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142. The Concussion Episode Part 1: "OK: I am alive. And I am in a body. And everything hurts."
Traumatic brain injury can change your entire relationship with the outside world. That's what happened to Razi, who has sustained multiple concussions throughout his life starting in college, but suffered his worst concussion in 2019, right before the pandemic. When that happened, he was completely knocked out of his normal routine: for months, all he could do was sit in the bathtub with no light, maybe a candle. He likens this experience to going back to the womb.
But it also highlighted to him how much the modern world we have built is constantly at war with our bodies and our biology: for example, artificial light is a fairly recent phenomenon in human history, and our almost constant exposure to it is so vastly different from the "natural" light environment we evolved to be in, where the sun shines so many different kinds of light on us throughout the day that our biological clocks have grown to be naturally attuned to. And artificial light has forced us to ignore these biological signals we evolved to have to be able to be productive and entertained long into the night.
Another example is being able to travel around in cars and trains: modern transportation is very loud, can go very fast, and for most animals would be a relatively scary and traumatizing experience that we have completely grown accustomed to. It makes you think about how many other things in our daily lives condition us to ignore signals from our own bodies.
We will continue this conversation next week in Part 2 of the concussion episode.
Links:
Razi's Website: https://www.therazy.com/
Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.
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By Isabel Knight & Deondre' Jones
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Traumatic brain injury can change your entire relationship with the outside world. That's what happened to Razi, who has sustained multiple concussions throughout his life starting in college, but suffered his worst concussion in 2019, right before the pandemic. When that happened, he was completely knocked out of his normal routine: for months, all he could do was sit in the bathtub with no light, maybe a candle. He likens this experience to going back to the womb.
But it also highlighted to him how much the modern world we have built is constantly at war with our bodies and our biology: for example, artificial light is a fairly recent phenomenon in human history, and our almost constant exposure to it is so vastly different from the "natural" light environment we evolved to be in, where the sun shines so many different kinds of light on us throughout the day that our biological clocks have grown to be naturally attuned to. And artificial light has forced us to ignore these biological signals we evolved to have to be able to be productive and entertained long into the night.
Another example is being able to travel around in cars and trains: modern transportation is very loud, can go very fast, and for most animals would be a relatively scary and traumatizing experience that we have completely grown accustomed to. It makes you think about how many other things in our daily lives condition us to ignore signals from our own bodies.
We will continue this conversation next week in Part 2 of the concussion episode.
Links:
Razi's Website: https://www.therazy.com/
Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.