hol+ with Dr. Taz MD | The Future of Medicine is Holistic | Generational Trauma: How Ancestral Stress Lives in the Body (and What Science Is Finally Revealing)

What if the anxiety, burnout, inflammation, or exhaustion you carry didn’t begin with you?

In this solo episode, Dr. Taz explores the emerging science behind generational trauma and how stress, fear, and survival patterns can be passed down biologically through mitochondrial DNA, the nervous system, and hormonal pathways. She explains why some people struggle with symptoms that don’t resolve despite doing everything right, and how ancestral trauma may be quietly shaping inflammation, cortisol levels, emotional regulation, and energy production across generations.

You will learn how trauma can alter mitochondrial function, disrupt the HPA axis, and create inherited patterns of hypervigilance, anxiety, burnout, and chronic disease. Dr. Taz introduces her five body map framework, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and community, to help you understand where inherited trauma may be showing up and how healing becomes possible when all layers are addressed.

Dr. Taz shares:
• How trauma can be transmitted biologically through mitochondrial DNA passed down the maternal line
• Why chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, and cortisol dysregulation often appear in families with histories of displacement, silence, or survival stress
• The signs of inherited nervous system patterns, including hypervigilance, fear based thinking, emotional suppression, and burnout that starts early
• How ancestral trauma affects hormones, energy production, mental health, and emotional regulation
• Why family secrets, shame, and silence can destabilize the entire family ecosystem and show up as disease
• The five body map approach to screening generational trauma across physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and community layers
• Practical ways to begin healing, including nervous system regulation, storytelling, somatic release, mitochondrial support, and restoring safe connection within families

Whether you are dealing with unexplained symptoms, chronic stress, emotional patterns that seem bigger than your life experience, or simply want to understand your family’s health history more deeply, this episode offers a new lens on healing. You may inherit biology, but you can change how it is expressed and what gets passed forward.

Stay Connected:

Connect further to Hol+ at https://holplus.co/- Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell to stay updated on future episodes of hol+.

Follow Dr. Taz on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/drtazmd/

https://www.instagram.com/liveholplus/

Subscribe to the audio podcast: https://holplus.transistor.fm/subscribe

Subscribe to the video podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@DrTazMD/podcasts

Get your copy of The Hormone Shift: Balance Your Body and Thrive Through Midlife and Menopause

Host & Production Team

Host: Dr. Taz; Produced by ClipGrowth.com (Producer: Pat Gostek)

(00:00) - Hi everyone, it's Dr. Taz. Before we get into today's episode, I just wanna pause and say thank you. Your messages, your shares, your stories are, the reason we make Whole Plus every conversation here is about connecting the science, the intuition, and everyday life together so you can feel more like yourself.
(00:00) - if you haven't already hit that subscribe or follow button, it helps us reach more people who need this. All right, let's begin. What if the pain you [00:00:30] carry didn't start with you? Science now shows that trauma can be passed through generations, not just through stories or behaviors, but through biological changes in the body itself.
(00:00) - this episode, we're exploring the connection between ancestral trauma and mitochondrial DNA and how your body might still be echoing the stress, the fear, or the survival patterns of your lineage. The gift of being in practice for over 16 years and seeing, I don't know how [00:01:00] many patients, I think collectively as, uh, a series of whole plus clinics were at 60, 70,000.
(00:00) - the gift of seeing a patient day in and day out and following them through their journey. Allows us as providers a lot of time to think, observe, learn, and listen. And one of the things that has always confused me until recently is why some people have symptoms or have issues without any explanation.[00:01:30]
(00:00) - done all the right things. They're following the diet, they're exercising, they are doing all the things they're supposed to do. They've got those wellness routines down, red, light, blue, light, you name it, they're doing it, but they're still not well. And while I could have a conversation with all of you about chemistry and biology and physiology, here's what maturity and time has taught me.
(00:00) - healing and being well doesn't exist on [00:02:00] one plane. It's not just about the numbers and the data. It's actually a whole lot more, so much more that it may even be linked to your generational trauma. Now, bear with me for a second. Please don't roll your eyes and change the channel or flip the screen.
(00:00) - is important information and we are just beginning to understand what all of this means and how it's all connected. I've had many opportunities to observe [00:02:30] this. Some of them begin right in our home. I have watched as the women in our family have a very similar look in their eye demeanor way of talking tone.
(00:00) - name it. Some of it we could explain away. My mom was an immigrant, came here at a very young age, 17, 18, 19 years old, had an arranged marriage. She had, I thought, the insecurity of being an immigrant, of being somebody in a new [00:03:00] country without a community. And I always explained away her inability or fear.
(00:00) - of in terms of taking action or taking next steps as a part of that story, the immigrant story, right? I, I can't imagine what so many immigrants go through to get here and then to build a life in a family of their own, leaving behind mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, huge families. So I explained her story away that way.
(00:00) - then there [00:03:30] was me and I grew up, as I've shared sometimes in a slightly chaotic, dysfunctional childhood home, and I don't wanna get into all of those details, but I had that same glimmer of fear and insecurity that I saw in my mom. But let's fast forward to my daughter all these years later, growing up in a pampered home with a father that dotes on her.
(00:00) - we doted on her even a bit too much, but regardless, had all the comforts and the [00:04:00] security that anybody externally could provide. But guess what? The same glimmer, that same sparkle, that same sort of tone. Something, I can't describe it, where there's fear and insecurity. What is that? Why is it going down generation after generation, after generation?
(00:00) - where I started to think and explore, and the year was 2017 or 2018, I started to go into the science because I was so bothered [00:04:30] by this or so confused by why with very different experiences and backgrounds. We were all presenting in a similar way. Why did we have this emotional. Thing. Why are, were we all slightly insecure?
(00:00) - though our circumstances for each of us as women were so different? And that's when I learned about the mitochondria. Of course, I knew about the mitochondria before I've been to med school. I did all those biology classes. I did all the pre-med [00:05:00] classes. I think I know the Kreb cycle way better than I ever needed to or should know in my entire life.
(00:00) - not the mitochondria I'm talking about. I'm talking about the science emerging. It had just started to emerge in 20 17, 20 18, and it is starting to explode now, which is super exciting. But I'm talking about the science that is connecting, the fact that we store our emotions and our emotional memories and our traumas, and even our joys in the [00:05:30] mitochondrial DNA.
(00:00) - specifically in DNA, that is inherited down the maternal line. That means women to women to women over the generations and over time. And one of the things we know from science is that mitochondrial DNA really doesn't get tampered all that much. You'll have some epigenetic changes for sure. You'll have some paternal influence for sure, but at the end of the day, our mitochondrial DNA [00:06:00] is carrying the stories of the women in our families going back and back and back in time.
(00:00) - that the explanation? I don't know. Again, science is just emerging and talking more about this, but what we are starting to talk about more and explore more in family systems is this idea of ancestral trauma. Generational trauma, and how it is showing up physiologically and biologically in our [00:06:30] bodies.
(00:00) - the studies start to emerge and we as doctors start to scratch our head about it, all of us are not necessarily privy to some of these personal experiences that I've shared with you, but they apply to my exam rooms as well. We have patients that tell stories of ancestral trauma, being displaced, being an immigrant, going through Holocaust, surviving atrocities that many of us cannot even fathom.
(00:00) - sure enough, in their blood work. [00:07:00] Despite their habits and their wellness routines, we see inflammation. We see insulin resistance, and we see high cortisol and chronic dysfunction of the adrenal gland. Is it all connected? Well, even if science is not yet able to prove these things in a very concrete way, we at least need to be thinking about it, and we at least need to start connecting the dots.
(00:00) - big mission of the show, the big picture mission of the show was to really think about [00:07:30] health and healing in a whole family or whole community. Sort of system or ecosystem because that ecosystem is a living, breathing, dynamic organism that is influenced by everything around it and everything that has transpired before.
(00:00) - that's where I wanna lead all of us today. And understanding things that our body remembers, the stories that our families never told us. Our body knows the secrets that maybe our parents or grandparents were afraid to tell. [00:08:00] And that things like generational diseases are sort of the same as saying these are families with certain genetic tendencies.
(00:00) - here's the good news in all of this. As you're listening to these connections and trying to understand how the mitochondria might be connected to generational trauma, how genetics play into the conversation around health and wellness and why some people simply don't get better. The good news is that the sooner we recognize this, the sooner we can all heal.[00:08:30]
(00:00) - is the other undeniable fact. As much as we hold onto trauma and store trauma, we have an equal capacity to heal, but we can't heal if we have no idea. What we are healing from, or we are not willing to embark on a healing journey. I wanna go through the next episode talking about some things that we can actively do and reviewing the science behind ancestral patterns of trauma [00:09:00] and what they mean for the current generation.
(00:00) - the other reason I feel like this conversation's really important is because today when we are seeing rapid epigenetic changes due to the environment, due to our stress and our blue light and all the other things that we expose ourselves to on a regular basis, I have concerns about what we as humans are going to look like in a generation or two generations from now.
(00:00) - are we gonna carry and pass down and what do we need [00:09:30] to be thinking about as we move forward? So after 20 years of practicing over and over again, right, of really thinking about the patient through this holistic lens and understanding, after all this time with my teammates, that healing happens in five dimensions and five layers, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and community.
(00:00) - that each of those layers has to be touched. We [00:10:00] now also understand that generational trauma impacts each of those layers, and if we're not pursuing a plan of health that is asking those questions, right? What did. What did your family go through? What did their family go through? What did it take to arrive in a country or to build a business or to do big things, or what were the secrets or the things that were more shameful, that were buried under the rug?
(00:00) - often turn [00:10:30] into diseases and secrets, upset the family ecosystem by presenting in multiple ways, whether it's addiction, mental health disorders, you name it. So we've gotta start to really wrap our hands around this and understand it and understand that there are signs and symptoms that you or your family has experienced generational trauma, and really get in to what we understand from the research component of it and merge that with what I see in practice [00:11:00] on a daily basis.
(00:00) - let's get into it for just a second. So we've talked about the mitochondrial already, right? And I talked about the mitochondria being inherited from the maternal line. And how trauma we know now impacts the mitochondria and impacts inflammation pathways. In fact, there's a study from the Biological Psychiatry Journal in 2018 talking about the fact that traumatic stress disrupts mitochondrial production and then that is then transmitted down [00:11:30] generation after generation.
(00:00) - again, if your ancestors have been through something severely traumatic, it's changed their mitochondrial efficiency and in turn impacted the generations that follow in a journal from Psycho Neuroendocrinology published in 2021, we link together maternal stress and how it's linked to altered maternal DNA in children.
(00:00) - can even take that a step further. There was a recent study [00:12:00] talking about maternal stress and how high cortisol in the mom led to high androgens in the preconception environment, which in turn led to high cortisol and behavioral disruption in the infant. So again, we are all interconnected. Here's one that may hurt even more deeply.
(00:00) - again, this is not, I'm not doing this episode because I want us to feel helpless. I'm doing this because I want to [00:12:30] understand our responsibility in a journal from, uh, famine and Yehuda at al. This was a Dutch journal. It talked about trauma markers being inherited epigenetically amongst Holocaust survivors, meaning those who had been through the Holocaust.
(00:00) - we looked at their children or their grandchildren, we saw the epigenetic changes in the mitochondria, the slight increase in chronic inflammatory markers that were not present. In a control [00:13:00] group of people who did not or whose families had not been through that experience. So this means a lot for the world, right?
(00:00) - means a lot when we think about it politically or economically. But again, we as individuals can't really change that or control that to a significant extent. But what we can do is really look within and start to filter and screen. Ourselves and our family members for patterns of ancestral trauma and understand [00:13:30] what it may be doing when it comes to the mitochondria and inflammation and how it may be involved in progression of disease burden, or even little symptoms like that look I was talking about of insecurity or fear in the eyes that we see in our family.
(00:00) - some things that I want you all to know in addition to maybe understanding your family story and writing it down, and sharing experiences and talking to our elders and to what they [00:14:00] know, right? Oral tradition, built the Bible, built the Quran, built so many books, but. That is a part of it is to really know the story and to pull as much information as you can out to see if any of the patterns of behavior that your ancestors had or went through, or experiences that they went through are influencing what you are doing today.
(00:00) - to bring it back to today and today's world, here are the things that we can start to screen for. The first thing we wanna try to [00:14:30] understand is a nervous system sort of check, right? I can't think of a better word for it, but like what is happening with your nervous system? If you need a visual for what the nervous system is, I want you to picture it.
(00:00) - an energy field. It's basically an energy field that starts up here in the brain, goes along this. Spine, but surrounds the entire body. Think of a hologram of yourself, maybe full of energy and light and moving in different direction. That is your nervous system. Meanwhile, [00:15:00] it is feeding that energy to your cells, to your organs, to your tissues, to every single process in the body.
(00:00) - if that nervous system, right? It's like a highway. It's like a, a interconnected highway. You know, for those of us in Atlanta, we've got 2 85 and this intricate highway system, it's basically like that. But we know that if one thing goes wrong on one highway, all the other ones get blocked up, right? So that nervous system and the flow of energy through it is [00:15:30] determining what is getting fed to every other organ system, cell tissue in your body.
(00:00) - essentially what the Chinese medicine model really referred to as chi. When you talk about chi, they're talking about the flow of energy through the body. It's what Ayurvedic medicine referred to as prana. What is that flow or energy in the body? Is it, is it working well? Is it moving or is it stuck in a particular place causing problems for the rest of the body?
(00:00) - all five [00:16:00] levels, right? Older systems of medicine recognize this phenomenon, and that's why healing happened in family units, and healing happened first spiritually, then physically, they understood how it was all interconnected. But again, if we're trying to screen and understand what's going on in our own homes and with ourselves, and if I'm trying to look within our family and be like, okay, here are the things that make sense.
(00:00) - is a generational trauma pattern [00:16:30] and it is now our responsibility to change it. Here are the things you could look for. Hyper vigilance, right? The folks in your family that are scared or fearful or are looking over their shoulder all the time. We also know things like high cortisol levels, right?
(00:00) - to anger, quick to react, quick to be fearful. These are, again, signs and symptoms, especially if they've got kind of their basic chemistry. Managed chronic cortisol elevation over long periods of time over generations messes up the [00:17:00] mitochondria. So Chinese medicine talked about this as folks that were constitutionally weak.
(00:00) - fact, they believe preconception was a big deal for them. And we've done episodes on preconception for the show, and I encourage you guys to check those out. But the reason they believe so strongly in preconception and understanding preconception chemistry and physiology was that they believed if you didn't do some work.
(00:00) - to conceiving, then your embryo, your [00:17:30] child, your fetus, whatever we wanna call it today, was going to be constitutionally weak, would not have enough energy. Gee, prana, whatever words you wanna use for good quality life. Right? They believed in life force. So trauma and what, you know, if they were sitting here today, they would tell us is that if somebody had unresolved.
(00:00) - or had chronic cortisol activation for whatever reason, then that trauma was impacting the [00:18:00] energy or the Q or the life force of the fetus, or of the embryo or of the child, right? So they would walk into the world in a depleted state already with that alteration in mitochondrial function. And with that alteration in mitochondrial function, they became more susceptible to disease and disease patterns.
(00:00) - are the folks that are more susceptible to autoimmune disease or cognitive diseases or focus and [00:18:30] memory diseases, or just don't have the energy that maybe somebody else has. Again, we wanna expand how we think about energy and start to include the words, mitochondrial function, cellular function, inflammation in our understanding of what energy is, and constantly have that visual of that hologram of ourselves with energy flowing in multiple different directions as something we want to all aspire to.
(00:00) - know that trauma actually [00:19:00] accelerates mitochondrial aging. Let's go back to the studies again. Again, in a study we showed, or it was shown that trauma alters the hypothalmic pituitary axis and cortisol patterns. What does this mean? This means that trauma will essentially inflame the brain, and as it does so, remember right in that hypothalamus sitting right up here is the control center for both your hormones and for your nervous system.
(00:00) - I set up here. So for those of you listening, I'm [00:19:30] pointing to the brain, FYI as trauma hits, you have disruption in the HPA axis, the hypothalmic pituitary axis. This results in a number of different hormonal patterns in the modern day world. What does it look like? It can look as simple as high cortisol and a chronic stress pattern, or it can look like early testosterone depletion, premature ovarian failure.
(00:00) - On the nervous system side, [00:20:00] it looks like anxiety, depression, addiction, A DHD, and so much more. Again, the interconnectedness. Another study by Kim Etal talked about maternal stress changing childhood amygdala connectivity. What are they saying? The amygdala is where, again, we store emotions, but helps us with relationships.
(00:00) - if we have too many maternal stressors inherited or present because of the modern [00:20:30] day, then the child has more problems with emotional connectivity and relationships because they're coming in in a higher stress state. So it's important to understand how all of these things we can start to screen for and for me, screening begins with a deeper understanding of the five body map.
(00:00) - talked about the five body map in the beginning when we were talking about ancestral trauma. But I'm gonna dig into it and again, continue to go back to the science and to our [00:21:00] clinical experience so that you have more of an evidence-based approach to tackling this issue. I know we've seen a lot on generational trauma, but it seems a little fuzzy and a little bit cloudy.
(00:00) - gonna try to put the ends on it and define it a little bit more clearly. So let's start with the five body map. And again, I want you to first think about the nervous system as that hologram, and then understand we have the physical, mental, emotional, energetic, or spiritual and community bodies within the physical realm.
(00:00) - where we [00:21:30] see the mitochondria. Its ability to work effectively, the concept of energy, hormone balance, inflammation, and cellular health. In the mental component, again, we are looking at things like rumination, OCD. Thought loops, you know, fear before, logic type responses, hypervigilance. These are all things that we are seeing in the mental body when we wanna screen for ancestral or generational trauma and the emotional component, [00:22:00] shame.
(00:00) - to shameful feelings, silence, emotional suppression, not being able to communicate or connect your feelings. These are all passed down across generations in the energetic bodies That hum. Or emotional resonance of sort of feeling a certain way, right? Some people will call it vibration. Some people will call it frequency, but that ancestral hum is something you wanna try to identify.
(00:00) - you [00:22:30] exist in a lower vibration state? And remember, I've talked before and we talked about it in the hormone shift as well, about the spectrum of human emotions and how neutrality is where you're kind of at peace or very even. And the highest emotion is love, while the lowest emotion is hate. And in between you've got fear and worry and anxiety.
(00:00) - you get to acceptance, then you get to happiness, joy, and then of course love. So you've got the spectrum of emotions, but is [00:23:00] everybody in your family parked on a particular emotional spectrum? There may be a generational pattern to that, and you wanna look at that and make sure you're not repeating the patterns of your ancestors or of your families.
(00:00) - families stay parked in fear. Right. Fear creates a different outcome for those families. Some families stay parked in worry or anxiety. Others stay parked in love and joy. It's important to know if your personal hum or vibration [00:23:30] or frequency is matching that of your entire family, and if it's something that you individually needs to change or collectively could be something everybody works on together.
(00:00) - there is of course, the community body where you look within the community and you look for patterns that may be healthy or maybe more unhealthy. This is the way we communicate with one another in the family. Are we snapping or are we raging? Are we quick to anger? Quick to accept defeat. Do we retreat [00:24:00] into a corner?
(00:00) - we tiptoe around somebody or do we bring things out in the open? Do we have trust and vulnerability? Do we have space to talk? What has happened within your family structure that you may be learning or modeling from a generation before and a generation before that? The roles that people play within a family, I think are very important as well.
(00:00) - again, if you can think of that five body map and have it firmly in your mind and understand that we can start to screen [00:24:30] four patterns of generational trauma because we know it exists and we know it plays into the picture of your overall health and how you will ultimately change the generations after you again.
(00:00) - is such a big win, and it's such a big win, not only for you and your family, but for, so for society at large. Let's talk about some real life scenarios of some of these things, right? We can get into that. So I gave you the first one, right? Daughters of Anxious Mothers. That's our entire family story.
(25:00) - Women probably, although they were very successful in our family, often had to fight for their voice. So there's an element of anxiety with that. That could be the story for so many different types of families and generations of women before us. But daughters of anxious moms are often hypervigilant and fearful, so they won't take that risk and they won't take that next step.
(00:00) - I wanna ask you this question. Are you the daughter or the son of somebody with anxiety or hypervigilance? And does it [00:25:30] go back a generation or two? And the reason to ask this question is, A, in your lab work and your physiology, are you picking up high cortisol and high inflammation? Or maybe it's not about the blood work, but instead, are you fearful to take that next step and that fear is really not grounded in any kind of reality.
(00:00) - is it holding you back from being the person you're meant to be and living the life you're meant to live? [00:26:00] That is a real question to ask, and I see these patterns over and over again. I personally have been very determined to fight through these patterns and not to replicate them so that again, we can have a different story as we move into the next generation.
(00:00) - another example and one that we did a recent episode on as well, which is talking about men, right? And the shame that they carry generation after generation, right? The secrets, remember, create [00:26:30] disease, so sons of emotionally shut down. Fathers. Fathers that could not communicate very well, have trouble communicating themselves.
(00:00) - can't speak. It's often like someone shut off their own voice, but they walk through life and they walk into careers and relationships and situations, and communication is their failure. You may know somebody like that. I know I do. It's important to [00:27:00] recognize this pattern within a family, and again, open the space for trust and vulnerability so that family can heal.
(00:00) - when somebody is not allowed to be emotionally expressive in a family unit, and what we are passing on as we move from generation to generation amongst our men is again, the inability for them to express their emotions. So as a mom and as a wife, as a friend and a colleague, I encourage you guys to look at these patterns and see if there's [00:27:30] something you can actually do to shift and change them.
(00:00) - there are the patients that come in. We just can't get their cortisol down. We do it all. We do all the protocols. We make sure their diet is consistent, their blood sugar is stable. They're getting enough sleep at night. They're getting, you know what I've talked about many times before in 90 minutes of deep sleep, 90 minutes of REM sleep, they are doing acupuncture and yoga and massage.
(00:00) - cortisol is not budging. [00:28:00] They're in a chronic state of anxiety and they can't explain it. They can't tell me why, and they don't know why. That is somebody who in turn may be dealing with a generational imprint of anxiety, cortisol, and trauma. And then the next one is one that I see probably very frequently, and that's the crash out.
(00:00) - patient that has crashed out, they are fatigued, they are burned out. They cannot necessarily. [00:28:30] To use a different word, like they cannot resuscitate themselves. They can't get that flow of energy back for whatever reason, and the crash out, or the burnout happens very early and they can't get back up.
(00:00) - they don't have the skills of resiliency right when the traumas hit and they can't, you know, they haven't learned how to move from one trauma to the next without putting themselves through a proper healing jo journey and a healing routine. But what do we see in the science? In the science? What we see is that in [00:29:00] these patients, the mitochondria cannot function efficiently.
(00:00) - cannot deliver energy. It cannot power the cells in every organ muscle tissue of our body. From how we think and how we feel to how we move to even, you know, how we are going to make a decision. It's complete crash out it's mitochondrial crash out. And the folks that come to me with this crash out very early on, like even in childhood.
(00:00) - a generational imprint. The ones that come a [00:29:30] little bit later, maybe it's not generational, it could be other factors in life, but their responses and their ability to handle it is, again, sometimes generationally imprinted. So these are some of the things that you can start to maybe sink your teeth in and put your hands on when you're trying to understand if some of your behavior patterns, even your lab work may be ancestrally based.
(00:00) - again, is trying to connect these dots, but if we do science the way we [00:30:00] traditionally have done it by doing, you know, very small cohorts and placebo control trials, then we're not really gonna get to the bottom of the story because we're only gonna understand it if we accept that energy, chi, prana, all of these different things have to be measured as well to really get the understanding of what somebody's generational imprint is.
(00:00) - genetics. What else might healing look like if somebody recognizes that this is the pattern of [00:30:30] trauma, of ancestral trauma that they need to be aware of? Well, here's where hopefully I can give you a to-do list that's a little bit easier, other than what we've talked about so far with communication and recognition of symptoms and signs.
(00:00) - storytelling, family shared secrets, releasing of shame, and really releasing of any guilt as well. That's such a healing experience, and that's one that I encourage every family to walk through. But in addition to that, we can go back to kind of [00:31:00] systematically thinking about what can we do for each of those layers of generational trauma and generational burden.
(00:00) - heal all five layers of the body. So with the physical body, we understand. Remember, if you go back to where I connected the dots, it was around the mitochondria and it was around inflammation. So this is where an anti-inflammatory diet will make a difference, right? Getting all the junk out, really helping to bring the burden of inflammation down, choosing clean and whole foods over processed foods.
(00:00) - are things that can make a difference. In [00:31:30] addition to that, supporting the body. With healthy lifestyle habits. We talked about sleep, we talked about the importance of mindfulness work, right? Really moving the body out in nature. Those are things that help with both mitochondrial repair and even with cortisol reduction too.
(00:00) - in addition to that, if we're gonna get into how to. Port the mitochondria. Some of the things that we've seen work over and over again in practice include coq 10, something called NAC or N-Acetyl Cysteine, which is a precursor of [00:32:00] glutathione, magnesium, omega threes, for example. All of these are things that support mitochondrial function, but again, you can't out supplement trauma.
(00:00) - have to work at it in an autoimmune five body approach for it to actually reverse and make a difference from the emotional com. Component of what's going on here and even the mental component. I think again, that storytelling, that writing is a way of release. I love to write. I feel like that's a way to release a [00:32:30] lot of the shame that we may hold internally to really help secrets unfold.
(00:00) - again, that storytelling, I think, is a part of this, uh, healing protocol as well. In addition to that breath work, right? Understanding through breath work, how to calm the nervous system down effectively. There's so many different great types of breath work, whether that is the 4, 7, 8 breath, whether it's box breathing right, or it's diaphragmatic breathing, or yoga, breathing.
(00:00) - are all ways of, again, assisting the [00:33:00] emotional body and the mental body to focus, to calm down and to allow the body to repair itself. There's energetic healing, which I so believe in. They, there are healers out there that do work. I don't a hundred percent understand. I do get to see the difference in the stuff that we do in our practice, whether it's seeing their vibrational frequency shift or their lab work shift.
(00:00) - is fascinating to kind of see the fallout from that. That's everything from grounding, right breath work comes back [00:33:30] into this picture as well. Frequency resets, whether it's working with an energy healer on a modality like Reiki, for example, craniosacral therapy, chakra therapy, these are all things. At work energetically with the body rather than just on the physical plane or just even on the emotional plane to make a difference.
(00:00) - release is another therapy that is very helpful to release some of these stored patterns. You know, you might guys might've seen a lot of what they say like. Not, not just your cells, but your [00:34:00] fascia and your tissue hold story as well, right? Of course they do. They're made up of all these cells, but somebody that's doing somatic relief or neuromuscular work may have a great way to help the body release some of these things too.
(00:00) - when we get to kind of the community body, this gets back to honesty, vulnerability modeling, proper conversation, making, breaking silence patterns. I think silence is deadly, and I think that's a pattern that, you know, so many [00:34:30] cultures have latched onto as a protective mechanism, right? Women have stayed silent to make men happy.
(00:00) - cultures have stayed silent to make another culture happy. Silence is our enemy. It's an enemy within the home as well, and I hope you all remember that, that you wanna teach and pass on to your children that while conversations are uncomfortable and conflict is not everyone's chosen choice, right?
(00:00) - it comes to navigating situations, silence is deadly [00:35:00] and worse and triggers chronic inflammation. And it is the silence of our ancestors sometimes and the shame of the secrets that they keep that has weakened mitochondria. And weakened inflammation. And I actually think that the weakening of those patho, you know, those physiologic processes in the body are kind of behind what they talk about.
(00:00) - trauma and even generational curses. It goes back to the weakening of your lineage over a period of time. So all of this [00:35:30] comes together if we're gonna have an honest conversation around health and healing. And we talk a lot about how you'll live Whole plus, right? Like, like what does that mean?
(00:00) - it's not just substituting an herb for a medication or taking a supplement for something, or you know, sitting cross-legged on your mat and doing yoga or mindfulness work or owns all day long. That's not living whole plus. Living whole Plus is the recognition that we are multi-layered and [00:36:00] that each layer needs healing and those layers are connected to our ancestral story.
(00:00) - we have to look backward just as much as we look forward if we're gonna go on a path of healing and recovery. And that healing and recovery is not just about you. It's not just about your data and your numbers, it's about your family ecosystem. And if I can challenge you a little bit more, it's about your community ecosystem and are they all humming [00:36:30] in a flow state where the nervous system is happy and can do the work it needs to do?
(00:00) - are we all living together in a state of fear and anxiety where we are each other's enemies rather than each other's allies? So living whole Plus is connecting the dots and putting it all together and it's not easy and it's not. Take this and you're gonna be okay tomorrow. It is a little complex, but again, our goal here [00:37:00] is to be your partner to help break it down.
(00:00) - when it comes to generational trauma, this is how you're going to break it down. Understand what cortisol and mitochondrial health looks like for you and your family. Understand where fear-based thinking anxiety and insecurity are actually coming from. Understand and know where you are with inflammation and cellular health.
(00:00) - your responsibility. Know your family story and their [00:37:30] health and understand if there are shame secrets, trauma, silence that has gone unnoticed. And at the end of the day, bring everybody together on a healing journey of forgiveness and conversation and exploration so that you and your family for generations beyond can live in a happy and whole way, so you're not just living whole Plus, they will be too.
(00:00) - this is a topic. I know that's [00:38:00] a a bit of a stretch. I think it's an important one because I think it's going to be at the forefront of science and healing maybe in the next decade or even in the next two years, and you will be ahead of the curve when you start to understand that the science is already there.
(00:00) - practice of it is yet to come. The in-between space is where we all have opportunity. So I encourage you all to dive into your family stories, understand what's going on, and heal [00:38:30] together in a family ecosystem. All right, that was a doozy. Thank you for joining me for this episode of Whole Plus. Again, we post new episodes every week, and if you wanna hear more about this or any particular issue, please reach out to us and let us know.
(00:00) - you go, take a second to reflect on what stood out for you today. Then if you can leave a quick review wherever you're listening, it really helps other people discover Whole Plus and start their own healing journey. And don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Dr. [00:39:00] Taaz md. I love hearing how these episodes are supporting you.
(00:00) - Chapter 95

Creators and Guests

Host

Dr. Taz Bhatia MD

Dr. Taz Bhatia is a triple-board-certified integrative medicine physician and founder of hol+, where she brings together science, spirit and the human experience to deliver holistic, whole-person care.

Producer

Pat Gostek

Founder of ClipGrowth.com - End-to-End YouTube, Podcast & Clips Management (you just record).

What is hol+ with Dr. Taz MD | The Future of Medicine is Holistic?

hol+ with Dr. Taz MD is redefining holistic medicine as the future of healthcare—integrating modern science, functional medicine, and time-tested healing systems to treat the whole human, not just symptoms. As a 2025 Webby honoree and pioneering show, hol+ dares to enter the next dimension of health-where both science and spirit converge to drive our health, happiness, relationships and family ecosystems.

Recent guests include mental health advocate and author, Sophie Gregorie Trudeau, best-selling author, Katherine Schwarzenegger, Emmy-winning host, actor, and health enthusiast, Cameron Mathison, supermodel Carol Alt, veteran actress and sometimes medicine woman, Jane Seymour, author and journalist, Tamsen Fadal, wellness advocate and cancer thriver, Kris Carr.

From cutting-edge and innovative experts to celebrities and thought leaders, veteran TV personality, author, and trople board-certified physician, Dr. Taz MD, the host of hol+, leads these game-changing conversations - redefining the future of medicine.

On the heels of her successful 8-year-long podcast, Super Woman Wellness, which boasted over 1 million downloads, hol+ continues to be recognized as a show to watch, recognized in the same category as the Mel Robbins Podcast in the 29th Annual Webby Awards.

(00:00) What if the pain you carry didn't start with you? Science now shows that trauma can be passed through generations, not just through stories or behaviors, but through biological changes in the body itself. In this episode, we're exploring the connection between ancestral trauma and mitochondrial DNA, and how your body might still be echoing the stress, the fear, or the survival patterns of your lineage. Hi everyone, it's Dr. Taz.
(00:27) Before we get into today's episode, I just want to pause and say thank you. Your messages, your shares, your stories are the reason we make Whole Plus. Every conversation here is about connecting the science, the intuition, and everyday life together so you can feel more like yourself.
(00:48) Again, if you haven't already, hit that subscribe or follow button. It helps us reach more people who need this. All right, let's begin. the gift of being in practice for over 16 years and seeing I don't know how many patients I think collectively as uh a series of whole plus clinics were at 60 70,000 but the gift of seeing a patient day in and day out and following them through their journey allows us as providers a lot of time to think, observe, learn, and listen.
(01:20) And one of the things that has always confused me until recently is why some people have symptoms or have issues without any explanation. They've done all the right things. They're following the diet. They're exercising. They are doing all the things they're supposed to do. They've got those wellness routines down. Red light, blue light, you name it, they're doing it. But they're still not well.
(01:46) And while I could have a conversation with all of you about chemistry and biology and physiology, here's what maturity and time has taught me that healing and being well doesn't exist on one plane. It's not just about the numbers and the data. It's actually a whole lot more. So much more that it may even be linked to your generational trauma. Now, bear with me for a second.
(02:14) Please don't roll your eyes and change the channel or flip the screen. This is important information and we are just beginning to understand what all of this means and how it's all connected. I've had many opportunities to observe this. Some of them began right in our home.
(02:36) I have watched as the women in our family have a very similar look in their eye, demeanor, way of talking, tone, you name it. Some of it we could explain away. My mom was an immigrant. Came here at a very young age, 17, 18, 19 years old, had an arranged marriage. She had, I thought, the insecurity of being an immigrant, of being somebody in a new country without a community.
(03:05) And I always explained away her inability or fear sort of in terms of taking action or taking next steps as a part of that story, the immigrant story, right? I I can't imagine what so many immigrants go through to get here and then to build a life in a family of their own, leaving behind mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, huge families.
(03:28) So I explained her story away that way. And then there was me. And I grew up, as I've shared sometimes, in a slightly chaotic, dysfunctional childhood home. And I don't want to get into all of those details, but I had that same glimmer of fear and insecurity that I saw in my mom. But let's fast forward to my daughter all these years later growing up in a pampered home with a father that dotes on her.
(03:54) Maybe we doted on her even a bit too much. But regardless had all the comforts and the security that anybody externally could provide. But guess what? The same glimmer, that same sparkle, that same sort of tone, something I can't describe it where there's fear and insecurity. What is that? Why is it going down generation after generation after generation? That's where I started to think and explore.
(04:26) And the year was 2017 or 2018. I started to go into the science because I was so bothered by this or so confused by why with very different experiences and backgrounds we were all presenting in a similar way. Why did we have this emotional thing? Why were we all slightly insecure even though our circumstances for each of us as women were so different? And that's when I learned about the mitochondria.
(04:55) Of course, I knew about the mitochondria before. I've been to med school. I did all those biology classes. I did all the premed classes. I think I know the KB cycle way better than I ever needed to or should know in my entire life. That's not the mitochondria I'm talking about. I'm talking about the science emerging. It had just started to emerge in 2017 2018 and it is starting to explode now, which is super exciting.
(05:19) But I'm talking about the science that is connecting the fact that we store our emotions and our emotional memories and our traumas and even our joys in the mitochondrial DNA and specifically in DNA that is inherited down the maternal line. That means women to women to women over the generations and over time. And one of the things we know from science is that mitochondrial DNA really doesn't get tampered all that much.
(05:51) You'll have some epigenetic changes for sure. You'll have some paternal influence for sure, but at the end of the day, our mitochondrial DNA is carrying the stories of the women in our families going back and back and back in time. Was that the explanation? I don't know. Again, science is just emerging and talking more about this.
(06:14) But what we are starting to talk about more and explore more in family systems is this idea of ancestral trauma, generational trauma, and how it is showing up physiologically and biologically in our bodies. As the studies start to emerge and we as doctors start to scratch our head about it, all of us are not necessarily privy to some of these personal experiences that I've shared with you, but they apply to my exam rooms as well.
(06:46) We have patients that tell stories of ancestral trauma, being displaced, being an immigrant, going through holocausts, surviving atrocities that many of us cannot even fathom. And sure enough, in their blood work, despite their habits and their wellness routines, we see inflammation. We see insulin resistance. And we see high cortisol and chronic dysfunction of the adrenal gland.
(07:12) Is it all connected? Well, even if science is not yet able to prove these things in a very concrete way, we at least need to be thinking about it and we at least need to start connecting the dots. The big mission of the show, the big picture mission of the show was to really think about health and healing in a whole family or whole community sort of system or ecosystem because that ecosystem is a living, breathing, dynamic organism that is influenced by everything around it and everything that has transpired before and that's where I want to lead
(07:47) all of us today and understanding things that our body remembers the stories that our families never told us. our body knows the secrets that maybe our parents or grandparents were afraid to tell and that things like generational diseases are sort of the same as saying these are families with certain genetic tendencies.
(08:10) But here's the good news in all of this. As you're listening to these connections and trying to understand how the mitochondria might be connected to generational trauma, how genetics play into the conversation around health and wellness, and why some people simply don't get better. The good news is that the sooner we recognize this, the sooner we can all heal.
(08:31) Because here is the other undeniable fact. As much as we hold on to trauma and store trauma, we have an equal capacity to heal, but we can't heal if we have no idea what we are healing from or we are not willing to embark on a healing journey. I want to go through the next episode talking about some things that we can actively do and reviewing the science behind ancestral patterns of trauma and what they mean for the current generation.
(09:03) And the other reason I feel like this conversation is really important is because today when we are seeing rapid epigenetic changes due to the environment, due to our stress and our blue light and all the other things that we expose ourselves to on a regular basis, I have concerns about what we as humans are going to look like in a generation or two generations from now.
(09:27) What are we going to carry and pass down? and what do we need to be thinking about as we move forward. So after 20 years of practicing over and over again, right, of really thinking about the patient through this holistic lens and understanding after all this time with my teammates that healing happens in five dimensions and five layers, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and community.
(09:57) and that each of those layers has to be touched. We now also understand that generational trauma impacts each of those layers. And if we're not pursuing a plan of health that is asking those questions, right? What did what did your family go through? What did their family go through? What did it take to arrive in a country or to build a business or to do big things? or what were the secrets or the things that were more shameful that were buried under the rug? Secrets often turn into diseases.
(10:34) And secrets upset the family ecosystem by presenting in multiple ways, whether it's addiction, mental health disorders, you name it. So, we've got to start to really wrap our hands around this and understand it. and understand that there are signs and symptoms that you or your family has experienced generational trauma and really get in to what we understand from the research component of it and merge that with what I see in practice on a daily basis.
(11:03) So let's get into it for just a second. So we've talked about the mitochondria already, right? And I talked about the mitochondria being inherited from the maternal line and how trauma we know now impacts the mitochondria and impacts inflammation pathways. In fact, there's a study from the biological psychiatry journal in 2018 talking about the fact that traumatic stress disrupts mitochondrial production and then that is then transmitted down generation after generation.
(11:34) So again, if your ancestors have been through something severely traumatic, it's changed their mitochondrial efficiency and in turn impacted the generations that follow. In a journal from Psychonuroendocrinology published in 2021, we link together maternal stress and how it's linked to altered maternal DNA in children. I can even take that a step further.
(11:58) There was a recent study talking about maternal stress and how high cortisol in the mom led to high androgens in the preconception environment which in turn led to high cortisol and behavioral disruption in the infant. So again, we are all interconnected. Here's one that may hurt even more deeply.
(12:25) And again, this is not I'm not doing this episode because I want us to feel helpless. I'm doing this because I want to understand our responsibility. In a journal from uh famine and Yehuda at al, this was a Dutch journal. It talked about trauma markers being inherited epigenetically amongst Holocaust survivors. Meaning those who had been through the Holocaust, when we looked at their children or their grandchildren, we saw the epigenetic changes in the mitochondria, the slight increase in chronic inflammatory markers that were not present in a control group
(13:00) of people who did not or whose families had not been through that experience. So this means a lot for the world, right? It means a lot when we think about it politically or economically. But again, we as individuals can't really change that or control that to a significant extent.
(13:20) But what we can do is really look within and start to filter and screen ourselves and our family members for patterns of ancestral trauma and understand what it may be doing when it comes to the mitochondria and inflammation and how it may be involved in progression of disease burden or even little symptoms like that look I was talking about of insecurity or fear in the eyes that we see in our family.
(13:48) Here are some things that I want you all to know. In addition to maybe understanding your family story and writing it down and sharing experiences and talking to our elders and to what they know, right? Oral tradition built the Bible, built the Quran, built so many books. But that is a part of it is to really know the story and to pull as much information as you can out to see if any of the patterns of behavior that your ancestors had or went through or experiences that they went through are influencing what you are doing today. But to bring it
(14:23) back to today and today's world, here are the things that we can start to screen for. The first thing we want to try to understand is a nervous system sort of check, right? I can't think of a better word for it, but like what is happening with your nervous system? If you need a visual for what the nervous system is, I want you to picture it.
(14:42) It's an energy field. It's basically an energy field that starts up here in the brain, goes along the spine, but surrounds the entire body. Think of a hologram of yourself, maybe full of energy and light and moving in different direction. That is your nervous system. Meanwhile, it is feeding that energy to your cells, to your organs, to your tissues, to every single process in the body.
(15:10) And if that nervous system, right, it's like a highway. It's like a a interconnected highway. You know, for those of us in Atlanta, we've got 285 and this intricate highway system. It's basically like that. But we know that if one thing goes wrong on one highway, all the other ones get blocked up, right? So that nervous system and the flow of energy through it is determining what is getting fed to every other organ system, cell, tissue in your body.
(15:36) It's essentially what the Chinese medicine model really referred to asqi. When you talk about chi, they're talking about the flow of energy through the body. It's what Ayurvedic medicine referred to as prana. What is that flow or energy in the body? Is it is it working well? Is it moving or is it stuck in a particular place causing problems for the rest of the body on all five levels? Right? Older systems of medicine recognized this phenomenon.
(16:06) And that's why healing happened in family units and healing happened first spiritually then physically. They understood how it was all interconnected. But again, if we're trying to screen and understand what's going on in our own homes and with ourselves, and if I'm trying to look within our family and be like, "Okay, here are the things that make sense.
(16:29) This is a generational trauma pattern, and it is now our responsibility to change it. Here are the things you could look for." Hypervigilance, right? The folks in your family that are scared or fearful or looking over their shoulder all the time. We also know things like high cortisol levels, right? quick to anger, quick to react, quick to be fearful.
(16:49) These are again signs and symptoms, especially if they've got kind of their basic chemistry managed. Chronic cortisol elevation over long periods of time, over generations, messes up the mitochondria. So, Chinese medicine talked about this as folks that were constitutionally weak. In fact, they believe preconception was a big deal for them.
(17:11) And we've done episodes on preconception for the show and I encourage you guys to check those out. But the reason they believed so strongly in preconception and understanding preconception chemistry and physiology was that they believed if you didn't do some work prior to conceiving then your embryo, your child, your fetus, whatever we want to call it today, was going to be constitutionally weak, would not have enough energy, chi, prana, whatever word you want to use for good quality life, right? They believed in life force.
(17:45) So trauma and what you know if they were sitting here today they would tell us is that if somebody had unresolved trauma or had chronic cortisol activation for whatever reason then that trauma was impacting the energy or theqi or the life force of the fetus or of the embryo or of the child.
(18:07) Right? So they would walk into the world in a depleted state already. With that alteration in mitochondrial function and with that alteration in mitochondrial function, they became more susceptible to disease and disease patterns. These are the folks that are more susceptible to autoimmune disease or cognitive diseases or focus and memory diseases or just don't have the energy that maybe somebody else has.
(18:37) Again, we want to expand how we think about energy and start to include the words mitochondrial function, cellular function, inflammation in our understanding of what energy is and constantly have that visual of that hologram of ourselves with energy flowing in multiple different directions as something we want to all aspire to.
(18:58) We know that trauma actually accelerates mitochondrial aging. Let's go back to the studies again. Again, in a study, we showed or it was shown that trauma alters the hypothalamic pituitary axis and cortisol patterns. What does this mean? This means that trauma will essentially inflame the brain. And as it does so, remember right in that hypothalamus sitting right up here is the control center for both your hormones and for your nervous system.
(19:28) And I said up here, so for those of you listening, I'm pointing to the brain, FYI. As trauma hits, you have disruption in the HPA axis, the hypothalamic pituitary axis. This results in a number of different hormonal patterns. In the modern day world, what does it look like? It can look as simple as high cortisol and a chronic stress pattern.
(19:50) Or it can look like early testosterone depletion, premature ovarian failure, infertility. On the nervous system side, it looks like anxiety, depression, addiction, ADHD, and so much more. Again, the interconnectedness. Another study by Kim at L talked about maternal stress changing childhood amygdala connectivity.
(20:17) Now, what are they saying? The amygdala is where again we store emotions, but helps us with relationships. So if we have too many maternal stressors inherited or present because of the modern day then the child has more problems with emotional connectivity and relationships because they're coming in in a higher stress state.
(20:42) So it's important to understand how all of these things we can start to screen for. And for me screening begins with a deeper understanding of the fivebody map. I talked about the fivebody map in the beginning when we were talking about ancestral trauma, but I'm going to dig into it and again continue to go back to the science and to our clinical experience so that you have more of an evidence-based approach to tackling this issue.
(21:06) I know we've seen a lot on generational trauma, but it seems a little fuzzy and a little bit cloudy. We're going to try to put the ends on it and define it a little bit more clearly. So, let's start with the five body map. Then again I want you to first think about the nervous system as that hologram and then understand we have the physical, mental, emotional, energetic or spiritual and community bodies.
(21:30) Within the physical realm is where we see the mitochondria, its ability to work effectively, the concept of energy, hormone balance, inflammation and cellular health. In the mental component, again, we are looking at things like rumination, OCD, thought loops, you know, fear before logic type responses, hypervigilance. These are all things that we're seeing in the mental body when we want to screen for ancestral or generational trauma.
(21:58) In the emotional component, shame, right? resorting to shameful feelings, silence, emotional suppression, not being able to communicate or connect your feelings. These are all passed down across generations in the energetic bodies. That hum or emotional resonance of sort of feeling a certain way, right? Some people will call it vibration, some people will call it frequency, but that ancestral hum is something you want to try to identify.
(22:31) Do you exist in a lower vibration state? And remember, I've talked before and we talked about it in the hormone shift as well about the spectrum of human emotions and how neutrality is where you're kind of at peace or very even. And the highest emotion is love while the lowest emotion is hate. And in between you've got fear and worry and anxiety until you get to acceptance.
(22:55) Then you get to happiness, joy, and then of course love. So, you've got the spectrum of emotions, but is everybody in your family parked on a particular emotional spectrum? There may be a generational pattern to that, and you want to look at that and make sure you're not repeating the patterns of your ancestors or of your families.
(23:15) Some families stay parked in fear, right? Fear creates a different outcome for those families. Some families stay parked in worry or anxiety. others stay parked and love and joy. It's important to know if your personal hum or vibration or frequency is matching that of your entire family and if it's something that you individually needs to change or collectively could be something everybody works on together.
(23:42) Then there is of course the community body where you look within the community and you look for patterns that may be healthy or maybe more unhealthy. This is the way we communicate with one another in the family. Are we snapping or are we raging? Are we quick to anger or quick to accept defeat? Do we retreat into a corner? Do we tiptoe around somebody or do we bring things out in the open? Do we have trust and vulnerability? Do we have space to talk? What has happened within your family structure that you may be learning or modeling from a
(24:14) generation before and a generation before that? the roles that people play within a family I think are very important as well. So again, if you can think of that fivebody map and have it firmly in your mind and understand that we can start to screen for patterns of generational trauma because we know it exists and we know it plays into the picture of your overall health and how you will ultimately change the generations after you.
(24:43) Again, that is such a big win and it's such a big win not only for you and your family but for for society at large. Let's talk about some real life scenarios of some of these things, right? We can get into that. So, I gave you the first one, right? Daughters of anxious mothers. That's our entire family story. Women probably, although they were very successful in our family, often had to fight for their voice.
(25:06) So, there's an element of anxiety with that. That could be the story for so many different types of families and generations of women before us. But daughters of anxious moms are often hypervigilant and fearful. So they won't take that risk and they won't take that next step. So I want to ask you this question.
(25:26) Are you the daughter or the son of somebody with anxiety or hypervigilance? And does it go back a generation or two? And the reason to ask this question is a in your lab work and your physiology, are you picking up high cortisol and high inflammation? Or maybe it's not about the blood work, but instead, are you fearful to take that next step? And that fear is really not grounded in any kind of reality.
(25:54) And is it holding you back from being the person you're meant to be and living the life you're meant to live? That is a real question to ask and I see these patterns over and over again. I personally have been very determined to fight through these patterns and not to replicate them so that again we can have a different story as we move into the next generation.
(26:17) Here's another example and one that we did a recent episode on as well which is talking about men, right? And the shame that they carry generation after generation, right? The secrets remember create disease. So sons of emotionally shut down fathers, fathers that could not communicate very well have trouble communicating themselves.
(26:40) They can't speak. It's often like someone shut off their own voice. But they walk through life and they walk into careers and relationships and situations and communication is their failure. You may know somebody like that. I know I do. It's important to recognize this pattern within a family and again open the space for trust and vulnerability so that family can heal.
(27:10) But when somebody is not allowed to be emotionally expressive in a family unit and what we are passing on as we move from generation to generation amongst our men is again the inability for them to express their emotions. So, as a mom and as a wife, as a friend and a colleague, I encourage you guys to look at these patterns and see if there's something you can actually do to shift and change them.
(27:34) Then there are the patients that come in, we just can't get their cortisol down. We do it all. We do all the protocols. We make sure their diet is consistent, their blood sugar is stable, they're getting enough sleep at night, they're getting, you know, what I've talked about many times before, 90 minutes of deep sleep, 90 minutes of RM sleep, they are doing acupuncture and yoga and massage, but their cortisol is not budging.
(28:01) They are in a chronic state of anxiety and they can't explain it. They can't tell me why and they don't know why. That is somebody who in turn may be dealing with a generational imprint of anxiety, cortisol and trauma. And then the next one is one that I see probably very frequently and that's the crash out.
(28:24) The patient that has crashed out, they are fatigued. They are burned out. They cannot necessarily to use a different word like they cannot resuscitate themselves. they can't get that flow of energy back for whatever reason and the crash out or the burnout happens very early and they can't get back up. Maybe they don't have the skills of resiliency, right? When the traumas hit and they can't, you know, they haven't learned how to move from one trauma to the next without putting themselves through a proper healing journey and a healing routine. But what
(28:56) do we see in the science? In the science what we see is that in these patients the mitochondria cannot function efficiently. It cannot deliver energy. It cannot power the cells in every organ, muscle, tissue of our body from how we think and how we feel to how we move to even you know how we are going to make a decision.
(29:20) It's complete crash out. It's mitochondrial crash out. And the folks that come to me with this crash out very early on, like even in childhood, that's a generational imprint. The ones that come a little bit later, maybe it's not generational, it could be other factors in life, but their responses and their ability to handle it is again sometimes generationally imprinted.
(29:42) So these are some of the things that you can start to maybe sink your teeth in and put your hands on when you're trying to understand if some of your behavior patterns, even your lab work may be ancestrally based. Science again is trying to connect these dots. But if we do science the way we traditionally have done it by doing, you know, very small cohorts and placebo control trials, then we're not really going to get to the bottom of the story because we're only going to understand it if we accept that energy, chi, prana, all of these
(30:14) different things have to be measured as well to really get the understanding of what somebody's generational imprint is beyond genetics. What else might healing look like if somebody recognizes that this is the pattern of trauma of ancestral trauma that they need to be aware of? Well, here's where hopefully I can give you a to-do list that's a little bit easier other than what we've talked about so far with communication and recognition of symptoms and signs, family storytelling, family shared secrets, releasing of shame, and really releasing
(30:50) of any guilt as well. That's such a healing experience and that's one that I encourage every family to walk through. But in addition to that, we can go back to kind of systematically thinking about what can we do for each of those layers of generational trauma and generational burden to heal all five layers of the body.
(31:10) So with the physical body, we understand, remember if you go back to where I connected the dots, it was around the mitochondria and it was around inflammation. So this is where an anti-inflammatory diet will make a difference, right? Getting all the junk out, really helping to bring the burden of inflammation down, choosing clean and whole foods over processed foods.
(31:28) These are things that can make a difference. In addition to that, supporting the body with healthy lifestyle habits. We talked about sleep. We talked about the importance of mindfulness work, right? Really moving the body out in nature. Those are things that help with both mitochondrial repair and even with cortisol reduction, too.
(31:47) But in addition to that, if we're going to get into how to support the mitochondria, some of the things that we've seen work over and over again in practice include CoQ10, something called NAC or Nacetylcysteine, which is a precursor of glutathione, magnesium, omega-3s, for example. All of these are things that support mitochondrial function.
(32:08) But again, you can't outsupplement trauma. You have to work at it in an autoimmune fivebody approach for it to actually reverse and make a difference from the emotional component of what's going on here and even the mental component. I think again that storytelling that writing is a way of release. I love to write.
(32:28) I feel like that's a way to release a lot of the shame that we may hold internally to really help secrets unfold. And again that storytelling I think is a part of this uh healing protocol as well. In addition to that breath work right understanding through breath work how to calm the nervous system down effectively.
(32:48) There's so many different great types of breath work whether that is the 478 breath whether it's box breathing right or it's diaphragmatic breathing or yoga breathing. These are all ways of again assisting the emotional body and the mental body to focus to calm down and to allow the body to repair itself. There's energetic healing which I so believe in.
(33:11) They there are healers out there that do work I don't 100% understand but I do get to see the difference in the stuff that we do in our practice. Whether it's seeing their vibrational frequency shift or their lab work shift. It is fascinating to kind of see the fallout from that. That's everything from grounding, right? Breath work comes back into this picture as well.
(33:33) Frequency resets, whether it's working with an energy healer on a modality like Reiki, for example, craniosacral therapy, chakra therapy. These are all things that work energetically with the body rather than just on the physical plane or just even on the emotional plane to make a difference. Somatic release is another therapy that is very helpful to release some of these stored patterns.
(33:55) You know, you might guys might have seen a lot of what they say like not not just your cells but your fascia and your tissue hold story as well, right? Of course they do. They're made up of all these cells. But somebody that's doing sematic relief or neuromuscular work may have a great way to help the body release some of these things too.
(34:16) Then when we get to kind of the community body, this gets back to honesty, vulnerability, modeling, proper conversation making, breaking silence patterns. I think silence is deadly. And I think that's a pattern that, you know, so many cultures have latched on to as a protective mechanism, right? Women have stayed silent to make men happy.
(34:37) Certain cultures have stayed silent to make another culture happy. Silence is our enemy and it's an enemy within the home as well. And I hope you all remember that that you want to teach and pass on to your children that while conversations are uncomfortable and conflict is not everyone's chosen choice, right, when it comes to navigating situations, silence is deadly and worse and triggers chronic inflammation.
(35:04) And it is the silence of our ancestors sometimes and the shame of the secrets that they keep that has weakened mitochondria and weakened inflammation. And I actually think that the weakening of those patho, you know, those physiologic processes in the body are kind of behind what they talk about generational trauma and even generational curses.
(35:24) It goes back to the weakening of your lineage over a period of time. So all of this comes together if we're going to have an honest conversation around health and healing. And we talk a lot about how you'll live whole plus, right? Like like what does that mean? And it's not just substituting an herb for a medication or taking a supplement for something or, you know, sitting cross-legged on your mat and doing yoga or mindfulness work or ohms all day long.
(35:54) That's not living whole plus. Living whole plus is the recognition that we are multi-layered and that each layer needs healing. And those layers are connected to our ancestral story. And we have to look backward just as much as we look forward if we're going to go on a path of healing and recovery. And that healing and recovery is not just about you.
(36:18) It's not just about your data and your numbers. It's about your family ecosystem. And if I can challenge you a little bit more, it's about your community ecosystem. And are they all humming in a flow state where the nervous system is happy and can do the work it needs to do? Or are we all living together in a state of fear and anxiety where we are each other's enemies rather than each other's allies? So living whole plus is connecting the dots and putting it all together.
(36:51) And it's not easy and it's not take this and you're going to be okay tomorrow. It is a little complex, but again, our goal here is to be your partner to help break it down. And when it comes to generational trauma, this is how you're going to break it down. Understand what cortisol and mitochondrial health looks like for you and your family.
(37:15) Understand where fear-based thinking, anxiety, and insecurity are actually coming from. Understand and know where you are with inflammation and cellular health. It's your responsibility. Know your family story and their health and understand if there are shame, secrets, trauma, silence that has gone unnoticed.
(37:40) And at the end of the day, bring everybody together on a healing journey of forgiveness and conversation and exploration so that you and your family for generations beyond can live in a happy and whole way. So you're not just living whole plus, they will be too. Okay, this is a topic I know that's a a bit of a stretch.
(38:03) I think it's an important one because I think it's going to be at the forefront of science and healing maybe in the next decade or even in the next two years and you will be ahead of the curve when you start to understand that the science is already there. The practice of it is yet to come.
(38:22) The in between space is where we all have opportunity. So, I encourage you all to dive into your family stories, understand what's going on, and heal together in a family ecosystem. All right, that was a doozy. Thank you for joining me for this episode of Whole Plus. Again, we post new episodes every week.
(38:40) And if you want to hear more about this or any particular issue, please reach out to us and let us know. You may inherit biology, but you can rewrite how you express it. When you heal your nervous system, you change what gets passed forward. For more mindbody episodes like this, subscribe to the channel and continue your healing journey with the next

hol+ with Dr. Taz MD | The Future of Medicine is Holistic

More episodes

Chapters

Creators and Guests

What is hol+ with Dr. Taz MD | The Future of Medicine is Holistic?