The Five Levers Of PTSD

By Jordan Vezina

The Five Levers of PTSD recounts the author's story of how he developed PTSD via a series of concussions and a traumatic childhood. He also presents a theory of PTSD in stark contrast to the current psychological model: PTSD is a result of Traumatic Brain Injury.

A system is also put forth that may allow those suffering from PTSD, anxiety and depression to improve their symptoms through the use of neurologically based exercises and the implementation of a ketogenic diet. 

This book is the result of ten years of study in neuroanatomy as well as emerging fMRI research in neuroscience. Information is presented on dysfunction of different neural structures in relation to PTSD in a way that the lay person with no background in neurology can understand. Those with a background in neurology will also gain valuable insights from Jordan's years of experience applying these principles to clients.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jordan Vezina
• Release date: Mar 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393867579

Book preview

Introduction

An animal that is unable to heal itself

has little chance of survival.

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My name is Jordan Vezina, and I am an uncommon personal trainer working in Palo Alto, California. Early in my career I saw that most of the people coming to work with me had deeply rooted movement problems and many of them also had chronic pain.

I knew that it wasn’t enough for me to just push them through that pain and dysfunction, I needed to develop a better understanding of both physiology and neurology so that I could correct these problems and help them improve their health and fitness in a sustainable manner.

The years of study I put into this began long before I started presenting with obvious PTSD-like symptoms, which I now believe to be the progression of Traumatic Brain Injury, or TBI. Not only that, but I now believe nearly all PTSD is in reality misidentified TBI brought on by one or a series of concussions. There are certainly psychological components to PTSD, but I think the majority of the causation is neurological in nature.

I am not the only person to see this. More and more professionals in the medical and even fitness community are seeing this crossover between PTSD and TBI symptoms and beginning to understand that it isn’t a crossover at all. They’re the same thing.

This identification is crucial so that we understand not only is there a clear cut neurological reason for the symptoms those suffering from PTSD are experiencing, but that there also may be a way out of it beyond drugs and talk therapy. Psychiatric medications have their place, but they may not be appropriate as an automatic first response to PTSD. You may be shooting at the wrong target.

When I work with chronic pain clients, the most important part of the process is taking their history. Buried within that history is the answer to why they are having the problems they came to me about. Often, the root of that problem began growing in childhood. A concussion on the playground at seven years old may have set the stage for the development of an adult with severe depression and chronic knee and back pain.

This is my history, my personal story of my journey into and out of PTSD. I am going to lay out what worked for me, but it would be improper for me to make a guarantee that it will work for you. Will it possibly improve your symptoms? Yes. Will these techniques get you back to normal over time? Maybe. The first step in this process is believing you can get better. For a long time I didn’t put as much work into fixing my problems as I should have, because at my core I didn’t actually believe I could ever get back to normal.

There’s some pretty dark stuff in this book, but I want to make it understood that I don’t walk around feeling sorry for myself or having a bunch of regrets about what I did or didn’t do. Every single thing that I did or that happened to me put me where I am today, and I’m very happy with my life. I wouldn’t go back and change anything even if I could.

It’s also important to note that a lot of folks had it way worse than I did, probably even some of you reading this. Most of you didn’t have experiences like the ones you’ll read about in the coming pages, but that does nothing to diminish your own trauma. It’s all relative.

When it comes to PTSD/TBI you don’t have to be a combat veteran or even have been in the military. Your experience is unique to you and no one has the right to try to take it away, minimize it or tell you that you should tough it out. It doesn’t work that way. It’s your journey and it’s also yours to finish on your own terms.

When people talk about PTSD the buzz word is management. The idea is to use talk therapy and/or medication to manage your symptoms. I don’t think that’s good enough. I don’t want to live my life just trying to manage a problem like this. I want to be me again, not some broken shell of who I used to be.

This book is organized into three sections. First we’ll get into my history with PTSD/TBI, both how I believe it developed and how I found my way out of it. Next we will examine a concept I have developed called The Five Levers Of PTSD. These are different things you can manipulate that I believe all have a serious impact on neural function, and this impact can be positive or negative depending on how these levers are manipulated and in what order. Following that we will also look at a couple of ancillary factors that can be important, going a little further into nutrition research and our modern use of devices.

No treatment path should be static. Instead, it should evolve as more and more people move through it and offer feedback on their own experiences. Because of this my hope is that aspects of this book will change over time and I can continue to improve and streamline this approach to resolving PTSD.

Exposure is also important. For a long time (particularly in the military) we developed an immature mindset that having PTSD somehow meant you were weak and that we shouldn’t be talking about it. The reality is that talking about this as a community is the only way out of it.

I didn’t talk to anyone about my symptoms for years. Back before I even understood that what I was experiencing was PTSD/TBI I thought I was alone. I thought I was just losing my mind, and part of the reason for this was that we as a community were not being vocal. We were all keeping our own private little hell a secret.

I understand now that in doing this we were not helping each other.

So I’ll get the ball rolling right now.

1

History

When working with chronic pain clients the key is to take a good history. You need to know everything about this person if you want to help them. It’s not uncommon for my history taking process to involve several email exchanges or to take a half hour or even a full hour in the studio.

Any time that I have struggled to help someone, it was always because I missed something in the history taking process.

This is my history, so that you will understand where I came from and how I eventually helped myself.

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I shouldn’t be alive. My mother used different drugs throughout her pregnancy and also used LSD regularly. I know this because she told me directly when I asked if she used anything while she was pregnant with me.

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This was the exact conversation we had.

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Me: Did you use any drugs while you were pregnant with me?

Mom: It would be better to ask which drugs I didn’t use.

Me: Which drugs didn’t you use?

Mom: Heroin.

Later in life this would be confirmed by one of her longtime friends who told me that she knew for a fact my mother was dropping LSD throughout her pregnancy.

My mom wasn’t a bad person, and she wasn’t trying to endanger me. I think she just bought into the 60’s and 70’s mindset that these drugs were harmless, and it was all about opening your mind. She was also struggling with a history of abuse and her own mental health issues at the time. The drugs probably gave her the only real respite she ever found from the demons on her back.

When I was nearly born dead it changed her, but not enough.

My mother and stepfather were told by the doctor that I wasn’t going to make it, and they would do all they could. I spent the first weeks of my life in an incubator. Somehow, I pulled through and they were finally able to take me home.

This might sound a little self-indulgent, but that was probably when I first learned to fight. I wasn’t going to have an easy entrance into the world. On some level I was going to have to decide that I wanted to be alive and fight for that survival.

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At the age of seven I had my first concussion, at least that I’m aware of. This is just an approximation, as I don’t remember most of my childhood. The only reason I even know this happened is because I found the hospital x-rays of my skull when I was older, filed away in a drawer. I had no memory of the incident, but it seems that I took a blow to the head severe enough that someone thought I needed an x-ray. I asked about it at that time, but no answers were forthcoming. No one seemed to remember it happening. That’s pretty unlikely. It’s very possible that any adults present were drunk and high at the time.

I have identified concussion symptoms in photographs from when I was a child. In the ones before this age I looked normal, but in the ones from the age of seven and beyond I present with some abnormalities common in people with a history of head trauma. Early on I developed a hypersensitivity to light, which is another common symptom of TBI.

I also recall a fight I was in with an older boy a little after this. I was slammed into the concrete probably close to a dozen times, often landing on my head. I sustained several other blows to the head throughout my formative years, so I won’t go into detail on all of them. We don’t have that kind of time. During this fight my stepfather sat on a sawhorse in the yard watching and smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t trying to teach me a lesson about toughness. He just didn’t care.

By the way, I won the fight. It’s important. Okay, important to me.

My brain was already not working properly, but I wouldn’t have obvious symptoms for another thirty or so years. That’s the truly insidious thing about mild traumatic brain injury. It is the essence of creeping incrementalism. By the time you know you have a problem, it might be too late.

Looking back on it I remember that I had a lot of trouble focusing. I couldn’t be taught to catch a ball. I couldn’t run for very long before I was exhausted. I was extremely physically weak. Later in life, as I grew mentally tougher, I was able to gut my way through most of these problems, which was really the worst thing that could have happened. Every step of every run I ever took was torture, but I thought that was how everyone felt.

Layered on top of this early brain damage, my mother and stepfather both smoked in the house with us and in the car driving us around. They each smoked two to three packs per day. All of their friends also smoked in the house with us. On the days I wasn’t in school I was being exposed to three to five packs of second-hand smoke.

This began respiratory distress that I would live with my entire life, but never know about until I had clinical-level evaluations performed on my respiratory system. It’s amazing I never developed asthma. It’s even more amazing that I was able to perform all of the feats of endurance that were required of me while I was in the Marines.

I spent most of my childhood in my room. I was a graphic artist primarily working on comic books. I was really good at it but looking back on that time I now realize that I was blocking out external stimulus. I was able to focus my limited vision skills on something that to me was simple