Have you ever felt like there's got to be one thing that if you could snap it into place, you could unlock your motivation, stop procrastinating, lock in on your goals, unlock your confidence, and stop being so anxious and awkward? What if it's not a pill, a diet, or some exercise routine? What if it's healing your trauma? Trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma. How many people have some form of trauma? Well over half the population.

You might have been traumatized at work. We've all experienced trauma just watching news and social media. Trauma is actually extremely common. Trauma is implicated in autoimmune disease and cancer and addictions and every mental health condition. The root of depression, addiction, Parkinson's disease is from trauma. The internet makes it seem like trauma is at the root of all our problems. But what if one of the biggest, most widely respected sources of science on trauma

that just scored a $10 million book deal for a sequel was mostly [\h__\h] Hi, my name is Russell Vanderulk. I'm a psychiatrist. The popularity of trauma seemed to have started with one particular book. The most traumatizing TV series ever. Game of Thrones holds a Guinness World Record for being the most in demand TV show in the world in 2023. Ironically, the hugely popular book on trauma, The Body Keeps a Score, has more Amazon reviews than the first book of a Game of Thrones. The author of The Body Keeps a Score, Bessel Vanderolk, is a total superstar. The New York Times said

he's currently the world's most famous living psychiatrist, and he has racked up tens of millions of views across all kinds of huge YouTube channels, including big names like Diary of a CEO and Big Think. For many, his book has completely revolutionized how they think about trauma. The primary cause of all illness and disease is emotion that's trapped in the body. Trauma is stored in the body. Trauma is stored in your body. Trauma becomes stored in your body. The body has a trauma response.

Trauma is stored in the body. How to release trauma stored in the body. How to release this trauma from where it's stored in the body. Body keeps a score has been on the top 20 most sold non-fiction list for over 4 and a half years. And just 6 months ago, he received a $10 million book deal for a second book. Now, the big thing about Vanderolk is he strongly emphasizes in the book that trauma is very, very common. It's not just something that victims of violence or people who fought in a war zone experience. And we've all heard of terrifying experiences leading to PTSD. And PTSD is, of course, a very real and serious disorder. But there's PTSD and then there's a very vague

term trauma. In the book, Vanderoke seems to be lowering the bar. So all kinds of things could be labeled as traumatic. That is because of the way Vanderoke defines it. Almost any experience could be trauma. Trauma is something that happens to you that makes you so upset that it overwhelms you. So you might have trauma, but you might not realize it. And it could be way more impactful than you thought. Trauma is so ubiquitous that if you think you have never seen it, you have not looked. Vanderle claims that trauma is so common that it is quote arguably the greatest threat to our national well-being. In his book, he uses loads of scientific

research to support the idea that trauma can produce actual longlasting physical changes in the body, brain, and even your hormonal responses, even if you can't remember what exactly the trauma could be. That is, you might not remember something as traumatic, but the body does. The body keeps the score. Those issues you have with your gut, the culprit might not be your diet, but your unprocessed trauma. Vanderoka suggested that because of these longlasting effects of trauma, it can be linked to everything from chronic neck and back pain to migraines, digestive problems, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue, and even asthma. The book has been the number one ranked book in

psychiatry on Amazon for years. All kinds of psychiatrists and therapists nowadays use concepts from this book to inform how they approach therapy. And the book is taught in some universities. But what if this book that has completely changed the way we think about trauma is mostly [\h__\h] That's a strong word. But what I mean is what if most of Vanderulk's claims are based on completely wrong interpretations of the science. Let's start to dig into the book. Personally, I had some suspicions about the body keeps a score when I first read it about 4 years ago because Vanderculk wasn't proving that the trauma-induced brain changes he was talking about weren't already there

before the trauma happened. that is he might be confusing the chicken for the egg. This is one of the reasons I wrote an article criticizing the very famous Gabbor Mate who is sometimes called the trauma doctor. Is there a human being on the planet that doesn't have trauma from their childhood? In this culture, that would be the exception. The reason Gabbor Mate assumes practically everyone has trauma is because he's quite vague to where the bar for what could be trauma is pretty low. People can be wounded just when they're not seen for who they are, when

they're not accepted. Dr. Mate doesn't really define trauma. It could be something as simple as an unkind word to somebody that someone takes offensively. Gabber Mate has suggested that the cause of ADHD is trauma, but it's very likely he's confusing the chicken for the egg. ADHD expert Dr. Russell Barkley explained this in his video, Why Dr. Gabbor Montate is worse than wrong about ADHD.

Mate is wrong. He is worse than wrong. Worse than wrong means you continue to advocate a thesis that has been resoundingly refuted in the scientific literature. What happens is that children with ADHD have bad experiences because their fickle, easily captured attention makes them very impulsive and willing to take all kinds of risks and their bad behavior frustrates those around them. This leads to all kinds of very painful social consequences. That is the ADHD leads to very negative experiences.

Having had negative experiences, trauma doesn't lead to ADHD. A big thing about the body keeps a score is that it uses plenty of research on PTSD to justify his claims about trauma in general. I've talked some about PTSD briefly on my subsc. For example, lower testosterone levels before a traumatic event. In one study, deployment to a combat zone predicted the development of PTSD symptoms. That is, testosterone seems to have a protective effect from PTSD. Another study found that testosterone literally decreases fear and testosterone is well known to have anti-anxiety effects. The textbook evolutionary psychology argues that because PTSD seems to be associated with

increased inflammation, the inflammatory nature of a standard American diet may make some people more susceptible to PTSD. All this suggests that certain people's lifestyles may make them less mentally resilient and therefore more vulnerable to developing trauma. So, Vanderle could be getting everything backwards. That is, trauma doesn't necessarily make your body and brain unhealthy, but unhealthy people get trauma more easily. So, I was gearing up to start researching for a full breakdown of the claims made in Vanderulk's book until I came across Dr.

Michael Scaringa. Dr. Scaringa, a professor at Twolane University School of Medicine, has a 29-year career researching and treating PTSD. Sufficiently shocked that no one had written a proper breakdown of all the glaring issues with the book, Dr. Scaringa decided to write his own. He published the body does not keep the score in 2023. Now, one critique that he kept making was that Vander Kulk was using tons of cross-sectional research to prove his point. So, what is that?

The cross-sectional research he's talking about is these papers where they just take a snapshot of the brain of people who have PTSD. So, what that means is because they only have one snapshot, they don't know what the brain looked like before the trauma. Just like with Gabbor Mate, it could be easily the case that Vanderilk was getting the picture entirely backwards. So the big question is, does trauma really directly damage the brain and the body? Does the body keep the score? Without solid proof that the trauma was the cause of any brain, body, or hormonal problems, Vanderolk's claim that the body keeps a score falls apart. Let's get to the specifics. Starting with the first

claim, Vanderol claims that trauma wrecks the brain's insula. He claims that quote, "Almost every brain imaging study of trauma patients finds abnormal activation of the insula." First off, Vanderulk provided no citation for this claim. But after digging through the literature on the insula, Michael Scaringer found that in 20 out of the 21 papers available on the insula when the body keeps the score was published, they were those snapshot studies. So, we don't know if the abnormal activation was present before the trauma or not. Also, the studies clearly contradicted each other. 12 found that there was more insulin activity and six found less insulin activity and two reported no

change in insulin activity. So the insulate part of the brain is the part that links how we're what we do with how we feel. Yeah. What's happening in our bodies? It links how we're feeling in our bodies to what we know about ourselves. Yeah. That's what the insula does. And trauma interrupts that which causes what kind of dysfunction?

You feel numbed out or disconnected. You don't feel alive. You don't feel connected. You can't feel pleasure. So Vanderolk says that the insula links how we feel in our bodies to what we know about ourselves. So if 12 studies say more insulin activity and six studies say less insulin activity, does that mean trauma makes us know ourselves and feel our bodies more or less? Hold up, because the 21st study is the one that's most important. It directly proves Vanderolk wrong and it provides strong evidence for the suspicion that he's getting trauma completely backwards. The study that assessed insulin activity before and after the trauma found that the insulin activity was not changed at

all after the trauma. Before we get to claim two, let me point out an issue with people like Paul Kanti, Gabbor Mate and Vanderolk hyping up that trauma is very common. Trauma is actually extremely common. For example, if we go with what Gabber Mate says, trauma which is underneath all human dysfunction, addiction, disease, then we would have to logically conclude that if there's something about us we want to fix, then something in our past must have been traumatic. Maybe you can't remember a trauma, but there's also this idea that you can have a trauma that you don't remember, but your body remembers it.

Trauma cannot be remembered, and that's because the conscious brain shuts down. um enduring trauma. So, someone might be struggling with anxiety or more and more depressed mood and then they start seeing all these different trauma podcasts and end up focusing too much on trauma and not enough on practical lifestyle changes that could improve their mental health by improving their physical health. The root of depression, addiction, Parkinson's disease is from trauma. There are lots of experts Gabber Mate and others who will say trauma is the root cause of all mental illness. I disagree. There are lots of people who have mental illness who had perfectly

happy childhoods. And there are also people who have horrible abusive childhoods who don't develop a mental illness. So, let's take a look at the second claim. Vanderol claims that trauma rewires the brain's amygdala. Just recently, Bessel Vanderolk appeared on the Big Think Channel to claim that the amygdala is where you'll find the core imprint of trauma. The core imprint of trauma is in that core part of the brain having to do with survival. In his book, he mentions the amydala 28 times over eight different chapters. Let's jump back to Gabbor Montate because it illustrates this

amydala idea. My eldest son, when he was 3 years old, I slapped across the face cuz he wouldn't think happy birthday to me. I'm not singing happy birthday. I get more and more angry. They ended up hitting him. What was being triggered in me is the sense I developed as a young child that I wasn't loved and lovable. Deal with your trauma as much as you can. Gabri Mate's trauma is apparently from when he was an 11-month-old infant. At the time, his mother left him in the care of a stranger for 1 month. He says that this specific event determined his

behavior 70 years later. And when I arrive back at the airport in Vancouver, I get a text from my wife saying, "I haven't left home yet. Do you still want me to come?" My mood switches. I become dark. I become angry. And when I get home, I barely even looking at her. What was triggered in me was the wound of a one-year-old infant who was abandoned by his mother in an effort to save my life actually. But the meaning I made of it is that I wasn't lovable. And so these early wounds could still show up seven decades later over a relatively trivial incident.

I pointed out on my other channel that it's highly unlikely that Gabbor Mate could make an accurate conclusion about how a specific one-mon period when he was an infant affected his adult self. considering reliable memories can't be formed before the age of two. One criticism I saw a couple times was that he didn't need to consciously remember the event. His nervous system remembered the event and more specifically his amygdala remembered the event. So I assume this is probably coming from the body keeps his score. People with PTSD, their amydala is hyperactive. It is overactive.

Trauma is in that core part of the brain. Vanoke explained in the Big Think video with almost 1 million views that the trauma changes the brain such that you're stuck seeing reality as this dangerous scary place. And so you'll behave in a way with other people that's either very submissive or very controlling or very vengeful. And but here's the thing about this claim. Scaringer reveals that Vander's claim that trauma can rewire brain centers such as the amydala plays out almost exactly like the first claim in 21 out of 23 of the papers available on the amydala. When the body keeps a score was

published, they were those snapshot studies we talked about. So we don't know if the abnormalities in the amydala were already there before the trauma. And again, the studies contradicted each other. Seven found more activity, one found less activity, but 13 studies found no difference in the amydala activity between people with and without PTSD. So actually even the snapshot studies completely disproved Vanderol's claim. But more importantly, there were two very solid studies that actually looked at the amydala before and after the traumatic event. There was no change in amydala activity after the trauma took place.

My mood switches. I become dark. I become angry. You'll behave very submissive or very vengeful. So, someone might have seen that Big Think video and thought, "Hey, I'm actually a bit submissive myself and I can be pretty vengeful at times. Maybe I have a trauma that I need to heal to heal my amydala." But looking at the research, there's apparently nothing wrong with the amydala that needs healing. On that note, if a man's problem is that they're too submissive, they're likely to be able to fix that issue far faster by just raising their testosterone than trying to figure out what their trauma is and figure out a way to heal it. This isn't some kind of

you got to be alpha thing. Naturally, improving your hormones may actually help, considering testosterone literally has a social anxiety reducing effect. But nowadays, the cure for being too submissive for a lot of people could be something much more simple, like hanging out with actual humans more regularly instead of experiencing your whole life through a screen. Surprisingly, Vanderolk even suggests something like asthma could come from trauma. He says that quote, "Traumatized children have 50 times the rate of asthma as their non-traumatized peers." Except this paper of Dr. Jenny Nolles he referenced doesn't say anything about asthma or even breathing. Journalist Emmy

Neatfield reached out to Dr. Null about this and Dr. Null said, "We've never published anything about asthma." Vanderolk also cited Dr. Null's work to say that girls who were victims of SA have an entirely different social development. Vanderolk says that quote, "They don't have friends and other kids usually don't want anything to do with them. They are simply too weird." Dr. Null's response to Vanderulk's take was, "My god, that's so awful." and that his take in no way describes an entire group of survivors. Dr. Null's colleague, psychologist George Banano, said that

the idea that girls victimized by essay have a completely different social development trajectory is [\h__\h] Now, let's take a look at the next claim. Trauma leaves you with increased stress hormones. Vanderolk says, quote, "After a traumatic experience is over, the brain may be reactivated at the slightest hint of danger and secrete massive amounts of stress hormones." You've probably heard about this idea before. A lot of people describe it as saying someone is stuck in fight or flight mode. When a trauma is disruptive enough, the amydala can get stuck in fight or flight.

Except again, Vanderolk doesn't site any studies for his claim. Vanderolk says in PTSD patients, fight flight freeze signals continue after the danger is over. The continued secretion of stress hormones is expressed as agitation and panic and in the long term reres havoc on their health. As Scaringa points out, stress hormones could refer to all kinds of hormones, but the main stress hormone that gets attention is cortisol. So, Vanderolk is very likely talking about

cortisol. Scaringa provides a timeline of contradictory results from research on cortisol and PTSD. Starting in 1986, the first study on cortisol and PTSD came out. Cortisol levels were lower in PTSD. In 1989, cortisol levels were found to be higher in PTSD. In 1989, again, cortisol levels were found to be normal in PTSD. In 2007, a metaanalysis of 37 studies on individuals with PTSD came out. The conclusion based on these 37 studies was that the cortisol levels were normal in PTSD. In 2012, another meta analysis of 37 different studies came out. The conclusion was that cortisol levels were not different between trauma exposed and non-exposed individuals. Despite all this,

Vanderlook would go on to claim that elevated cortisol causes serious health problems in people who experience trauma. This constant flood of stress hormones eventually weakens the prefrontal cortex. So maybe your constant stress isn't due to you being stuck in fight or flight due to your trauma, but because you go to sleep at 3:00 a.m. You're drinking way too much coffee or energy drinks, and maybe you're crushing Zins all day. The other thing with fumbling the science to hype up the negative effects of trauma is the noibo effect. It's the opposite of the placebo effect. Doctors

have known that patients are more likely to experience side effects from drugs if you highlight that the drug can have side effects. Early on, scientists found that you can give people sugar pills with nothing in them, tell the people that it's a powerful drug that can have side effects, and that people actually experience negative side effects from these fake pills like nausea, pain, or even blood pressure shifts. So, here's a great example from NAL's book, Beyond Belief, which is an evidence-backed deep dive on how much belief can positively or negatively affect your physiology and your reality in very practical, measurable ways. So, a 26-year-old man bursts into an emergency room gasping

for breath and begging for help. He said, "I took all my pills before collapsing on the floor." The man named Mr. A in the case report was taking part in a clinical drug trial for anti-depressants. After a heated argument with his girlfriend, he downed all the pills they gave him and his neighbor had to drive him to the hospital. The doctors found him to indeed look like someone who was suffering from an overdose. He was pale and covered in a cold sweat with clinically low blood pressure and tachi cardia, an abnormally rapid heartbeat. While trying to figure out what exactly he took so they could treat him properly, the doctors got in touch with

one of the physicians from the clinical trial who told them that Mr. A had randomly been assigned to the placebo group. So there was nothing in Mr. A's pills. The doctors told Mr. A the relieving news and within 15 minutes all his symptoms went back to normal. One little piece of information took him from appearing legitimately deathly ill to the doctors to suddenly completely fine. So just the thought that Mr. A had taken a dangerous dose of pills was the noibo. It actually affected his body in a negative way. So, what does that say for the body keeps the scores narrative about trauma being so terrible for you?

Like I said before, PTSD is definitely a real diagnosis. I'm not trying to minimize the negative psychological effects left on victims of catastrophes. But what about people who didn't really think that they had trauma until they went on a self-improvement quest and came across Vanderolk's book suggesting that nearly everyone must have trauma and it has all these terrible effects. They might just say that they don't remember anything from their past that was traumatic. So, case closed. I don't have trauma. But remember, a core claim from vessel vanderculk is that there could be traumas that you can't

consciously remember, but your body remembers them and you still experience the negative effects. So, could a noibo effect arise when you combine this with Vanderolk misrepresenting the signs to hype up the negative effects of trauma? Or what about someone who had an experience that was quite traumatic, but always thought that they had moved on without any lasting damage? Could they get a noibo effect from reading Vanderculk's book? Thinking, well, I thought I was okay, but this book says that I must have some big issues. We covered three big shortcomings in Vanderk's book, but there's still a lot more. So, in Dr. Scaringer's book, he systematically numbers and breaks down

each suspicious claim in the body keeps a score. Let's get a bird's eye view of the many, many other claims. So for claims 1 6 8 9 22 23 24 25 30 33 34 35 40 and 42 for all 14 of these claims in Manolk's book he either didn't bother to site a study or the citation he listed couldn't be found in the scientific literature then for claims 3 10 26 28 29 31 32 and 41 Vanderolk completely misrepresents the study he cites in each of these claims for example in claim three Vanderolk says that a certain part of the brain goes offline line during a PTSD flashback. Vanderolk cited a study which he said was designed to understand flashbacks. The complete lack of discussion of flashbacks reveals that

this was not the aim of the study. It mentioned flashback only once and it was simply referring to a different study. Do you feel this? No. In claim 26, Vanderolk claims that trauma damages the ability to literally feel touch on parts of the body. The paper Vanderolk cited made zero mentions of insensitivity to touch. Now, there's two more claims that I want to break down because they highlight how Vanderulk exaggerates and misrepresents the research to support his narrative that trauma is far more prevalent and far more damaging than we thought. So,

claim 19 is that a lack of warm memories can wreck your brain. In chapter nine of his book, What's Love got to do with it? Vanderle claims that if you lack a deep memory of feeling loved and safe, the receptors in the brain that respond to human kindness may simply fail to develop. At first glance, this talk of receptors sounds nice and sciency. But as Dr. Scaringa explains, the issue is that Vander cited three review articles of animal research. Scaringer says pretty plainly, animal research cannot measure memories of feeling loved.

There's no such thing as receptors for responding to kindness. Now, since I really enjoyed Yak Pank's effective neuroscience, the person whose work Vanderk cited here, let me add some of my own digging on this point. In footnote nine of chapter 9, Vanderk cites three of Yak Panks studies and claims that Panksup found that quote, "Young rats that were not licked by their moms during the first week of their lives did not develop opioid receptors in the ACC, a part of the brain associated with affiliation and a sense of safety." First off, none of these three studies that he cited from Pancep said anything about mice or rats being licked. Going past these three

citations, I couldn't find any studies of Panceps anywhere where he manipulated the licking behavior of a mother mouse. However, in one of the papers, Vanderook cited Pankep did write that quote, "It has recently been demonstrated that social isolation of animals can lead to increases in the number of opiate receptors in the mouse brain." So, this is the opposite of what Vanderook said. And further, this is about social isolation, not whether or not the rats were licked. Social isolation is dramatically worse. Based on work like that of Harry Harlos, where he

completely isolated monkeys in a box he called the pit of despair, we have learned that sadistically putting animals in a tiny prison for extended periods of time by themselves will have absolutely terrible effects on their mental development. Despite this misrepresentation, Vanderol goes on to say that something as vague as lacking a deep memory of feeling loved and safe can prevent human kindness receptors from developing. The trauma is not the event that happens. The trauma is how you respond to it. It's a subjective experience and what may be traumatic for you may not be traumatic for me. The issue with Vanderolk's narrative is it makes it seem like resolving trauma

should be the first priority for improving mental health or even just self-improvement. Except is that really the most productive? The largest and most comprehensive meta analysis on depression interventions looking at 218 randomized control trials ranked exercise as the most effective intervention for depression outperforming SSRIs. What came in next was cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, which by the way focuses on practical behavioral change, not on resolving trauma. Despite this, Vanderook even spends a chunk of his book arguing against CBT. Here, Vanderculk cites a study to downplay how effective CBT is for PTSD. Except the paper he cited

straight up says it is one of the most effective psychosocial treatments devised to date. There are lots of experts who will say no, it is trauma. Trauma is the root cause of all mental illness. I disagree. The only scientific way to unify all of the risk factors that we know play a role in mental illness is through metabolism. I think the root cause of mental illness is metabolic dysfunction affecting the brain. Dr. Chris Palmer, a Harvard psychiatrist, has been putting patients with severe treatment resistant mental illness, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, into remission by

putting them on a diet. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was so manic. I was so psychotic. Matt saw more than 40 clinicians, tried 29 different medications. I was taking all the medication prescribed, and I was still sick. In 2020, Jan reached out to Dr. Christopher Palmer. His suggestion for Matt, a ketogenic diet. Matt started a medical keto diet.

It was life-changing. I'd gone manic every March. I had to take 20 milligs of this medication or more. I went on the diet. March of 2021, I sailed through 5 millig of this medication. No symptoms of hypomomania, zero. People with depression and anxiety experienced dramatic benefit from this diet as well. almost my whole life being depressed. With taking methylated B vitamins and going onto a ketogenic diet, I have been medication free and completely symptom free for 3 and 1/2 years. Palmer thoroughly lays out all the science behind this in his book, Brain Energy. But the concept is straightforward. Mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain. When

the body's metabolism is broken and can't produce energy properly, this affects the brain cells. If you fix the metabolism, you can fix the brain. This specific type of diet Palmer used to fix these patients metabolism was a ketogenic diet, which is well known to dramatically improve metabolic health in many people. But when it comes to issues like depression or anxiety, he says even just cutting out processed junk food can make a measurable difference. Now, this isn't me trying to say everyone needs to do a ketogenic diet, but I'm illustrating that addressing your physiology is a huge component of mental health. Vanderolk overblowing the

negative effects of his vague concept of trauma might have us prioritize the wrong thing. So, sure, trauma and investigating your past can be a helpful part of the equation, especially for certain people. But for many people, it would be likely more beneficial to start with the practical boring basics like diet, sleep, exercise, cutting down on stimulants, cutting down on alcohol, socializing more, and so on. Now, speaking of practical steps like improving your physical health, what's interesting about fasting, ketogenic diets, drinking caffeine, sweating a lot through exercise, or hitting the sauna is they all have you lose a lot of

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