A firefighter describes using ultra running to manage PTSD, finding that extreme endurance training quiets trauma symptoms. He links the intense pain of ultra marathons to feeling most alive and has since moved into biohacking to sustain the practice without injury.
About 12 years ago. I was a firefighter at the time. I was dealing with PTSD issues like that. So I kept trying to push myself harder and harder to deal with that because my initial thing was, oh, if you feel weird in your brain, just exercise.
You look at the incidents of suicide and police officers and firefighters and our first responders, it's significantly higher than it is the general population.
I had to start doing a little bit more to get that to calm down. And that led to the ultra running.
Because of the amount of pain and soreness and your brain really telling you to stop, that you actually feel the most alive in those moments and you know there's no PTSD creeping in.
You need to train your brain to be able to handle a lot of very tough situations. And what better way to do that than in an ultra marathon if you.
Put that much wear and tear on your body. I gotta get into what you're doing to biohack yourself.
So I found that in order to not get injured, it's best to.
