This Is Your Body on Trauma: How to Nourish Safety, Resilience, and Connection with Polyvagal-Informed Nutrition

by Meg Bowman

This Is Your Body on Trauma is the first book to teach readers how to use nutrition to heal underlying trauma that presents in physical symptoms. It features a unique do-it-yourself approach, allowing people to completely customize their care plan.

Trauma is pervasive, and recovery usually involves extensive talk therapy. What is often overlooked is using nutrition as a way to restore a sense of safety and self-trust. Research shows between 75 and 90 percent of physician visits are due to the wear and tear on the body from stress hormones. The gut is often our first indicator that something is awry; it is the watchtower raising the alarm, and the existence of trauma can create a negative feedback loop with the brain that leads to several quite common gut-brain axis complaints, such as anxiety, depression, IBS, and pain.

More than “just” a nutrition book, This Is Your Body on Trauma helps people make connections between what is going on in their mind and body with a unique 360-degree integrative approach to mental health. Using a unique, customizable approach, readers are given a series of experiments based on recommendations, formulating their needs and providing actionable solutions to lessen the perception of stress with nutrition. This book will help people who have experienced traumatic events as both a child and an adult, those who experience chronic stress, as well as people who have experienced food trauma heal and manage the physiological impacts of that trauma throughout their lives.
The experiments provided in the book can be done in collaboration with a therapy or nutrition provider. This book is the only one that discusses not only nutrition for trauma (what to eat), but also applies it in a trauma-informed way (how to eat to avoid triggers).

336 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 28, 2025

Reviews

[Crystal Palmisano-Dillard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book about how nutrition can sometimes help with coping with trauma (and how nutrition can be tied to trauma).

I work in child welfare so food insecurity and/or other trauma are often prevalent - this information could be huge for caregivers of young people in foster care and/or young adults in care or alumni.

I like how the author breaks things down in a way that isn't rigid as the ONLY way, but options and suggestions to find a nutrition plan that works for you. One that is accessible, non triggering, works with dietary preferences, etc. It's nice to not have something touted at you as a cure all that only works if you follow it to a t.

[January · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Is Your Body on Trauma: How to Nourish Safety, Resilience, and Connection with Polyvagal-Informed Nutrition by Meg Bowman MS, CNS, LDN, CHES (2025)
8h 22m narrated by author - Meg Bowman MS CNS LDN CHES, 336 pages

Genre: Nonfiction, Nutrition, Post-Traumatic Stress, Anxiety, Healing

Featuring: Epigraphs, A Different Approach to Nutrition, Why You Got Sick, Anxiety, Danger Signals, Survival Responses to Trauma, Neuroception, Neuropeptide S (NPS), Why It's So Hard to Eat Healthy, Highly Divisive Foods, Survival Mode, Ventral Regulation, Polyvagal Theory, Peripheral Nervous System (PNS), Hierarchy of the Autonomic Nervous System, Ventral Vagal State (Social Engagement Mode), Sympathetic State (Fight-or-Flight Mode), Dorsal Vagal State (Freeze or Shutdown Mode), Co-regulation, Comfort Foods For Stress, Dorsal Shutdown, Pendulation, Somatic Experiencing, Your Relationship With Food, Attachment Trauma, Eating Disorders, Determining The Right Nutrition Approach For You, How Trauma Shows Up Physically, Figs Protocol - Food, Inflammation, Gut, Stress Hormones; Deficiency, Chronic Inflammation, Trauma Vs. Illness, Abuse, Racism, Toxic Relationships, Night Shift Workers, How to Lower Inflammation and Support Healing, Finding the Right Primary Care Provider, Focus on Social Connections, Attachment Anxiety, Destress With Nature - Gardening, Sitting by Bodies of Water, Sunshine Breaks; Breathing Exercises, Gut Boundaries, Heart Rate Variability (HRV), Survival Nutrition Toolkits, Ventral Regulation Toolkits, Food Glimmers, l Special Thanks

Rating as a movie: PG-13

Songs for the soundtrack: "Long Way" by Antje Duvekot, "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt

Books and Authors mentioned: Finding Me by Viola Davis, Polyvagal Practices: Anchoring the Self in Safety by Deb Dana LCSW; Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing by James Samuel Gordon, M. D.; Dr. Peter Levine; Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating by Christy Harrison; Mentalizing in the Development and Treatment of Attachment Trauma by Jon G. Allen; The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk; How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis, Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole, Sick Woman Theory by Johanna Hedva; Dr. Gabor Maté, Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory by Deb Dana, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation by Deb Dana, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing by David A. Treleaven, Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day by Leanne Brown, WOLFPACK: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game by Abby Wambach

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟😰🤒😋🥗🍨

My thoughts: 📱8% 31:18 <24m Part 1 Chapter 1 - 30m> - I had to stop here to get my food packed for transport.
📱14% 1:07:59 Part 1 Chapter 2 - Okay, it's not all about food. But it's still going to take me a couple of days to get through this maybe a week.
📱37% 3:08:09 Part 2 - Okay, this is so much better than I thought it would be.

This book was very informative. I didn't know so many chronic illnesses were tied to childhood trauma. I loved her approach to nutrition.

Recommend to others: Yes. This was quite surprising.

Memorable Quotes: There was a long pause. Eventually, I screwed up my courage and offered a suggestion. What if we didn’t ask Erika to talk about the trauma just yet? What if we started with the body itself—supporting the physiological stress response that was fueling her asthma, her sleeplessness, her constant sense of threat—without requiring her to dive back into the painful memories? I suggested we try a bottom-up approach: nutrition. By helping lower Erika’s inflammation and nourishing her body with foods that supported her nervous system, we could start creating a foundation for physical safety. The goal wasn’t to erase the trauma; it was to help her nervous system feel a little less under siege, even while her mind was still sorting through what had happened. In my experience, this kind of bottom-up support can make a real difference. One therapist I often collaborate with once told me that having clients work with me makes her job at least 10 percent easier. She noticed that the clients with nutrition support seemed to have a stronger footing in therapy. They were better able to stay present during sessions, tolerate the discomfort that naturally arises when talking about trauma, and go deeper into their healing work. It wasn’t that nutrition took away the pain. Instead, by calming the nervous system’s internal alarm systems, it gave people just enough extra capacity to hold the hard things without becoming overwhelmed.

In this book, I’ve deliberately simplified and consolidated information wherever possible, and I’ve chosen to write in a conversational style rather than academic or clinical language. There’s a lot of complexity in the science behind trauma, the nervous system, and healing, but the last thing you need when you’re dealing with the aftereffects of trauma is to feel overwhelmed or shut down by too much detail. My goal is to give you enough understanding to make meaningful connections without drowning you in technical jargon or biochemical pathways. If you’re interested and have the capacity to explore more, you’ll find additional details and resources tucked into the sidebars throughout the book. You can dip into them if and when you feel ready—and you also have my full permission to skip them if that feels best. Throughout the book, the stories and examples shared are composites, drawn from the experiences of many clients over the years. Names, details, and identifying features have been changed to protect privacy. While they reflect common themes I’ve seen in practice, they are not based on any single individual.

People like Jen remind me of a duck swimming across a pond. On the surface, to our friends and family, it looks like we’re gliding through life, smoothly evading obstacles and moving toward our goals. But under the surface, our little webbed feet are paddling as fast as possible, just trying to stay ahead of the current. It reminds me of something Viola Davis wrote in her memoir, Finding Me, reflecting on the long shadow of childhood trauma: “And though I was many years and many miles away from Central Falls, Rhode Island, I had never stopped running. My feet just stopped moving.”

Many of my clients are confused by their physical symptoms because they haven’t experienced life-altering trauma such as Jen’s—what we often call a “big T trauma.” They believe that their daily, chronic experiences (“little t traumas”) shouldn’t have the same impact as a more acutely devastating event. But as Lotty Ackerman Mayer, the therapist of one of my clients, brilliantly noted, “This isn’t the Trauma Olympics. You don’t need to get a gold medal in trauma to have experienced harm.” Our nervous systems tell our bodies to respond to threats in the same way, no matter whether that threat is a saber-toothed tiger or a nasty comment your aunt made at Thanksgiving.

[Chelsea Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers a refreshing and practical guide to addressing trauma from a nutritional and body-centered perspective. It doesn't replace professional therapy, but it is an insightful and useful companion for anyone looking to understand and support their body's role in the healing process.

The greatest strength is its holistic, polyvagal-informed approach, which connects the dots between a dysregulated nervous system, the gut-brain axis, and how trauma manifests physically. It sounds like a lot, but Bowman does a good job of making complex science accessible and provides explanations for how chronic stress impacts inflammation, hormones and digestion. I love that this approach is customizable and a "do-it-yourself) approach.

The reason for m 4 star rating is that I feel like for those with severe or unaddressed trauma, the content could feel overwhelming. Some of the sections feel a little dense for readers without a background in nutrition or biology.

I still feel like this is a very powerful book and tool for those who have support while working to heal.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is primarily a book about food — how stress and trauma cause us to make dietary decisions we regret like eating junk food and comfort eating, and how to support your default trauma reactions to eat foods that will help you feel better and reduce inflammation. There’s also some of the standard advice about forming connections, getting into nature, finding ways to exercise and so on. It’s a very judgement-free, sympathetic book but it is very focused on just food reactions to trauma. In my case, food isn’t really my issue with my challenges so it wasn’t really helpful. If you have disordered eating as a result of stress or abuse then this book may be very affirming and helpful.

I read a digital ARC of this book via netgalley.

[Marci · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a long-needed book that not only has the power to help individuals but also clinicians who work with individuals who have experienced trauma.

Meg thoughtfully weaves together the physiology of trauma and eating to help individuals not only make sense of their experience with food but begin to make accessible changes through compassion and self-understanding.

For individuals who are suffering more acutely with symptoms of PTSD - they will likely be best served by gaining support from a clinician familiar with Meg’s approach. The book may be too much to navigate.

I am very glad to have this book on my shelf to recommend to colleagues and support my own clients.

[Aria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Educational and clearly written. It has tables and explanations to help you find a healthy eating balance, and destigmatizing the natural fluctuations in eating that we generally have.
It helps also with a more compassionate approach, highlighting that there will be days where you won't have the energy to make a time-consuming meal for yourself and helps you with strategies and planning to nourish your body and nervous system.
Very well written and clear. I recommend it