The Fascinating Science of Posture (& Its Full-Body Health Effects!) With Annette Verpillot

This Life Network Expert Replay features Annette Verpillot, the founder of PosturePro. We discuss how eye movement, foot stimulation, and jaw therapy can radically upgrade your posture, your performance, your entire brain-body connection. It's simple but powerful stuff. All the resources are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/LNAnnette as in Life Network Annette, A-N-N-E-T-T-E. Enjoy the show. And for more on all of our fantastic Life Network Expert and to become a member of our community today, visit joinlifework.com. Let me ask you a question if you're listening right now. How often do you run into performance issues or injury issues or recovery issues or even things like sleep issues and think, "Oh, gosh." I know what's going on here. It's my feet, my eyes, and my jaw. My feet, my eyes, and my jaw. Most people don't think about that. I certainly didn't until I discovered the teachings and the work of today's guest who has some pretty mind-blowing science and techniques when it comes to posture and posture's overall implication to your health. I think I first discovered today's guest when I heard her interviewed by my friend Ben Pakulski, and my ears perked up because I was like, "Gosh, this gal's talking about things that really aren't addressed that much in terms of the brain-body connection and tools and techniques that can help to recalibrate faulty motor patterns and postural alignment." And, it turns out when I began to dig into her that she works with a range of professional and college teams like the New Jersey Devils and the, the 49ers, the Gators, the Xavier University men's basketball team, UNC Charlotte men's basketball team. She's worked with a lot of top athletes, and her work has been presented at Harvard Medical School and a variety of universities. And yet I think it flies under the radar. So I wanted to get her on the show today to talk all things posture, particularly with her unique flavor. Her name is Annette, and Annette's last name, I'm going to guess because she's up in Canada and there's a lot of French folks up there, it's spelled V-E-R-P-I-L-L-O-T. Annette Verpillot, I'm guessing. Am I close, Annette?

That's perfect.

Oh, wow. Okay, cool. I don't even speak French. I've spent a lot of time on Duolingo with my Italian during my toilet time, but not a whole lot of French. Although, you'd probably frown upon from a postural standpoint playing Duolingo while you're on the toilet. Yes? No?

While you're doing some foot and eye drills, sure.

That's right. That's right. You got to stack habits. So, if you're listening in right now, I'm going to link to Annette's fantastic website, the Posture Pro website and her Posture Pro Method if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/PostureProPodcast. Along with some of the tools that she uses to retrain posture. As a matter of fact, one is sitting right here in front of me. This might be good opening fodder for our discussion in that I've got this blue jaw thing. I can't talk within my mouth obviously, but you've got this jaw thing, you got some insoles, and then I don't recall if there was something that you sent me for the eyes. But, tell me about this jaw device that I have sitting right in front of me right now.

Yeah. So, that's a functional activator. It's basically a mouthguard that serves the purpose to do one thing and one thing only is to help you position your tongue on your palate. And, by doing so, it's going to promote physiological nasal breathing. I've long looked in my practice at the functions of the jaw in relation to posture and some of the ailments I was seeing clinically with some of my clients. And, the jaw is a huge component of posture. So, I always struggled finding a way to, if I may say, neutralize the jaw so the sensory input going into the brain from the trigeminal nerve. If there's a dysfunction with the jaw, if someone, for example, is a mouth breather or has an underbite or an overbite, that's actually going to modify their jaw posture, which will have an effect on their head posture, shoulder posture, and their global posture. So, the Functional Activator came about in an attempt to find a solution to address that sensory system being the jaw so that I would be able to work by process of elimination and find which sensory receptor was really causing or is at the root cause or was at the root cause of the imbalances that I would see clinically. So, the way that it's shaped, it's kind of like a double gutter mouthguard that allows you to put your lower jaw and your upper jaw together. There is a little shape for your tongue. So, when your tongue feels the pressure right under it, it automatically should go on top of your palate. And, that's going to create one of two things. Well, it will create physiological nasal breathing, but it's also going to create these micro movements that are going to reset your temporomandibular joint in place. So, the idea is to wear it when you're working on the computer, wear it a couple of minutes throughout the day, but ideally to be able to sleep with it.

Ben: Okay. So, it's a little bit different than just say closing your mouth and focusing on breathing nasally or doing something like, let's say, while you're asleep, mouth taping because it's keeping the position of the tongue higher up on the palate?

Correct. So, the pressure of the little wedge actually creates an involuntary, if I may say, kind of reflex that will cause you without having to think about it will cause you to position your tongue up on the palate. And, that will promote nasal breathing. So, there are some studies that show the advantages of a softer mouthguard versus a hard mouthguard, which is what we're accustomed to seeing. Most mouthguards that are available are really hard and they're kind of shaped to the molding of our teeth. And, what that does is that it just further promotes the dysfunction in the jaw if there is a dysfunction or if there is a malocclusion, it's really going to just protect the enamel of the teeth. So, I wanted to go step further. I wanted to address grinding of the teeth. I wanted to address clenching, but I also wanted to address the jaw muscles, and that begins with addressing the tongue. Okay.

Sorry, I had to take this thing out of my mouth because I was playing around with it while you were talking. Could I wear this during a night of sleep?

Of course, of course. Ideally, the optimal scenario is to wear it when you sleep. This kind of resets the entire system and allows you to breathe through your nose as well have proper jaw position while you're sleeping.

Better than, say, mouth taping?

Well, yeah, because mouth taping does not actually address the tongue. It forces you mechanically to close your lips and prevents you to breathe from your nose. But, we come from a concept where we want to actually make changes in the nervous system. And, the tongue, if you start with the tongue, which is the strongest muscle in the mouth and you address it consciously wearing the activator when you're doing your daily activities or even working out and wearing the activator functional activator when you sleep, that's when you're going to get the most benefits from wearing the device.

Okay, gotcha. And I, of course, I'm sure have some overachieving listeners who are going to put this thing in their mouth and then tape their mouth to keep it shut inside or something like that and stack the two. I'm curious because you mentioned, of course, the fact that this will enhance nasal breathing. I've discussed on the show before how that can be beneficial for the jaw alignment, for nitric oxide production, for fixing some issues related to sleep apnea, et cetera, but you also mentioned that there is a global postural effect, I think is the way you phrased it. And, in some way, this is affecting things like the scapula and the thoracic spine, which I think might be a little bit of a disconnect for some folks. How could doing something like putting a mouthpiece in to adjust the jaw have an effect on things like scapular function or thoracic function? And, why is that important?

[Speaker:Annie] The lower jaw is connected to our skull through muscles. I guess that we don't really tend to think about this all that often, but the development of that entire oral cavity really begins in the early stages of life. Basically, the way that we learn how to swallow our food. When the teeth start coming out and when we start to form teeth, we normally should go through a process where our swallowing patterns are going to start changing from infant to toddler to adulthood. And, if there are disruptions in that system and those basic reflexes do become up to a certain extent become fixated in our nervous system, but if there are disturbances in that system, what will end up happening is that we will end up with a malocclusion. Now, the link between malocclusion and tongue is that the tongue is always the culprit. It's always at the root cause. Of the problem, yet it's never addressed. So, how can this create an imbalance with your posture? Well, it's going to have to do with the development of your teeth and it's going to have to do with the development of your arch, which will ultimately affect the position of your head on your shoulder and then challenge your overall stability, your gravity. It has to do really with your head posture. So, the tongue is intrinsically linked to that entire system. And, if it functions properly, so for example, if you were breastfeeding, if you if you have a big jaw and if all of your teeth came out and if your jaw is more square than round, you then have the most chances at promoting nasal breathing and optimal jaw development, which will then ensure that the condyle in your meniscus is properly grounded, which will then promote proper head posture and cervical and thoracic curvatures. So, this is how the jaw can potentially create that dysfunction. And, what we like to know in our sessions is basically what's causing what because the jaw, if it functions properly, if there's no dysfunction either with a lingual dysfunction being that you would propulse your tongue forward every time you swallow your saliva, the tongue actually shouldn't touch the teeth. If you're clenching your teeth, which is basically when you're just not eating or drinking, are your teeth in contact in the day? If they are, that's pathological clenching throughout the day. All of these things have an effect on your joint, and that could then potentially, again, affect your jaw, which in turn can affect your posture.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. My dentist, Dr. Anika Loud, has been on this podcast before. She's based out of Phoenix. And, the first time I went in to see her, she did a full 3D scan of not just my head and my jaw, but down to the cervical. And I think she even went down as far as the thoracic spine and noted that the way that I had my teeth set in my mouth and some of the, the shape of my jaw was actually affecting things like my cervical and my thoracic function. And she had this custom-designed mouthpiece for me that I wore for 6 months during sleep. And she basically has this theory that in order to fix the teeth, you have to start with the posture. You have to start with the jaw, the cervical spine, get everything in alignment. Because if you try to do aesthetic treatments on the teeth, like say to fix issues related to grinding or improper bite, et cetera, but you don't fix the underlying postural issues first, all you're going to do is kind of like get a pretty mouth that you continue to wear down. So, this kind of makes sense. And this, this jaw piece and the fact that it can affect things like performance and strength is absolutely fascinating. But of course, there's the other two things that you talk about, the feet and the eyes, and I want to get to that. But before we get to how you can work on the feet and how you can work on the eyes, I'm just curious, this whole Posture Pro system— and we've got a little bit of time for you to get into the details if you want to— how did it come to be? Like, how'd you learn this and develop it?

It came about throughout my own personal practice. I quickly came to realize that the results— I have a background in rehabilitation, and some of the results that I was producing or the relief that I was producing in session, I quickly came to realize that it was very short-lived. This was something that, you know, although I was providing relief and I was very happy to do so, it became clear to me that I needed to to look outside the box if I was going to provide real answer and real results in my practice. And, this is what led me to looking or finding the answers in neurology and reading published studies and trying to understand how the role of the brain could have an effect on movement and most of the ailments that I was seeing in my practice. When I started applying I mean, the information about the feet, the eyes, and the jaw has been— I've traced stuff back to the 1800s as far as figuring out how humans are able to stand upright and fight gravity efficiently. And, applying these concepts in my practice completely transformed my clinic and the results that I was getting clinically with my clients.

Now, didn't you do some work with a fitness icon who's since passed, who's very influential, Charles Poliquin?

Yes, Charles, God bless him. Yes, he was one of the first ones to actually bring interest or be interested in what I had to say as far as this brain model in the context of strength. And his main interest was he wanted to know and was curious to know if if we would be able to basically increase strength through posture correction. It's really thanks to Charles that I was able to pierce through the market, if I may say, of fitness and rehab and just strength and conditioning because he was the one who really was able to show and explain how an aligned posture would have immediate impacts on sports performance and on strength output. Some of the first readings that he did were he was talking about strength gains anywhere between 5.1%, which according to him was the equivalent of 1 year's training. And, his last reading was 15% with posture correction, which blew him away. And, I said, "What does that mean exactly?" And, he says, "Oh, well, it means that athletes are performing at 85% of their total capacity." And it's sad because he was actually going to do a video about this and give his feedback and explanation as Charles does, but he never had the opportunity to do so.

Well, I mean, if a guy who was as brilliant as Charles was about posture and body mechanics vouched for something like this and saw the value in it, that certainly speaks volumes. And he gave a lot to the fitness and the rehab and the performance world. So, if you're listening and you haven't looked into some of Charles' work, I'll certainly include some links in the shownotes. Over at bengreenfieldlife.com/posturepropodcast. The other thing that I wanted to ask you, Annette, was, you know, you, you kind of sort of hinted at the global effect of something like proper jaw alignment when it comes to posture, but what about just the, the overall link between the central nervous system and posture? Why is it when you go to, let's say, like a typical physical therapist or rehab specialist, that they're not focusing on the central nervous system and the brain and seem to go straight to things like the muscles and the joints, whereas you're focusing on the central nervous system?

Yeah, I believe that that is the missing link is in the educational system. That is the only explanation that I've been able to come up with. But it is true that we are in the world of rehab and even in fitness, we're not accustomed to thinking about the role of the brain in movement and performance and health and longevity. But, the reality is that in order to age gracefully and for longevity to occur, the primary thing that we have to assess is or ask ourselves is how well are we fighting gravity? How are we managing our stress and how are we digesting our food? So, it turns out that when you dig a little bit into neuroscience and how from an evolutionary perspective, In order for us to be able to stand upright, we rely on 3 main sources of input, which is basically proprioceptive. And I apologize for the complicated word, but our sense of perception, which usually comes from our muscles. Sensory, that would be sensory stimulation, visual, which is what we see through our eyes, and vestibular, eyes and vision kind of work together. All 3 of those systems orchestrate this thing called upright posture and gait and feed into our brain right at the beginning of life. The reason that babies are not able to walk when they're born is because they don't yet have access to the part of the brain that allows us to move, which is the frontal lobe. And, the reality of things is that the brain builds from the bottom up and from the back to the front. It really is the missing link. And, and the missing link in, in— I find that in most training programs is, is the fundamental understanding and the application of the organization of the brain in the context of rehabilitation and fitness.

Interesting. Okay, this kind of reminds me of a guy named Eric Cobb who I interviewed a while back, and he had a company called Z-Health where he'd do a lot of work with the eyes with convergence and divergence and even had a whole system called the Vision Gym, which is supposed to fix you and even remove a need for things like contacts and glasses. I actually bought it for my wife and I think it's still in a deep dark corner of a shelf somewhere because she wasn't that interested in using it. But, he hinted at this idea because he was working with a lot of athletes that he actually did a lot of work with the eyes. And then, you look at, you know, an athlete like probably Steph Curry would be a great example doing things like tennis ball drill and goggle drills and saccadence drills, something like that. Is that the right word?

Saccadic drills, yes.

Yeah, saccades. And so, there's something to this, but explain what's going on with the eyes.

Yeah. So, basically, the eyes are the only part of the human body that function at 100% of their ability at any moment of the day or night without any rest. And the muscles that move our eyes feed right into our— the cranial nerves that innervate these muscles feed right into our primitive brain. And, the muscles that move our eyes move more than 100,000 times a day to help us scan our environment and our surrounding and focus on a specific target with efficiency. So, what we see and how we see it and the way that we see the world has an incredible impact on our state of mind, on our breathing, on our posture, and on our stress level. Why do I say stress? Because if we have an eye imbalance, it's going to create an imbalance in our vestibular system. And, if there's an imbalance in our vestibular system, which is our inner ear, our sense of balance, there's going to be an imbalance in how stable or there's going to be a disruption in how stable we feel within our own body. Anxiety actually lives in the vestibular system. If there's an imbalance, There's an imbalance with the vestibular system, and that could ultimately create anxiety. And, I could elaborate on that a little bit more later if you'd like. But, the information from that outside world, we use our eyes to take in information from the outside world and bring it into our brain so that we can organize our movement. And, it turns out that there's actually imaging studies in neuroscience that support that eye movements can actually activate specific parts of our brain. So, I'll give you an example. One of the exercises that I always try to restore is an exercise called convergence, which is basically the ability to bring your eyes inwards towards a target. And, by doing this simple exercise, which is just converging, bringing your eyes inwards and focusing, and I use circles to kind of solidify the exercise, what we're doing is we're triggering the activation of different neural circuits in the brain that can actually impact our attention, our gait, our balance, because that's going to involve the vestibular system, as well as our alertness. Another example would be, and I love to use different eye exercises for this, and I actually do use them for myself and in my practice, is if you were to move just your eyes sideways. So, for example, if you were to put your thumb in front of you and move from the left to the right slowly, just following with your eyes laterally. Then you can actually suppress or activate or trigger a part of the brain that suppresses the stress response and that increases that happy hormone serotonin because you're having an effect in the same area. You'll find the vagus nerve. Controversially, doing opposite movement, vertical movements as opposed to lateral, so just up and down slowly, you'll target the part of the brain, the midbrain, which is the part of the brain that secretes dopamine. So, that's going to be for mood, alertness, and focus. And, as you said before, saccades uses the front part of the brain, the frontal eye fields, and that's going to improve reaction time. So, you can use different— there's different ways of doing these saccades whether they be horizontal, vertical, or whatnot, standing on one foot. There's different ways to do them, but the point is that they can actually improve reaction time. And, if you want to use eye movements with head movements, so specifically using the eye as the head is moving, then that's going to help with coordination and balance. So, what's really cool is that if our eyes can affect our balance, they can also affect our posture. And, because our brain trusts our eyes over all other senses, if we have an imbalance with the eyes, it does create an imbalance with posture, with our stability, and ultimately, it could it could affect our health.

This kind of reminds me a little bit of eye movement desensitization reprocessing. Like, it's called EMDR, and that's a— it's a therapy treatment for people who've been through trauma and seems to be pretty effective. You know, you using specific movements, typically like lateral movements of the eyes, and it's usually combined with hand tapping and often audio stimulation to allow someone to access traumatic memories and then process them in new ways. So, is that what you're referring to when you mentioned that this can be used for things like anxiety?

Not in that context. EMDR is using eye movements to bring your entire body and mind to a state of deep awareness through eye movements to be able to cope with traumatic or negative events that you've had in life. But, the eye exercises that I'm referring to are— well, you could use them, they can be used if you're trying to think of a traumatic event, I'm referring more to just doing these exercises as part of your healthy routine every morning or 3 times a day, a couple of minutes per day to just kind of light up and activate your brain the same way that you would if you went for a brisk walk or if you meditated in the morning or decided to go in cold water to just kind of wake your body and your brain up. They have many purposes and could be used for many different things.

Yeah. One thing I was taught during breathwork was when coming out of breathwork to reactivate the vagus nerve to move the eyes left without moving the head, then right without moving the head, then up without moving the head, and then down. And I do a lot of breathwork with my sons, and typically— and some of my friends who have brought through breathwork, they'll experience this with me— we spend the final minute just shaking the fingers and toes, then opening the eyes and going through that series. And it seems to be a really cool way to bring yourself back into the world. I've never actually tested something like heart rate variability to see if it actually increases heart rate variability significantly, but that idea of finishing breathwork and then moving on to these type of eye movements that trigger the vagus nerve, you actually experience this shift towards what I would describe as more of a peaceful, grounded, and relaxed state when you finish breathwork. Have you ever done something like that, like paired eye movements with breathwork?

I've never done it. I've heard of it. I'm sure that it would be extremely powerful if it was done along with the breath. But, I can see the relation with eyes and just breathing because eye movement can target or have an effect on vagal tone. I mean, there's just so much that the eyes can do. And, it's something that as far clinically or even from a health perspective because they do communicate with really essential nuclei in the brainstem that can put us, again, either in a state of alertness or in a state of calmness. And, in the context of posture and the vestibular system, they also have an effect on our back muscles, on our extensors, and our ability to stabilize our head in space. But, some of the exercises even that you were describing suppressing natural movements of the eyes with the head, can also target really, really specific parts of the brain. And, that's why I find that they're really incredible when you use them in the context of rehabilitation when someone comes to see you with shoulder pain or back pain because if you understand how these exercises could potentially help you activate parts of the brain that are then going to activate specific muscles that you're trying to target to help alleviate pain, that's when this becomes really super powerful.

Okay, got it. Now, related to the vagus nerve, I noticed on your website you also have this thing that you put in your mouth that vibrates. What's that doing?

So, that is a vagal activator is what we called it. It's basically using vibration. It's kind of like a piece of, I don't want to say plastic that you put in your mouth, it kind of has a plastic structure, it's flexible. And, it has this little part that's kind of sticking out. And, when you hit it with your finger, it creates a vibration. And, the idea is to be able to target all of the different— the muscles of your throat. So, you're really using the vibration from your teeth to have an effect on the trigeminal nerve because there is desmodental sensitivity. That information, that sensory information goes into your trigeminal nerve, but at the same time, you're having an effect effect on your entire throat. So, from the moment that you have an effect on the throat, you'll have an effect on the vagus nerve as well. So, you can kill two birds with one stone. You're calming down the trigeminal nerve. These are for the clenchers, the daily clenchers. And, at the same time, you're tapping into your vagus system, which will allow you to just feel better and relax and breathe better.

[Speaker:BEN GREENFIELD] Kind of reminds me also back to breathwork of this idea of doing vocal toning or humming or chanting or humming to kind of vibrate and shake the body during the breathwork because that seems to tone and activate the vagus nerve in the same way that gargling is another thing that can do that. But this is just a device that you put in your mouth and use your finger to just kind of flick it up and down to make that same vibrating sensation?

Yeah, exactly. I just wanted to use something that was cheap. It comes in a pack of 5, so you can have one in the car or have one at home, have one in the gym, have one in your bag, in your purse. And you kind of have the vagal activator with you at all times. And, when you feel stressed, just put it in your mouth for a couple of seconds, start vibrating it, and just relax. [Speaker:BEN GREENFIELD] Yeah.

I have a friend, Joseph Anu, who's been on the podcast before. He's amongst many other things a kettlebell instructor. And, to keep his sympathetic nervous system from being overactivated during a lot of his kettlebell work like these death marches he would do holding the kettlebell overhead or clutch to the center of the chest, he would use a popsicle stick, put a popsicle stick in his teeth and do nasal breathing with an exhale hum while doing his workouts to kind of like keep his nervous system a little bit more de-stressed while training. So I was kind of familiar with the approach but hadn't seen a device like this before. Now, the feet, in addition to the jaw, is something that you talk about. And, you know, right now I've got a, like, a spiky ball underneath my feet. I don't know if it's the one that you sent to me or not, but it's like this proprioceptive ball. And then there's also these insoles that you recommend for similar function. Talk to me about what it is that we need to think about when it comes to our feet and why that's important based on your Posture Pro system.

I like to refer to these different body parts as sensory receptors simply because they, they take information from the outside world and They bring it inside our nervous system for us to be able to assess exactly what's going on out there and make the appropriate decision in regards to movement. The foot really is a structure that has 3 things that are communicated to your nervous system. The information will either come in through the skin or through the muscles or through the joints. And, that's going to go to different parts of your brain that will create either stability or dysfunction in the body. There's also obviously a biomechanical component. If the muscles are tighter on one side in comparison to the other, then the movement of the foot and the flexion and the extension of the ankle joint is going to be compromised, and then the lower body, left side versus right side, will also be compromised. The foot really is the point of contact with the ground. It allows us to sense and interact with our environment. And, those sensory receptors in the skin are called mechanoreceptors. They send information to the brain about postural sways, if I may, about balance, about gait. So, there's some that are extremely sensitive to 1/100th millimeter of a stretch or 3 to 24 grams of pressure. And, that information is unconscious. It's going into your brain. You're not thinking about it. You're not aware of it. So, the shoes that you wear are going to affect that process And, when we use sensory stimulation like a Spikeball or therapeutic insoles, what we're doing in essence is we're targeting the same mechanoreceptors in the skin to have an effect on the parts of your brain that help you inhibit flexion and activate extension. So, by doing so, and we can actually, and we have, and we do record this on a force plate, what we can see is that by improving sensory input to the brain, what we're doing in essence is that we're diminishing, we're reducing postural oscillations. And again, this can be measured with very, very precise number with a computer that shows you the actual movement that one subject would be doing with or without the therapeutic insoles. So, from the moment that you decrease postural oscillations, you're basically wasting less energy standing upright. Upright posture, again, is something that we take for granted. When we're born, we're born into flexion and we have to develop or learn how to develop a way to inhibit flexion and activate extension. That's why when you see someone who has kind of like a flexor dominant type of posture, and you'll see that often with Parkinson's Parkinson's disease, they tend to go forward because the nervous system, those parts of the nervous system are being affected and the brain is no longer able to inhibit that flexion and activate extension. So, doing foot drills is an awesome way. The shoes that you wear, obviously, I mean, we need to wear shoes, especially here in Montreal where it's really cold. But, the shoes that we wear can affect those mechanoreceptors. Again, remember, they're super sensitive. 1/100th millimeter of a stretch, that's crazy, that's like nothing at all, and they're already firing to your nervous system. So, using proprioceptive drills or even using the therapeutic insoles in your shoes to kind of create that stimulation constantly is a great way to start reversing the imbalances that we may have acquired over time.

Ben Greenfield: I didn't realize this, but when I first got the insoles, they seemed pretty similar to a lot of insoles that I've gotten in the past. Typically, you take the cheapo ones out of your shoes and you go grab, I don't know, Walgreens or CVS or whatever have the nicer insoles that are meant to control pronation or supination or provide you with a little bit more of a comfortable ride. But, these therapeutic insoles that you have, they have a built-in disc inside them. I think you call it a resonator. What exactly is that doing?

We're basically using two different types of metal. It's not electric, but we are using two different types of metals and shapes to create a frequency. The body is frequency. So, it is a language that the body understands. And specifically, what we're using is a 90-hertz frequency, and we are achieving this with the metals and with the shape of the metal and with upright posture. So, when you you put them in your shoes and you start to walk, that's going to create a frequency that ranges roughly around 90 Hz. Why 90 Hz? Because studies have shown that when you use a 90 Hz frequency towards the midfoot, so where your arch would be, then individuals tend to activate, again, that part of the brain that I was referring to that will inhibit flexion and activate extension. The 90 Hz is is kind of like the gold standard to get the maximum activation that you're going to want to get from the nervous system in order to be able to fight gravity efficiently. And, what you'll see really in practice, and I have tons of pictures of this, are people that are just kind of like they're growing, they're getting taller, but they're not actually getting taller. It's just that they're inhibiting flexion and their back muscles are now really taut and firing in the nervous system and they're boop, Some of them are gaining inches or fingers and look much, much taller and straighter. So, we do use frequency, but we also use wedges. We'll never see our insoles go over 3 millimeters because we know, again, from published studies that anything that's above 3 millimeters will create kind of like that reverse myotactic reflex. Instead of activating, it will inhibit. And, if you don't use it, you lose it. So, we want to use the concept of we want to activate the nervous system as much as possible for as long as possible so that we can get the greatest response.

Okay. So, the insoles, those can be used in any shoe and you can wear socks with them, right?

You can. Specifically with the therapeutic insoles, the frequency, it doesn't even have to touch your skin. I'm just going to mention that because the frequency is the one that has this criteria, which means that they work even when you're sitting down. Whereas the other models that we have, you actually have to be weight-bearing. But, with the frequency specifically, they work at 15 centimeters, what is that, 6 or 7 inches from your skin. So, those mechanoreceptors are picking up on that frequency up to 6 to 7 inches from your skin.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. And then, for the ones that are for low back support, have you simply just changed the angles using wedges or thicker material or something like that?

Yeah, correct. So, we're basically using the 3-millimeter wedges. And depending on where it's located, we're actually fooling your nervous system. For example, for the lower back insoles, when you put them under your foot, it gives the nervous system and the vestibular system the impression that you're moving forward. So, if you feel that you're moving forward, what you'll do unconsciously is you'll activate your back muscles and pull yourself back. So, we can use different wedges in different areas of the foot to induce the desired postural responses that we're looking to achieve clinically.

This kind of reminds me of how my brothers and I used to walk down our driveway when I grew up in Lewiston, Idaho, about a quarter-mile-long driveway to either get the mail or drag the large-wheeled garbage cans down for garbage pickup day. And, we almost always went barefoot and the entire driveway was gravel. So, I grew up just basically walking on this proprioceptive stimuli of gravel. And still, both me and my sons, we go just about everywhere barefoot outside in our yard constantly getting that proprioceptive stimulus. So, I would assume that folks who do a lot of barefoot walking or spend time outdoors unshod on surfaces that have proprioceptive stimuli such as gravel would just naturally have a little bit better posture. Yeah?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the sooner you start, the better. It's all about implementing those different protocols in the early stages of life. I think that your sons are lucky to have someone like you that is so aware of how important it is to to work on that foot proprioception. Unfortunately, not everybody's aware of this and it does create problems or it can create problems in the long run. It's about developing coping mechanisms. At some point, our children have to go to school and unfortunately in school, they have to wear shoes. And unfortunately, the shoes that we have or that are offered to us in most stores are shoes that are going to modify the gait. A baby, a child foot is flat up to the age of 3, even 5 years old. There is kind of like this layer of fat on the sole of the foot and the foot will start and the arch will start to form through movement and sensory stimulation. So, the longer we walk barefoot, the better it's going to be to develop our postural chain, our posture, the way that we learn how to walk and gravity and all of the stuff that's necessary in order for us to waste the least amount of energy while we're standing upright.

Have you noticed differences in athletes who might actually use these type of insoles for game day or for training in terms of their actual power output or performance? Like, have you studied this at all?

Yeah. So, absolutely. So, we noticed that there was a lack of ankle injuries with basketball for an entire season. So, not one single ankle injury in a basketball season with the therapeutic insoles. One of the things I wanted to continue Charles' work and I worked with the state police in Massachusetts. And, one of the things that they were really interested about as far as longevity is concerned is if we can improve with the insoles specifically strength obviously which is a big one, blood pressure, and shooting accuracy. And we did testing with 13 officers ranging from the younger being 30 up to 60 years old and anywhere in between. We measured the differences with the force plate pre and post, and what we found is almost all of them improved up to a certain extent as far as blood pressure, as far as shooting accuracy. And this is with a gun in a specific room that they call the the mile of the room and with their strength output. So, the foot could have major implications on blood pressure. I mean, that's just something that's huge, but it has major implications on everything really because what we're doing is we're having an effect on, again, on how well we are managing and fighting gravity. The less postural oscillations we have, the more energy we have for everything else.

[Speaker:BEN GREENFIELD] Yeah, you remind me a little bit of a biomechanist I know named Katy Bowman who I'm going to have on the podcast soon, and she even has a section section in one of her books. I was actually reading it last week where she even tackled things like menstruation pain and period issues through calf and footwork and found that by switching to minimalist shoes and doing a lot of calf and particularly proprioceptive work on the bottom of the foot, it somehow changed her level of anxiety and possibly endocrine function for certain times of the month, which is just fascinating how many links there are between the feet and the rest of the system of the body. Now, I mentioned the fact that right now while we're talking, and this is just for about every podcast, I have this little textured mat underneath my feet. I have a grounding mat. It's actually kind of funny. There's a long stake going out from this mat that's planted out in my backyard. So, I'm kind of grounded the whole time I'm indoors in my office at my standing workstation, but the grounding mat is on top of one of these Topo mats with all sorts of little surfaces on it. And, there's even a ball right in the middle of the mat that I can roll on. I forget the brand of this thing, but I mean you can find them all over Amazon. And then, of course, you also have this spiky ball that you sell on your site. And, I have a spiky ball too. It's underneath my left foot right now. I think a lot of people are aware of these balls that you can get for a variety of different biomechanical treatments. I think Kelly Starrett, the author of "Becoming a Supple Leopard," probably made a lot of this stuff pretty popular. But, it's one thing to own it and another thing to know how to use it. How do you actually recommend using these type of spiky balls on the feet? Are you just rolling it up and down or are you stopping and putting pressure on certain points? What's the ideal way to use these things?

Yeah. So, the way that I do it is I don't actually use specific points, I kind of rub the entire foot. And the reason being that the toes, the metatarsals, the heel, the midfoot, the side, inside the arch, all of those different areas of the foot do target specific sensory receptors. So, they'll either target the fast twitch, the slow twitch, the type 1, the type 2. I want to target them all. I want to have an effect on everything so that I can to be as stable as possible. So, I'll do it 3 times a day. I'll wake up my feet in the morning. I do this with my kids to help encourage them when they were younger and I still do it now. And, before sporting activities for sure and afternoon and around suppertime along with the eye exercises. These are actual things that I do in my daily routine. And, even when I travel, they're spectacular for fighting or combating jet lag when you are in that stressful state of not being home. So, really simple tasks. You don't have to do it for very, very long because it's highly efficient, but it is something that I do repetitively on a daily basis.

Ben Greenfield: It's kind of funny that you talk about that with the eyes because I have these two little poker-sized cards in my fanny pack. And, I take them out and they've got 10 different drills on the card all based on divergence, convergence, saccadic training. And, I got them, and this is interesting because you talked about shooters, I got them from a shooting instructor named Mike Ox who has a book called "Dry Fire Training Essentials" because right next to my bedside, I have this little pop-up thing that I also got from Mike that allows me to do dry fire practice with with my handgun. For example, before bed, I'll just do a few rounds. I use this thing called a Mantis that I can put on the gun that allows me to know whether I'm gripping it too hard, my trigger pull time. It's got a bunch of built-in almost dry fire shooting games in it that ties to an app so I can work on my handgun skills without actually blowing through a bunch of expensive ammunition. Now, these cards came with his book and they're supposed to train your eyes to be able to do things like acquire a target faster or move from one target to the next or adjust your ability to be able to see at close distances and then long distances with rapidity. And, I noticed that on your website, you do have something called a saccade training for these saccadic movements, but how does your device work because it kind of looks like a long leaning Tower of Pisa with a bunch of dots on it? What exactly is going on with that?

Yeah. So, that's a really cool piece. So, what it does is that it promotes saccades of both eyes. So, fixating a point that's really close and really far and closer and further and closer and further and just kind of practicing that system. Remember, that's the frontal eye fields. That's going to be in the frontal lobe. There's different types of eye movements, whereas this one is really training both eyes together. But, we've also created the saccadic training, which means that you can— it kind of looks like an arrow. And, if you if you flip, you see the side where it's like the end of the arrowhead, you can actually flip it around and put it right on your nose. It would be easier to show, obviously, but there's a way to actually flip it around and now start training one eye at a time. So, you can train saccades of both eyes together and you can also train saccades of one eye at a time but in conjunction with the other eyes. You kind of separate the visual field from the left side to the right side. And, you want to see if both eyes are kind of following the target simultaneously. It's extremely powerful, again, for just going from one target to the other. And, it's something that can be done really virtually anywhere in the world if you have your saccade training in your bag. You can just pull it up and start doing these eye exercises and then your brain is going to be all that. It's like having caffeine without caffeine. [Speaker:BEN GREENFIELD] Yeah.

And, you'll also be a real ninja figuring out those 3D posters at the mall where you're supposed to find the hidden an image. As soon as I started doing all this training, I can do that and those optical illusion books a lot better. So, it's kind of crazy how you can get your eyes to be used to seeing hidden objects and adjusting to 3D scenarios. You also have this proprioceptive enhancer. Now, I think that one's for the jaw. It's like this small black object. But, what exactly is that, this angular proprioception enhancer?

[Speaker:Ben Greenfield] Yeah. So, that's kind of like a gua sha that's very lightweight.

Wait, explain to people what a gua sha is.

A gua sha is basically a device that you can use to break down adhesive tissue on your body.

Yeah. A lot of people use it for face therapy, right?

Right. Well, some people use it all over their body, but we use it for the jaw, but we also use it for the foot to help us go a little bit deeper into the fascia. But for the jaw, it's a great tool to use to release the masseter and different muscles of the jaw if one wants to kind of dig in there and be able to release their jaw. But again, with the jaw, really, it's all about the tongue. If you're able to manage daily clenching, you most likely will not have the need to massage the muscles of the jaw because they're not going to be tense. It's about the stress management.

Ben Greenfield: Are you for or against gum? I chew a lot of gum and I wonder if it keeps my jaw tense or if it has a more relaxing effect on the jaw. What do you think about gum?

It does create an effect of that constant pressure on the teeth. I love gum, don't get me wrong. I was a big gum chewer when I was in high school, but it does oversolicit your trigeminal nerve, and especially if you're doing it all day long.

Oh, yeah, especially because I use the mastic gum, which is like the Greek gum that's supposed to to increase salivation and jaw strength. But, I guess my theory was if I'm strengthening the jaw, kind of like if you're working out a muscle, it's tense during but then more relaxed afterwards assuming you're not maintaining too much tension in it subconsciously. So, my idea was kind of like chewing the gum and working out the jaw and almost exhausting the jaw during the day could help it to relax. When I'm like eating or sleeping or resting or something like that. But you think there's just like too much tension created from constant gum chewing?

Yeah, for adults, definitely. But I will say that for kids, for kids, it's great because it forces them to, to learn to control and develop their tongue posture and the swallowing patterns. So I find that that's something that's really awesome for kids. I always give gum to my kids for them to just chew. But, for adults, it's not something that I would recommend to do on a daily basis.

Isn't there even a form of therapy, I think it's called mewing, that teaches kids how to maintain correct tongue posture?

Yeah, absolutely. It's basically different types of breathing and awareness around the tongue, but it goes back to whether or not the child was breastfed, whether or not there are primitive reflexes that are still active like rooting, the rooting reflex. In children. For the rooting reflex is basically, I don't know if people know what a primitive reflex is, is a reflexive movement, an involuntary reflex that occurs involuntarily and that is inhibited by the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that I'm going to say is inactive in newborn babies. This is the reason why they can't walk. And, through sensory stimulation, through repetition, through movement, what they end up doing is they build the connections through the frontal lobe that allows them to inhibit those reflexive movements. So, what we find with kids that have malocclusions is that more often than not, there is an active rooting reflex. And chewing gum actually helps them integrate that reflex. So, the more aware a parent is, as far as primitive reflexes and that whole sensory integration, the better chances we're giving for the child to grow up as optimally as possible from a posture standpoint, of course.

And obviously, the presence of ultra-processed foods, soft baby foods, and an inability for a child to use their jaw and their teeth properly is something that I know has created a big, big problem with kids' posture and the idea of a soft jaw and teeth crowding. And the necessity for removal of wisdom teeth. That's a whole discussion for another day. But the gua sha thing you talked about, it did remind me, I have this thing called a Myobuddy. It's a massage device I discovered a long time ago. It's basically like a glorified car buffer. As a matter of fact, they're probably using a car buffer and just marking up the price and selling it as a body therapy tool. But I keep it on my bathroom counter and I can use it for digestive work, for moving my around my abs in the direction of the ascending and transverse and descending colon if I want to help out with the bowel movement, or I could use it on a sore joint. But then, I also a couple of times a week will take this thing and it just creates this massive vibrating massage. And, I do it all over my jaw, all over the occipital, and even all around the sutures on the top of the head. And, it feels amazing. And I feel like it really, really helps with jaw tension to use this vibrating tool. So I, you know, I obviously would be careful because if you, if you use vibrating or acoustic therapy too much on the jaw and the teeth, you could risk, you know, breaking something or cracking something. But just a little bit of jaw therapy here and there I think is fantastic. As a matter of fact, the other thing that I have done is when I get a massage, my massage therapist will often put pressure in certain areas right around the teeth and then have open and close my jaw. I think it's even called like jaw adjustment therapy or something like that. But I think not enough people who do deep tissue therapy or bodywork actually take it as far up as the jaw and the teeth and the masseter. And it sounds like, based on my discussion with you, that when it comes to all of the global implications for posture, it would be a good idea to pay a little bit better attention to our jaws.

Yeah, I completely agree. The jaw is It's a profession that is reserved to dentistry. So, not a lot of people are looking at the jaw because they just assume that it has to do with cavities and teeth, but it's just so much more than that. Just like the foot is muscles and joints and biomechanics, the jaw is the same except that we have the teeth, we have the actual joint, we have the tongue, we have the muscles. And, all of that together needs to work in synchronicity in order to either promote health or disease.

Annette, this is absolutely fascinating. Thanks so much for coming on and sharing this stuff with us.

Thank you so much for having me, Ben. It's been a pleasure.

Awesome. All right, folks, well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Annette— gotta do it one more time— Verpillot, signing out from bengreenfieldlife.com. Have an amazing week. Hit subscribe, leave a ranking, leave a review if you got a little extra time. It means way more than you might think. Thank you so much.