In this episode of the Shawn Ryan Show, Jon Truett discusses his journey from his early life in southeast England through his 23-year military career in the Special Air Service (SAS). As one of only 26 candidates who completed the rigorous SAS selection process out of 240 initial applicants, Truett served 19 tours, many in Iraq, where he specialized as both a breacher and Joint Terminal Attack Controller.
The conversation explores how personal tragedies and the intense stress of military service affected Truett's physical and mental health, leading to various neurological symptoms. Truett also shares his current work as an ambassador for N mez groups, where he helps develop muscle stimulation and breathing optimization technology to enhance human performance and support veterans and conflict survivors through rehabilitation programs.
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Jon Truitt grew up in southeast England with a builder/Olympic sailor father and an architect/milk recorder mother. Despite a happy outdoor childhood, Jon faced challenges when he began boarding school at age seven. Though he struggled with the strict environment, Jon excelled in both music and sports, eventually earning scholarships to attend Eton College. At Eton, he continued to demonstrate athletic and academic prowess while grappling with the institution's rigid structure.
Inspired by his brother's service in the Parachute Regiment, Jon joined the military in 1998 and pursued the elite Special Air Service (SAS). He completed the grueling six-month selection process at age 24-25, emerging as one of just 26 successful candidates from an initial 240. During his 23-year career, Jon served 19 tours, many in Iraq during the early 2000s. He specialized as both a breacher and Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC), working closely with US forces in increasingly challenging conditions.
While serving, Jon experienced significant personal losses—his mother died in a car accident in 2004, followed by his father's death from a heart attack in 2005. His military career also took its toll, with Jon experiencing behavioral and neurological changes, including alopecia and mini seizures, which he attributes to the intense stress of his work. After leaving service in 2021, Jon faced challenges in transitioning to civilian life while seeking new ways to apply his unique skill set.
Jon now serves as an ambassador for N mez groups, a company developing innovative muscle stimulation and breathing optimization suits. These non-invasive technologies aim to enhance human performance and aid in rehabilitation, particularly for veterans and conflict survivors. Jon collaborates with experts to address the impacts of high-stress occupations and works with organizations like the Unbroken Foundation to support conflict survivors through sports therapy and technological innovation.
1-Page Summary
Jon Truitt’s story begins in the southeast of England, shaped by a joyful outdoor childhood, challenging school experiences, and extraordinary talents in both music and sports.
Jon Truitt describes a very happy childhood spent primarily outdoors in a house constantly under construction by his builder father. His parents moved from London to the southeast before he was born. Jon's father was not only a builder and ran a small building company but also a competition sailor, having sailed in the Olympics and built his own boat. His mother was an architect and a milk recorder, and Jon recalls mornings waking on a farm in the back of a car while his mother worked. Despite not always agreeing with his father, Jon's mother was supportive of her husband, particularly regarding their children’s education. Jon paints a landscape of his youth filled with the energetic involvement of both his mother and father in his upbringing.
Jon Truitt recalls attending boarding school starting at age seven, where he encountered "quite tough experiences," including homesickness, strict rules, and limited contact with his parents. Jon often found himself in trouble for activities like leaving the school to get chocolate or go to the cinema—acts the school deemed "running away." Despite his troubles, Jon does not remember his childhood as unhappy and credits a lower master at the school for including him in family dinners under the pretense of chores, which provided him moments of care and normalcy.
Truitt's parents made sacrifices to offer him and his brother opportunities for a better education, deciding on the tough love of boarding school and later consulting with the institution for a psychological evaluation of Jon and his challenges.
Continuing his educational journey, Jon was removed from his first boarding school at around age 11 due to challenging behavior, finding refuge in a day school for a year, where he enjoyed rugby. Leveraging hi ...
Jon Truitt's Background, Childhood, and Early Life
Jon's journey into the world of the Special Air Service (SAS) began with an unwavering determination to join the military under the influence of his brother, a commissioned officer in the Parachute Regiment, and led to 19 action-packed tours.
Driven by the support from the Parachute Regiment and guided by the life lessons from his roofing job, Jon enlisted in the military in November 1998 and, by 2002, set his sights on the SAS. His initiative led him through a grueling six-month selection process at around the age of 24 or 25, sharpening his skills in navigation and other essential tasks meant for elite soldiers.
As Jon undertook the SAS selection process, he faced 182 days of demanding tests and challenges. The process stripped down the physical differences among candidates, leaving their mental fortitude bare. Training involved intense physical tasks like continuous runs and hill marches. During these challenging times, candidates honed skills through tuition preparing for test week, under the watchful eye of the Directing Staff (DS) who provided no encouragement to ensure only the most persistent and suitable remained.
The selection process's first part was intensely physical, which is where most candidates dropped out. This was followed by specialized training in harsh environments such as the jungle, where the ability to operate as part of a team and individual survival skills were tested to the extreme under conditions designed to tempt candidates into taking easy ways out. Eventually, Jon was one of the approximately 26 men out of an initial 240 hopefuls to earn the right to wear the SAS beret, and he became a part of an elite unit entrusted with the nation's most critical and dangerous missions.
Jon was quickly deployed to Iraq after passing selection, arriving in Baghdad to witness the initial sense of hope which soon gave way to the reality of war and escalating complexity. As conditions worsened, Jon observed the marked shift from mission to mission, with his experiences amounting to 19 deployments, during which he witnessed significant events, like aircraft being shot down and collective bravery in the face of loss.
In Iraq, Jon's SAS unit often found itself in collaboration with US forces, encountering an increasingly coordinated enemy amidst the deepening crisis. The response to harrowing situations, like a downed Hercules aircraft, exemplified the multifaceted threats they navigated and the close inter-allied operational ties, partic ...
Jon's Military Career, Especially in the SAS
Jon's career has been marked by personal tragedies and professional challenges that highlight the complex realities of military service and its aftermath.
Jon endured the loss of both parents while fulfilling military duties. His mother died in 2004 following a severe car accident involving a woman who knew her personally. Dealing with the aftermath, Jon discovered some inconsistencies in the police report and took it upon himself to investigate. This tragedy deeply affected Jon's father, who became hollowed out by grief. Jon describes his father's transition to deep grief, marked by his morning tea routine. Unfortunately, Jon's father passed away from a heart attack the following year, a loss compounded by the holiday season's emotional weight. Despite these personal losses, Jon did not see the point of missing work, reflecting on his parents’ deaths healthily and feeling grateful for their legacy.
Jon dealt with alopecia and changes in behavior during his military career—symptoms he retrospectively recognized as manifestations of stress, potentially exacerbated by the grief of losing his parents. His colleagues noticed an increase in his security awareness, an uncharacteristic sign of his mounting professional stress. He also experienced mini seizures, likely related to his intensive explosives training. Jon attributes these behavioral and neurological changes not just to trauma, but also to the continuous exposure to high-stress conditions. He managed to recalibrate after gaining a space for reflection, indicating a self-awareness of his experiences and the impacts they had on his mental and physical health.
Jon's Tragedies and Challenges During and After Military Service
Jon is deeply involved in developing and advocating for non-invasive technologies to enhance human performance and aid in rehabilitation, with a strong focus on aiding veterans, conflict survivors, and those with high-stress occupations.
Jon is an ambassador and data subject for a company pioneering the use of suits for muscle stimulation and breathing optimization. This company is called N mez groups, which stands for neuromuscular electrostimulation group. They are engineering a superconductive membrane that can be made into clothing, leading to the development of a suit used for training and improving physiological functions such as metabolic change at a cellular level.
Jon speaks about his role with N mez groups, positioning him at the forefront of technological advancements. These advancements are designed to enhance athletic, medical, and therapeutic outcomes, making Jon a vital figure in the promotion and application of human performance technologies (HPT).
He discusses how he uses a suit for muscle stimulation, a first-generation product that has been taken off the market as they consolidate to support the war injured. The suit includes a membrane designed to be highly effective, with medically graded waveforms authored for neurological conditions and has customization capabilities, such as varying the number of stimulation points, to suit different needs and applications.
Jon also explains the development and prospects of a new generation of suits hand-made by a team in Taiwan that are integrated with advancing technology. These suits, adaptable and applicable to various specialist professions, challenge human biology and encounter environments where radiation or explosive blasts are present.
Jon showcases a strong commitment to using these technologies to aid the recovery and reintegration of veterans and conflict survivors. He discusses the implications of high-stress occupations on human biology, resulting in conditions like 'operator syndrome,' and the potential benefits of boosting physiological functions to address the impact of such environments.
He mentions the use of a suit that remaps pathways and builds vascular access back, which has been effective in a simplified form and is part of a current project aimed at rehabilitating individuals with war injuries. Jon speaks of working with MMS Group AB and experts who create waveforms to initiate changes in the body, which can vary based on individual biology.
Jon also talks about how non-invasive technology has been used for significant health improvements, citing a case where a patient with severe health issues made a dramatic recovery. This technology has also been applied to a rugby player's sister with Guillain-Barre syndrome and a veteran, Duncan Slater, assisting in their rehabilitation efforts.
He stresses the importance of accessibility and affordability, especially for therapeutic use cases, and how the company he's assoc ...
Jon's Work and Interests in Hpt and Rehabilitation
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