Sports nutrition and indeed many forms of nutritional medicine largely ignore the mental/emotional component of wellbeing. Through the dynamic balance of the autonomic nervous system, our thoughts, feelings and emotions are translated at a cellular level into messages of threat or safety into the mitochondrial signalling system, which affects energy delivery.
Through subtle perturbations of the autonomic stress response system, mitochondria are able to adjust their output according to the perceived threat level encountered. Many high-achieving athletes and sports people are driven by unconscious beliefs of unworthiness and trauma to drive their bodies beyond natural hormetic tolerances, that predisposes them to burnout and fatigue.
In this presentation, Dr Patricia Worby outlines the complex intersectionality between the autonomic nervous system, limbic brain and cellular processes (the cell danger response) to create either health or disease. She presents a case study (that’s you!!) of how this manifests and how it can be rebalanced with emotional healing and a multidisciplinary approach to mind-body medicine.
About Dr Patricia Worby
Dr Patricia Worby BSc MSc PhD Dip HPD ACMT H.Int.Dip. (naturopathy) has both an academic background in nutritional medicine, trauma psychology, and has recovered from CFS/ME in her thirties. She now specialises in somatic release of trauma and unresolved emotions, and has a thriving online practice using somatosensory techniques to rebalance the mind, body and spirit. She has written four books including The Scar that won’t Heal (on stress and trauma in chronic disease), The World Within (on the microbiome), Losing our Minds (on the cellular processes of ageing) and Life Illuminated (on the electromagnetic human body). She has developed and presented a Trauma Informed Practice course for practitioners (and hopefully doctors in training) run by the Chrysalis Effect (which specialises in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and post-viral fatigue), and is currently developing an online approach to healing via her own practice (alchemytherapies.co.uk) and a multidisciplinary group practice (fatigue-free.me). She is not an athlete, but a recovering A-type high achiever, so understands the pressures we put on ourselves.
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