Could a brain injury caused by trauma lead to POIS?

[Bob Morane]

I had a very active healthy sexual life until I was 33 years old. Then I experienced a very traumatic event that decreased my immune system and other physiological systems. For example my heart rate went as low as 38 BPM together with depressive feelings. I became ill with a lung and urinary infection. My doctor had me on 3 different antibiotics for a one month treatment. POIS began shortly afterward. I am now 69 y. o. and POIS never went away. I have always focused on the microbiome damage from the antibiotics to explain POIS and various food intolerance that occurred just after the treatment. But recently I have been reading the work of Peter Levine on trauma and I am now wondering if POIS could be a direct consequence of trauma rather than the abx treatment. I am not convinced, I am just exploring this idea. Unresolved trauma or PTSD by itself can block a lot of normal neurohormonal responses. Anyone else had a traumatic event (including an accident or concussion or a dramatic emotional/psychological event) that may have triggered or contributed to POIS?

[Journey]

I had a head concussion on the pavement when I was 7 years old when two older girls ran into me while I was running around on an automatic fountain thing in summer

[Rollo]

skiing accident in my case...did you start experiencing POIS right after the accident?
Because some people her claim to have POIS since Puberty hit them and in my case it was a bit later at 18...

[Clues]

Bob, a self-perpetuating immune system and autonomous nervous system dysfunction due to trauma and stress is probably my main theory right now for my own case.

When I was about 8, my parents had a messy divorce. That could be what started it. AFAIK I was completely normal as a smaller child, but was withdrawn and had attachment problems as a teenager, and I had what in retrospect appear to be early signs that my immune system was oversensitive.

In adult life, up until I've started managing it about a year ago, I've exposed myself to an abnormal amount of stress. I've worked unhealthily to the point of burning out several times, almost deliberately, and have suppressed my psychological issues.

A lot of my symptoms are AFAIK consistent with trauma, e.g. perpetually tight and tender psoas muscles.

I'm practicing Wim Hof these days, in the hope that I can recalibrate my immune system and autonomic nervous system to essentially calm down. See Wim Hof thread for my experience so far.

[silkmane]

Found this while looking to see if I could find any link between POIS and TBI. I had an injury to the head very young (freak accident thing). From what I understand from parents, doc just thought I was ok, not concussed, but also not that much understanding of such things back then probably. I was later diagnosed with thyroid problems as a young adult, which I suspect looking back may have been present much earlier and simply not spotted until later. And I remembering experiencing POIS-like symptoms since I reached puberty and started exploring that side of myself; I had no reference to it or comparison, but I remember being more low energy, depressed, anxious, in my teens, which coincides with the introduction of those symptoms and doubtless feeling less capable and alert as a person.

Having historically shown up as a more quiet person in my family, it was likely easy to mask and for no one to spot as something off, other than me.

I've also been wondering about any crossover links to SCT (see Russel Barkley's talk from 2018 about how it is a distinct condition from ADHD and may have some relationship to TBI). What if SCT is related to POIS and both stem from some kind of disruption in brain processing as a result of injury? I wonder if anyone has studied for links between the two (probably not yet).

I was also listening to an interview the podcast Neurohacker did with Dr. Barry Komisaruk who has studied the effects of orgasm on the brain. Nothing directly related to POIS in there, but I wanted to mention it because I noted that he mentioned all parts of the brain get activated during orgasm. I'm wondering about the intersection of TBI and orgasm, if an injury can cause the chemicals that relate to sleepiness after orgasm to get released in some kind of hugely disproportionate amount, causing this kind of state of overwhelm, where it takes much longer to normalize. And/or if the injury can disrupt the processing of related chemicals, such that it becomes difficult for your brain to sort of "level out" afterward, instead lingering overly long in this altered state. Or the joint activation of different parts of the brain perhaps itself creates some kind of overwhelm that would normally be easy to recover from. I'm not a neuroscientist, but just trying to grasp at any connections because there's so little to go on.