“Wellness and the Black Molecular Future” is an article written by the Health and Wellness director at Dignity and Power Now. Their primary interest is for the incarcerated Black American. As I scan the web for thoughts and ideas about ACEs, I pay particular attention to nutrition. Few people are talking about nutrition specific to addressing ACEs, and although this article does not mention nutrition in the context of ACEs, it does address trauma and the Flint, MI, lead-poisoning incident.
The article discusses lead as a neuro-toxin and implies that research links lead poisoning to developmental impacts on children that can lead to criminal acts as adults. The author links violence to physiology and interruption with neural development. Once prevention is not an option, then intervention by stopping the toxic intake, then cleansing the body of the toxin is the only alternative. Toxins are a definite problem in the United States and include many others in addition to lead.
Addressing ACEs should, in my view, include stopping the intake of toxins and adopting a diet and supplementation plan to reduce or eliminate the toxins. The human body is designed to eliminate toxins. But it can be overwhelmed. Some interventions are quite easy. Drink more pure water. Include antioxidants in your diet. And one that has been vilified since 1974, but is starting to be restored to its rightful place, is to consume more healthy fats. Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, of the National Institutes of Health, has conducted pioneering research on the effect of increased consumption of Omega-6 and -9 fatty acids on increases in violence and the impact of supplementation of Omega-3 essential fatty acids on violence reductions in prison and elsewhere. An memorandum presented to the Montgomery County, MD, Public Safety and Health and Human Services Committee outlined some of Dr. Hibbeln’s research.
The author then goes on to talk about the nutritional link to violence, and detach it from myths about minority violence.
“The impact of this diet on our neurobiology creates physiological grounds for depression, anxiety, aggression, and suicide. Wellness then takes on a different magnitude in the fight against anti-Black state violence. A Black specific wellness requires us to question the myth of violence and aggression as inherent to Black people, challenges us to think more deeply about the physiology of criminalization and ultimately requires an end to state violence all the way from the architecture of policing and mass incarceration down to the level of the neuron.”
If we accept that the physiology of our brain can be impacted by ACEs, then the brain must be susceptible as well to nutritional deficiencies. The brain is run by chemical reactions built along neural pathways. We need to feed the brain those nutrients that give it a chance of optimal functioning and prevent or remove those toxins that invade it.
I agree in large part with this concluding paragraph: “Be it by food, ceremony, or institutionalizing our healing practices, Black wellness asks us not only to believe in self-determination politically, but to imbue that belief with the raw material--the serotonin, dopamine, GABA, oxytocin--that makes the self feel vibrantly worth determining.”
Let’s be curious enough to start the ACEs-wide conversation about the role of nutrition as a part of healing.
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