The aim of the book is to sensitize physicians and researchers to the important long-term health effects of early, persistent, and severe trauma. The author, an internist, rheumatologist, and basic researcher in psychoneuroimmunology, shows connections between adverse childhood experiences and typical adult sequelae. After early traumatic experiences and childhood stress, there is a higher incidence of mental illness, chronic pain, sleep disorders, dental problems, obesity, cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes mellitus and chronic inflammation. A selection of diseases unmistakably demonstrate the long-term consequences of early childhood trauma. These childhood experiences create a kind of long-term programming that has a negative effect in adulthood.

From his psychoneuroimmunological perspective, Rainer Straub identifies four factors that link the brain to the immune system and are involved in chronic immune activation: direct connectors originating from the brain, indirect connectors functioning through hormonal and neuronal pathways, extracorporeal (the environmental factors) and pleiotropic connectors (genetic factors).