The Immune Storm Has a Source: Julianna Giles on Trauma, Toxins, and Autoimmune Recovery

Most autoimmune patients arrive at Dr. Julianna Giles's office in Seattle having already seen half a dozen specialists. They have a diagnosis—or sometimes several—and a medication list that manages symptoms without ever asking why the immune system turned on itself. Dr. Giles, a naturopathic doctor with a Master of Science in Applied Statistics, asks the question most providers skip entirely: what happened to you?

At Neuroveda Health, Dr. Giles treats autoimmune conditions not as isolated diseases but as downstream consequences of unresolved upstream triggers. Her clinical framework centers on three primary contributors that she has found drive the vast majority of autoimmune presentations: trauma history, environmental toxin burden, and chronic infectious load. It's an approach that challenges the conventional model—and one that research is increasingly validating.

The Multifactorial Nature of Autoimmunity

Dr. Giles's assertion that trauma is the most overlooked variable in autoimmune disease may sound provocative, but the evidence is compelling and growing. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity examined the association between childhood adversity and autoimmune disease in adulthood, finding a statistically significant link across multiple autoimmune conditions.^[1] The mechanism isn't mysterious: chronic stress from unresolved trauma keeps the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in overdrive, dysregulates cortisol patterns, and shifts immune function toward the kind of chronic, low-grade inflammatory state that sets the stage for autoimmune activation.

A separate scoping review in Seminars in Arthritis and Rheumatism specifically examined the link between traumatic stress and autoimmune rheumatic diseases, confirming that both PTSD and significant life trauma are associated with increased risk of conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus.^[2] What makes Dr. Giles's approach distinctive is her insistence that you can't treat around the trauma—it must be addressed directly before the immune system will stand down. This is a departure from conventional rheumatology, which typically manages the immune response with medication while the underlying trigger continues to drive disease.

Her framework also identifies environmental factors and chronic infections as key contributors. Research on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and multiple sclerosis development has identified specific mechanisms by which early-life toxic stress creates lasting immune vulnerability—including epigenetic changes, altered gut microbiome composition, and disrupted blood-brain barrier integrity.^[3] Each of these mechanisms represents a potential treatment target in naturopathic autoimmune care.

The Rising Tide of Environmental Autoimmunity

The epidemiology supports Dr. Giles's observation. Autoimmune disease incidence has been rising globally for decades, with rates increasing faster than genetics alone can explain. Environmental exposures—including industrial chemicals, heavy metals, pesticides, and indoor biotoxins like mold—have emerged as significant contributors to this trend.^[4] The mechanism often involves molecular mimicry, where environmental antigens structurally resemble the body's own proteins, confusing the immune system into attacking self-tissue.

Dr. Giles's focus on undifferentiated autoimmune conditions is particularly relevant. Many patients experience autoimmune-type symptoms—joint pain, fatigue, brain fog, skin changes, cognitive dysfunction—without meeting the full diagnostic criteria for a named autoimmune disease. Conventional medicine often struggles with these cases, leaving patients in diagnostic limbo. Dr. Giles treats the pattern rather than waiting for a label, recognizing that the immune dysregulation is real regardless of whether it fits a textbook category.

Her emphasis on biotoxin accumulation connects to a broader understanding of how modern environments overwhelm the body's detoxification capacity. When the liver, kidneys, and lymphatic system can't keep pace with incoming toxins, these substances accumulate in tissues and chronically stimulate the immune system. The result can be a slow-building inflammatory state that eventually tips into autoimmunity—especially in individuals who also carry intestinal permeability or a trauma-driven stress response. Understanding what a naturopathic doctor does helps clarify why this whole-systems approach differs fundamentally from conventional immunology.

Healing the Whole Person—Trauma and All

What's striking about Dr. Giles's closing message is its directness and hope. She doesn't minimize the difficulty of confronting trauma—she calls it courageous—but she's unequivocal that the work pays off. Her recommendation of somatic therapies aligns with a growing body of research showing that body-based approaches to trauma processing can reduce inflammatory markers and improve immune regulation in ways that talk therapy alone sometimes cannot.

The inclusion of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy reflects the cutting edge of trauma-informed care. While still navigating regulatory pathways, research institutions are generating evidence that substances like psilocybin and MDMA can facilitate deep trauma processing in supervised therapeutic settings. For autoimmune patients whose disease is driven by unresolved trauma, these emerging modalities represent potential tools for addressing root causes that have resisted conventional treatment.

Dr. Giles's deliberate capitalization of "yourSelf" in her message speaks to something beyond clinical advice—it's a philosophy of care that sees the person as fundamentally whole and capable of healing, even when the immune system has gone haywire. For patients who've been told their autoimmune condition is something to manage rather than resolve, her approach at Neuroveda Health offers a different story: one where uncovering and addressing the real drivers of disease can lead to dramatic improvement. The immune storm does have a source. And finding it changes everything.