Get a Grip on Your Blood Pressure – Zona Health – #601

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You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today's cool fact of the day is that as your blood pressure rises, so do all sorts of different risks. Some new blood pressure guidelines announced at the end of 2017 just pushed half of US adults into the unhealthy range. Basically, 13080 is the new 14090. And if you don't know what that means, you're going to learn on today's show. What it means in terms of risk is that now there's 103 million people from 72 million people under the old definition of high blood pressure that need to make some changes in their diet and exercise, look into devices or anything else they can do to lower your risk of heart attack and stroke and all the other bad things that happen when your blood pressure is too high. And these new guidelines are the first major update since 2003. And they were just announced at the American Heart Association's annual scientific sessions. And the researchers said, it's very clear that lower is better. And that came out of the Tulane University School of Public Health. And I'm gonna put a little asterisk on that. Almost everything in your body. It's not true that lower is better just because cholesterol is bad. Well, if you have cholesterol that's too low, your risk of all sorts of diseases go up just because cortisol is the stress hormone. If your cortisol is too low, you will hate your life. Did you know that insulin that's too low increases your risk of death more than high insulin? It does. So what's going on is you want your blood pressure and every other hormone level and biomarker to be in the correct zone for living a very long time and having tons of energy. So I'm going to put a little asterisk there that says it's not clear that lower is better. It's clear that lower than where most people are is better. But. But if you have low blood pressure, don't lower it anymore because your brain kind of likes oxygen. Now, in my master's degree in foreshadowing that I've been working on here in the show, you probably have guessed that we'll be talking about blood pressure, but you probably haven't guessed we're going to be talking about something that has nothing to do with what you eat or how you exercise or even medication. So if that has piqued your interest, what's left? You might ask yourself well, what's left is technology that you might be able to use that changes your blood pressure and improves it. This is something that if you're a longtime listener or you've been following the blog for many years, the very early days I talked about this technology and I just haven't really talked about it much since then. It's called Zona plus. And this is just a really cool tech because instead of using drugs, instead of going out and making lifestyle changes that you probably really should make anyway, what they're doing is they're using data and real time feedback in order to teach your body to control its own blood pressure in a way that's really profoundly effective very quickly with tons of science behind it. So the guest on the show today is Mark Young, the CEO of Zona Health. And Mark is aactually. His background is in clinical psychology and he's worked with a variety of medical tech companies and in education for a long time. And he's really passionate and motivated about showing people, hey, here's what a small amount of training of your blood vessels can do for you. Mark, welcome to the show.

I appreciate that, Dave.

All right, give me the lowdown. Given that you're working with this new technology. What exactly is hypertension? What's going on with it? Just for people listening, going, yeah, I never thought about my blood pressure too much. What's the deal with it?

Yeah, well, I appreciate the intro that you gave because you talked about the statistics of the number of Americans that are suffering with high blood pressure. And we make the claim on our website that one out of three Americans, and statistically that's accurate and that includes most countries. In fact, it's not that America is specific.

We should have good data.

It's good data. I like your research, but the reality is that one out of three people are dealing with it. And of the one out of three, they say that one out of five people don't even know they have it. So a lot of people are oblivious to the fact that they even have high blood pressure problems. And as you alluded to the most recent update by the American Heart association, ask the average person what their ideal blood pressure is and they come back and say 120 over 80. Right. That's been the number that we all grew up knowing was the perfect blood pressure. American Heart association recently came out and said, no, actually it's better at 110 over 70 and 120 over 80, which used to be the perfect score, is now actually verging on pre hypertension so people who thought they had perfect blood pressure, in fact are elevated by the current standards. And as you pointed out, now we've got a lot more people who are in risk and didn't even know it.

Can you talk about the two different numbers in the score and just kind of give people a grounding in what systolic and diastolic are?

I mean, systolic is obviously the top number of the blood pressure reading, diastolic on the bottom number. Both. I don't know how much science you want to go into on that, but.

So with blood pressure, there's two numbers. And one is when your heart beats, how much pressure is there when you're actually pushing? And the other one is how much pressure is there when you're not pushing. Right. And what's the problem with high blood pressure in general? Why should people care? If it's so what are the risks? How does it work?

Well, high blood pressure itself is obviously a problem. And what happens is it puts a strain on the heart, because imagine the case, like I always give people the example of a kink in a garden hose. You put a kink in a garden hose and all of a sudden the pressure builds up so much that it starts to force it, like a backwash, if you will. Too high a blood pressure causes all sorts of issues throughout the entire body. You know, WebMD would tell you that you're dying of everything if you looked up high blood pressure. But the idea that the heart needs to pump even harder and harder and harder weakens, leading to cardiovascular disease, leading to strokes, leading to any number of medical indications simply just based on those numbers seeming to be off.

Obviously, some of the other things that have intrigued me about this are that if you have high pressure, clearly the heart has to push harder, but you also then have an increased chance of fluids leaking out. And this is something that happens when you get puffiness in your legs, you get inflammation throughout the body, so called water weight can happen. And of course, things like an aneurysm where you have a weakening of a blood vessel. If you have more pressure in there, it's more likely to be a problem. The microtubules in your kidneys really are most at risk from high blood pressure, which a lot of people don't know. And so one in five people listening, at least the ones who haven't ever measured this probably don't know they have it. And if you go to the doctor to measure it, you probably don't know either, because a lot of people get high blood pressure from the white lab coat syndrome and just being in a doctor's office, which is usually not the place you feel relax.

You mentioned kidney failure in there. And this blood pressure has been recently linked as the number one cause of kidney failure. We don't think of that as being a concern, but it's like blood pressure is affecting so many different functions throughout the body that it's almost too extensive to list.

Now. I've put up a few videos over the years, sort of eviscerating this idea that, oh, eat less salt to lower your blood pressure. Do you have a perspective on sodium and blood pressure that you want to talk about versus the way of just training your body to do what you want it to do? Yeah.

I'll tell you that as you said before, too little is not always better. And with salt intake, certainly too much salt does lead to increased water retention, increased blood pressure. Too little salt has adverse effects as well. And it's all things in moderation. Dave, you know that.

It's about getting the right level. And it drives me nuts, because unless you're one of the 3 to 5% of people who are salt sensitive hypertensives, the amount that your blood pressure will go up from eating more sodium is within the error margin of a blood pressure cuff at the doctor's office. It's a very small effect. And so a lot of people have high blood pressure not because they have too much sodium, but because they don't have enough potassium or magnesium. It's about ratios of these. And people who have low sodium levels have a serious problem dealing with stress. In fact, if you lower your sodium, really even to the levels that are recommended today in the Recommended dietary Guidelines, it increases your heart attack risk because low sodium increases, called renin. And renin then increases your cardiac risk very dramatically. So, same thing, you gotta be in that right zone. And of course, you're named Zona, which is funny, but you just have to get it there. So for me, I was on a low sodium. It was a raw vegan thing for a long time. And you know what? I feel a lot better on 6 to 8 grams of sodium a day. And that's because it helps my body manage the stress load in my life. It keeps my blood pressure where I want it to be. And if I eat not enough salt, I actually get low blood pressure, which is annoying. And a lot of people, though, they eat extra salt, they get puffy, but they take magnesium or they do other things and they don't get puffy. So it's really, it's a complex thing. But the idea that, oh, I'm not at risk because I eat a low sodium diet, the data does not support that.

Correct.

In fact, the head of the American Society of Hypertensive. Okay, I'm misquoting the name of it.

You're talking about the American Hypertension Society.

Thank you. That's the one. This is going back a while, but he did a study of 3,000 people looking at urinary sodium excretion instead of. All the data that we look at comes from self reported salt intake. And now can you tell me how many grams of salt you had today?

Not a clue.

Yeah, neither could anyone listening to the show.

Right.

So it's just all garbage data. And they did all these things that are just not even cool with our recommendations. But at the end of this study with real data, direct quote from the lead study guy, he says, if you want to live longer, eat more salt. Okay, now, clearly there's an upper limit, but we're in there. So I just want you, if you're listening to this, to be like, okay, this isn't a conversation about salt and blood pressure, because salt isn't going to be that big of a factor in your blood pressure unless you're in that tiny 3 to 5%.

Right?

So given that 20% of people don't know they have high blood pressure and about 33% or whatever percentage have it, have it, this is a big deal. And if you look to your left and your right, you look at your mom, your dad or your kids, whatever, you know, people all around you have this. And so this is a fundamental thing. And traditionally we use medications for this, right? So you go to the doctor and they say, oh, you need to be on this medication. It has some weird side effects and it's expensive, et cetera, et cetera. What's the Zona approach?

Well, the Zona approach and you bring up the medications and my personal passion behind being involved with Zona and getting the word out to the public, to be honest with you, is it's a medication free living. And I think that speaks to most of your audience as well. It's the idea behind. There's a lot of solutions to a lot of life's ailments and better living that are not related to medication, obviously. So Zona is a. You mentioned the isometrics, I believe, earlier. And Zona is actually a. We call it an isometric exerciser. And what that means is it's a medical device that uses isometric exercise to ultimately lower blood Pressure.

I think most people don't know what isometric exercise is.

You beat me to it.

Sounds like a flavor of malt.

It's good, right? So isometrics, literally meaning ISO, meaning equal metrics, meaning measurements, means that isometric exercise is the exact opposite of what most people think of when they think of aerobic exercise. So aerobic exercise, lifting weights, you know, take heavy things, pick them up, put them back down. So isometric exercise is the idea that you're holding a muscle group and holding your body at a very static resistance level. So, like a plank, a person doing a plank is holding all of the muscles associated with holding that position in an equal measurement. So the body is not lifting anything and putting it back down. It's not turning in circles like a bicycle. It's doing none of that. And what's happening with that isometrics is it's the difference between aerobic exercise versus anaerobic. And what's happening with anaerobic exercise is it's triggering the parasympathetic nervous system. And that has multiple different outcomes for it, which is what the zona helps. What the Zona plus is doing, David, is it's actually working to help the body use its own healing properties to heal itself. The zona is not doing anything to someone. It's not doing anything other than helping you do exactly what your body's naturally programmed to do.

It's really cool how it came about. This is what got my attention years ago. When I first heard about this, I was so excited about it. And I've actually gave one to my dad, who has high blood pressure, and he uses it on a regular basis. It looks like a little joystick.

Like a Star Trek phaser.

Yeah, yeah. In fact, that's even better. Like a little phaser.

The grocery store scanner is what we hear about.

Yeah, a barcode scanner. That's the most likely descriptor for it. And the idea, though, is that fighter pilots used to pass out when they would do high G maneuvers. And the reason they pass out is blood pressure control issues. The blood drains out of their head when they're spinning their jet, and then it crashes. In fact, I lost a great uncle to a jet fighter pilot thing like that, years, I mean, before I was alive. But, you know, family lore. The point of it, though, is that we learned with pilots how to not pass out. So one of the things that they do is they wear a pressure suit, which actually compresses the body so that the blood won't go where it's not supposed to go. But then they learned this cool hack that if they squeeze the control stick really, really hard, that that pressure was allowing them to maintain their blood pressure the way they wanted to. So the Zona plus used that knowledge and that original research where they noticed, hey, some of these guys who had high blood pressure don't anymore. What's up with that? And they realized, oh, you can squeeze this little joystick like device not too hard, not too soft, just in that Goldilocks zone. Just like you don't want your cortisol too high, too low, your blood pressure too high, too low. You want your grip strength not to be as hard as you can squeeze, because you can do that with a spring. You don't want it to be too soft. And you do this for two minutes per hand twice a day, essentially eight minutes a day. What kind of results do you guys see? I mean, you have like a dozen clinical studies behind this thing now, which is why I wanted to have you back on. But like, what do people see from that?

I'm actually going to go back to your first point and I'll get back to that one. But you mentioned the story behind how Zona even came about and we get a lot of questions. Probably one of the biggest questions that we hear from people is, why have I never heard of this before? Is this brand new, is this real, so on, so forth. And it's fun that we can take the story all the way back to 1969, which is when Dr. Ronald Wiley, who is actually a well renowned, actually cardiopulmonary physiologist, who was commissioned by the U.S. air Force Force to start this research. And the reason was they wanted to test the effects of isometric exercise on G force blackout when planes were doing it. Dr. Wiley became intrigued and for decades ended up continuing this research to find out. And to your point, Dave, you talk about that sweet spot that Goldilocks, not too hot, not too cold, but just right. And the reality is that's exactly the beauty behind Zona is that you can squeeze as hard as you want, but that's not going to get you the effect. And you can, you cannot squeeze at all. And obviously that's not going to get you the effect. But Zona, speaking to your, to your second point, is that what Zona does is it actually holds your grip in exactly the same position. One of the stories we tell people is they think they can just hold something at a static rate and it's going to be okay. But the problem is, is most people, if you tell them to squeeze to their maximum pressure. If you cover up any kind of display that lets them know what pressure they're squeezing, eventually they completely let go because they get distracted.

I will say that when I use my Zona plus, if you try to watch Netflix or something, when you're doing it, it doesn't work. You actually have to look at the screen because we're talking really real time feedback.

Correct.

And the things that have changed my life the most, aside from just not eating garbage, is things like heart rate variability training, where in real time. Oh, that's what the spacing between my heartbeats look like. Oh, neurofeedback. That's what my brain waves are doing right now.

Now.

And I mean, I love my Oura ring and all, but waking up in the morning and saying, here's how I slept over the last eight hours, that's valuable data, but it doesn't allow me to correct my sleep in real time.

Correct.

And what this is, though, is it is eight minutes of concentration where you're looking at a number and it goes up a little bit, down a bit. And I also have the little grip strength, like the proper trainers that they use for, like the world grip champion stuff. And I know that my grip strength. Yeah, and like my grip strength is. I have a digital one too and it says that it's off the charts for an 18 year old. And I'm 46, so I know I have a strong grip, but it doesn't matter when I use the Zona, it's not a strength issue, it's a control issue. Like how tightly can I vary the window of it and can I do it for two minutes? I found it to be challenging, but not muscle challenging. It's like developing a skill. Yeah, it's fascinating.

It's kind of cool. And when you say that the Wiley spent, you know, literally two decades almost perfecting the calibration. And what happens is that with using a device like this, it's not the maximum grip strength that gives you the benefit, it's not the minimum grip strength that gives you the benefit. It's that sweet spot right in the middle. And it's also, it really, it really depends on the rest periods, it depends on the precision of the pressure and it depends on the intervals that you're doing it. And all three of those factors play into how effective it's going to be. Wiley spent decades trying to come up with the exact measurement. So, for instance, you mentioned two minutes of therapy. Two minutes is perfect. More than that doesn't have the effect because you need the rest in between the two minutes. Move to the other hand. You're two minutes doing that. And to your point, you're talking about the pressure of the device. It must be held at the same pressure. And you talk about biofeedback. The zone is beeping and it's giving you a visual aid to tell you, squeeze less, squeeze less, squeeze more, squeeze more. And it's counterintuitive when using the device because seldom do you use something that tells you to squeeze less, because you usually use something telling you to do more, do more. But to tell you to slow down or to grip less is counterintuitive. But it has to hold you in that exact range in order for you to get the benefit of the exercise.

So is there a correlation between controlling your blood pressure and having a good memory? No, I'm kidding.

Probably not. Kill me. But yes, actually, there is. Actually, one of the things that is being studied right now is the connection between proper blood flusher and brain oxygenation. Because many people have been diagnosed with. I don't want to get into the claiming of medical things, but people who are showing signs of dementia are in fact poorly oxygenated brains.

Well, this is legit because this actually happened to a family member and it happens to huge numbers of older people who are diagnosed with Alzheimer's and senile cognitive dementia. You know what they have? They have medication for high blood pressure that pushed their blood pressure too low so there's no oxygen in their brain.

Correct.

And Daniel Amen's been on the show a couple times. He looks at blood flow, hemodynamics, they call it, in the brain. And even though I recovered my brain from all the toxic mold stuff that I had going on, it was actually chemically induced brain damage. I still have lower blood flow in the brain than average, but I have none of the damage remaining from that. So I do things to make sure my blood pressure is high enough because I don't have high blood pressure problems at all. And I do track it, I measure it. And it's really fascinating that if we took all these people who are over medicated and don't have enough blood pressure and said, hey, let's get you off the medication. Let's train you on how to control your own blood pressure. Do this biofeedback for a while so that you learn how to do this, you won't need medication, but you'll have enough blood pressure that your body can regulate it the way you're supposed to. And then it's like your brain just wakes up.

Yeah. Well, one of the things that the you talk about the juxtaposition between using a medical device like a Zona as opposed to using blood pressure medication. Blood pressure medication in no way helps your body regulate itself. Blood pressure medication is doing the regulation itself. It's actually doing it. It's forcing the number lower, which means too much blood pressure medication can actually put you into even, even more dangerous territory than the blood pressure that you started the medication to treat using something like the Zona. Plus, your body's not naturally going to push itself too low. And what Zona's doing is it's training your body to get itself to a standard so that it knows how to regulate itself. We get people who ask, you know, regularly, what are the side effects? Is there, is there a side effect to using it? Can it be dangerous to use it? And the real only side effect that we have ever been able to determine, which is in fact not a side effect at all, is people who are currently taking blood pressure medication and then they decide to use the device to get a more natural solution to get away from pharmacology. They use the device, they don't adjust their blood pressure medication or they use it without their physician's knowledge. And the problem is they end up because their body is, I'll use the word healing, they don't need the blood pressure medication anymore, but they're still taking it potentially at levels that are now dangerous. So people using the device who are on medication should keep that regulated. They should make sure that they're taking their blood pressure regularly and consulting their physician, because they will likely have to stop or reduce the amount of medication they're taking.

Now, this isn't a infomercial kind of thing, but I'm sure people who are looking, listening to this right now are saying, alright, what does this thing cost? We're talking a few hundred bucks. I don't actually remember what the cost is.

Yeah, the cost of the device is $599 as available on our website.

No prescription required.

No prescription required. It's available to the consumer and we actually have a 90 day money back guarantee. Not to sound like an infomercial, but I say that because in all of our clinical studies, the device actually was effective for over 90% of the people who used it.

I have recommended this dozens and dozens and dozens of times to friends and people consulting with you about their health. It's people I run into. I'm like, you know what, if you've been Battling this blood pressure problem. This is going to cost less than medication for a year for sure. And that 90% number is in the studies that you shared with me before the show. It's a real thing. Does it fully solve it or does it just help with 90% of people?

It depends on the person, like anybody. Again, the device is not solving a problem. The device is training your body to solve its own problem.

Okay?

And in so doing, As I said, 90% effectiveness of people getting that reduction that they need. Some people are completely medication free, some people go right back into normal ranges, but the device itself is going to definitely increase reduction. A statistic that you may find interesting, Dave, is, you know, the biggest thing for most people's health is diet and exercise, right? It's not a secret. Most people feel like they're, you know, whatever's happening. And for a lot of conditions, diet and exercise fixes things. Giving you an example, doing aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise, which is, you know, you're bicycling, you're running, you're doing something like that. It's the first line of defense that most doctors will give somebody to, you know, you've been diagnosed with high blood pressure, feels like a death sentence. Cut salt out, as you said, and you know, start going to the gym more. That will probably change your blood pressure if you're doing it regularly by about 5%.

Oops, not enough.

5% reduction. So if you're at a 140, a 5% reduction, you're probably now somewhere around like a 133, 132, you're still in the danger zone. You pulled yourself down, but not clearly enough to make that big of a difference. That's not a lifestyle difference. Doing anaerobic exercise, as we mentioned that the Zona, if you just gripped something at maximum strength or just, you know, did a squat, went halfway down and held it, planks, so on, so forth. Probably a 2 to 3% change in blood pressure reduction using the Zona because of the exact prescription, again Wiley's beautiful science, that exact prescription, actually we find that most people using it in about can be as little as four, but can be as high as eight. So somewhere in that six week sweet spot average, they notice an average of 10 to 15% reduction. It's incredible.

So that's more than diet and exercise? About three times more.

Potentially two to three times.

Two to three times more than diet and exercise. What do blood pressure medications do?

Blood pressure medications can take it down further. The problem is, again, as you mentioned earlier, you're setting up all these questions here. With diet and exercise you can take it down, that 5% medication can take it down even further. The problem is now you're living on synthetic medication that comes with it. Often the side effects worse than the blood pressure itself. And that's what we deal with all the time, is people who are on blood pressure medication and can't stand being on it because it's chronic cough, it's dry mouth, it's dizziness, it's all of the other things that are coming along with the blood pressure medication. And for some elderly people, it's often just the fear of leaving the house without it.

Do you have a price on your head from any big pharmaceutical companies for.

A year's worth of blood pressure medication?

No, just a price on your head. These guys are selling a device that could potentially disrupt a multibillion dollar market for drugs that people have to take for the rest of their lives. Do you sleep with a handgun under your bed and a tinfoil hat or anything like that? Are you worried? Are there black helicopters following?

You misunderstood that question. I'm listening to the question is did you have a price in your head? I'm like, why are you buying the company? Got it. Say that again.

The deal is, are you worried? I mean like seriously, anytime a device company comes along and you're FDA cleared and all that sort of stuff, it's a real medical device. But even so, you're going up against the multi billion dollar pharmaceutical giants in one of their sweet spot cash cow things like oh yeah, we've got some huge percentage of the population on blood pressure medications that don't work very well because half the population still doesn't have their blood pressure controlled. And you're saying I have this buy it once and last I checked anyway, it's been a couple years since I looked. There's no subscription, like monthly cloud based fee or anything. You buy the thing and you use it as long as you want forever. And it's all just included, right?

It is.

Okay, good deal. So that's not the monthly subscription. Go to the pharmacy, you know, flow through your insurance company, all that kind of stuff? Yeah, I mean, are they just pissed at you?

It is a high blood pressure. $46.8 billion a year is what high blood pressure costs Americans alone. Not talking worldwide, just the US $46.8 billion is considered the cost of high blood pressure. And that's co pays on medications, that's missed days at work, that's strokes, that's heart Attacks and so on. Is there a price on my head? No one's actually showed me a wanted poster yet. But I can't imagine that there will be pharmaceutical companies not happy with this. To that point, I will say that Zona has recently. And you know this, you've been affiliated with the company for years. You've known about us. We've been on your show before. Yeah.

And just full disclosure there, I used to carry in the very, very early days of bulletproof, back when it was called upgraded Self on the website, I used to carry Zona. I'm like, this is one of those pieces of biohacking gear no one's ever heard of that's, you know, based on jet fighter pilot, medical stuff. Like, it's just cool. And I don't think we carry it anymore.

No, I remember.

Yeah, but it's, it's still, it's just, it's a cool thing. So that, that's the level of affiliation we're talking about. Yeah, but other than that, we say affiliation like there's no other commercial stuff going on.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I just meant you. You obviously know the company. You've known the brand for a long time. The. But we've actually really forced mainstream as of last year. And I'm super excited about it. And then Zona's been like this off the radar science that no one's, you know, quote unquote heard of. And then all of a sudden we've really taken the. Taken the juices and gone full strength. We started actually advertising national television last year. I'm sure you've seen that around. Full disclosure, we're all over the place. We've got tons of physician backgrounds. In fact, we just had an endorsement by Dr. Phil recently.

Beautiful.

Who got involved, which was fun. And Phil learned about us because Travis Stork, who is actually the host of the TV show the Doctors. I'm sure you've heard of the Doctors before, worldwide syndication. On that show. Travis Stork, who's the host there, he's actually the face of our brand. He's our spokesperson for the brand. So you're talking some pretty big names willing to put themselves out there to promote this type of science because their goal is that they want their patients, they want people in general to live healthier lives, to live longer lives. And that's not a medication ridden life.

It's hard for people to really understand what it takes for someone like Travis Stork or Dr. Phil to be able to step up to do this. I Mean, I've been on a few shows like that, even on Dr. Oz. I interviewed Dr. Oz on Bulletproof Radio about the incredibly high standard that's required for any doctor, but specifically someone who's on tv to be able to stand up and endorse something. How people actually misuse doctors names and all that. But you actually have a fully legal, vetted, signed, sealed, delivered, proper agreement in place, which means that it's subject to a level of scrutiny that most people would not even believe.

Well, and doctors like that because they're in the public light. It's not some doctor at a clinic down the road who's willing to recommend it. I mean, these are people that have their careers potentially at stake for making these types of things. And it's like, not that there's any legal implication behind it, but you're talking about. I remember talking with Travis initially when we first went through getting him to be a spokesperson for the product. He went through this with a fine tooth comb because his name was going on nothing that had not already been vetted. And went through the research, read all of the studies himself. In fact, his mom has high blood pressure and the first thing we did was sent a unit to his mom and he waited the entire period just to see if it had impact on his mom before he was willing to do anything. And it's like for him, the idea that here's a doctor whose mother suffers with a condition and he could prescribe her anything he wanted by writing the prescription himself and he sends her a medical device to try to find a solution. To me, he was our kind of people.

It's exactly what I did. I sent it to my dad and I definitely will talk about things and say, I don't know if this works, but, but generally, if I'm going to put something on the website, I want to have a good degree of rigor there. So I read all the studies and said this is based on fundamental real science and observed effects. Someone did the work. And it's amazing because a lot of the stuff that we do at Upgrade Labs, I'm pretty sure we have this at Upgrade Labs at retail. And if you're listening to this, Upgrade Labs is a company that I spun out of Bulletproof, that has this experience. You go in LA today, the Beverly Hilton and in Santa Monica, and we have a whole variety of devices that are based on this idea that you can have more control of your own biology. And we have the Zona plus there because I wanted people to understand you can get two and a half hours worth of cardio in about 21 minutes. If the pressure, the timing, the speed, the cadence, the recovery are all carefully designed based on data to give you much bigger results. And this is exactly the same line of thinking.

Exactly the same.

And it's hugely disruptive, though. The thing that gives me the most pleasure is disrupting things like breaking big dumb things. When I hear that there's tens of billions of dollars getting poured away on blood pressure medication, and there is a use for blood pressure medication for some people, no problems, but it's just way over prescribed, even the latest numbers. I open the show with about this new low number. Part of me wonders, is that real or is that a marketing ploy to sell more drugs? Because they did that with cholesterol numbers a while back, they keep lowering the safe upper limit for cholesterol, even though probably two dozen people have been on the show have gone through hard science as well as in two of my books saying total cholesterol is not a useful number. Inflammation is a useful number. All right, let's talk a little bit more about what happens when you do this type of training of your vascular system. One of the things that a lot of more experienced biohackers or the doctors who listen to the show will know about is nitric oxide. And this is a signaling molecule that we really didn't know mattered very much until recently. And it has to do with vasodilation. Does training your vascular system with biofeedback the way Zona does, does it have any effect on your nitric oxide levels?

I love that the nitric oxide levels. Interestingly enough, people take supplements nonstop to try to increase nitric oxide levels.

Beet is the most common one, right?

I mean, personally, I take pycnogenol and L arginine and other stuff, but everything that you're taking for that is actually triggering the production of nitric oxide. It's not actually delivering nitric oxide to your body using the Zona to use that isometric exercise. I know I use that phrase a lot. The isometric exercise found in the Zona is actually triggers the production of nitric oxide levels even beyond what supplements and stuff do. Nitric oxide is linked to so many different benefits in the body when it's at higher levels. Obviously people want this elevated. And it's everything from workout recovery. It is actually helps. And again, I'll say them. I'm speaking to the claims of nitric oxide, not Zona, but actually helps reverse symptoms of diabetes. It actually lowers blood pressure, decreases Overall body pain. It's ridiculous what nitric oxide overcomes. One of the things that's really fun about one of the claims that we don't make about Zona, but I would love to, but no clinical studies are there. Zona increases nitric oxide production. Nitric oxide production actually has the ability to cure erectile dysfunction. It actually has the ability to stop migraine headaches.

Hey, you know, it's not a medical claim. Morning wood.

Morning wood. There you go. Zona can create morning wood.

There you go.

Regulate that. There you go. Put that on an FDA clearance.

No, but what I'm saying to not be too crass about things is that when you do things to increase nitric oxide, whether it's supplements, whether it's exercise, all the things that do that, and when I say increase it, you can measure it with saliva on a little saliva test strip for nitric oxide. So this is a real data point when you do that, when you wake up in the morning and you're a guy, you wake up more like a teenager and less like an older person. And that's pretty darn predictable. I said that without being too crass.

That's good. That's good.

By the way, if you guys are looking for crass, just listen to my episode about Gainswave. Because sometimes you just have to talk about your junk in some certain way.

Amazing. To quote one of our board members, I want to make the claim Zona makes your woody Woodier. That was our research proposition.

Well, you could do clinical trials on if it increases nitric oxide. What about for women though? What effect does it have on women?

All of the exact same issues. Because you're talking about nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator. So it increases blood flow. So any place you want blood flow to be positive, obviously that's going to affect.

That's a vascular health issue at the end.

It's vascular health. But I'm going to add to that and say that the nitric oxide levels increase vasodilation, which increases. Obviously blood flow is non restricted in an environment of vasodilation, but it also acts like a muscle relaxer in that area as well. So not only is the veins opening wider, particularly resistance vessels which haven't been given a lot of credibility in, or not credibility, but a lot of notoriety, if you will, in medical research. And we're now finding that even that's a big deal. It's not just the veins, not just the arteries, but it's actually the resistance vessels that connect them together are are even more important. But nevertheless, it's not just blood flow. It's also letting the muscle relax around the blood flow. So it's kind of like a double whammy in there. Less muscle constriction.

What else happens with nitric oxide? So there's sexual side effects. There's more pump. Like if you're exercising, you're going to see your veins pump out, you're going to get better blood flow in the muscles. What else does the research you've seen suggests nitric oxide can do? Not necessarily Zona. Even though you may influence nitric oxide, you're not claiming that those effects are yours until there are clinical trials. But what other things do nitric oxide do that might be useful?

My recommendation is a quick web search would find all of that for you, because every site says something different. The reality is that nitric oxide, as I said, it's obviously muscle pump. It's obviously vasodilation which leads to cardiovascular vascular health. It's, as I mentioned, the upset and reversal of symptoms of diabetes. It's any number of things related to that. My favorite one, as I was saying, is that increased vasodilation and decreased muscle constriction actually resolves migraines. That's actually a proven effect, which is absolutely amazing to me that there's something that you can do to interrupt migraines. Now, of course, we don't make that claim because we don't have the clinical study to support it, but all of the evidence that we have in our clinical studies actually leads to the same place.

Very interesting. So for people who suffer from migraines or have loved ones who do, they pretty much know that it has to do with changes in blood flow in the brain that's triggering it. So. So it would follow that if you could train your blood, basically your blood vessel system, your circulation system. Yeah. To be more tightly controlled, maybe it would have an effect. Could be worse, could be better. But certainly it's a plausible hypothesis until it's tested. All right, I like that thought. And I do know people whose migraines are made worse by increases in nitric oxide as well as better. And that's probably because they have too much blood flow, because it's not regulated well. So in that case, if, probably if they had sustained increases, they'd be fine. But I think that's a really interesting aspect there. What about just cognitive fitness in general? Is my brain going to work better if I have better control of my circulatory system?

Well, I think we were Talking earlier about people who have actually been misdiagnosed with early onset dementia and stuff like that, and the overregulation of blood pressure medication. People who are on too much blood pressure medication are getting. Getting side effects from it. And one of the side effects is memory loss. One of the side effects is just a decreased cognitive ability. And when we end up in a situation where we're able to get people off of those types of medications, you notice that people are being, say the personality is almost restored. People are coming back to life in some ways, not literally coming back to life, but the fact is that the cognitive function has been restored where it hasn't been in a long time. Increased nitric oxide, as you're well aware, being a bulletproof guy increases brain operation. You end up with higher cognitive functioning simply because it increased nitric oxide levels in the brain. It almost becomes a rabbit trail of conversations when you're talking about the benefits of this type of thing.

Do you notice anything happen? You mentioned that you take L arginine, which is an amino acid that increases vasodilation and nitric oxide, and you take Pycnogenol, which is an extract of basically pine bark that also can increase nitric oxide levels. In fact, I think we have Pycnogenol in one of the bulletproof formulas. But at least either it made it in the final list or it didn't. But I put it on the first list anyway.

It was a contender.

Yeah, it was a contender if it didn't make it in the final one. So these are useful, well studied supplements. You take those personally. Do you notice an additive difference whether or not you've done trials, just like personally. So if you're doing training of your vascular system and then you add things that improve vascular health, is there a synergistic effect or would you predict one?

Yeah, if I get off of doing supplements, let's say I travel and I don't take them with me, I will notice brain fog by the time I return home.

Even if you're training your Zona plus along the way?

If I'm using the Zona? No, because the same thing. But bear in mind, I will say Zona has effects, as I mentioned earlier, that four to eight week window. So taking a supplement is going to have a relatively rapid effect. Using the Zona takes a little bit of time because you need to. You're building your health. It's like jumping on a treadmill once and expecting to lose weight. Not the case. It needs the buildup of that and using the Zona is much the same way. So all of the effects, the lowered blood pressure, the increased nitric oxide levels, all of that stuff does come over time. The good news is because all of those effects are long lasting. So you take that and when you don't take it for, you know, say you don't use the Zona, you go out of town and you don't take it with you, your blood pressure is not going to spike while you're out of town because your body's already been retrained. So if you don't jump on the treadmill this afternoon, you're not going to gain 10 pounds over time. You're going to end up going back to that same, you know, entropic state that your body was in before you started using it. But nevertheless, it's not an overnight solution, nor is it an overnight detriment if you don't.

Okay, so it's a slow response curve. You said use it for six to eight weeks. Do people stop after that or do they see the results in their blood pressure? If they're going to see results. But then how often do you have to retrain or how often do you continue using it?

So again, I'll use the treadmill example and say that that's probably the most common one that I use, and that is, is if you're on a treadmill six to eight weeks, you start noticing a change in your body. And it's not the same change that you'll notice with Zona, but you try to lose weight, great. You go out, you exercise six to eight weeks, you start noticing that your endurance levels are up, you start noticing that, much like that same treadmill, if you stepped off of it, you don't fall out of shape tomorrow. But if you stopped using it for the next six months, you're going to notice physiological deterioration. Same thing with the Zona. So you're going to use it for that four to eight weeks until you get your real initial big push. That 10 to 15% reduction is usually that. I'll say four weeks is the earliest that we normally find. Eight weeks is the very latest. So that six week window is usually the sweet spot. People are going to see that reduction and sometimes it literally happens overnight. Dave, it's the craziest thing. Like people can use it for four weeks, five weeks, they call us, they say, I'm just not noticing the results. And we beg them, stick with it. Like, we'll extend your money back guarantee, period, so that you feel better about using it. For another two weeks and we'll get a return phone call saying, oh my gosh, my blood pressure literally just dropped 20 points last week. Like, I'm back in the normal zone. And it just happens overnight like that, because the body makes the change. And again, I use weight loss as an example because a lot of people can, can relate to that. And it's like, it's like hitting that plateau and you can't lose a pound no matter what you do. And then all of a sudden, you lose three pounds one morning when you jump on the scale. It's that same kind of feeling when you notice that reduction go down. But much like that treadmill, you're not going to stop using the Zona. So throughout your entire life, using the Zona as a. As a, I'll say a supplement to a healthy life over time, don't stop using it.

If it takes about eight minutes a day to do this, I'm assuming that I already know because it has different user levels, but multiple people can share one of these in a household or something like that.

It's 12 minutes per day. Along with the device. The device actually stores all of the data for two users. And the same thing goes. We actually have a website where people can actually plug the device into their computer and via usb, it actually uploads all of their results. So two users can use the device, two users can use the website portal. It's fantastic for people that are going to their doctor and showing their doctor the results and they're tracking all their numbers. But knowing your numbers is the first issue for most people to overcome. It's figure out what they are and now start tracking. Because what gets measured gets accomplished.

All right, so that basically cuts the cost in half. And if you were to share it with more than two people, which you're probably not supposed to do, it would be even less. So I think this falls within the realm of affordable biohacking technology. I'm just looking at how would you make this happen in millions of households?

Oh, my gosh. Just the idea that blood pressure medications themselves average $1,100 a year.

Oh, okay. So you're doing all right.

Yeah. Someone taking blood pressure. One person taking blood pressure medications spends on average $1,100 per year just paying for the medication.

Unbelievable.

And that's co. Pays with insurance and everything. $1,100 versus a one time purchase, and the $1,100 never comes back.

All right, I've got one more question for you. And this has to do with my New book on anti aging that I just finished the draft of that's coming out in a little while. It's how long? Given that you have your Zona plus, you're hacking your blood pressure, you take supplements, you're clearly a healthy guy, you're in shape. How long you think you're going to live?

Personally, I'm shooting for 120. 120. And I laugh because when I turned 40 years old, you know, people say, ooh, what's it feel like being 40? And I would say, it's just weird to think that a third of my life is over already.

Nice.

And I would get some, you know, some math challenged people would actually take a while to get that. But yeah, personally, I see no reason why people can't be living well beyond what people expect life expectancy to be. But you know that better than anybody, right?

Yeah. I told people that 45 was my 25th percent birthday.

That's amazing.

And like you said, you get some pushback, it's okay to push back. Because something is going to happen. One of them is that you'll die before me and I won't make it to 180 and that's okay. Or you'll die before me and I'll make it to 180 and that's okay too, because you're not taking care of yourself. Like, maybe we could talk about, let's do what we can to feel really good right now and live a long time, and then we'll both live as long as we're going to. That seems like good table stakes, but people don't believe that's possible.

I'll drink to that, Dave.

There you go. All right. What is the website for your magic device?

The magic device. I like that. Well, we're easily found@Zona.com Dave, and that's for here in the United States. Because we're here in the US right now. But I know you're a resident in Canada. Canadian listeners can find us at zonahealth ca and on either of those sites, our team has actually put together a coupon code for any of your listeners. You talk about the affordability factor. And although we've already proven that it's a affordable biohack, anyone using coupon code Dave immediately gets a $75 coupon. Anyways, so 75 bucks off the price of the price unit zona.com, coupon code.

Dave saves you $75.

True enough.

Which is a nice give for listeners. Thank you for that.

Oh, sure.

And this is really good science. I looked at the dozen research pieces that exist around this that we talked about ahead of the show, and I think if you're listening to this, you have high blood pressure. Talk to your doctor. But this is a cool device and it's one that gives you a little bit more control without needing any chemicals at all. So I think this totally meets the bar as an epic and amazing biohack. Plus, it came out of the Air Force. How cool is that?

It's really cool. Yeah. The other cool thing too, Dave, is, as we mentioned earlier, is someone wants to try it, Try it. And we talked about so many different things that it.

90 day money back guarantee.

We've got a 90 day money back guarantee. And what's the sad part? I'll tell you, this is the saddest thing. When we get returns back, I see a box come down our hallway and it just makes me cringe because the majority of the returns that come to us are people who never even tried it. It's still shrink wrapping because the device actually keeps track of all the usage. So when return comes back, we go look. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like, the people who are returning it are the people who didn't even try it. They got it and decided they just, you know, buyer's remorse or whatever set in.

It's like it comes out.

What do you have to lose?

Like Zona plus jelly donut. Zona plus jelly donut. You know, some people are going to choose the jelly donut. They really are.

They really are.

And that's a mindset thing and an energetic thing. But if you're going to do the work well, it's eight minutes of actual work and four minutes of rest. So 12 minutes a day, 12 minutes total.

Right.

It seems like a good investment to me. So that's why I've been a supporter of this tech, this idea, this type of biohacking for, I think, going on seven years now.

It's been a long time. Yeah. Your audience is just such a perfectly primed audience for a product like this, though, to me, it's the ultimate biohack. It's absolutely crazy.

Yeah. If this is something that someone's looking to hack, I just. I fully agree. And if you have no issues with your blood pressure, this probably isn't the one for you. But so many people have this or it's in your family. So that's why I got one for my dad and it has my full endorsement here because it's real. So thanks for bringing it out, fighting the good fight and just talking about this. It is a true Disruptor.

Appreciate the time, Dave, and I'm hoping that price on my head's not accurate.

If you liked today's episode, you know what to do. Go to zona.com, use code Dave, save yourself 75 bucks. You have a 90 day money back guarantee. And consider this device for yourself if you're dealing with hacking your own blood pressure or for a family member. If not, this show is meant to give back. That's a beautiful gift that Zona is providing there for you. But mostly I just want you to have control of your biology. And high blood pressure just sucks on so many different levels. Let's stop it.