Tana Amen — "At 23, I Prayed I Would Die." How She Turned an ACE Score of 8 Into a Life of Purpose

it, The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child.

And yeah, a lot of people don't know that about me.

So when I was a kid, I think I, you know, it's funny when you hear your post read back to you, I'm like, that sounds really crazy.

But so I don't know if you know much about ACE scores.

Do you know about Adverse Childhood Experience scores? So it's really important.

I came across this information as a nurse and someone who works a lot with mental health and physical health.

when I learned about this, it was life-changing for me.

So adverse childhood experience scores or ACEs, you can actually take the quiz online.

And the reason this became important to me is because they rate your adverse childhood experiences on a scale of zero to 10.

And it's basically the bad things that happen to you within your family.

And mine's an eight.

My score's an eight.

That's not my appearance.

That's just my bad things that happen to me.

But what that means is the reason it's important is because they actually studied this for years through Kaiser, and it became a cornerstone of health, like in the health industry, because what they noticed was anyone with a score over four, like four or higher, they got sick way more often.

And anyone with a score of seven or higher, they got seven of the 10 most common chronic illnesses and died 20 years earlier.

So it's a big deal.

And when I realized my score was an eight, yeah, I started to get serious about this.

And when I met my husband, he's a psychiatrist, I almost canceled my first date with him.

I didn't want to be psychoanalyzed.

And he asked me, one of the things he asked me, we were just talking in conversation.

I didn't cancel the date.

And he said, he was asking me something.

And I was telling him, I said, well, I've always had these gut issues.

I had an upper and lower GI when I was four.