The Cell Danger Response: The Hidden Switch Behind Chronic Illness, PTSD and Mental Health Disorders
- Monica Williams
- 10 hours ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 7 hours ago
What if the root cause of nearly all chronic disease—from autoimmune conditions to PTSD and anxiety—wasn’t something “broken” in the body, but something stuck? Welcome to the Cell Danger Response.
What Is the Cell Danger Response?
Coined and extensively researched by Dr. Robert K. Naviaux, MD, PhD, the Cell Danger Response (CDR) is a groundbreaking framework for understanding disease—not as random malfunctions, but as cellular defense programs that fail to shut off.
Dr. Naviaux, professor of genetics and co-director of the Mitochondrial and Metabolic Disease Center, discovered that when a cell senses a threat—such as a virus, toxin, trauma, or stress—it initiates a coordinated biochemical defense response. This includes:
Closing communication with neighboring cells
Shifting energy production to a survival state
Halting cell division and repair processes
Releasing ATP into the extracellular space as a danger signal
Once the threat passes, cells are supposed to revert to normal function. But when the CDR becomes stuck, healing halts and chronic degenerative changes begins.
The CDR and Chronic Inflammation: Trapped in a Defensive Loop
This is where the model becomes revolutionary: chronic disease isn’t due to permanent damage, but a failure to complete the healing response. When the CDR stays “on,” mitochondria downregulate their function, inflammation persists, and the immune system continues to operate as if under siege.
This leads to:
Low energy and fatigue
Persistent inflammation and pain
Mood disorders and cognitive dysfunction
Hormonal imbalances and autoimmunity
PTSD: A Survival Response That Won’t Turn Off
Essentially, every chronic condition can be traced back to a defense response that won’t turn off.
PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) can be seen as a state where the Cell Danger Response (CDR) becomes stuck in the "on" position, long after the traumatic event has passed. In PTSD, the body and brain continue to perceive danger, keeping stress hormones elevated, the nervous system hypervigilant, and healing processes suppressed. This prolonged CDR affects brain regions like the amygdala (fear center), hippocampus (memory), and prefrontal cortex (rational thought), contributing to flashbacks, emotional dysregulation, and chronic anxiety.
PTSD reflects a biological survival response that hasn’t resolved,
The CDR Hijacks the Vagus Nerve and Blocks Recovery
The vagus nerve is the body’s master calming pathway—part of the parasympathetic nervous system that tells your body it’s safe to rest, digest, and repair. It runs from the brainstem through the neck and into the chest and abdomen, influencing heart rate, digestion, immune function, mood, and inflammation.
A well-functioning vagus nerve promotes resilience, emotional regulation, and physical healing.
But when the Cell Danger Response is active, the body shifts into fight-or-flight mode, suppressing vagal tone. This makes it harder to calm down, digest food, sleep deeply, or recover from illness or trauma. Over time, low vagal tone can contribute to anxiety, depression, gut issues, and chronic inflammation. Supporting vagus nerve health—through breathwork, nature, vagal tone exercises, meditation, and Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSM)—can help signal to the body that the danger has passed, switching off the CDR and allowing healing to resume.
Mental Health Through the Lens of the CDR: Greg Doney’s Perspective
In The Cell Danger Response in Mental Health, author Greg Doney explores the profound connection between the CDR and psychiatric conditions. He argues that trauma, infections, and environmental toxicity can trigger a CDR in the brain—particularly in the glial cells—leading to:
Panic attacks and emotional dysregulation
ADHD, depression, and anxiety
Trauma responses that are biologically maintained
This perspective reframes mental illness not as a failure of willpower or serotonin imbalance, but as the brain’s protective strategy gone rogue. It explains why many individuals feel “stuck,” despite medication and therapy:
"...biology is literally trapped in a state of survival"
Why the CDR Doesn’t Shut Off
The body is looking for a resolution point where inflammation can switch off and the healing response can begin. If this never comes, the CDR gets stuck on.
Factors that can lock the body into a chronic Cell Danger Response include:
Emotional trauma and PTSD
Environmental toxins (e.g. glyphosate, EMFs, microplastics)
Mitochondrial dysfunction and poor methylation
Inflammatory diets and nutrient deficiencies
Persistent infections (e.g. EBV, Lyme, mold)
Physical trauma (e.g. concussion, surgery)
The result is a loop of biochemical danger signaling, where even healthy systems (like immune response or gut motility) become part of the problem.
Salugenesis: The Final Phase of Healing
In his groundbreaking work on the Cell Danger Response (CDR), Dr. Robert K Naviaux introduced the term salugenesis to describe the body’s final and most vital phase of healing—the point at which true recovery occurs.
Salugenesis, derived from the Latin salus (meaning health), is not just the absence of symptoms or disease; it is a biologically active process in which cells return to normal function, inflammation resolves, communication is restored, and the body re-establishes homeostasis.
Salugenesis is the final step in healing—when your body knows the danger is over and starts to repair.
But in many people living with chronic inflammatory illness, anxiety, or PTSD, this phase never fully arrives. The body remains locked in a defensive state, perceiving a threat that no longer exists—whether it’s unresolved trauma, a past infection, or long-standing toxic exposures. In this state, healing stalls, inflammation lingers, and the nervous system stays hypervigilant.
PTSD is a prime example of this—where the body and brain keep reacting as if danger is still present, leading to sleeplessness, reactivity, and emotional overwhelm. Likewise, anxiety can be a sign that the vagus nerve and parasympathetic system are unable to reassert calm after prolonged activation of the stress response. Autoimmunity and other inflammatory conditions often reflect the same stalled healing pattern: the body attacking itself in an ongoing state of perceived threat.
Salugenesis cannot begin until the CDR is resolved.
This is where Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSM), functional nutrition and trauma informed therapies play powerful roles. FSM helps reset dysfunctional cellular signaling, reduce inflammation, and restore vagal tone, while functional nutrition provides the mitochondrial nutrients and detoxification support needed to shift the body out of survival and into recovery. Together, they create the safety signals cells need to complete the healing cycle and initiate salugenesis—moving from chronic illness to true repair.
What can you start doing today to help your body move toward Salugenesis?
There are things you can do every day to support your body move toward healing. Here are foundational lifestyle steps:
1. Prioritize Restorative Sleep
Aim for 7–9 hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep
Create a dark, cool, screen-free bedroom
Sleep is when glial cells in the brain clear inflammation
2. Breathe and Regulate
Practice deep breathing, meditation, or vagus nerve stimulation (FSM or cold plunges)
Try somatic practices like trauma release exercises (TRE), yoga, or EMDR
These help shift the body out of fight-or-flight and into a parasympathetic healing state
3. Move Gently, but Often
Engage in low-impact movement: walking, swimming, rebounding, tai chi
Avoid overexertion when in a flare—this can re-trigger the CDR
4. Avoid These Toxins That Prolong the CDR, for example:
Environmental:
Pesticides and herbicides (choose organic whenever possible)
Mold and mycotoxins (especially in water-damaged buildings)
Heavy metals (mercury in fish, lead in old plumbing or paint)
Synthetic fragrances and VOCs (from candles, air fresheners, cleaning products)
EMF overexposure (limit Wi-Fi near bedrooms, use airplane mode at night)
Dietary:
Industrial seed oils (canola, soybean, corn)
Processed sugar and refined carbs
Artificial sweeteners, colors, preservatives
Gluten and casein (for sensitive individuals, these may act as inflammatory triggers)
Psychological:
Unresolved trauma and toxic stress
Chronic overwork, lack of boundaries, emotional suppression all feed into danger signaling.
5. Resolve a Nature Deficiency
Most people suffer from a nature deficiency, as life can keep us sitting inside in front of screens all day, some people barely take the time to look up. We need connect to nature every day, taking the to stop, breathe, engage in a moment of peace, and marvel at how nature works. Start weaving nature into your life.
Get into nature on the weekends where you can have your bare feet on the earth
Go to a park and give your eyes a 'green bath'
Go to the beach for sunrise and sunset
Eyeball the sky throughout the day - notice the light changing, the clouds, the colours, the big blue
Frequency Specific Microcurrent
When the body is already stuck in a CDR loop, targeted interventions can help reset cellular function and promote repair.
FSM uses gentle, precise electrical currents to shift tissues out of inflammation, pain, and defensive states. Specific frequency pairs address both the problem (Channel A) and the target tissue (Channel B). For example:
40 Hz on A (reduce inflammation)
10 Hz on B (spinal cord) or 89 Hz (midbrain) or 109 Hz (Vagus nerve)
FSM supports people through:
Post-concussion recovery
Long COVID and fatigue syndromes
PTSD and trauma recovery
Chronic pain and fibromyalgia
Frequency Specific Microcurrent helps resolve the Cell Danger Response by restoring cellular communication, reducing inflammation, and signaling safety to the nervous system—creating the conditions needed for salugenesis to begin.
Functional Nutrition
Methylation is a crucial biochemical process that affects everything from mood regulation to detoxification and gene expression. It’s how your body turns certain genes on or off, clears toxins, and produces neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. When this process is out of balance—whether you’re undermethylating (not enough methyl groups) or overmethylating (too many)—it can deeply impact your mental health.
Symptoms like anxiety, depression, OCD tendencies, or poor stress tolerance can all be linked to methylation imbalances. Testing your methylation status gives valuable insight into your body’s ability to regulate stress, detox, and repair. If methylation is dysfunctional, it can keep the Cell Danger Response turned on, making it harder for your brain and body to return to safety and healing. Targeted nutritional support can help rebalance methylation and guide the body out of chronic defense mode.
You can’t rebuild a house without bricks.
Functional nutrition provides the nutrients mitochondria need to leave survival mode, while Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSM) acts like the foreman—guiding the repair process by resetting cellular communication and reducing inflammation. Together, tailored nutritional and gut healing protocols, combined with FSM, help restore safety signals to the immune system and support the body’s return to healing.
From Survival to Healing
The Cell Danger Response offers a revolutionary lens for understanding why so many people remain sick, stuck, or symptomatic—even when they’re doing all the “right” things. Chronic inflammation, fatigue, mood disorders, PTSD, anxiety, and mystery illnesses are not signs of a broken body, but of cells trying to protect themselves from unresolved danger.
Healing begins by turning off the alarm and restoring a sense of safety.
FSM therapy and Functional is a powerfully supportive way to calm the nervous system, reduce inflammation, and signal to your cells that it’s safe to heal. It integrates well into a collaborative program focused on trauma-informed care. If you’re ready to move from survival to recovery, FSM can play a valuable role in helping you get there.
Resources:
Naviaux RK. “The cell danger response: inflammation, metabolism, and mitochondria in chronic disease.” Mitochondrion, 2016.
Naviaux RK. Healing Cycle Research Lab - https://naviauxlab.ucsd.edu/science-item/healing-and-recovery/
Naviaux RK. “Metabolic features and regulation of the healing cycle.” Mitochondrion, 2014.
Doney G. The Cell Danger Response in Mental Health: Unlocking the Mitochondrial Root of Anxiety, Depression and PTSD, 2023.
Stephen J. Sharp, MD, MS, Mylene T. Huynh, MD, MPH, and Rosemarie Filart, MD, MPH - Frequency-Specific Microcurrent as Adjunctive Therapy for Three Wounded Warriors
McMakin C. The Resonance Effect: How Frequency Specific Microcurrent is Changing Medicine, 2017.
McMakin C. Mental Health, The Brain and PTSD, Townsend Letter, 2020.
Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation with Monica
If you or a family member is experiencing mild to severe back pain, contact Monica to discuss whether Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSM) therapy could support your recovery.
Based in Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast, Monica offers one of Australia’s most specialised Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSM) clinics. While most practitioners use FSM alongside other therapies, Monica focuses solely on microcurrent treatment—this is her full-time clinical specialty. She operates with seven FSM machines (compared to the typical 1–3), and integrates Avazzia and Bicom Bioresonance where needed to optimise results.
Clients travel from Sydney, Melbourne, and across regional Australia to see Monica—one of the country’s most experienced and dedicated FSM practitioners. With deep clinical insight, cutting-edge technology, and an unwavering focus on individual care, Monica brings precision and heart to every treatment session.
Book in for a free 15-minute consultation by following the link below.
