Sara Gottfried, MD, director of Precision Medicine, Marcus Institute of Integrative Health, Department of Integrative Medicine & Nutritional Sciences, Thomas Jefferson ‎University, presented Novel Approaches to Trauma and Toxic Stress at the ACLP Annual Meeting.

Emphasising the strategic value of biomarkers in diagnoses and treatment criteria, she described how conventional medicine falls short when diagnosing and treating toxic stress and trauma.

Many people suffer from symptoms such as severe fatigue, brain fog, aches and pains, abdominal pain, digestive problems, hair loss, insomnia, depression, and anxiety—and don’t realize their psycho-immuno-neuro-endocrine system is at the root.

Dr. Gottfried shared experiences she encountered with many of her patients downstream from toxic stress, including disruption of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, disturbed hormonal levels, diminished cerebral metabolism, lower heart rate variability, and autoimmune disease. And she described interventions, such as measuring cortisol levels and heart rate variability, as viable treatments to improve outcomes.