The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity—A Transformative Guide to Understanding Childhood Trauma and Health

by Nadine Burke Harris

our patients with zero ACEs lived in the same neighborhood and had the same access to health care, the same lack of safe places to play and nutritious food as our patients with high ACEs. When you realize what toxic stress does to the hormonal systems of kids who have experienced multiple ACEs, you understand that it’s not just because they subsist primarily on a diet of fast food that they are overweight. It’s not just that they are living in a food desert (a term that refers specifically to a neighborhood with a dearth of nutritious food) and are being brought up by parents who think Taco Bell is a healthy alternative to McDonald’s. Those things compound the problem, to be sure, but they are not the whole story. Our data suggested how powerful the underlying mechanism of toxic stress can be—that the metabolic disruption was also an important driver. If you grow up in a food desert, of course it’s going to be difficult for you to be healthy. But if you also have higher cortisol levels that are driving you to crave high-sugar, high-fat foods, it’s going to be that much harder for you to choose broccoli over French fries.