Hi Friend

I Hope you have had a great week. This week I want to explain how what happened in the first 18 years of your life could explain why you have your chronic health conditions today, I will also include a questionnaire to check your score.

It is important to understand we are all born with an abundance of neurones, neuronal connections and nervous tissue, and we do not need it all. During the first 18 years of our lives the nervous system is constantly filtering its system and refining to see what connections/neurones its must keep and which ones it no longer requires and that can be discarded. If during these highly crucial years there is any major trauma that occurs (physical or mental) this can have a huge impact on this “pruning” stage of your development and how your nervous system handles stressors in the future. Meaning in later life it could take a simple trigger to set off a chronic illness. Examples could be stomach infection to trigger irritable bowel syndrome, or a depressive episode that causes persistant pain everywhere (fibromyalgia) or a divorce that makes you feel extraordinarily tired all the time (ME). This is not the case for everyone, however in my experience a very large proportion of chronic illness suffers have had some form of adverse childhood experience.

Adverse Childhood Experience Score

I have below included a ACE questionnaire (this is for your information only, please do not share your results), to help identify those people who have had adverse childhood experiences, and are at higher risk of developing a chronic illness.

Answer each "Yes" or "No". A "Yes" scores 1 point.

Abuse

1. Emotional Abuse: Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? Or act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?

2. Physical Abuse: Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? Or ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?

3. Sexual Abuse: Did an adult or someone at least 5 years older than you ever… touch or fondle you in a sexual way, or have you touch their body in a sexual way? Or attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?

Neglect

4. Emotional Neglect: Did you often feel that… no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? Or your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?

5. Physical Neglect: Did you often feel that… you didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, or had no one to protect you? Or your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if needed?

Household Dysfunction

6. Mother Treated Violently: Was your mother or stepmother often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? Or sometimes or often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? Or ever repeatedly hit or threatened with a gun or knife?

7. Household Substance Abuse: Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs?

8. Household Mental Illness: Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide?

9. Parental Separation or Divorce: Were your parents ever separated or divorced?

10. Incarcerated Household Member: Did a household member go to prison?

Scoring:

• Each "Yes" = 1 point.

• Score range: 0–10

• Score 0 is Low Risk

• Score 1-3 is intermediate risk

• >3 is high risk

I hope this can give you abit of insight into why some people get chronic syndromes. This is vital and all my patients get asked detailed questions, because if we know why your nervous/immune system is at risk of getting a chronic health condition we can give very targeted therapies and treatment to try and tackle the actual cause.

This brings me onto the platform I am building to help fibromyalgia suffers. It will be a online community. When you first sign up we will help you identify any adverse childhood experiences, identify any triggers and then give you action plan. There will then be daily sessions available to help you heal and get better that will be targeted directly to your action plan. These will be live sessions and then recorded so you can access them at any time. There will be check in withs doctors and and a very active forum for everyone to discuss all things fibromyalgia. This week I have onboarded 5 new amazing specialists from nutritionist, somatic therapy experts and EMDR experts. I have had to say no to many people as I only want the best people giving the therapies. I will continue to give weekly updates and inform you all when it goes live!! I really think we can make this help alot of people. Next step will trying to onboard the low dose nalterexone clinic and medicinal CBD clinics for those who need them.

Hope this was useful! As always please let me know if any questions.

All the best

Dr Ahmed