This is part of my Oxford Trauma Conference Reflections, a series on the ideas I’m bringing back into my psychotherapy work in Toronto and how they are shaping the way I think about trauma, relationships, the body and healing.

Luis Mojica’s session on Food Therapy made me think about something I hadn’t considered enough in trauma work:

What messages are we sending the nervous system through the food we eat?

When we think about the physiology of stress, we tend to think about something happening psychologically first.

An upsetting email.

An argument.

A frightening memory.

A difficult relationship.

The brain perceives threat and the body responds.

Luis’s work invited us to think in the other direction too. Changes within the body can produce sensations that look remarkably similar to anxiety and physiological stress.

Blood glucose is a good example.

After eating carbohydrates, particularly rapidly absorbed carbohydrates, blood glucose rises and the pancreas releases insulin to help move glucose out of the bloodstream.

That is normal physiology.

Where it becomes interesting from a nervous system perspective is what can happen when glucose subsequently falls.

If blood glucose drops into a sufficiently low range, the body has a powerful counter-regulatory system designed to protect us. Glucagon and adrenaline are released, followed by other hormones including cortisol, to bring glucose back up.

And what does adrenaline feel like?

A racing heart.

Shakiness.

Sweating.

Restlessness.

Alertness.

Anxiety.

In other words, some of the same bodily sensations we associate with fight or flight.

This does not mean that eating carbohydrates causes trauma responses or that every fluctuation in glucose triggers adrenaline. The physiology is more complicated than that, and genuine reactive hypoglycaemia is not something we should casually diagnose ourselves with.

But it gave me a much more interesting way to think about how biological state and psychological state can interact.

If someone’s nervous system is already highly attuned to bodily signs of danger, sensations such as shakiness, heart racing or sudden changes in energy may themselves become alarming.

The body reacts to the body.

Luis also talked about foods he thinks of as more “balancing.”

Beans were an example that stuck with me.

Legumes tend to produce a slower glycaemic response than many rapidly digested carbohydrate foods. Studies comparing beans with other carbohydrate sources have found lower post-meal glucose and insulin responses, and combining beans or chickpeas with rice can moderate the glucose response compared with rice alone.

That does not mean beans are a treatment for trauma.

It means that our emotional lives do not occur independently of our biology.

Sleep matters.

Hormones matter.

Blood sugar matters.

Movement matters.

Medication matters.

Food matters.

And psychotherapy matters.

I find that integration exciting.

I also want to be very careful with it.

I don’t believe food should become another moral system in which “good” foods mean we are taking care of ourselves and “bad” foods mean we have failed.

Luis’s work is actually much more interesting when we move away from judgement.

Instead of asking, “Why did I eat that when I know I shouldn’t?”

We can ask:

What was I trying to change in my body when I reached for it?

More energy?

Comfort?

Numbness?

Stimulation?

A break?

Something soothing at the end of an overwhelming day?

Food choices can be physiological and psychological at the same time.

That is the piece I am bringing back into therapy.

Not nutritional prescriptions.

Curiosity.

Because sometimes understanding our nervous system means listening to what is happening emotionally, and sometimes it means remembering that the nervous system also has glucose, hormones and a body to manage.