http:\/\/xsports4vets.org\/<\/a><\/p>\nOne form of therapy is whitewater rafting down the Lochsa River, a 20-mile stretch of wild and scenic river in western Idaho that boasts 25 class 3-4-and-5 rapids. I floated the Lochsa a few years ago, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I got out on the river, it was like team-building,\u201d says Brandon Bryant, an Air Force vet. \u201cIt was exciting without the inherent danger of going out in the field.\u201d<\/p>\n
During five and a half years in the Air Force, Bryant fought the war from a cubicle in Las Vegas, where he was the co-pilot of a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) Predator.\u00a0 \u201cWhen we shot missiles, I was the one who guided them into the target,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n
But the first deaths he witnessed were American soldiers returning from a mission in Iraq just after dawn.\u00a0 \u201cWe saw something that looked like a buried IED (improvised explosive device) in the road, but we couldn\u2019t stop them. The first vehicle went over it. Then the second went over it. It exploded, and everyone died,\u201d he says. \u201cI was 19 at the time and I felt guilty, as though I was responsible for the deaths of our military members. That\u2019s when I knew I would never be the same again.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one sense, it was like being a bombardier in Vietnam. In another, it was a lot worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe flew the Predator by satellite in Iraq and Afghanistan, gathering intelligence for a week or so unless our guys were under attack,\u201d he says. \u201cThen we found out where the bad guys were shooting from, and we would drop bombs on them. \u00a0I could see the aftermath of every strike.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Bryant returned home, he was diagnosed with 100 percent PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). He carried a lot of guilt and a lot of anger at people who had little regard for their own lives or the lives of others. And he isolated himself from most civilians, including his own family, who couldn\u2019t understand what he\u2019d been through.<\/p>\n
That changed on the river.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing in combat, that adrenaline rush comes with worry,\u201d says Bryant. \u201cDeep in your gut, you\u2019re not sure if something bad is going to happen until it\u2019s all over. But out on the river, you know that if something bad happens, you\u2019ve got a lot of guys around to help you. So there\u2019s no risk of dying.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m with Bryant to a point, but when I floated the Lochsa, I knew there was a risk of death. I felt we were challenging a huge natural element, something that was dangerous but not malevolent, something that could kill you but didn\u2019t necessarily want to.<\/p>\n
There was a lot of teamwork involved in pulling the oars together strongly so we could power the raft over a curl of boiling whitewater without it flipping backward and dumping us into the frigid water.<\/p>\n
And when one of my friends, sitting in the seat directly in front of me, got washed into the river, I jumped to my feet, pushed an oar at him, pulled him over to the side of the raft, grabbed the shoulder pads of his life vest, lifted him as high as I could and then fell backward, dragging him on top of me into the raft. What a rush that was!<\/p>\n
Adrenaline is a huge part of floating the Lochsa River, just as it\u2019s a huge part of surviving combat. But we now know that adrenaline also plays a large role in enhancing memory for emotional events, so that voluntary exercise that involves an adrenaline rush may facilitate the \u201clearning\u201d of safety and the consolidation of new, positive memories.<\/p>\n
Paul Gasser, a neuroscientist at Marquette University in Milwaukee, says that just the exercise from extreme sports reduces stress. \u201cExercise is at least as effective an antidepressant as any of the pharmaceutical treatments,\u201d he told me recently.<\/p>\n
Gasser and his colleagues have been tracking adrenaline and a hormone called cortisol in both humans and laboratory animals. Adrenaline is secreted into the bloodstream instantly by the adrenal gland during \u201cfight-or-flight\u201d situations because it enhances quick bursts of energy for survival purposes, heightened memory function, and a lower sensitivity to pain. Cortisol, an important stress hormone also secreted by the adrenal gland, acts more slowly to facilitate adaption and recovery after stress.<\/p>\n
\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Neurologists have found that PTSD patients appear to have lower baseline cortisol levels and a decreased cortisol response to stress.\u00a0 This means that these patients appear to have lower levels of the hormone that is critical for relaxing after stress. They say that this may be a risk factor for PTSD, and increasing that cortisol response could facilitate recovery.<\/p>\n
Both adrenaline and cortisol are produced during periods of voluntary exercise. Elevating the adrenaline levels during voluntary exercise and the cortisol levels after exercise appears to help the body recover better after stress, says Gasser.<\/p>\n
Steve Hale, who deployed to Iraq in 2004-05 with the Washington National Guard, can speak first-hand to the benefits of the X Sports 4 Vets program. \u201cI gave it a shot and really saw the value of it,\u201d he told me. \u201cI got a connection between me and the experience and between me and the other guys. It was almost like being born again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Combat had changed his perspective. \u201cI really believed in the mission until the first bullet skipped across the hood of the vehicle,\u201d he says. \u201cThen it was all about self-preservation and helping your buddy get home, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he got home, he wasn\u2019t exactly sure who he was, except that he wasn\u2019t the same person he had been before Iraq. Like Bryant, Hale was depressed and tended to isolate himself from others. But that made it hard for him to understand that he wasn\u2019t alone with his problems. Working and bonding with other vets has given him a chance to see how they are resolving their common problems, says Hale.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s that adrenaline rush that Gasser talks about.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re on the edge to where it could be dangerous, but it\u2019s not,\u201d says Hale. \u201cPeople talk about numbing, but this makes you feel again. It\u2019s good to have a pucker factor and your heart race. It\u2019s a good positive outlet, not like getting drunk and getting into fights which is how we used to cope. But you can\u2019t sustain that morally or legally. This is constructive versus destructive.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I get out on the river, I come home with stories and big pleasant memories,\u201d says Hale. \u201cIt does me a lot more good than the pills they\u2019ve been throwing at me.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If my plastic brain (see my last two blogs) has been stamped with some ugly combat images, why not drop a couple of pleasant, high-adrenaline memories on top of the bad ones? That\u2019s the premise that X Sports 4 Vets is based on, and the program based out of Missoula, Mont., seems to be helping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericnewhouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}