A Groundbreaking New Book
by Goodsky Co-Founder, Greg Doney.

Books with the power to change the course of an entire field of medicine are rare.  Books with the power to connect cutting edge discoveries in the lab with practical solutions in the clinic are even rarer. Greg Doney has given us both. In a tour de force of medical writing, Healing Trauma at a Cellular Level—the role of the cell danger response in PTSD and trauma recovery, is just such a book. Written with understanding, perspective, and compassion, in language that is accessible to patients, therapists, physicians, and scientists alike, this book is a towering intellectual achievement. It unites the silos of medical research with the specialties of therapy and medical practice. Doney’s book is a bridge that connects medicine, pediatrics, mental health care, neuroscience, and even the classification of chronic illnesses and mental health disorders, through the mitochondrial nexus. 

Mitochondria are often said to be the “powerhouses of the cell”. This is because they are responsible for converting the food we eat and the oxygen we breathe into the energy we need to think, talk, love, move, and play.  But mitochondria are also much more than this.  Mitochondria are the hub of the wheel of metabolism, and the canaries in the coal mine for our cells. Mitochondria are the sensors and the early alarm system that activate an ancient biology called the cell danger response—the  CDR.  All living things on Earth use the CDR to sense and defend themselves from danger at the cellular level. Indeed, the CDR must be activated to heal from any trauma, infection, stress, poisoning, or injury. Programmed changes in mitochondria drive the orderly transitions from the first, to the second, to the third and last stage of the CDR.  Each stage must be completed in order for healing to be complete. This is quite literally the magic we witness every time a cut is healed, an infection is eliminated, or a person recovers from depression, anxiety, PTSD, or any other trauma.  This system usually works well. Most of us heal from the vast majority of infections, cuts, and traumas that we experience over a lifetime.  However, the latest science has shown that healing can be arrested when the CDR gets stuck.  When this happens, it produces the symptoms of chronic illness. Chronic pain, anxiety, fatigue, dysbiosis and other GI abnormalities, neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, mental health struggles, heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune and autoinflammatory disorders, and many other disabilities are what results when the CDR becomes stuck. These complex chronic illnesses now affect hundreds of millions of people around the world. 

For over 5,000 years physicians have been trained to treat acute illnesses by eliminating the cause whenever it can be bypassed, killed, burned out, or cut out.  In this First Book of Medicine, acute illnesses are viewed through the lens of pathogenesis—the study of what is damaged and how it is damaged. Yet full recoveries are made possible by another process that works silently in the background. This is the process of healing that occurs naturally once the triggers are removed and reinjury is prevented.  In an increasingly complex world, it has become apparent that a growing number of chronic illnesses remain after the acute illness or acute trauma is resolved.  Something is going wrong with the very process of healing itself.  Healing is getting stuck. To help scientists study this at the molecular level, I needed a new word.  I coined the word salugenesis in 2018 to describe this new biology and give the new science a sharp focus. Taken from the root word Salus, the Roman goddess of personal health and well-being, salugenesis refers to the universal process used by all living things to restore health after a stress or injury. It is different than the word salutogenesis that describes the lifestyle choices and coping skills that foster health despite economic and environmental hardships.  Salugenesis is the process of self-healing. It is driven by mitochondria that create the molecular, metabolic, and cellular features of the healing cycle.  Salugenesis is a whole-body signaling system that begins with mitochondria and the cell.  Salugenesis is not the reverse of pathogenesis. The two work hand in hand. Pathogenesis creates the damage. Salugenesis follows to eliminate the threat, effect the repairs, restore health, and build resilience. The word was first used in a public lecture I gave at a meeting of the MINDD Foundation in Sydney, Australia on 23 March 2019, and described in the scientific literature in 20231.

Both the CDR and salugenesis are driven by energy and metabolism. As such, they compete for the same limited resources and cannot coexist for long.  Chronic activation of the CDR steals from the energy needed for salugenesis. Chronic activation of the CDR inhibits the molecular, cellular, and cognitive steps needed to heal. Salugenesis signaling breaks this deadlock by instructing cells to complete the stages of the CDR and to reconnect with the whole. Salugenesis signaling redirects energy to create a regenerative circuit from mitochondria to the brain and back. Remarkable healing and recoveries are possible with this new approach. This book contains descriptions of many of the tools and methods that have been developed to help people recover from trauma—to reboot the stalled CDR and send the signals the body needs to heal.  Additional tools for treating other chronic disorders will soon follow. Only time will tell, but Greg Doney’s book may be the first salvo in a revolution in medical care for chronic illness. It is a guidebook like no other.