This article originally appeared on VICE US
In 1998, Carol Redding's life was in a tailspin. She'd just gone through a breakup and was starting to lose control after what felt like a lifelong battle with nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, depression, thyroid disease, and three bouts with cancer (leukemia, breast cancer, and lymphoma).
A friend, who recognized symptoms of trauma, referred Redding to see Vincent Felliti, then head of Preventive Medicine at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego and a co-principal investigator of theAdverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study. Together with Rob Anda, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Felliti had published groundbreaking research that showed a strong correlation between childhood trauma and many of the leading causes of death, including cancer.
Felliti asked Redding to complete a survey, known as the ACE Questionnaire, which covered ten categories of child abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. Redding received one "point" each time she marked that she had experienced one of these. Those with a score of four or more were twice as likely to develop heart disease, according to Felliti's findings; seven or more, and they were three times more likely to develop cancer.
Redding scored ten out of ten.
[For more of this story, written by Dustin Grinnell, go to http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read...-cancer-in-adulthood]
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