Section II
After multiple conversations and email exchanges with Drs. Robert Naviaux and Stephen Porges, I’m going to share two different lenses on their collective work over the coming weeks.
This week, I’ll start with the simpler, more accessible view before moving into a much deeper scientific dive.
Together, these two scientists are offering remarkably powerful frameworks for understanding how the body enters danger, how it becomes stuck there, and how healing may require restoring the ability to recognize safety again.
Their work may help point medicine toward something we have long needed: ways to address disease closer to its biological root, rather than only treating its downstream consequences.
When the Body Cannot Hear That It Is Safe
What if one of the most important questions your body asks every day is also one of the simplest?
Am I safe?
We usually think of safety as an emotional idea.
Is my family safe?
Is my child safe at school?
Do I feel safe in my home?
But safety is also biology.
Your brain asks whether you are safe.
Your nervous system asks whether you are safe.
Your immune system asks whether you are safe.
And, remarkably, every cell in your body appears to ask some version of the same question.
Two scientists have spent much of their careers looking at this problem from very different directions.
Dr. Stephen Porges studies the nervous system and developed Polyvagal Theory.
Dr. Robert Naviaux studies mitochondria—the tiny structures inside our cells that help manage energy—and developed the concept of the Cell Danger Response.
One studies the whole person.
The other studies the cell.
Yet their ideas meet in a fascinating place:
How does the body know when danger has passed?
And what happens when it doesn’t?
Your Nervous System Is Always Listening
Imagine walking through the woods and suddenly hearing something moving behind you.
Before you have time to think, your body changes.
Your heart beats faster. Your muscles tighten. Your attention sharpens. Digestion becomes less important.
Your body prepares you to move.
This is not a mistake.
It is exactly what your body is supposed to do.
Porges describes a nervous system that is constantly gathering information about the world around us and the world inside us.
Much of this happens without conscious thought.
He calls this process neuroception.
The nervous system is continually asking:
Is this person safe?
Is this environment safe?
Is something wrong inside my body?
According to Polyvagal Theory, the autonomic nervous system has different ways of responding.
When we feel safe, the ventral vagal system helps support connection, conversation, digestion, learning, play, and rest.
When danger appears, the sympathetic nervous system helps us mobilize.
Fight.
Run.
Act.
And when danger feels overwhelming or escape seems impossible, Porges describes a defensive response associated with the dorsal vagal system, where the body may conserve energy, withdraw, or shut down.
None of these responses is inherently bad.
We need all of them.
The problem occurs when the danger is over but the nervous system keeps behaving as though the tiger is still in the room.
Cells Have a Danger Response Too.
Now shrink yourself down thousands of times and step inside one of your cells.
The same basic story appears again.
Mitochondria are often called the power plants of our cells because they help make ATP, the energy currency of life.
But mitochondria do much more than make energy.
They also help cells sense their surroundings.
When a cell detects infection, injury, toxins, metabolic stress, or another serious threat, it changes what it is doing.
Dr. Naviaux calls this the Cell Danger Response, or CDR.
The cell stops acting primarily like a member of a larger community.
For a while, survival comes first.
Energy use changes.
Inflammation changes.
Communication changes.
Growth may slow.
Defense and repair take priority.
Again, this is not disease.
Initially, this is intelligent biology.
If your house is on fire, you don’t remodel the kitchen.
You put out the fire.
One of the most fascinating parts of Naviaux’s work involves a molecule called ATP.
Inside a cell, ATP is energy.
Think of it as a tiny rechargeable battery.
But outside the cell, ATP can become a distress signal.
It can tell nearby cells:
Something is wrong here. Pay attention.
That is incredibly useful when danger is real.
But what happens if the signal remains turned on?
Cells may continue behaving as though the emergency has not ended.
The smoke alarm keeps ringing even after the fire should have been extinguished.
Naviaux describes healing in stages.
During CDR1, the cell focuses heavily on defense.
During CDR2, rebuilding begins.
Then comes CDR3.
This stage may be especially important.
CDR3 is not simply the moment when everything becomes safe again.
It is the stage when the cell begins regaining the ability to hear that it is safe.
A cell may live inside a person who is now safe.
The infection may be gone.
The injury may have healed.
The stressful event may have ended.
But if strong local danger signals remain around the cell, those signals may drown out the larger message.
Naviaux describes the basic idea this way:
Local danger can overpower distant safety.
The cell remains focused on itself.
Survive.
Repair.
Protect.
It is not yet ready to fully rejoin the team.
Naviaux uses a wonderful analogy.
Imagine the body as an orchestra.
The brain helps conduct.
Hormones provide timing.
Daylight and darkness provide timing.
Sleep, meals, movement, and the nervous system provide timing.
Healthy cells listen to these signals and play together.
But after injury, some cells may temporarily stop following the conductor because they have more urgent work to do.
That is appropriate.
The violin player has spotted a fire backstage.
She should stop playing.
The problem comes when the fire is gone but she never returns to the music.
Meanwhile, other musicians may already be playing normally.
Now the orchestra is out of sync.
Not every cell heals at exactly the same speed.
Eventually, healthy cells must return to what Naviaux calls team mode.
They begin responding again to the rhythms of the whole body:
Sleep and wake.
Eating and fasting.
Activity and rest.
Day and night.
Seasonal change.
The orchestra begins playing together again.
This may be where Naviaux and Porges meet most beautifully.
Neither model suggests that health means avoiding stress.
A healthy nervous system should respond to danger.
A healthy immune system should fight infection.
A healthy cell should enter the Cell Danger Response when injured.
The goal is not to eliminate the danger response.
The goal is to finish it.
Activate.
Defend.
Repair.
Recover.
Return.
Health may therefore be less about remaining permanently calm and more about being able to move between different states without becoming trapped in one of them.
For most of human history, life moved in cycles.
Light and darkness.
Warmth and cold.
Feast and hunger.
Movement and rest.
Stress and recovery.
Summer and winter.
Our biology evolved inside these rhythms.
Modern life is different.
Food can be available every hour.
Artificial light can turn midnight into daytime.
Indoor temperatures barely change.
Screens keep our brains stimulated late into the evening.
Many people sleep too little and move too little.
Psychological stress can continue for months or years without a clear ending.
The signal is often:
More. More. More.
More food.
More light.
More stimulation.
More information.
More stress.
But biology also depends on:
Stop. Recover. Reset.
The rhythm matters.
Children are not simply small adults.
They are building themselves.
Their brains are wiring.
Their immune systems are learning.
Their bones are growing.
Their mitochondria are adapting.
Their social and emotional systems are developing.
All of this requires enormous amounts of energy.
Now imagine a child experiencing several problems at once:
Poor sleep.
Highly processed food.
Repeated infections.
Nutrient deficiencies.
Blood sugar swings.
Family stress.
Social isolation.
Very little outdoor activity.
Maybe chronic inflammation.
Medicine often puts each problem into a separate box:
Nutrition.
Psychology.
Neurology.
Immunology.
Endocrinology.
But the child’s body does not know about our medical specialties.
The child’s biology is simply trying to answer:
What kind of world am I living in?
Is this a world where I can spend energy growing?
Or is this a world where I need to keep defending myself?
Modern medicine is excellent at finding abnormal numbers.
High blood pressure?
Lower the blood pressure.
High blood sugar?
Lower the glucose.
Inflammation?
Reduce the inflammation.
Anxiety?
Calm the anxiety.
These treatments can be important and sometimes lifesaving.
But perhaps we also need to ask:
Why is the body producing this response?
Porges might ask:
Why does this nervous system still believe danger is present?
Naviaux might ask:
Why does this cell still believe danger is present?
Those are not competing questions.
They may be two parts of the same question.
We spend enormous effort helping people create external safety.
And we should.
Children need stable relationships.
Predictability.
Love.
Connection.
Good sleep.
Movement.
Play.
Healthy boundaries.
Time outside.
A nervous system cannot thrive without these things.
But Naviaux’s work raises another possibility.
What if the environment is saying:
You are safe
while some cells are still saying:
No, I’m not.
Then emotional safety alone may not be enough.
We may also need to understand why cellular danger signals remain active.
Is there ongoing inflammation?
Poor sleep?
Metabolic overload?
Infection?
Nutrient deficiency?
Tissue injury?
Circadian disruption?
Too much fuel arriving too often?
Something else keeping the biological smoke alarm turned on?
The goal is not to force the body to relax.
The goal is to understand why it believes it cannot.
Perhaps we have been looking at health too simply.
Health is not the absence of stress.
Health is not staying calm.
Health is not having perfect laboratory values.
Health may be the ability to recognize danger, respond appropriately, repair the damage, and then recognize when the danger has passed.
At the level of the nervous system, that means leaving defense and returning to connection.
At the level of the cell, that means completing the healing cycle and returning to the rhythms of the whole organism.
Different scientists.
Different levels of biology.
A remarkably similar question:
Can the body hear that it is safe again?
Perhaps that is one of the most important questions we can begin asking about ourselves and especially about our children.
Dr. M
You can back to Newsletter 15V31 for more on S. Porges
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