July 1, 2026 Salus Health Care Forum

And I’ve seen it in people all day, every day. Depending on where the chair is in the clinical room, they won’t sit in it because they don’t want their back exposed to the open door. I mean, there’s a million different examples I could probably come up with. But speaking to what you’re mentioning, Jack. Yes, these trauma memories are held in the body. Even experiences, I believe, like Bill B’s describing. We may not have put our words around it as a youngster getting our tonsils out and might not realize it. But there may have been some sort of reverberated response to somebody getting close to your neck, as an example. So, I absolutely believe that it contributes to our physiological wellness.

Perry

I think that the idea of triggers that may generate certain kinds of reactions or recall memories and things like that. I think that that’s really an important dimension of body memories. Maybe we don’t give each other enough credit for how much is rolling around in our heads all the time. All it takes is some familiar little trigger to pull a very distant memory or a fear or something out and have that directly affect us.

And to go back even further, regarding those of us in the later parts of our life. Every time we undergo yet another intrusive diagnostic test, you get a fear reaction about what they’re going to find. And what is the implication of that going forward? Well, with the logical adult mind, we try to process that. But for a kid, that’s got to be really impactful. So Bill B, you’re bringing up the impact of it on you as a kid, having your tonsils out, I can see that there’s a nugget in your head that’s going to stay there forever and is going to get triggered now and then. I think that’s an important point. Like I said, we have a whole lot more going on in our heads all the time than we really give ourselves credit for.

Mitch

Let me say something about the 20/70 phenomena.  I think that the fine tuning of the test before and after the anesthesia will bring you to closer to 70, the higher level look you do and you’re looking for cognitive decline. And the less sensitive it is, the more towards 20% it’s going to be. That’s why I think the discrepancy. I also want to say that there’s a distinction between the effects of anesthesia on the brain and the effects of delirium. The effects of delirium are huge.

In fact, in critical care, we call that a brain infarct. It’s no different than having a heart attack. It’s failure. The electronics of it is completely unwired, uncoordinated brain activity. And it is associated with damage almost 100%. If you have a well enough adjusted study before critical care, which has never happened, then you will see that anyone who gets delirious is going to have a major problem. And so that’s different than the anesthesia question. Although anesthesia can also lead to delirium. Your ability, your cognitive reserve, the more likely you are to get delirium. So I just want to put a little bit of definition in and around that.

And then for my bias. My bias concerns what we can do about anesthetics that we’ve given to reverse their effect on the body. I think there’s preparation going in. We look at the psychedelics and they work pretty good for some things with people who are desperate. But they’re never just here, take this, go home and take it. They’re coached. And they’re coached several times. They’re given therapy on what to expect and how to work with this. And that continues afterwards. So it’s not like a psychedelic effect. It’s a preparation and it’s a holding through the whole thing.

And then afterwards to help interpret what happened. I think that’s really important.