Shining Laser Lights On Your Balls & Beyond: Photobiomodulation 101 - How To Use Near Infrared & Re

This is one of those podcast episodes where I welcome some very cool dudes into my home and you get to hear us jam out. We're going to talk all about light, near infrared light, far infrared light, red light, if light exists, then we talk about it on today's show, which is brought to you by something that is probably one of the best things that you can put into your system to protect your gut. It is chock full of cytokines, which are part of your systemic immune system growth factors which help to grow certain body tissues, including your gastrointestinal lining, lactoferrin, which actually helps you absorb iron, growth hormone, immunoglobulins, which are these little proteins that are used by your immune system to seek out and destroy foreign invaders. And also what are called PRPs, which are proline rich polypeptides. These are immune system regulators that encourage the growth of new white blood cells and help to restore the balance of a whole bunch of different immune functions. Well, you get all of this from something called Colostrum, along with a whole bunch of different vitamins and minerals and enzymes and even amino acids. If you load with this stuff before workout, it reduces the gut permeability that heavy exercise causes, especially in the heat. It can heal the lining of a leaky gut. The list of benefits of this stuff, I mean, it's really nature's first food. It's what mammals first get from mom's milk. We get it from organic goats in Western Washington and at Kion, it's called Kion Colostrum. And you can get your hands on this stuff, take it every morning and watch your immune system performance go through the roof and your gut feel unstoppable. You go to getkion.com, getk I-O-N.com and this stuff's called colostrum. So go to getkion.com and look there for Colostrum. It actually pairs quite well with the other sponsor of today's show, Kettle and Fire. Kettle and Fire makes bone broth. They ship it to your house and no other superfood, kale, soya berries, green tea, you name it, contains the amount of vitamins and amino acids and collagen that come from animal bones and connective tissue. Know now why it pairs pretty well with Colostrum. Collagen is actually the reason why so many people say bone broth transforms their joint, their, their skin, their hair, their nails, their gut health, their energy levels. And Kettle and Fire is one of the few bone broth companies out there that's creating certified gluten free Whole 30 approved non GMO body loving goodness. And you get it straight from these specialized cartons that make it drinkable for up to two years with no nasty preservatives. They simmer their grass fed bones for over 20 hours and they seal them and they send them to you. And they're giving all of my listeners 15% off all kettle and Fire products and free shipping. If you get six cartons or more. They have a whole bunch of different flavors. They've got a chicken bone broth. They even have Lion's man they put into for a little bit of a cognitive boost. They've got a beef bone broth. It's all over@kettleandfire.com Ben that'll automatically add the coupon code to your cart. The coupon code is Ben if you want to just add that yourself or you just go to Kettle and Fire just like it sounds. Kettleandfire.com Ben he's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health. And his show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power.

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For some reason, I have gotten a reputation of late as a guy who shines laser lights on his balls. And it may have been a Men's Health magazine article in which I talked about this form of light therapy called photobiomodulation as a way for a dude to increase his sexual performance or his sperm count or his testosterone. Maybe it's because I've described on many podcasts in the past about how I pull down my pants for about 20 to 30 minutes a day while I'm at my desk and I bathe my nether regions in red and near infrared light using this nifty little light panel device called a joovv. And it turns out, though, that the benefits of photobiomodulation, all joking aside, go pretty far beyond just your crotch. There's one recent study, actually, and I'm going to link to it in the show notes that I'll that I'll give to you here in a little bit during this episode. There's a recent study that hinted at the fact that photobiomodulation, which is also called PBM should be banned because it might be an illegal performance enhancing drug. And that's due to a lot of the biological mechanisms that I'll talk about in today's show. But what I decided was I wanted to get a couple of experts in the field of photobiomodulation on my show, guys who know the ins and outs of laser light. Their names are Justin Strahan and Scott Nelson. They're here in my home with me. We just finished piecing together this crazy modular photobiomodulation device they invented out in my living room. And kind of going through that. And you're going to learn a lot about what that is too, on today's show. So who are these dudes? Well, Justin actually invented and developed much of the technology behind the Juv light. And he spent his career as an engineer managing design and development teams. Apparently has six children as well. Something I've learned about Justin. So a far more patient man than I. And then Scott is the guy who said a lot of what goes on behind the scenes at Joovv in Motion. And prior to co founding Joovv, he spent his career in leadership positions with some pretty big medical device companies like Medtronic and Covidian and Boston Scientific and C.R. bard. And he also has a podcast, a top ranked medical device podcast called Med Cider Radio. So these guys are pretty much obsessed with light. Welcome to the show. Welcome to my home, guys.

Thanks, man. Awesome to finally, finally be here.

Excellent. Honored to be here.

Yeah. And just, just so you guys know, you'll, you'll get to know the, the voices of each of these cats here as you listen to this show. But I would say, Justin, your, your voice is possibly a little bit more smooth and, and rolling.

You're giving me quite a standard to hold up now.

Yeah, you've got the voice for radio.

I was going to say mine was just that much more masculine.

Well, yeah. Well, also your microphone stand broke before we started recording, so I'm going to have to boost your levels a little bit behind the scenes. So which one of you cats designed this thing? This Joov Lite?

Yeah. So going back to how we kind of discovered it, my wife actually first introduced me to photobiomodulation, or as we referred to it at the time, red light therapy. And after digging into the science of it, I worked on developing the original Joovv, which I see sitting behind us here in your office.

How's your wife introduce you to it? What do you mean?

She first tried out the therapy in a Salon where they had tanning beds that were converted for the purpose of red light therapy. So they were using strictly red wavelengths. And she had some pretty awesome health benefits from it. And then because of that, she wanted to try to find something she could use at home, not only just for herself, but also for myself and our six children. You referenced earlier. And that's what really led us down the path of creating our own device that would allow that to be a possibility.

Would you just tinker it together in your garage?

No. It was kind of funny. The first JOOVV prototype. Tinkering probably would be a pretty accurate description. It was basically a collection of infrared heat lamps clamped to a 2x4 hung on either side of our shower. So that was the very first JOOV prototype.

Wow. And so that was the. I actually have one of these. It's about what, 4ft tall, about a foot wide. That's the JOOVA original that you developed?

That's correct.

The original one that used to shine on my balls. Now I've got your elite modular. I can just shine everything, my whole body, all at once. We'll talk about that because that thing's pretty sick. But ultimately, when did you hook up with Scott? How'd that happen?

Well, my wife Melissa, her younger sister is Liz, who happens to be Scott's wife. So we, our brother in laws, we've known each other for 20 some years now.

Wow. So you got a lot of nephews and nieces, Scott? We do.

Justin's got six. He's beaten me on that front for sure. I've got four kids of my own. But the family extension goes far and wide for sure.

And you were in medical device sales before you started doing this laser light thing?

I was, I was. I spent my entire career in the traditional medical device game, primarily in the cardiovascular space. So, you know, products like peripheral stents and balloons and atherectomy catheters, kind of the stuff that goes on in an interventional cardiology lab or something like that. But yeah, so my last actually position before.

JOOVV was actually overseeing marketing for the Endovenous franchise at Medtronic. And so that was the last. That's actually what brought us to Minneapolis in the first place. But so anyway, I come from a very formal medtech medical device background. And so when Justin's wife, and then my wife, who experienced the same type of benefits came to us with this concept of red light therapy, I thought, well, that's way too woo woo for me. There's no way different colors of light can have these types of benefits on your body. But.

As Justin mentioned before, we started digging into the science and I'm kind of a guy that goes straight to PubMed and it was pretty mind blowing how much research has been published specifically using red and near infrared wavelengths. It's like it blows you away. Just do a little bit of research.

So that's what I want to get into is this whole idea of photobiomodulation. And I think a lot of people get confused when they hear about all these different light wavelengths. And I get asked this all the time, what is red? How does that compare to far red or far infrared? What's near infrared? So can you guys walk me through the specific wavelengths of light used in something like photobot biomodulation? And I don't care if you call that pbm, because I already did. And apparently that's the word all the kids use anyways these days.

Yeah, no, I'll feel that one. So basically there's all types of health benefits that you can get from a wide range of wavelengths. Obviously, sunlight provides everything from the UV visible light into the near infrared mid and far infrared wavelength ranges. And all of those have some related health benefits. But for the purposes of pbm, the specific ranges that have the most scientific research behind them are red wavelengths between 600 and 670 nanometers and then near infrared light in the 800 to 880 nanometer wavelength ranges.

Okay, so that first term that you use, red light, it's not far infrared light.

Correct. So when I say red, I mean visible red that you're able to see with the naked eye.

Okay, so that red is the stuff you can see. Like when I flip on a joov and all the, it's like one of the circles is red and the next one next to that is clear, then the next one is red. The ones that are red, that's actually red light. And you said the 600 to 850 nanometer range. And then the near infrared is the one you can't see.

Correct. So the red is between 600 and 670 and the near infrared is between 800 and 880. In terms of the scientific research, the Joovli devices that we've got here, we use red at 660 and near infrared at 850 nanometers.

Where does far infrared come in?

Far infrared has some great benefits, primarily related to heating tissue. So your infrared sauna, for example, is primarily using wavelengths longer than 3,000 nanometers, which would be considered far infrared light.

Can you see far infrared light?

No, you can't. The main, basically the human eye can see up to around 700nm. Once you get much beyond that, you're not going to be able to see it with the naked eye.

So if I have an infrared sauna, specifically one of these far infrared saunas, because I have like that big clear light one in my gym over here, I'm not getting the same type of red and near infrared as I'm getting from the joovv that's giving me the far infrared spectrum. And then I get the red and near infrared when I flip on something like this.

Exactly.

Okay, so tell me about some of the actual research behind red and some of the research behind near infrared. Because I want to wrap my head around why you'd combine these two into one laser panel. Yeah, if you want me to stop saying laser lights, I can. I just like to act like I'm all space aging.

I'll touch on that briefly. So the original PBM devices were lasers. They were referred to as low level laser therapy or lllt. So really the, the origin of the, of the field is based in lasers.

I used to get attacked at health conferences by dudes with all these laser light ones. Yeah, I never noticed jack from any of them really.

That's interesting. I think the main issue with issues with lasers is just the treatment area. Obviously you're talking very small area. So even though there's some robust evidence for the deeper tissue benefits with lasers, the treatment area is such that it's very limited in terms of the overall benefits and applications.

Yeah. And to be fair, I think in many cases people would just shine it on like a bum knee. As I'm walking around a health complex and I know a lot of times you need repeated doses and probably a little more of a controlled environment, but it's that, that's where all this originally developed was these low, you call them.

Low level, low level laser therapy.

Okay. And those are like the wands or kind of like these laser guns that you'll see a lot of people use at chiropractic clinics or alternative healing clinics, places like that.

Yeah, exactly. It's been used in the kind of physical therapy.

World for, for quite some time. And really what came about with some studies in the 90s that demonstrated the fact that LEDs could be just as effective, only now you could treat a much larger surface area without having the risks of the potentially overheating tissue that you have with lasers.

What's the difference between an LED and.

A Laser, the main difference is just the light source itself. So with a laser, you have a coherent beam, and what that means is you have a specific wavelength. So literally all the photons are in alignment with each other. So you have kind of basically all the waves lined up, and that enables the beam of light to stay very, very tight. And, you know, that's why you have all these different applications for, you know, whether it's cutting tissue or even in the manufacturing where you can cut materials with lasers, because you can tighten up that beam to a very small point. With LEDs, you have a fairly tight range of wavelengths, but you don't have that coherent beam. So the light is dispersing, and you basically control that with the lenses on a device, like really, like basically what we have on the Juvlight. So you can control the spread of those photons to target a specific area.

So in this case, if you wanted it to target the entire body, you just stand in front of a whole panel of the led. But then that's combined with near infrared.

Exactly. And to get back to your earlier question on why we use both wavelengths, from a biological standpoint, both wavelengths have very similar impacts at the cellular and mitochondrial level. The main difference being that the near infrared, infrared wavelengths are much more effective at penetrating through to deeper tissue. And that really boils down to the water absorption that allows them to penetrate deeper.

Just to add on to Justin's comment there, photomedicine, by and large is still a very niche field within healthcare in general. But if you were to go to a photomedicine conference, most of the older academics would say the field was built on laser based therapy. But if you talk to a younger researcher, Even someone like Dr. Hamlin, who's often referenced in this.

Dr. Michael Hamblin.

That's right, Dr. Michael Hamlin. He's a PhD at Harvard, runs his own lab, he's published over 300 manuscripts. But he would say that with the advent of medical grade LED technology in general, you can deliver the same type of intensity with very quasi coherent light just over much broader treatment area.

As opposed to a laser?

As opposed to a laser, Exactly.

Okay, so basically what you're doing with LED is you're covering more area, but you're still getting the same effects as a laser. It doesn't have to be like this targeted wand that you hold over the tissue. It's more like the shotgun effect.

Exactly.

Okay, got it. So how is this any different than sunlight? That means stepping out into the sun because the sun's got uva uvb, all of the wavelengths of light spectrum, spectrum from blue to near infrared to far infrared and beyond. So how is this different than sunlight?

Sure, the main difference is instead of having the full spectrum and just to back up, we're big fans of getting as much natural light as possible. My wife and I will typically go out in the morning, try to catch you guys.

Aren't a bunch of white vampires hunched over in your garage over your laser lights?

Definitely not. So, yeah, we got the Southern California California tan working on that and everything. So no, we're definitely big believers in getting natural light as much as possible, but the fact is, for most of us, we don't get outside near as much as we should. So I think the latest stats that I've heard is Americans spend roughly 93% of their lifetime indoors separated from natural light.

Especially those of us who have I'm a blogger and a podcaster. People ask me, why don't you just spend all day out in the sun like you preach, Ben? I'm like, I can't because I have to pay the bills.

Exactly. Most of us fall into that category in one way or another. So whether you're in corporate America or even. Most of our children spend most of their time indoors stuck in a classroom. So for a variety of reasons that our lives have changed so much over the past 100 to 200 years.

We'Re not getting the natural light that we should be. Photobiomodulation or PBM just gives us a way to harness some specific wavelengths that are really important at helping to restore healthy cellular function, and specifically with some of the stresses that our cells are constantly undergoing, Whether it's Bluetooth, EMFs from other types of technology, Wi Fi, cell phones, and even the extreme amount of blue light that most of us are under for a good section of the day. So PBM just is a great way to help restore that healthy function at a cellular and mitochondrial level after we're kind of bombarded by all those other.

Stressors throughout the day.

Yeah, just to add to that, it's not too dissimilar to supplementing. Any way else you'd supplement your diet, Right. If you're taking a multivitamin, if you're adding protein powder to a smoothie, it's not terribly different than that. Most of us just simply cannot spend the amount of time that we need outdoors.

It'd be like getting a bunch of folic acid from spinach and kale in my morning smoothie, but then wanting more. And so I supplement my diet with the multivitamins got like methyl tetrahydrofolate in it, something like that. Dr.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah.

That was my excuse to use a big word to make myself sound smart. So you've got these lights that are essentially giving you some of the beneficial wavelengths of sunlight, but you're not getting the UVA and the uvb, which isn't bad per se, but in excess amounts it can be you're not getting much of the blue light and the artificial light. Not that you're getting artificial light from sun, but you are getting blue light. And so these things can be used at night, for example, without disrupting circadian rhythm. But what I want to do is we very briefly went over just a few of the little benefits of this, but I want to dig into some of the research proven benefits of what photobiomodulation has been shown to do. I just got to start saying pbm. Fellas, I obviously have, like I mentioned, caught some attention for talking about how it improves the activation of the Leydig cells in the testes for sperm cells cells and testosterone and sexual performance and blood flow. And I've possibly kind of kicked that horse to death in articles that I've written. I think a lot of people are aware that I that I pull down my pants in front of the juvenile and there's a lot of guys doing it. Now my friend Ollie over in Finland is the first guy who told me about this. He would lay on his couch at night and just like hug his juve. I think he had the original. He would just like hug it, just like lay there on the couch with the thing like nestled up in his crotch. And he'd do that for like 20 minutes a night. And he showed me his before and after testosterone. I was amazed. And you guys have sent me other research studies on pre and post testosterone levels of guys who do this. But it seems to go beyond sexual optimization and testosterone and blood flow and silly jokes about leading your balls. And there's a lot of other interesting and compelling research on this stuff. So walk me through some of the things that you guys know photobiomodulation to do and some of kind of the ways the mechanisms of action behind how the would work.

Sure, I'll take a stab at that one. So as you mentioned, the benefits are pretty wide ranging. It's literally everything from skin health to muscle recovery to enhancing peak athletic performance to reducing joint pain and inflammation.

There's evidence that suggests that it helps with thyroid function. So if I were to list all of those Benefits on a late night QVC commercial. Most people would be like, that's too good to be true. That doesn't make any sense.

You sound like you use car soda.

Exactly. But the reality is all of this is supported by a robust amount of published peer reviewed clinical literature. In fact, there's over 3,000 manuscripts that. I'll repeat that again, 3,000 manuscripts. It's unheard of in most healthcare arenas, but there's 3,000 manuscripts that have been published to showcase the benefits of these wavelengths of light. And maybe more compelling, there's over 200 double blind, randomized placebo controlled trials showcasing the benefits. So there's a robust amount of science. So every single benefit that we mention here during this conversation, it's supported by research. You can Simply do a PubMed search for LLT, PBM, photobiomodulation. There'll be a laundry list of studies that support this. But those are some of the benefits at a high level. But the reason for the wide ranging, varying sort of health benefits from these wavelengths of light, it kind of goes back to the fundamental core mechanism of action. What are these specific wavelengths of light doing at a cellular level? And.

From a macro perspective, these wavelengths actually excite an enzyme during the fourth phase of cellular respiration called cytochrome C oxidase. You mentioned it earlier in the intro. But by doing that, that will actually tend to free up cytochrome C oxidase from nitric oxide. So that's why you get the nitric oxide.

Vasodilation, enhanced blood flow. Ben, you could probably speak to that more than I did. I think your master's was specifically on nitric oxide. But you, more than anyone probably can speak to the benefits of that.

In biochem, I spent a lot of time writing a paper on nitric oxide. An entire freaking semester.

You want to name one of your boys nitric?

Yeah, exactly. For me, honestly though, I was a gym rat. You know, I was bodybuilding and using no explode and just wanted to dig into the mechanism of action. I just thought it was a freaking cool molecule. I didn't get it tattooed on me or anything like that. But, you know, and it's interesting, you know, in some cases, excess nitric oxide, as you guys know, can result in excess free radical production. And I want to talk to you a little bit more about this whole purported Goldilocks effect of photobiomodulation and the idea that you might not want to do too much of it, which was originally, there's this guy that makes this headset device, you Heard of the violite before. It's like, I have one over there in the corner, right under there. I wear that every other day or so. Like, it's fantastic for jet lag and for cognitive performance. From what I understand, it's very similar, like putting one of your guys's juv lights on the skull. And he told me, he was like, use it about every 48 hours, like, you know, for 30 minutes or so. You don't want to create excess reactive oxygen species. And so I want to talk to you guys a little bit about that, but before I do, I want to continue down this road to the mechanism of action. So this thing's activating cytochrome C oxidase, releasing nitric oxide, and then what?

And by doing that, you free up cytochrome C oxidase to be used in the way it was supposed to be during the fourth phase of cellular respiration. And that's really to produce the gradient in the mitochondrial matrix to produce adp, which is a precursor to ATP, which is cellular energy or the energy currency of life. Taking everyone back to the high school biology class. But that's sort of the core fundamental mechanism of action. You do get sort of secondary things that go on. So enhanced gene transcription, better cell signaling, a shift in cellular redox. You get sort of these secondary benefits, a better immune response by secreting more cytokines. There's all these secondary responses, but it kind of all goes back to that primary mechanism of action, which is breaking, helping excite cytochrome C oxidase to free up the bond between nitric oxide and CCO and then restoring sort of natural cellular function.

Okay, got it. You talked about skin health. That was, like, one of the first things that you brought up. How would that affect the skin specifically?

Yeah, and going back to the difference between red and near infrared light, Red light has been shown to. It's often studied for skin health. So if you look at, like, a derm paper, for example, most of the studies will use red light because most of that energy is absorbed in the dermis and epidermis of your skin. Whereas near infrared light has a unique ability to penetrate into tissue a little bit further. And so near infrared light is often used for studies related to joint pain, osteoarthritis, muscle recovery.

You can talk about it for, like, detox detoxification, because it penetrates so deeply.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that's the kind of the core. The same mechanism of action applies to both wavelengths. It's just the major difference is the depth of the depth of penetration.

So when my little boys, because you brought over one of these juve minis, I'm turning them into little biohackers. They have a little biomat mini upstairs for their, their warming and their negative ion exposure and they've got a Joov Mini. They're 10 years old when they start to break out in acne, when they're 13 or 14 and hopefully their insulin levels are pretty stabilized. They're not doing a lot of vegetable oils, but you know, shit happens when you become a teenager when those balls drop, weird things happen to your face. How would this work on that? Like, could they use something like this for acne?

Yeah, yeah. There's a whole host of skin benefits with red light. You'll find some studies actually that use blue light for acne related issues, but that's primarily bacterial induced acne. But any other form of acne, red light is actually great for restoring healthy skin, healthy collagen production, everything from rosacea to psoriasis to reducing acne, Red light is great for that.

What about the eyes? Two questions really for me, because I've got these lights and I've always kind of wondered, but I haven't done much of it because I wanted to ask you guys about it. Now I've got you as a captive audience here in my home.

What happens if I look at this? Will it damage my eyes if I turn around and stare at this joovv and then b. Does it help my eyes at all?

Yeah, interestingly, it has actually been shown to be beneficial for eye health. So there's actually a decent number of studies for a wide range of various degenerative eye disorders where PBM has been shown to be quite helpful. In fact, referencing Dr. Michael Hamblin, he's a big fan of using near infrared because it's a little bit more comfortable on the eye. Whereas some people, if they have a little bit of a sensitivity to the red, that's something that they can overcome. But for most people, we would basically recommend they would start a treatment with their eyes closed and then if it's comfortable to them, they can open their eyes and take those wavelengths right directly to them.

So this new elite model that you have, you guys just set up out in my living room, that has the ability to shut off the red. So if that was bothering my eyes and I just wanted to treat my eyes and enhance the health of the eyes, I could switch it to near infrared and just use it that way.

Exactly.

Interesting. Okay, cool.

The one thing to add to that is, I would say, not all devices are created equal. So, like, when you're submitting to FDA, there is a series of IEC tests that you need to submit along with the 510 and one of the this photo biological safety testing. And so, you know, you could in theory be using a PBM device that hasn't been tested properly. That may not be the best case. Well, it's just kind of an unknown. You know, you don't necessarily.

So don't Amazon prime it necessarily.

Exactly. Just be careful.

Now, what about this one? Is this thing like, FDA approved or how's that work?

Yeah, yeah, the new device and our old devices were class one registered with fda, which is, you know, relatively easy to get. You still need all the testing in place. But our newer devices are actually Class 2 cleared, which is a big milestone for us as a company, even though fundamentally they're still delivering the same wavelengths with fairly similar power. It's just a big milestone for us because we want to get more involved in clinical studies. And in order to get IRB approval at certain clinical sites, you need Class 2 approval. With most devices that are.

Is that hard to do Class 2?

I wouldn't say it's hard. The barrier is definitely harder or more challenging than class one. It's just that the paperwork, the testing, everything goes up a notch with Class 2. And just to put it in perspective, Class 3 devices are like heart valves, something that you didn't plant in a body, typically, where Class 2 is everything from something like the joov that's not used inside the body to.

An orthopedic implant maybe could be a Class 2 device. So it's kind of a wide variety of devices, but the barrier is definitely leveled up for sure.

Have you guys seen the pictures of the guys who actually are implanting lights under the skin, like LED lights and light tattoos? These grinders, they treat the human body as wetwear, and they install these things called hardware, like chips and biotracking devices. But they do lights. Now, if you were to Google light tattoos, you would see these guys. And I think they're just basic LED lights that they're implanting as almost an advanced form of a tattoo. I'm pretty sure they don't have class three FDA clerics.

Probably not. Yeah. So the other thing interesting about collagen, I want to ask you, you mentioned thyroid health, and I'm super interested in the idea of weight loss as well. But my friend Andy Nilo, who develops these clay masks, he has a company called Olitora. It's like clay and colostrum, all these things you put on your face. He talked about how you could do that and then do infrared at the same time. So I actually have been putting on a clay mask every Wednesday. I do this and I go shine the jubilite on my face with that clay mask on for like 20 minutes, which sounds incredibly laborious. I know those of you listening in, but, you know, you put on an audiobook or a podcast and you just kind of jam on your face, your 20 minutes of self love for your face each week. What's going on with collagen production when you'rewhen you're using something like red or near infrared?

Yeah.

So it's just, it's been proven to actually. These wavelengths have been proven to actually produce. Help your, help your body produce more collagen. So that's typically seen in, you know, with skin health. I mean, that's where you notice it. You probably notice it the most. But there is evidence that suggests that increase in collagen is actually what helps restore joint health too.

Just to name something. But you're right, we're big fans of what Andy's doing with Alatura. And I know there's actually some things that actually have been, even though the evidence isn't strong, copper and green light, which I know he uses in some of his products, have actually shown to enhance the benefits of light therapy as well. So not only are you getting sort of the natural collagen boost with these standalone wavelengths, but using, you know, something like that mask that has some of those ingredients, you'll get crazy.

What can be combined with light? I mean, when we, when we step back and we were talking about this in the living room a little bit about how, you know, you step back and you look at all this science on pulsed electromagnetic field therapy and photobiomodulation, all these things biohackers are doing now, it really comes down to the fact that we are, we're kind of like achieving a concentrated equivalent of mineral rich water and sunlight and grounding and earthing and all these things that our ancestors would have done. But we're kind of figuring out a way to concentrate those in these deliverable doses, even when we're, say, inside in our office, which I think is incredibly cool.

Oh yeah, it's super interesting when you think about sort of how our biological systems have evolved so fast. Right. Because most of the stuff we're doing now, I mean, we certainly weren't doing it even 50, 60 years ago in front of all of WI FI exposure, Bluetooth exposure indoors most of the time, that was, that wasn't the case 50 to 100 years ago. And so our biology just can't keep up with that sort of technology or to expect it is probably not the best way to go about living. But you're right, I mean all this, a lot of the stuff that most of us use kind of harken back to our Paleolithic ancestors and living under.

Natural not to rabbit hole too much. But is there any evidence on whether or not this could mitigate either the circadian rhythm issues or other issues generated by excess expos you to blue light or to artificial light?

There are definitely some interesting studies out there specifically on doing treatments of PBM either in the morning or in the evening to help overcome some of those challenges, even in related to UV light that we would get through the sun during the midday. So the sun kind of gets a bad rap because I think a lot of times when we do get sunlight, we basically live in a cave all week and then go out.

It's associated with skin cancer. There's interesting data on workers who work all day in the sun. They don't get skin cancer. The people go out and tan on the weekends, on the beach, they get skin cancer.

Exactly. And there's some interesting studies on the skin actually being exposed to red and near infrared wavelengths that you should be getting in the morning and evening parts of the of the day that actually help both prepare your skin for the UV exposure that is certainly more harsh and has some different challenges for your body. But it's obviously necessary for vitamin D production. But then as you're getting those red and near infrared wavelengths in the evening, you're able to actually help restore and repair some of the, I guess, stress that your tissues have been undergo during the day. Yeah.

So red light at night, blue light in the morning. Actually it's interesting because I've been using this in the morning as well. Not only to get my little release of nitric oxide and blood flow and activation of mitochondria at the beginning of the day, but because even at the beginning of the day when I open up my phone, I'm looking at blue light and artificial light as soon as I go down to my computer and I start reading research studies and preparing for the day and writing articles and doing what I do on my computer again, big blast of blue light and artificial light to a certain extent from my computer monitor. I've done some things to mitigate that. Like I use the Iris tech software on There. And I've got this monitor over here is an ISO monitor. So I can switch that to paper mode and decrease some of the artificial light coming off the screen. But my logic is if I'm going to expose myself to blue light in the morning and I'm not able to get out into the sunlight, I want to create an environment in my office that's as close to sunlight as possible. So. So I flip on the joovs. So now I'm getting blue light from the screens, but then I'm getting red and near infrared from the joov. So I'm almost like simulating sunlight in my office. Even these lights overhead, you guys notice that they're pretty bright. You know those are, those are blue light producing lamps from lighting science. So they kind of more biological led, they still produce a lot of, a lot of flicker. And we can get into that later maybe. But ultimately that's kind of my approach is I want to of kind combine as many different light sources as possible in my home. So I'm kind of simulating sunlight in the morning and not just flipping these things on at night.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And there's evidence that even using red and near infrared light in the evening does, does help your body produce more melatonin.

Yeah. So there's. Oh absolutely. I mean my wife and I crashed out in the sauna last night. I flip on the red light in the sauna. We're getting far infrared in there. But yeah, I mean it's amazing. You sleep like a baby when you get some form of red light. You know, same thing upstairs in our bedroom. Right. It's red incandescent bulbs or candlelight at night. And you sleep so much better. Hey, I want to interrupt today's show to tell you why I look so spanking spiffy these days. It's because pretty much most of the time when you see me, I'm wearing one brand of clothing. I've got their shirts, I've got their pants, I've got their shorts. They make this incredibly versatile fabric that can be used for any activity. Running and training and spinning and yoga, but also just cruising around, going out to eat, hanging out with your friends, going to parties. It's this company called Viore and Viora has made this line of clothing that not only looks good, but it performs amazingly. And did I mention it's extremely comfortable. It feels like you're wearing silk pajamas. So it's an athletic clothing company. They focus primarily on dudes. Finally. And all of it looks sharp. Like I just put it on it fits me like a glove. The colors are perfect. You got to go to their website and check this out and try this new athletic gear for yourself. So what VORA is doing is they're going to give all of my listeners a special offer. They're going to give you 25% off any of their clothing. 25% off. That's a slamming deal on some, some really, really good looking, well fitting clothing that you can again use for multiple purposes, fashion or working out. Code for you over@vaoriclothing.com is Ben25. I don't have such a hard time pronouncing their their their name. It's Veore. Veore, say like a fine Italian fashion advisor. Here's how you spell it though. V U o r I clothing.com v u o r I clothing.com and the code you want to enter is BEN25 at checkout that gets you 25% off your purchase. So enjoy that. This podcast is also brought to you by Organifi. I am a big fan of antioxidants and you can get a big antioxidant boost from their red juice. They have packed a bunch of different things that help you to perform at altitude, but also some of the most dense antioxidants known to man into their red juice, including beets, which are like Viagra for your whole body. They've also shoved a bunch of cordyceps and reishi in there. Two of the mushrooms that are the highest in beta glucans are the most powerful for supporting your entire physiology, especially for workouts. But you don't have to chop all this stuff up on your counter and you get all the benefits without breaking the bank because it ends up being about 3 bucks per serving compared to, I don't know, 10, 11, 12 bucks that you pay at the grocery store or the fancy juice outlet for one of these really fancy juices. They also have a green juice. They have this wonderful golden milk that I drink nearly every night with turmeric and cinnamon, ginger and lemon balm, smooth coconut milk. All of their stuff is just spot on and you just mix it into water or almond milk or hemp milk or coconut milk or in the smoothie or in the blender. But you don't have to blend it. You can just stir it into water. Mixes perfectly. So it's organifi. You get 20% off of everything at organifi. And organifi is spelled with an I. So you go to Organifi.com that's Organifi with an I.com and you use 20% discount code greenfield. So that's Organifi.com and use discount code greenfield. So one of the things that annoyed me, especially when I was a trainer at the gym, was you'd walk into the gym and you'd see these ladies like standing on the vibration platforms with their big, you know, 400 calorie Jamba juices in their hand, losing weight by vibrating their bodies and standing there. And whenever I see weight loss claims that don't involve just like working hard and sweating and burning calories, I sometimes raise an eyebrow. And I've seen you guys talk a little bit about how you might get weight loss or fat loss with these, this juve. Is there any actual research on that?

Yeah, there is actually some research on slimming effect that PBM can have.

Slimming effect?

Yeah. So I think it's a, you can kind of be, as you mentioned, it can kind of be a slippery slope if you start talking about weight loss claims. But yeah, there actually have been some studies specifically around slimming, as I mentioned, and it basically has to do with the metabolic burn rate that your body's able to, to process fat. And there's some interesting studies using red light actually to help increase that metabolic rate.

When you dig into some of these research studies, there's actually slides showcasing adipose cells actually becoming more porous. So it's hard to say, is it weight loss, is it more like contouring? But in essence, these fat cells are shrinking.

You're getting dispersal of lipids when you're almost like vibrating the adipocytes.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So it's kind of interesting. But to your point about, is there any evidence, actually some of the more well structured PBM studies are kind of for weight loss.

FDA has cleared it for.

Sort of the slimming effect. So there's pretty well designed, well structured studies that do in fact showcase significant results with these, you know, with those wavelengths of light.

That's interesting. And I think that that whole idea of mobilizing lipids from fat cells is one of the reasons that you'll see, you know, I know, I know the whole like detox world is full of scams and quackery. But, you know, three guys I really respect in the whole like detoxification sector, Dr. Brian Walch, Dr. Dan Pompa and Dr. Chris Shade, they all talk about how you don't just want to like eat a bunch of chlorella or dump a bunch of charcoal into your body, you instead need to, you need to mobilize toxins, then you need to enhance detoxification pathways, then you need to somehow bind or excrete them. And so this whole idea of mobilizing toxins from fat tissue, which is a lot of times where they're stored, that's where things like rebounding and those infamous vibration training platforms and saunas and exercise and movement and even the use of something like light therapy would be a way to mobilize fat cells during something like a detoxification program.

Yeah, exactly. And I think one of the things that we've really tried to focus on is to get people to start thinking about their overall health in terms of the big picture. Instead of just trying to think, I have this specific issue and I want to try to fix that problem. And it's kind of a similar what we have in the whole medical field where, you know, you have this symptom and you're taking this drug to basically mask that problem. And I think to kind of get that change where people start to realize what, what are these things that we can do to get back to the way our bodies will function at their. At their highest level, their optimal. Optimally at a cellular function. Now we can actually address all of these issues instead of trying to work the other way around.

Yeah. Did you guys see the research on. On sleep deprivation and hormones and how red and near infrared light can assist with your leptin and your ghrelin levels?

I don't think I've seen that one actually.

Yeah, it was really interesting. I mean, indirect associated with weight loss, but essentially stabilization of appetite by modifying ghrelin and leptin in response to light. I think that's one of the reasons that of course sunlight can be so helpful mitigating the effects of sleep deprivation, particularly the appetite enhancing effects of sleep deprivation. But this kind of seems to do a similar thing, kind of indirectly affecting weight loss. If just like stuffing more food into your gaping maw is an issue. So we've got skin, we've got weight loss. Obviously the sexual performance, we talked about that a little bit. Muscle recovery is another. Is that all just related to the collagen?

I would argue that it's probably more to do with the actual. The repair of tissue, of muscle tissue. So it actually expediting how fast your body can respond to that stress that you just induced. In fact, one of our. You're familiar probably with Dr. Charles Poliquin. He's recently been.

My biceps are a little bigger than his.

But I remember when we first met with him, it's like he's jacked.

Oh yeah.

Veins rippling through his biceps. But no, he's recently been testing art devices. He's noticed even with a lot of the, the competitive athletes that he's training, they've noticed pretty profound benefits in terms of how much faster their bodies are recovering from their workout. I think it's more of a repairing function more so than collagen even.

Interesting. Now what about the whole idea of heat shock proteins? Because I know that saunas in the absence of muscle loading and physical activity seem to allow for some retention of muscle mass. I've talked with Dr. Rhonda Patrick about that and I've certainly used that on recovery days to keep muscle on. Is that all just the heat effect or does light play a role in the development of heat shock proteins as well?

Yeah, I think there are really two distinct therapies. So the heat shock proteins are specifically related to those far infrared wavelengths where you are delivering heat to the tissues. And that really boils down to the way that those wavelengths are absorbed by the cells. Whereas with pbm, instead of basically creating a stress on the body related to the heat that's delivered pbm, you're really providing more nutrients really in the form of light that are largely absent or basically don't contain heat that you would get from far infrared wavelengths.

Which of these mechanisms that we're talking about would have been the reason that that article came out? And I assume you guys saw about the potential for this eventually being like banned by Olympic committees or by WADA as a form of illegal performance enhancing. I mean that's the type of study you would expect to be put out by your guys industry right. To actually paint you in a favorable way. But I mean this was in the Journal of Biophotonics is where it appeared. And they talked about how it could increase muscle muscle mass after training, decrease inflammation, decrease oxidative stress. What they showed in muscle biopsies, what's your guys thoughts on that study and whether or not it's legit?

I mean I think there's, I guess.

It was more of a meta analysis.

Yeah, it's more of a meta analysis, but I think when you look at how that was researched, I mean they parsed down some like 300. I'd have to look it up to be specific, but they parsed down some 300 studies only to the most well structured 500 studies. 500, okay. I was going to say 500, but I thought it was a big number. And the Brazilians have actually done probably the most Research when it comes to Brazilians. The Brazilian, yeah, photomedicine researchers, they've done a ton with respect to muscle recovery and peak athletic performance, but it's largely those near infrared wavelengths in that kind of 800 to 880 nanometer range that have been shown to over and over again across all of these studies to have a pretty profound impact on it.

So if I'm using a sauna and it's just far infrared, I'm actually not getting all the benefits they found in these studies. If I don't have near.

Yeah, it's just a different therapy altogether. It'd be, do you need cardiovascular exercise versus heavy weight lifting? Something like that. Just different therapies altogether because those wavelengths are just. We metabolize those differently and they have a different impact at a cellular level. And so saunas are great for sure. I mean, there's definitely, you know, there's a profound amount of benefits from saunas, but just different types of, different type of therapy altogether than photobiomodulation.

What about stem cells? I have a lot of listeners interested in stem cells. And you know, I've used, I've used pulsed electromagnetic field therapy on the long bones of the femur. Super easy. While I'm just, you know, same thing as yanking down my pants when I'm standing there at the, at the desk working and doing the juvelite. I can just run PEMF on my femur. And, and the guys that showed me that from this company called Pulse Centers, showed me some of the very interesting data on PEMF and stem cells. But there is some research, at least from what I understand, on photobiomodulation stem cells. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, there's definitely some evidence. We're actually. Dr. Anthony J. He's doing some bench lab testing right now at Mayo, specifically with our devices and stem cells. But at a high level. I mean, stem cells are low loaded with mitochondria, more so than other cells in our body. It would make sense theoretically that if you're. Since the mechanism of action is at a mitochondrial level and if stem cells just have more mitochondria, you get even more profound effect with that specific cell type. In fact, a question that often comes up from customers is, can a pregnant mom use. Use pbm? And we always have to play that pretty carefully just because you're going to be hard pressed to ever find a study where you can successfully enroll pregnant moms. I mean, what mom is going to enroll themselves in a study like that? There's probably A few of them out there. But Dr. Michael Hamlin, who we've referenced earlier, he theorizes that actually your mom and fetus would actually get way more benefit from PBM just because of the overabundance of stem cells during pregnancy. So it's a theory for sure. I mean, I don't want to make any claims, by no means, but that because of that core mechanism of action, you can sort of, at a high level, kind of understand why you need to see more benefits with stem cells.

Use the joov, Have a wine cooler, drink a latte, try everything, play around with that fetal research. That's a whole can of worms. That's really interesting. Now, you also talked about something that I hadn't heard much of, but I. I think it was one of you guys I was talking to. Maybe it was a paleofx or something, and somebody was standing there and you were talking about shining on your neck for thyroid. What's the idea behind that? Because I personally have had thyroid issues in the past due to everything from combining ketogenic diet strict with Ironman triathlon to just beating up my body with a lot of endurance. I've had thyroid issues. I have a lot of clients who have thyroid issues. How would this affect the thyroid?

Yeah, I think it's interesting because you have a gland that's quite near the skin surface in the neck where it's pretty easy to get an effective dose of light to reach that area. And I think because of that, even though you have kind of a similar process going on at the cellular level, you're basically able to have some systematic impact by hitting that thyroid gland. And there's some pretty interesting research to suggest addressing both hyper and hypothyroid conditions to bring that back into a regulated, healthy range.

Yeah, levothyroxine. I know on one study they actually got people off levothyroxine using infrared. Yeah. I don't know if it was near infrared or far or.

It was near.

It was near.

Yeah. Near infrared. I can't remember the exact percentage, but it was a significant percentage of. Of the participants that completely stopped the thyroid meds.

Yeah. That's very interesting. Obviously, we still don't want to continue to make an argument for not getting out into the sun, but when you can get it, I mean, that's kind of the advantage of some of these devices. You can get it that close to the body, get that concentrated dose, even use something like a juve mini to direct it at the neck and affect thyroid activity. I'd love to see more people out there doing N equals one self quant and just tracking, you know, like reverse T3, T3, T4 TSH. And seeing what happens to thyroid because you know, you guys have sent me the data from some of the docs you have using this and their testosterone levels. I mean we're talking like what they jump from like 300 up to, up to 600 or 700, something like that.

Yeah, yeah. I mean one guy in particular, Dr. Thoma, I mean, I'm not sure if you've met him yet, but practitioner in Scottsdale. I mean the guy's jacked. He's like completely yoked. He's like, he lives the, you know, like if you could, if you could paint the perfect picture of health. It's like he loves it. And the one thing that was missing was like light in his, in his sort of his daily routine. And yeah, he saw over the course of, he had all this tested over the course of three and then six months, his testosterone, his free test and his was free test went from like in the mid-300s to I think in the mid-700s and then up again to like 1200s.

One of these anti aging docs.

He works for a lot of like professional athlete clients.

Dope to the gills.

He would definitely, if you met him, he would definitely not be taking anything like that.

Yeah. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about technology because I know that there, there are certain powers or certain intensities that you want to look for. This Dr. Michael Hamblin guy who you brought up, I think he brings, he brings up the idea of a certain amount of, of joules, I think it's called that you want to expose yourself to per day. And when you do his math, I think it comes out to like 20 to 30 minutes per day. Something like that would be like the sweet spot for photobiomodulation. But talk to me a little bit about how you deliver power and this idea of how it could vary from device to device and what you, what you actually want to look for as far as how much of this light to expose yourself to.

Yeah, that's kind of a loaded question, but I'll do my best here, so.

Feel free to rattle. Dude, we got all day. I got, I got coffee upstairs.

Who might need it.

Kion bars. Tm. We can just nosh all day and fill ourselves with caffeine and talk light, but go ahead.

Yeah, so there isn't a great cost effective way for your average consumer to really test the power output of A device. So you'll see some of these solar meters that people use to measure devices. But what we've seen, comparing that to professional meters, you can be off by 40, 50% or even more trying to use a device like that. So that might not be a terrible way if you're comparing two devices under the same conditions at the same distances. Try to control things the best you can. You can kind of get a comparative effect there. But really, you know, in referencing like folks like Dr. Michael Hamlin, what him and his team use, you know, talking a power meter that's, you know, in the cost range in the neighborhood of $2,500, like minimum. And even with a device like that, you have to calibrate it specifically for the wavelength that you're testing. So let's say you're wanting to test the output on that Joov Elite, you would calibrate the device to measure the wavelengths at 660 nanometers. And then you'd turn just those wavelengths on, test those and then you would have to calibrate it for the 850, turn just those on and they'll add that this together. So it's not something that the average consumer is going to have access to or be able to.

Readily access. I think when you boil that down, you really want to make sure that you're purchasing a device from a reputable company that you can trust, that they're not just basing claims off of either wattage or using kind of these cheap solar meters as a way to verify the output. So with the Joovlite, the output at the surface of the device, you're looking at an excess of 100 milliwatts per square centimeter. And to kind of, to convert that into the joule measurement you were talking about you referencing earlier, that equates to about six joules per square centimeter per minute. And obviously that goes down at, you know, with the distance. But our general or recommended treatment guidelines, we recommend a 10 minute treatment about 6 inches away from the device. And we found to 10 minutes, 6 inches away.

How many joules does that give me?

In the neighborhood of 20 to 30 joules per square centimeter. And it really kind of depends on, you know, how far off center the distance there's, you know, these different factors.

Yeah, but I think Hamblin, some of Hamblin's research showed like you could go as high as 100 joules. So I mean technically you'd be, you'd be showing then you could, you could do like 40 to 60 minutes on this thing.

Yeah. And that's, that's what's interesting is if.

You'Re six inches away. Yeah.

And if you look at, you know, there's some studies that indicate skin health, for example, that it just four, four to six joules is effective. But as you mentioned, for deeper tissue benefits, there's studies showing benefits at 60, 80, 100, 120 joules per square centimeter.

Interesting.

This concept of, in the world of academic literature is referred to as the biphasic dose response, meaning can you. Basically trying to answer the question.

Can you use PBM too much where actually you're doing harm? And we've gone deeper, deep and down the rabbit hole with this, with this topic, especially with a guy like Dr. Hamlin, who's co authored some pieces on this very subject. And the reality is, like, the unique thing about pbm, with these specific wavelengths of light, it's really hard to do, to have any. I mean, there's really virtually no contraindications. It's really hard to do damage, probably none.

You couldn't produce too many reactive oxygen species or too much nitric oxide.

You'd have to really, really overuse it. I mean, that meta analysis that we spoke about earlier, the 500 studies that were parsed down to like the 50 best, I mean, when you look at the amount of joules that were delivered to induce a biological effect on those subjects, I mean, you saw results even up to 300 joules per session delivered to muscle tissue.

Yeah, but they had increased performance. But, I mean, are there any downstream health effects?

It's really unclear.

So that was 300 joules. So based off what we were just talking about, I mean, that could mean what if you said 10 minutes would give you like six joules, 10 minutes.

Would give you more. I mean, at the recommended treatment distance, 10 minutes would give you more around like 30ish joules.

So it would be doing like 100 minutes.

Yeah, you'd have to really use it for a long period of time.

Yeah.

And so that's one of the challenges within photo medicine research is the wide variety of the ways researchers have gone about publishing their studies. So. So you've got different participants, you've got different tissue types, different ways to deliver light, different energy dosages.

Delivered at different times of the day. There's all of these different variants. It's one of the problems. And so it's really hard to say that the biphasic dose response is exactly this. I don't think. I mean, the evidence is really unclear. For anyone to, I think probably make a definitive, take a definitive stance there.

Yeah, I think the bottom line is, is just one of those things where you want to listen to your body and make adjustments to what works best for you. So I've had people through us ask specific questions like what should I do for this specific problem? And talk with Dr. Hamblin. He's like, well, there's no way for us to know that. We're just not far enough down the science to say that you need 7.5 joules per square centimeter. And that's, that's going to be the magic number. I mean, you'd basically start, you know, start at a reasonable level. And, you know, there's, there's not, as Scott mentioned, there's not a danger of overdoing it, other than you may find that it's, it's longer than it's. Than you need. So in rare cases, you have some people that maybe have some sort of a light sensitivity. But outside of that, there really isn't any substantial research that shows that, you know, you're going to have problems if you do it for too long.

Now, photobiomodulation can be delivered in, from what I understand, either waves or pulses. And I know some of Dr. Hamblin's research seems to show that. I believe like this pulsed is more effective or better. Can you, can you describe the difference between the two and what exactly the joovv is delivering? Sure.

So the bulk of the PBM research is based on what is called continuous wave light. So you're basically talking about a continuous source of light. You have a wave of it basically related to the AC power that's being used by these different devices. But there certainly have been some interesting studies using pulsed light where there's a true on off.

Of a source of light, be it a laser, which is honestly more typical, but that can be accomplished with LEDs. What is not clear is what frequency of this pulse is optimal for what different for a given benefit. So because of some of the things that are really yet to be determined there, the bulk of the research supporting continuous wave light therapy, we know that that works for a wide range of benefits. So that's what we stuck with with Jew for now.

Okay, what's the sun do? Do you guys know continuous versus pulse?

Yeah, it's continuous. I mean, there's different things in nature where you have a pulsed effect. So even like the, the magnetic field from the Earth, for example, you have this Schumann resonance that you actually have this pulsing from the Earth's magnetic field. So there's certainly some of this in nature, but yeah, sunlight, you're looking at a continuous wave.

Okay, got it. And that's what the Jew is making is a continuous wavelength. Okay. Now in terms of, and this is a question, I get a lot health effects. So there's two things that I'm concerned about in my home right now. One, I kind of alluded to these lights overhead. They're awesome. They're amazing in terms of, you know, they're made by this company called Lighting Science Biological led. And I can have certain bulbs that have the complete absence of, of blue light or for awake and alert areas, presence of blue light. But I recently had a building biologist go through my home and these things produce a bunch of flicker similar to like a computer monitor that's producing flicker. So even if I'm not aware of it, almost subconsciously, my retina, they're detecting that flicker. And that long term can cause everything from macular degeneration to brain fog in the afternoon, to headaches, etc. It's kind of why I'm in the process of slowly going through and just replacing everything with incandescent or candle OLED or just frickin candles. Now for the joovv. As far as the actual LED is concerned, obviously it's led. These are a bunch of LED panels. So are they producing a lot of flicker? Like could this potentially be irritating to the retina or have you guys looked into this at all?

Yeah, no, definitely. That's a common question. And one of the things that we've done with the power supply and the drivers that we use is to minimize that as much as possible. The flicker, the flicker or sometimes called flicker rate or flicker ratio, which basically has to do with the maximum light output into the minimum light output. As you're looking at it like almost like a continuous sine wave. The main difference between the two topics there is your lighting that you're using, using household lighting that you're using to see things under all the time versus a therapy that you're using for a limited period of time to boost cellular function.

Yeah, that's a good point. I'm not under it all the time.

Yeah. Even though it's something that we do design for, there's not any PBM research that shows if you have a certain amount of flicker rate that you're somehow negating these effects or you're not going.

To get the benefits. Yeah, I mean I wear blue light blockers and a lot of times like I'll even wear if they're out here on my desk. Yeah, I'll wear glasses like this. I think these are, these are, these are swannies. They're kind of like glasses you can wear during the day that block flickering glare from monitors, but they're clear so you don't look like a freak. And you also fall asleep at your desk because you're just blocking out all stimulatory light. So rather than a yellow lens or an orange lens, they're clear lens. Now, do these type of lenses block some amount of flicker? If I were to wear these and have the joovon at the same time, the flicker.

Like I said, the main difference between your household lighting is you've got A. Most LEDs people are using just a regular socket where they had their incandescent bulb screwed in and they just replaced it with an led. And basically what you have there is a transformer where you're taking that alternating current, transforming it to a DC current for the LED chip. And in that process, especially when you're doing it at an extremely compact level for just a screw in light bulb, it's not very effective at regulating that alternating current pulse. Whereas when you have FDA approved medical device where you're going through a much more stringent process with the transformers with the drivers to where you can get a much more consistent output from those drivers to minimize that. So if you were to do.

To minimize the alternating current or. To minimize the flicker.

To minimize the flicker. So basically you're taking the alternating current, you're converting it to a direct current.

Oh, you guys do an AC DC conversion?

Yes.

I did not know that. That's really good to know. That's the reason that I have not switched all the bulbs in my home to halogen, because it's incredibly difficult. Even though halogen would probably be the most biologically fluorescent friendly form of light for me to have. It all runs on AC current. And there's no way to just like retrofit every can in my house with, with like a AC DC converter. But you guys have AC DC built into the joov, Correct. Okay, that's really good to know because that affects. The other thing I was going to ask you about is emf. You know, that's the dirty electricity is the reason that I, that I won't use something that, that uses a huge amount of AC electricity. But as far as the EMF produced by the joovv, the dirty electricity, have you guys tested that? Have you mitigated for it? What's going on with that.

Yeah. So interestingly, right around the same time we were first developing the Joovv prototypes, we realized that our oldest son was quite sensitive to emf. So that really brought that on our radar and kind of brought that home to like, hey, this is something important. And not to go go too deep down that story. But he realized that if he would just unplug his computer and different electronics, he would sleep 100 times better at night. So since then, we've gone to WI fi free all the time. We'll actually turn power off in our house at night.

Flip the breaker.

Yeah, we'll just flip breakers off and limit that. So, yeah, to answer your question, is something that we're quite aware of and have designed for the. Even the original JOOVV has a very low EMF output. You're looking at less than 1 milligauss at the treatment distance, which for reference, you're probably in that neighborhood. Just walking through a typical house that.

Has six milligauss is where you start to get really concerned. Above three, I have this thing called an acoustometer that Dr. Mercola told me I should get. And so I just kind of. It's kind of addicting. You walk around your house, you just test everything you hold in front of everything. And anything that goes above 3, I get. Super. My. My phone. Not only does my phone go above six whenever I test it, but if I test my body, my body's at like zero. Right. As soon as I hold my phone in one hand and test my body, my body goes up to like three. It's crazy. Like, the phone uses my body as an antenna. What you're saying is the Joovv is less than 1?

Exactly. Yep. And we've actually taken some new steps with the, with the new JOOVV modular system to even further mitigate that. So we've got the power cords, for example. We're using multiple forms of technology to shield the electromagnetic field from the power that's coming through that. And then even the drivers that we referenced earlier, we are now using aluminum cases on those to further mitigate the EMF output from those.

Wow. It's fabulous. I'm proud of you guys. A lot of people in the technology sector, I'm going to pay attention attention to this. They produce some amazing device that winds up harming you long term due to things like the electrical pollution or the flicker. So I'm glad to hear you guys are, are working in some of this stuff. Men after my own Heart. I want to ask you a little bit more about that, that JOOVV model. But the other thing is that, you know, for example, we know that nanostructured water in the cells and this whole water based matrix surrounding the cells responds very favorably to near infra infrared light. Meaning that like having adequate water, being adequately hydrated, having like really mineral rich water, or even you know, going out and making Hunza water or structured water, you know, two things that we don't have to rabbit hole too deeply into, seem to be able to allow your cells to respond more favorably to light. So that's one example of something I'm very careful of. Right. I drink structured water, I put like trace liquid mineral droplets in it or sea salt in it and I keep myself very adequately hydrated. Especially before I use the JOOVV or before I use photobiomodulation. It just seems to enhance the effects even more. That's one example. But are there other things that you guys have found whether technologies or supplements seem to combine really well with something like photobiomodulation, whether based on research or your own internal testing and hacking?

Well, you've hit on a big one and you kind of go boiling back to what you referenced earlier. The really getting back to the way things were a couple hundred years ago. So light, water, magnetism, grounding, these are some foundational things. So there's certainly some powerful effects related to light and water in our tissues and cells. You referenced easy water. That's something that's fascinating to me. We've had some conversations with Dr. Gerald Pollack and kind of quizzed him on some of these processes and how near infrared light and red light can have an impact on that structured water.

Movement of water through vessels, even in the absence of a pressure gradient, all acts on electrochemical gradient. It's fascinating. His book the fourth Phase of Water, you shine infrared light on the water and it literally just crawls up a tube, same as water would go up through a tree.

Yeah. For any of you out there that haven't read that book, I highly recommend it.

I'll link to it in the show notes.

Yeah, it's a great one because I think some of us any references. I mean he really went out on a limb with his research related to structured water because he really calls into question kind of the established, generally accepted concepts of how water behaves. And in that research, I mean you mentioned some of the things that just defy logic. I mean, shining light on water and having it flow through a nafion tube, which is basically just a hydrophilic surface. And you mentioned the other thing that I think is fascinating too, just along with blood flow and how light plays an incredible role in those processes, I think you've hit on a big one. There's certainly other things Scott mentioned, the green tea extract and some other interesting benefits out of skin health level with things that you can have actually on the surface of the skin. But yeah, I think a lot of.

I mean, you put green tea on the skin. How does that work?

Well, initially you'd think it has to do with the ORAC score, the antioxidant, the fact that green tea has a high antioxidant ORAC score. But actually there's way more evidence that suggests green tea enhances cell signaling, which is one of those secondary sort of benefits of red and near infrared light is its ability to.

So you don't drink it, you put it on the skin.

On the skin? Yeah.

How do you even do that?

Well, in the research, it was literally like a cloth dipped in green tea and then put on the face.

Green tea shower.

Yeah, exactly. So if you're using green tea spray or a mist or something like that, in theory, you could probably induce maybe some better benefits.

Business opportunities. Opportunity for you guys right there. One quick upsell in the shopping cart. Add a little green tea spray to your juice purchase. There you go. There you go.

Copper is actually another one that again, evidence is somewhat limited, but it's pretty tantalizing that actually copper can help induce.

Copper is toxic, isn't it?

Not in certain dosages.

You're talking about oral consumption.

No, I'm talking about copper. Yeah. Like a topical. Yeah. In fact, one of Andy's serum, his gold serum. I think part of the ingredient stack is copper. And that actually has something to do with the way cytochrome C oxidase, actually, the chromospheres and cytochrome C oxidase.

The copper element of CCO and how that responds to light. And so it's super interesting. But yeah, there's some little hacks like that.

We'Ve heard people try. And there's some interesting early evidence that suggests they actually could work.

Mario Badascu facial spray with aloe cucumber and green tea. They sell it on Amazon. I don't know if it's got a bunch of other chemical crap in it, but stay tuned for the June Kindle.

Green tea spray here coming out in the future.

I'll put this in the show notes for you guys who want to try the green tea. So green tea, copper, this clay mask thing we talked about adequate water preferably structured with minerals in it. Any other little things you would combine with something like a joovv to enhance the benefits.

Well, I mean, just kind of going back to water. Dr. Laslos, who's a tenured professor at UCLA, he actually, it's his theory, he's doing a lot of. He's like they've done a lot of pioneering research with respect to deuterium depletion and he actually fundamentally believes that these certain wavelengths change the viscosity within the mitochondria of our cells, helping our nanomotors spin faster. And so, so that's actually, it's a little bit of a different mechanism than like exclusion zone water. But that's sort of some interesting things too. It's not necessarily like anything that you would do per se, but if you are doing.

You're talking about like drinking deuterium depleted water, this stuff called light water.

Yeah. Or just doing anything in general that lowers your deuterium levels.

Ketosis and fasting do that.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So along with light could actually help even further lower your deuterium levels too. So.

Right. So controlling glycemic variability, maybe using this primarily in like an intermittent fasted state in the morning. Put on your green tea spray and your clay mask. Copper in there. I like it. I love things like this that allow you to amplify the effect. And most of this makes. Makes pretty good sense. These are all things that would probably be pretty good if you're just going to go out and sunbathe as well.

Sure, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Interesting. So you set up this. I thought it was gonna be massive, but actually doesn't have that big of a footprint. This new joovv, what's it called? Modular.

Yep, the new Joovv modular system.

Joovv modular system. So tell me about this thing.

Yeah. So basically what we set up for you this morning is six of the joovv solo devices. So what the flexibility that that gives people to do is, you know, let's say they're hearing about light therapy. They've kind of come across this a couple times and they'd like to try it out and they see. Does this really make a difference? Is it something I can feel? I'm not sure whether I totally believe in this yet. They can try out and they could buy one juve solo and then say experience some of those benefits and then they can add on to that later.

It's like Lego blocks. Yeah.

You can basically connect the devices together and as you saw, they work pretty seamlessly together. So we Basically have two kind of size builders blocks if you will the Solo, which six of those make up the Elite or the full size system. Or you also have a mini device. So you could start even with a mini to use for if you just wanted to treat targeted areas such as your face or if you have an issue with a joint or a knee. And then the devices connect via Bluetooth to pair the devices together and control with just a one touch on off button. As you mentioned previously, you can change the control the wavelengths as well. So if you want to do just red or just near infrared.

Can you disable the Bluetooth if I.

Don'T want Bluetooth on it exactly the way that you do that. We just have a hardwire pairing kit. So similar to how you would get rid of having WI fi in your house, you just hard line your computer. This is the same way. So you just have a system that comes actually automatically with all of the modular systems. So if you get the Elite or any of the other devices, we're using multiple devices. It does include that hardwire pairing kit.

It's all one big flat panel. But could I if I wanted to kind of like turn that into a square that would like step inside to just get my body from all angles. Can you do that?

Yeah, you can. In fact we have some practitioners that are already set up with multiple of these elites or some of the smaller devices. So you can surround and get you know a true full body treatment and very time effective treatment.

And that's red light and near infrared that thing will make. So I just blast myself with that.

Cool.

I like it. I can't wait to experiment. I'm going to give my kids this little Juva mini too. They're going to love it. Love it. My little biohacking sons. Cool. You guys, this is amazing. I've always wanted to do a deep dive into photobiomodulation. I've gotten so many questions about this Joovv and I think we we managed to cover most of them. I know I also talked about a lot of things for those of you listening in along with a lot of research and and there actually is kudos to you guys because you've done a pretty good job creating a website that isn't just a bunch of sales spiels but but has some really good peer reviewed research on it. So I'll link over to the Joovv website and I'll also link over to everything that Scott and Justin and I talked about. You just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com JoovPodcast just like it sounds, but joovv. Just so you know how to spell this, if you're gonna Google them at all, etc. It's two O's, two V's. So. BenGreenfieldFitness.com J-O O V Podcast BenGreenfieldFitness.com JoovPodcast and I'll just link to everything over there. I believe we have a discount code or something like that for the joovv somewhere. I have trouble keeping everything straight when it comes to codes. But we have a code, don't we, fellas? We do.

If you. If you. If you use the code, Ben, at checkout, you'll get some. You'll get a special bonus. Bonus gift there that will.

I hate that. Well, dude, what's the bonus gift?

People are gonna ask the reason we.

Say that because you're still coming up.

With what it's gonna be.

It's the.

It's the. It's the green tea body spray. That. Joking aside, it's right. Right now it's gonna change probably on a quarterly basis. We'll keep it. We'll keep it fun. But. But right now, it's actually a hat, actually, that we brought with us here today, but it's a kind of a juv. Branded hat. That's pretty. It's not like a cheap hat. It's actually like one that you'd be cool.

Well, I have two thoughts about that. First, is it one of those laser hats that you see in the back of airplane magazines?

It's not that.

It's not that it should do that. It's an idea for you. And two, you guys sent me a blanket. Do you remember that?

I do.

Yeah.

I just got back from camping and I had that. That's like my blankie. That's the best blanket in the world. You guys should do that as gift sometime. Yeah, that blanket rocks.

Well, maybe in the future we'll.

We'll throw that into the softest blanket that I have. My wife laughs at me because I crawl into bed and I'm like, there's my blanket. And I put that blanket underneath my other blanket because it's soft. It's literally just like the one I had when I was six. I love it. Thank you.

That blanket, I'm not kidding, has a little bit of a cult following.

Yeah, it's a good blanket.

We may want to spray that with.

Green tea and have people wear it.

You know, sleep with it, you know, disappears. I'm going to freak out. Well fellas, thanks for coming up to the Greenfield compound. Thanks for setting up that new JOOVV modular elite thing out my office or living room. It looks sick. I can't wait to use it and enjoy the rest of your time here. In Spoken.

That'S great. It's beautiful. It's been an honor to have to be with you.

Thanks Ben. Appreciate it man.

Ben Greenfield along with Scott Nelson. Justin Strahan signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com Joovodcast have an amazing week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.