CIRS Therapy – the missing link to treatment
If you’ve seen any other blog on our page, you will know that our practitioners at Flourish Clinic follow the Shoemaker Protocol. This is because the Shoemaker Protocol is the only scientifically proven, peer reviewed method of treating CIRS.
We prove this again and again in our clinic. The Shoemaker Protocol works.
But for some people, there is no full return to health. For these people, even when they’ve done everything ‘right’, they still don’t feel like themselves. Sleep may still feel challenging. Anxiety still appears too often. They may still struggle with daily stresses, and feel ‘crashed out’ when they need to attend to emails, grocery shopping, or other day to day events that should be easy.
For these patients, we need to dive even deeper. So often, we find patients who have been dealing with trauma and nervous system dysregulation are the patients who are not able to find the resolution they need with the Shoemaker Protocol alone.
That’s why we sometimes need to step back from the Shoemaker Protocol, and take another, closer look at the whole picture. Trauma and nervous system dysregulation can very much affect recovery from CIRS. A new branch of CIRS treatment incorporates healing from the effect of trauma on the body, and is exactly what many patients need.
Expert Recap: CIRS Therapy
Having CIRS is a traumatic assault on the cells in the body. Many patients have an additional layer of past traumas that contribute to their body being in a constant loop of reactivity. This continual reaction has been hypothesized to cause physical changes to the cell, resulting in the Cell Danger Response. If a patient’s body is stuck in CDR, the only way to move forward is to communicate to the body that it is safe. This can be done through strategies such as brain retraining, nervous system regulation, somatic practices, vagus nerve retraining, and CIRS therapy either in a group or 1:1 setting.
What is trauma?
The American Psychological Association defines trauma as “any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning.” (APA, ret. 2026).
In the context of CIRS, what we need to look at is “other aspects of functioning.” Functioning refers to the way the body maintains balance within its environment.
When a healthy person experiences a stressful incident, the body will use the necessary hormones to address the stressor. The body then returns to normal.
However, a body that is experiencing chronic trauma continues to respond to ongoing danger signals long after the actual event has passed. In trauma, there is a perceived or actual threat of life, the feeling of “too much, too soon, too fast”.
Let’s examine two trauma classifications:
Big T Trauma
This trauma can be traced to large or formative events. This can include:
- The death of a loved one
- An accident
- A serious medical event
- Natural disaster
Chronic Trauma
Chronic trauma is more subtle. It is characterized by ongoing insults to relationships, or failures of an environment to feel safe or supportive. Sometimes chronic trauma can even begin before birth, during infancy or early childhood.
Childhood Trauma
The majority of people can confidently say they had a “fine” or “good” childhood.
However, there are nuances to the experience of being a human being inside of a body. When we further examine the childhood or upbringing, the patient may have experienced some very challenging events:
- A child can be loved, but the loving parent may have had a limited capacity to be emotionally safe around their child.
- Perhaps one parent was often absent or often angry.
- Maybe a parent was distracted or depressed, in addiction or always dieting/putting themself down.
- Someone may have moved a lot as a child or was bullied for being different.
- In some cases, there may have been actual abuse or neglect.
These are known as ACE’s or “Adverse Childhood Experiences” (Felitti, et. al., 2018). Having had ACE’s directly correlates with susceptibility to the impacts of trauma on our brain and bodies into adulthood.
You can read more about the health effects of childhood trauma in our Clinic Director Mark Volmer’s blog post from 2019.
Trauma can lead to feelings or beliefs about the safety of the world, as well as our capacity to show up effectively in it.
Touch is core to our basic needs as mammals for connection. This is housed in old evolutionary pathways in the brainstem. The absence of touch in early life can contribute to a disruption in the delicate balance between systems of the body (Yu, 2022), and affect midbrain structures.
How does the trauma of having CIRS impact the body?
CIRS is the chronic inflammation of the immune system that occurs when genetically susceptible individuals are exposed to mold or other biotoxins. As a result of this chronic immune system dysregulation, the body’s systems begin to present with symptoms that can be misdiagnosed as syndromes such as chronic fatigue (CFS), irritable bowel (IBS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), among many others.
New research by Dr. Robert Naviaux connects the chronic illness of CIRS with the Cell Danger Response (CDR). The CDR is a new way of looking at chronic illness. When danger is detected, the body’s cellular powerhouse, the mitochondria, switch from energy production to defence. This is an evolutionary response that protects cells from harm. In a healthy body, when the threat is gone, the body will go through a cycle that returns the mitochondria to normal. However, if this cycle is interrupted, the body is stuck in the cell danger response loop, which prioritizes survival.
Threats to the cell come in different ways, but can include infection (think long COVID or Lyme disease), environmental toxicity, or even psychological trauma, like the traumas previously listed. All of these threats can trigger similar symptoms of sickness (Shattuck and Muehlenbein, 2015). Until it receives an “all clear” signal, the cell will respond in a loop of reactivity as if there is ongoing danger.
Why CIRS is traumatic
Having CIRS is inherently traumatic. There has been an outside assault on the cells in the body. The cells are constantly exposed to danger signals from the environment, in this case, a biotoxin. However, because of the inability of the immune system to recognize and expel the danger, the body is in a constant loop of reactivity.
Layered on these physical effects may be the emotional scars of past traumas, or even the trauma of invalidation by the medical system who does not believe the patient is sick.
Direct external physical threats to the body in combination with psychological threats to the body manifest in a similar state of cellular stress. Ultimately it no longer matters if the threat is real or imagined; the body responds in the same cascade of stress and physical contraction. The production of adrenaline and cortisol becomes chronic. Brain structures may become wired to detect persistent threat (Seo, Douglas, Sinha, 2019). It is hypothesized that this causes physical changes to the cell, contributing to the CDR.
So if a patient’s body is stuck in CDR, the only way to move forward is to communicate to the body that it is safe.
Calming the CDR with CIRS Therapy
There are many practitioners and programs that offer numerous ways to calm the CDR so the body is able to accept treatment. Among the forms of CIRS therapy that patients find success with are:
- Brain retraining
- Nervous system regulation
- Somatic practices
- Vagus nerve healing
- CIRS Therapy in a 1:1 or group setting
All of these strategies help the body stop the CDR loop and return to baseline. There are online programs offering these in a DIY setting, or trained therapists that can help patients co-regulate in a safe setting. Working with a therapist has the added benefit of using the therapist’s nervous system as a ground and steady place from which to start.
It’s like learning to ride a bike with someone there to catch you. Little by little the patient learns how to do it on their own.
While the process of therapy is not easy, having the courage to step into our shadow places can allow transformation in the present, allowing more freedom, self-compassion, and confidence. This process often isn’t about working harder. It’s about learning to let the cells receive support when they have been starved for energy with CIRS.
Healing the body and the brain
The experience of being human is that you get one body. You come with a set of epigenetics, experiences, environment and biology that are uniquely yours. Your responsibility is to learn how to be in relationship with your unique physiology and nervous system. Inflammatory markers will improve with CIRS treatment. Thoughts, emotions and feelings of safety in the world can change with good therapy. Both pieces are important in order for the brain and body to re-establish ways to be in the world that feel safe.
Ready to start real recovery?
Book a consult with our team today.
Eve Paraschuk, RSW, MSW, specializes in helping people with CIRS recover through an integrative therapeutic approach. She combines a lived experience of CIRS with somatics, trauma-informed care, and the Shoemaker Protocol.
References
Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., Koss, M. P., & Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(98)00017-8
Robert K. Naviaux,
Perspective: Cell danger response Biology—The new science that connects environmental health with mitochondria and the rising tide of chronic illness,
Mitochondrion, Volume 51, 2020, Pages 40-45, ISSN 1567-7249, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mito.2019.12.005.
Hang Yu et al (2022). Social touch-like tactile stimulation activates a tachykinin 1-
oxytocin pathway to promote social interactions, Neuron, 110, 1051-1067
Matthews T, Rasmussen LJH, Ambler A, Danese A, Eugen-Olsen J, Fancourt D, Fisher HL,
Iversen KK, Schultz M, Sugden K, Williams B, Caspi A, Moffitt TE. Social isolation,
loneliness, and inflammation: A multi-cohort investigation in early and mid-adulthood.
Brain Behav Immun. 2024 Jan;115:727-736. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2023.11.022
Hesse et al, pages 98-99 in Eds. Solomon, MF & Siegel, DJ. Healing trauma: attachment, mind, body, and brain. Norton, New York, 2003.
Seo D, Rabinowitz AG, Douglas RJ, Sinha R. Limbic response to stress linking life trauma and hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis function. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2019 Jan;99:38-46. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.08.023. Epub 2018 Aug 17. PMID: 30172968; PMCID: PMC6436805.
