brain actually works. You know, we have lots of interventions and therapies
- 14:33and what have you. But you know, I'm always surprised how little people
- 14:35know about their own brain. I mean, it's our brain. It makes
- 14:39us who we are, it makes us everything. It's our memories, it's
- 14:43how we feel, it's how we think, it's how we stay alive.
- 14:48So you know, part of it was just like, yeah, I just
- 14:52wanted people to know more about the brain. I also wanted to emphasize the
- 14:58difference between them email and Maile brain. I feel like maybe people didn't appreciate
- 15:03the differences that really exist. You know, one of my big interests now
- 15:09is sexual violence. The interest is a good word for it, but I'm
- 15:15just you know, distressed by it. But there's so much sexual violence,
- 15:18and so another reason I kind of started going down this road was to talk
- 15:24more about how sexual violence affects women and to help them overcome it. So,
- 15:31yeah, how did you structure the book? Let's talk a little bit
- 15:37about because one of the things I want to get to is you mentioned this
- 15:41aspect of repetitive thought, repetitive memories and so forth. So let's kind of
- 15:46get there, but give us a broad scope of how you structure the book
- 15:48and why you did it that way. Yeah, I mean it's really three
- 15:52parts. So the first part is more what I would call psychology, you
- 15:56know, kind of basic psychology. You wouldn't stress. What is trauma?
- 16:00You know, what are the what are the various types of experiences we could
- 16:03have, and what are the various outcomes? You know, what kind of
- 16:07what kind of mental illnesses are associated with stress, what are the symptoms of
- 16:10those? Kind of like a general overview of that world. And then the
- 16:15middle part is more neuroscientific. I would say, you know, I get
- 16:19into a little bit more about how memories are made in the brain, traumatic
- 16:25memories, but just memories in general. And I do talk quite a bit
- 16:30about neurogenesis. You know. One of the things that I was involved with
- 16:34early on was this the production of new neurons in the brain, the discovery
- 16:40that the brain continues to make ne neurons, and so I do talk a
- 16:45lot about these new neurons and how we can make more of them and keep
- 16:49them alive, you know, through learning, and so that's it's kind of
- 16:53more about the cellular aspects of stress and trauma. Neurogenesis is also very much
- 17:00affected by stress and trauma. So people that are stressed or have PTSD or
- 17:06depressed, you know, they make well, we don't know for sure if
- 17:10they make fewer of these cells, but certainly the place where these cells are
- 17:12made is smaller. They hip a canvas, which is where they're made.
- 17:18So I kind of just describe kind of the basics. I don't think it's
- 17:22too technical, but it's you know, got a little more, a little
- 17:26more detail. And then the last part is more about recovery from trauma.
- 17:33One of the things that I've also been doing over the last decade or so
- 17:37is developing this intervention. I call it MAP Train my Brain, and MAP
- 17:45stands for Mental and Physical and I really developed it based on this work on
- 17:51neurogenesis, because you know, we had to discovered that these neurons are made
- 17:57in the brain throughout your life. You know, most people didn't. We
- 18:02didn't even know that we continue to make neurons in adulthood. So once they
- 18:07were discovered, people wanted to know what are they doing? Why do we
- 18:11have these new neurons? And it turns out they're involved in memory, in
- 18:15learning new things. And one of the more amazing things I think about these
- 18:21cells is that you that many of them die unless you learn something new,
- 18:26So it's kind of a use it or lose it. You're you're making these
- 18:30cells, and that if you learn something new, they stay alive and then
- 18:37they become incorporated and you know, into the rest of your brain. But
- 18:41the learning has to be effortful. It has to be something that you really
- 18:44concentrate on, something you really put you know, your kind of your heart
- 18:48and soul so to speak into you're really paying attention. And then another lab
- 18:55in California had shown that you could make more of these cells with exercise of
- 19:00the robic exercise. So I had this idea, Well, what if we
- 19:03combine those two, you know, make more selves through a robic exercise and
- 19:07then keep them alive through some kind of mental training. And yeah, no
- 19:15mental training is meditation, you know, the exercise of the aerobic Okay,
- 19:19I'm going to ask what I'm going to ask what I think is it feels
- 19:22like a stupid question, but what's the purpose of doing this? Of creating?
- 19:30Well creating, I mean, what's the purpose of the neurogenesis? What's
- 19:34the purpose of creating these new neurons? Oh, what's the purpose? I
- 19:40mean I can understand the purpose of learning new stuff, but obviously that that
- 19:44learning new stuff creates new neurons. What's how does that benefit us? Well,
- 19:48it's always good to have more new neurons. Seriously, I mean there's
- 19:53no situation. I mean, there might be a few unusual, very rare,
- 19:59unusual circumstances where you would make neurons that you don't want, But in
- 20:03general, do you want more neurons in your brain? You know, they
- 20:07have they make connections to other neurons. They're just yeah, it's like saying
- 20:11like, do you want more blood cells? Yeah, you want more blood
- 20:14cells. You know. So they're just like they're just basic building blocks of
- 20:17our of our brain. But you know, since we did those early studies,
- 20:22there's lots more information on them now and they do seem to be really
- 20:26important for for maintaining a functioning brain, you know, memory systems, for
- 20:33being healthy, for being able to concentrate. You're just things that that we
- 20:37maybe take for granted, but if you really think about it, Yeah,
- 20:40you have to have a substrate for this behaviors. You know, you have
- 20:42to have something that that doesn't and these neurons are part of that part of
- 20:48that system. So talk a little bit about what happens to the brain when
- 20:53someone experiences trauma. Well, there's so many things you know, during the
- 21:02traumatic experience, itself. You know, there's a big stress response the sympathetic
- 21:08nervous system, you know, where your heart beats really fast and you release
- 21:11lots of epinephrine into into the bloodstream and neurotransmitters into the brain. I mean,
- 21:18there's hardly anything that doesn't well, I shouldn't say that, but there's
- 21:23not much that doesn't change when you are under a lot of stress in the
- 21:27brain. Like if you put an a lot dround down into the brain during
- 21:30a stressful experience, the cells are firing, more, neurotransmitters are being released,
- 21:36hormones are being released, which is changing all kinds of you know,
- 21:38systems in the brain. So it's a big experience, and you know,
- 21:45that's partly why we remember it so well, because it's changed so many you
- 21:49know, systems that we depend upon. A lot of people listening to this
- 21:55are therapists of all kinds, people in the mental health space, survivors are
- 21:59coming of the two. What do you feel it's important that they know about
- 22:03your book? What's kind of take? Yeah, I think one of the
- 22:10things is that it's not I don't think it's too technical. I think there's
- 22:14accessible information in there that could help one of the things that you kind of
- 22:18mentioned is is I talk a lot about ruminations. You know, ruminations are
- 22:22these repetitive thoughts that all of us have. Women are particularly prone to ruminations.
- 22:29They're they're usually negative, they're always autobiographical, so they're about yourself,
- 22:36and they're usually associated with blame or regret. I like to think of them
- 22:42as memories laced with mood, right, because they are a form of memory
- 22:47since you repeat them, but they have this mood, kind of mood attached
- 22:51to them, and they're really detrimental actually, because when you're ruminating, you're
- 22:56not thinking about other things that are my, be important. You know that
- 23:00you've gotten all the information out of that thought, but you keep going back,
- 23:07and that's you know, that's what to ruminate means, like to chew
- 23:11on something like a cow chewing on the cut and the nutrients are gone and
- 23:17you're still chewing. So it's you know, good analogy for rumination. But
- 23:22the other thing that I think that's interesting to know about these thoughts is that
- 23:26anytime you have a memory, or bring back a memory so to speak,
- 23:33you create another memory, right because that memory that you brought to this present
- 23:38moment now becomes associated with this moment. So if I bring back a memory
- 23:45of, you know, my uncle right now, I've made another memory of
- 23:48my uncle here with you. And that's a benign example. But you can
- 23:53imagine if you're always bringing back these negative memories, you're making more of these
- 23:59traces in your brain. So ruminations, you know, they're distressing, they're
- 24:06distracting, et cetera, et cetera, but they're also changing the brain.
- 24:11And you know, one of the things that we we have been giving this
- 24:17intervention that I have just map trained my brain intervention out in the world to
- 24:21many people, mostly women with trauma. And one of the outcomes that we
- 24:26see in every single study that we've done is fewer ruminations. So people say,
- 24:33oh, I don't ruminate as much anymore, and then you know,
- 24:36when you don't ruminate as much anymore, then that's associated with less depression,
- 24:41less anxiety, fewer traumatic thoughts. We just actually finished the study with women
- 24:48who had sexual violence. Everyone I had PTSD. All the women had PTSD
- 24:55when we started, and they went through this program twice a week for six
- 25:00weeks. It's just went out train my brain. It's thirty minutes of meditation
- 25:06followed by thirty minutes of aerobic exercise. They also learn a little bit about
- 25:11the brain along the way, And afterwards, the women had forty percent fewer
- 25:19symptoms of PTSD according to DSM criteria. So that's a lot. Yeah,
- 25:27that's a lot. More than half were no longer they no longer met criteria
- 25:33for PTSD, and they were ruminating a lot less, you know. So
- 25:42I think sometimes, you know, we look for like these really complicated answers
- 25:48or even interventions to help people. Sometimes it you know, a little knowledge,
- 25:52you know, coupled with some this is obviously some mental training, coupled
- 25:56with some some exercise, arobic exercise, getting the heart rate up. I
- 26:02don't know, I mean, I don't even know exactly why it works so
- 26:04well, but it does work. Well. That's very interesting. Yes,
- 26:11And there are you mentioned interventions. I mean, as you know, there
- 26:15are slew of interventions out there, modalities out there. What are your thoughts
- 26:18on all of these interventions and modalities. Yeah, I mean, if you
- 26:26really break it down, they're probably not that different from each other. And
- 26:30some of these things have been going on for you know, thousands of years.
- 26:32People these tools to help themselves. I mean, I guess, you
- 26:36know, generally my philosophy and I some m talk about this in my book,
- 26:41particularly at the end, it's like get as many tools as you can,
- 26:45you know, like everything's not going to be tailor made to each person
- 26:48and there's not going to be one intervention that's going to help everyone. So
- 26:52you know, pick up these tools, learn new skills. It's really the
- 26:56skills, you know, it's not so much the intervention that's helping. Because
- 27:00even for the people that we help, you know, we'll ask them later,
- 27:04are you still doing it? Sometimes they're not, but they still learn
- 27:08these skills. So when something bad happens, they're like, yeah, I
- 27:12know that I should probably you know, sit in silence and count my breast
- 27:17for ten minutes and I'll feel better, or you know, go for a
- 27:21run, and you know, they capture these like little skills that they can
- 27:25use throughout their life. And I think that's true. Yeah, I mean,
- 27:30I feel like I'm let me just say one way to think about this.
- 27:34The brain loves to learn new things. It loves novelty. It really
- 27:38responds to novelty, So you know that's the key, Like get out there,
- 27:44learn new skills, expose yourself to new, new, new opportunities for
- 27:48learning. You know, that's kind of my philosophy. As we kind of
- 27:52wind down here, I appreciate you seeing you know, when you're talking about
- 27:56the results of that woman going through map, you're like, been sure why
- 28:02it works. I mean, I appreciate your honesty, but give us something.
- 28:06I mean, it's this mental meditation and physical It seems like we all
- 28:12can do that, right. It's not some wild modality, but take a
- 28:18shot. What is working there? Yeah, I mean I have theories out
- 28:22the kazoo, but okay, so one of my theories, of course,
- 28:26it relates to neurogenesis, that it's helping create and uh increasing survival of these
- 28:33neurons in the brain. But you know that's almost untestable. I do think
- 28:40one reason it might work is because when people are sitting in meditation, this
- 28:47is silent sitting meditation. It's hard, right, people don't often like to
- 28:52do guided meditation. So this is silent sitting meditation, and then followed by
- 28:56slow walking meditation. The heart rate is super you know, it's a very
- 29:00much a parasympathetic nervous system state, and so the brain is learning conceivably that
- 29:08when thoughts come up, traumatic thoughts, stressful thoughts, distressing memories, that
- 29:15oh, wait, just because I had that thought, my body is not
- 29:19racing, my heart is not racing. I'm not anxious. So you learn
- 29:22that, and then immediately after that you go into this aerobic exercise state,
- 29:29which is sympathetic. You know, the heart is going fast, over one
- 29:34hundred beats per minute, so but it's not full of fear. You know,
- 29:41usually when you're afraid your heart is racing, you associate that fearful experience,
- 29:47you know, with this feeling in your body. But in this case,
- 29:51particularly in my online course, you know, we have music. We're
- 29:55kind of like doing routines to the music. It's fun. You know,
- 30:00people generally think it's pretty fun. So again, you know, you're kind
- 30:03of learning, oh, just because I have this, my heart is racing,
- 30:07I'm not necessarily afraid. And you know, you might say, well,
- 30:11that sounds kind of simplistic, but that's how we learn. You know,
- 30:15we're learning to really associate what's happening in our body with our experience,
- 30:19like how we feel, and the brain has to be trained. It can't
- 30:25just pick this stuff up, you know, necessarily from a book or something.
- 30:29Sometimes you really have to get on there and just train the brain.
- 30:32Right, Which is which is I think what I don't want to say a
- 30:36lot, but may be several trauma treatment modalities do right, inviting the client
- 30:41to be in the moment, to be self aware, to be having those
- 30:45memories, and to know that they're safe in a sense. But why did
- 30:49you choose aerobic activity, Why not just walking or anaerobic activity or weight training.
- 30:56Well, a robic activity is the absolute best medicine for the brain.
- 31:03Like, the brain uses like twenty percent of the oxygen that we breathe in
- 31:07is used by the brain. So the brain needs lots of oxygen, and
- 31:11the best way to get oxygen is through exercise. Because the heart, when
- 31:15the heart beats fast, that blood goes right up your carotid arteries to your
- 31:19brain, you know. So yeah, it's you know, so if you
- 31:23want to consolidate memory or enhance brain structures, it's aerobic. It's got to
- 31:29be aerobic exercise. And it also increases neurogenesis, as I mentioned, increases
- 31:37blood flow, blood structures. It's just you know, it's just a very
- 31:41powerful stimulus for the brain. The name of the book is Everyday Trauma,
- 31:48Remapping the Brains that response to stress, anxiety and painful memories for better life.
- 31:52Doctor Tracy's shores phenomenal, I mean, so inspiring. Love to have
- 31:59you back. I mean, there's so much to talk about. I mean
- 32:01we didn't even touch your you know, your interest in sexual assault and violence
- 32:07against women. That's a whole different podcast. But thank you so much for
- 32:12being here. I mean, you're you're you're incredible. Thank you so much.
- 32:15I really appreciate it. I had so much fun and I'm just happy
- 32:19to get the message out any any way I can. All right, best
- 32:22way for people to get in contact with you is what you can contact me
- 32:27at map train my brain at gmail dot com. That's my Gmail, and
- 32:32I also have a website, map trainm brain dot com. And I even
- 32:37have a course I'm just uploading this week, so if someone's interested in taking
- 32:42it online, you know you can do it and any and even if you
- 32:45don't want to take my course, you can read about it on the website.
- 32:49Okay, we'll have all those links up here at the show notes page
- 32:52at the Trumpet therespodcast dot com. Thank you so much for greet, meeting
- 32:54you. Thank you so much, it's my pleasure a pepper. Are having
- 33:06a day at day, hasten to round looking