Mental and emotional stress can cause physical symptoms that might make you think you have a mental health issue when all you have is a dysregulation of your nervous system.  Unfortunately, friends and family members that have never been though a traumatic event may lack the empathy and understanding of human metabolism to help you.  That’s why out of their frustration they say, “just get over it” or suggest you medicate yourself to erase your symptoms.

As it pertains to the mental health and pharmaceutical industries, I have a short fuse and a long memory of what I’ve witnessed over 40 years in medicine.  Physicians, psychiatrists and psychologists are 20 years behind neuroscience.  Conventional medicine targets quick fixes for the most urgent symptoms that only give temporary relief and never address the root cause.

We can’t wait for them to swoop in and save us; we must save each other. 

Let’s see if we can turn on our synaptic “WTF Pathway” as we take a deep dive into stress and how it affects highly sensitive people so we can navigate past myopic, pill-pushing one-intervention physicians.

“It’s All in Your Head”

High-functioning people—the innovative, outside-the-box thinkers—run into physical-mental-emotional problems because they are more sensitive to their internal and external environment; this is what makes them special.  These people are highly creative, more insightful and have deeper connections with family.  It’s become very clear to me that these people are highly sensitive and notice subtle physiological symptoms that conventional physicians miss.  The irony is that on the flip side, these people are predisposed to addiction because their brain chemistry does not handle stress well.  The fragmentation of the health care system and taking drugs to counteract side effects of other drugs exacerbate their downward spiral to illness.

High-functioning people often sense that something is wrong, even if their physician tells them that their blood work is normal and suggests that it’s all in their head. This often leads to prescriptions for antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. Patients may also seek out quick fixes such as alcohol, drugs, sex, or food to quiet their mind and body. While these solutions might provide temporary relief, they don’t address the root cause of the problem. It’s like entering a new reality when you realize that your thoughts can make you sick. For instance, just replaying an argument in your mind can alter your brain chemistry and physiology.

On-the-Job Trauma

I first witnessed this behavior while training new paramedics.  After about two weeks of responding to emergency calls, many of these new students just walked away and said, “this job is not for me,” so back in the early 80s I knew that job stress caused physical symptoms.  For those who stayed, alcohol was the medicine of choice because it elevates levels of the feel-good neurotransmitter GABA and calms an overactive brain chemistry.  If you talked about this with any supervisor, you were considered weak and unfit for the job and never promoted.  That sent a hell of a message throughout the ranks: suck it up and don’t bitch.  

Traumatic events are profoundly painful and disturbing. On one end of the stress spectrum, people might enjoy scary movies or roller coasters, which are low-level stressors. However, when stress becomes chronic, leading to intrusive memories and physiological changes, it becomes a serious issue. There is a significant difference between a paramedic saving a life on the emergency scene and a police officer or war veteran involved in close-proximity violence. While I have never killed anyone, those who have often find their memories hardwired for a lifetime, constantly lurking just a thought away. These individuals are often in a state of low-level fight-or-flight, accelerating toward a metaphorical brick wall at 100 mph.

In 1889, pioneering French psychologist Pierre Janet first described traumatic memory as being held in automatic action and reaction, replayed and reenacted as visceral sensations. Peter Levine, a leading trauma psychologist and healer, explains that certain shocks can disrupt a person’s biological, psychological, and social equilibrium to the extent that a single event’s memory can dominate all other experiences, tainting the present moment. Levine calls this “the tyranny of the past.”

The Long Road to Wellness

As a person struggles with a new set of symptoms each week—overwhelming fatigue, body aches, digestive issues, general anxiety, and depression—the damage to their metabolism accumulates. This marks the beginning of a five-year journey of self-discovery, moving from one physician to another, exploring options like acupuncture, chiropractic care, and nutrition counseling. Despite these efforts, symptoms persist. Physicians and psychiatrists who care for people under severe stress often adjust their narratives to fit their diagnoses, missing the root causes. Humans are complex, with multiple metabolic pathways involved in brain healing and recovery.

Physicians who adopt an authoritative approach often build barriers between themselves and their patients, slowing the healing process. Patients are a valuable source of information about their conditions, making it essential for physicians to listen and understand the root causes. Conventional medicine frequently resorts to antidepressants without first testing nutritional, hormonal, and microbiome levels. Research in these areas is extensive and well-established. The key to starting the healing process is testing these levels.

For example, after ten years of responding to emergency calls, I discovered (through my own research and testing) that I was hormonally deficient due to stress, with elevated cortisol levels. I couldn’t quiet my mind at night without alcohol until I found progesterone. Using progesterone helped calm my brain and lower cortisol levels, allowing me to avoid alcohol. Progesterone stimulates the brain to produce GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), a neurotransmitter that reduces brain activity and helps you relax, facilitating better sleep.

One-Size-Fits-All…Doesn’t

I believe our DNA is designed for us to live and work together for the survival of the group. When we move from protective roles to unnatural warrior modes, our metabolic pathways can go awry. The key takeaway from my experience in educating physicians is that standard care often misses the mark. Patients may benefit from nutritional or hormonal replacement therapy, or a combination of both. Advanced testing not offered in traditional medicine is crucial—this is where healing begins. Patients are complex, and there are multiple pathways to recovery from illness.

I want to emphasize again that every person is biochemically unique. There is no one-size-fits-all program. It is up to you to educate your physician about research on nutritional, hormonal, and microbiome diversity that may be contributing to your symptoms. It’s not all in your head—it may be starting in your gut, which is now considered the second brain.  Ground zero for healing involves testing for nutritional and hormonal deficiencies, mitochondrial function, and the microbiome while also understanding how childhood trauma can affect adult behavior and immunity. Let’s start here and avoid compartmentalizing treatments.

Today, I am on a mission to encourage psychiatrists to consider nutritional and hormonal testing before prescribing SSRIs indiscriminately. The 28,000 psychiatrists in the US need to understand basic metabolic pathways and organ function and get to the root causes of their patients’ symptoms.

This is where Scala Precision Health excels: we meet each patient where they are and offer research-based testing and protocols not commonly found in conventional medicine.  We advocate for further testing, including hormonal assessments like free testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, and thyroid T3 and T4 levels.  Scala Precision Health provides open-source research on the Russ Scala YouTube channel at no cost to help you begin your journey.