Stack Cold Thermogenesis, Blood Flow Restriction & Grounding With High Intensity Interval Training For Massive Cardiovascular & Hormonal Gains

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, the fact is that when you use Kaatsu, you're compressing the muscle well over 100 millimeters of mercury. When you're using anything that goes over 100, 150, they go as high as 250 millimeters of mercury. You're compressing peripheral venous return, you're compressing deep veins, and you're compressing some arterial flow. You're correct that, you know, they have an air controller that actually tells you, basically you can regulate, you can reduce that and you can increase it. You cannot do that with the cheap bands that you just talked about. But the fact remains that you're applying a very significant pressure that goes way beyond the venous return. What we do with Vasper is the default pressure on vasper is 65 millimeters of mercury on your legs and 40 millimeters of mercury on the arms. So what we're doing there is just applying very low peripheral venous return that is below your diastolic levels. So when you're on Vasper, your arms and legs are anaerobic, but your chest is aerobic at the same time. You cannot do that with Kaatsu or any other device that applies pressure. Pressure over 100 millimeters of mercury.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

All right, folks, well, welcome to a show that's going to be really interesting when it comes to fitness and cardiovascular fitness particularly. You've probably heard me talk in the past about how, besides walking a copious number of steps on my office treadmill, that the majority of my cardiovascular work when I'm at home is something I get by exercising for 21 minutes three times a week on this contraption. It's called a Vasper. It's a little bit hard to describe, but it combines blood flow restriction and cold thermogenesis and full body high intensity interval training into one single 21 minute workout. And you feel like you've been running for like three hours when you finish this thing. But it's low impact and the gains on it are tremendous considering the minimum effective dose of exercise approach. I did a podcast about this Vasper device several years ago with Peter Wasowski, who actually founded and developed and invented this thing. It's a really cool story about how it came to be and I'll let him tell you about this because I have him on the show today. But anyway, so I use this thing three times a week. I Remember I used to be infatuated. I should actually ask you this, Peter. Remember in the airplane magazines how at the back of the airplane magazines they would have the exercise device that promised to give you like a, like a full workout in something crazy? I think maybe four minutes. And I believe Tony Robbins promoted it for a while. Do you recall this?

I actually don't. I don't.

Okay, okay. It was shaped very similar to the Vasper. You like, sat in this chair. And from what I could tell by looking at the photos of it in the airplane magazine, you're kind of like thrashing with your arms and legs at an incredibly high pace for four minutes. And that's your workout. And so the first time I saw the Vasper, I thought it was that. And then it was, I think it was at like a health or an anti aging expo or something like that where you or your son Sebastian put me on it and I did it and was super impressed with the combination of all the different modalities that you have in it. But I just had to ask you if you had come up with that idea by reading about a contraption in an airplane magazine or not. Anyways, I know you have a whole different story behind how this thing came to be, though.

I do, yeah. So basically, when I sold my previous company, most of you, or some of you may be familiar with GameReady. I'm sure you're familiar with GameReady product.

Oh, yeah. Tell people about Game Ready. Because I, I first discovered that at a physical therapy institute. Like, gosh, that must have been like 20 years ago. So I had forgotten you were involved with that company though. Tell people about Game Ready.

Yeah, so this was a device that I worked on with Bill Elkins, who actually designed the cooling part of a spacesuit for NASA. So whenever you put a astronaut inside a spacesuit, you cannot cool him with air, besides the fact that air is a temperature insulator and liquid is a temperature conductor. So the design there was to develop a piece of equipment that provided what's known as the Rice effect. So RICE stands for rest, ice, compression, elevation. And this was especially useful for professional athletes who travel. Of course, 50% of their games are usually away from home. And when they get injured away from home, let's say they have a knee injury during the game, they can walk on the airplane, but quite often they have to be carried off of the airplane because at, at altitude, at 30,000ft, the cabin is about 12,000ft. 80, 12, 12,000ft. So that injury actually gets worse because there is it's same thing like if you were shoes on the plane and when the plane reaches altitude, you want to loosen up the shoelaces because your foot is swelling up, right.

You get, you get, you get swelling, you get fluid accumulation in the joints. And I recall when I used to train and race an Ironman triathlon at the, I'd fly after the race. It was horrible in terms of the recovery implications. I tried when I could, to schedule my flight several days after the race or like hang around for a few days to recover. But you actually developed technology that allowed, did you say, for astronauts to not experience that type of pooling?

Well, astronauts is a different story. Yeah, we, we've had a seven year research agreement with NASA. We were working on developing a really functional piece of equipment that reduces exercise from two, two and a half hours down to 20 minutes for us. For somebody who's in microgravity, that's a completely different situation.

Okay.

When you're talking about game ready. So basically with game ready we had, we had a piece of equipment that treated that injury in flight, which was very critical for, especially for high performance, high earning athletes who actually were able to recover from that injury even while they're in the airplane, which has not happened before.

And what did game ready actually do? What was the device?

The device applied the Rice effect, rest, ice, compression, elevation. So it basically and was designed for joints. So if you had a knee joint injury, you would put it on and it would compress, it would fill with water that came from a, basically a container that had ice and water in it and it would pressurize basically to systolic pressure and then reduce the pressure and pressurize again to systolic pressure and reduce it.

So when athletes got on the plane, did they have to fill it with ice and water while they were there on the plane?

No, the device already had ice and water in it and it was powered by a battery. So all they had to do is put it on the joint and turn it on.

Okay. So if people have worn like these compression boots before, like you know, Normatec compression boots, I think is one model. I think that's the one I have. It would be like the compression boots that pump up with like gradated air compression. But in addition, the compression boots would be getting circulated with like icy cold water. That's kind of the, the idea behind it, right?

Absolutely, that's it. The cold water makes a huge difference.

Yeah. And that's also important by the way, because, you know, I'm sure you've Seen the somewhat popular phenomenon online and also in literature now that suggests that cooling might impair recovery. And one of the mechanisms of action for that would be that you get lack of blood flow to an area, you know, excessive shutdown of inflammation, et cetera. But a big factor there is the absence of compression. And when you actually look at the literature that combines compression and cold thermogenesis, you actually don't see the same questionable effect on recovery. Which is why I tell people if they're going to ice a joint, try and apply some type of compression when you do so, and preferably if you can, some type of gradated compression where it's compressing and relaxing and compressing and relaxing kind of pumping blood at the same time as it applies that cooling effect. So there is something different. There's some difference between icing a joint and combining ice with compression, which to my understanding, is why the game ready seem to work for things like recovery and injuries so effectively.

Well, that's partially true, Ben. The fact is that if you put ice on a skin and at 32 Fahrenheit, the ice basically causes vasoconstriction, where the blood vessels underneath the skin constrict, which actually limits cooling, the actual injury. And so the word cooling is a very loosely used word, and many people don't understand that you have to talk about very specific temperature gradients. So the ideal cooling is temperature that actually prevents vasoconstrictions and actually cools the blood. So your heat exchange with the blood vessels under the skin, those blood vessels, the cool blood, goes to the injured area and actually causes reduction of the inflammation and applies the proper cooling effect. You know, if you keep ice more than 20 minutes, you can actually cause nerve damage. And before those 20 minutes, if you have vasoconstriction, you're not doing very much for the injury at all.

So are you suggesting there's an actual temperature that would be ideal in terms of the temperature of the water or the cooling device that would be higher than 32 Fahrenheit?

Correct. What's the temperature on the gim ready device? It was around 54 Fahrenheit. 50 to 54 Fahrenheit. Which means that the blood vessels were not constricting. So you were actually doing proper heat exchange with the blood inside the blood vessels, and that cool blood would provide the cooling and reduction of swelling. Exactly where the joint injury is.

Okay, that's interesting also, because when you look at some of the literature that suggests that if you take an ice bath after workout, it might suppress mitochondrial biogenesis or satellite cell proliferation, and therefore restrict cardiovascular or hypertrophy adaptations to the cold. It's typically very long bouts of cold that involve, like, cold water immersion at anywhere from 33 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit for like 10 plus minutes. So the takeaway message is not necessarily to avoid cold, but to avoid excessive cold at very low temperatures for a very long period of time post workout. And it sounds like some of, some of the things that you were looking into suggested something similar, like don't get excessively cold in a workout scenario, but some amount of cold seems to be favorable.

Correct? It's very true. And there's a very specific temperature gradients that actually work.

Got it, got it. So you developed this Game Ready company and you sold it?

Yeah, we sold that to Lee Steinberg. If you've seen the movie Jerry Maguire, that was based on his life story. And so he bought the company from us. And I think it was sold more than twice since then. And the company is doing very well. They're selling, I think, over half a million, maybe even much more than that. I don't know the current numbers, but they're doing extremely well. And it's a very popular product now in professional sports. And as well as amateur sports, we also developed a similar device for treating racehorses as well. So it's called Game Ready Equine. And that's also quite popular on the racetrack.

Yeah, I would imagine people will spend anything for their racehorse. That's a very wealthy industry in terms of the amount of investment that they put into their athletes, if you want to call them that. But the. The Game Ready now, from what I understand, they've got devices for the legs, for the arms, for the core. Like, it's not just boots for the legs. Right.

Well, from the beginning, they were designed to treat the joints. So anywhere you have a joint, shoulder joint, knee joint, or any other joint, they had specific fitted devices that would fit the joint and provide very compliant pressure and cooling. And the pressure wasn't constant. It was a cyclic pressure. So it would go basically to your systolic pressure release. Go to systolic pressure release. So again, rest, ice, compression, elevation was achieved in that one device.

Okay, got it. With the elevation meaning that the joints were above the heart when you, when.

You'Re using it, not necessarily the pressure started from below the joint and was going up, which simulated elevation.

Okay, got it. That makes sense. So after you sold Game Ready, you just basically got rich and retired.

I didn't get rich as rich as I would like. But I did retire and we moved to Hawaii, to the Big island with my wife and two children. And when we moved to the tropics, the major issue was for me was dealing with the two health challenges that I had personally. One had to do with diabetes. I was pre diabetic, my grandfather died of diabetes. And second one was traumatic arthritis from two injuries to both of my ankles that developed into arthritis. So both of those issues became very symptomatic in the tropics. When we started living in tropical climate, the pain of arthritis was quite severe. So I had to be on strong pain meds. And at night when I tried to make it to the bathroom and I couldn't, I didn't have enough pain meds in me. I basically had to make it on my hands and knees. I couldn't put any weight on my feet.

Now why is that? Because I thought that arthritis seemed to be more aggravated by the cold by winter, hence that snowboard phenomenon of a lot of older people moving to warmer climates. In addition to a lot of other variables such as better golf to be able to deal with the joint pain. But you actually got more joint pain in the heat, like in the tropical climate of Kona.

Well, there's, there's many types of arthritis, so there's osteoarthritis and there's traumatic arthritis. That's a different type of arthritis that actually has to do with joints, specifically joints, and the inflammation happens in the joint space. So my first injury was when I was 15 years old. It was a motorcycle accident. At 19, I was already suffering from arthritis, which is traumatic arthritis. So basically there was one major issue and diabetes was the other one. And I was told that I would be on insulin pretty soon. Once you start taking insulin, you're sort of on a one way trip and the quality of your life does not improve past that. So I decided to design something that actually addresses the root cause rather than treat symptoms. And that's how Vasper happened.

Now, by the way, back to the diabetes thing, did you also find that your diabetic condition was aggravated by the heat or is that something different?

It was definitely by the heat and humidity.

Now the heat and humidity is interesting.

I've.

I've found when I wear a continuous blood glucose monitor that if I do something cold, whether it's the Vasper or a cold soak or a cold shower or anything else, my blood glucose stays very stabilized the rest of the day. And I've always thought this to be it kind of Makes sense a little bit intuitively in that your body is having to increase the metabolism, mobilize more free fatty acids for energy. There seems to be like a brief hyperglycemic response to cold that is due to this noradrenaline epinephrine response that then is followed by a stabilization of blood sugar. The rest of the day. Seems very, very good in terms of controlling blood sugar. This cold type of response, I've always thought that to be a little bit paradoxical, just because when you look at people in the sunshine, high vitamin D production, warm climate, more blood flow, et cetera, they seem to do better. Eating citrus fruits, taro and purple potato, a slightly higher carbohydrate intake, a lot of the type of dietary macronutrient strategies you'd see in Sub Saharan African or Southeast Asian type of diet. Yet the body seems to respond better, it seems from an acute standpoint to cold exposure. So that also seemed kind of paradoxical to me. You ever think about that? I did.

And actually what you. In tropical climates, a lot of people eat very spicy food which actually promotes sweating. So that's the natural way for the body to achieve normal temperature. Normal ideal operating temperature is through evaporative cooling. So yeah, spicy food, you sweat more, you, you achieve normal core body temperature and you're doing well.

Okay, so that makes sense. So despite the body in a hot climate tending to err towards higher blood sugar, the evaporative cooling mechanisms built into normal physiology, if physiology is working properly, would be to actually cause stabilization of blood glucose by active evaporative cooling responses.

Exactly. And each one of us has a very specific amount of blood on board which happens to be 8% of your body weight. So if you're looking at a hundred pound person, there is eight pounds of blood inside that person. And if that person is doing some type of intense exercise, significant amount of that blood goes to the surface of the skin in order to sweat. Skin is the largest organ in your body, has about six and a half million pores. So when you, when significant amount of your blood is at the skin level, you don't have enough blood at the muscle level to recover the muscle. And that's why you have sore muscles for one or two days or even longer, depending on the intensity of exercise when you do conventional exercise. So cooling and thermogenesis, the whole idea is it's very easy to study and very easy to adjusts. So that's one of the, you know, there's three scientific principles behind vasper and first one is blood flow Restriction exercise, very mild blood flow restriction exercise. Second one is temperature control, which is cooling. And the third one, which we haven't talked about, is electrical earthing or grounding.

Okay, well, I want to get back into what those technologies are, but back to your arthritis and diabetes and you being stuck in Hawaii. What exactly happened from there that led you down this road of beginning to investigate things like blood flow restriction, active cooling, grounding, et cetera?

Well, I had experience with some level of blood flow restriction before. And as far as grounding is controlled, the grounding or earthing, that came from ayurvedic medicine, which is the oldest form of medicine known to man. It's over 6,000 years old. And there's a whole interesting story with that. Back in 1960, early 60s, there was a famous scientist who was also an orthopedic surgeon who tried to find cure for arthritis. His name was Dr. Becker. And he found that arthritis and lots of other autoimmune diseases came up very steep, on a very steep curve in Western societies where we started using synthetic clothing. So when you have synthetic clothing and those surfaces rub against each other, they produce massive amounts of static electricity, which goes inside the body. And then you go outside with rubber, sold shoes, and you have no way to discharge its static charge to the ground. And that's when your autoimmune system goes crazy.

Wait, was this. Was this guy. Was this guy Robert Becker, the same guy that wrote the Body Electric?

Yes. Oh, okay.

I didn't realize he'd done initial research on grounding and earthing.

Well, he. He basically did. That's part of the book, by the way. But he. He learned that he. When he looked around the planet. There was one country in early 60s that didn't report any autoimmune disease. They basically didn't know what it was. That country happened to be India. So when he looked at the lifestyle of people there at the time, most people were walking barefoot and wearing cotton clothing. So whatever static charge they had, they would discharge that to the ground and pick up negative electrons which are needed for you to be balanced electrically. And so that's, you know, he was twice nominated for Nobel Prize in medicine, and I actually used his research in designing Vasper. That's why you're barefoot on the machine and your feet are resting on brass plates. Brass is a very conductive metal. Underneath the brass plates, there are copper tubes with water that take the static charge to the ground in the chiller and bring back negative electrons. So you are basically electrically balanced, which helps your natural Immunity considerably.

Yeah, yeah. So you wouldn't want to wear shoes when you're using the Vasper. I always have socks on or I'm barefoot. And it's due to this grounding and earthing effect you described. Now you use brass. Is that because that's a type of metal that's very conductive when it comes to the grounding or the earthing effect?

Correct. That's one. Brass and copper actually have two very unique properties. One is that it's very conductive. The other one is that germs cannot grow on brass or copper because of electrolysis. So when you're barefoot on the machine and somebody else before you was barefoot on the machine, even though we clean the machine after each user, but there is zero chance of any. If somebody has an athlete switch, for example, there's zero chance of transmission when you're using brass or copper. And copper is too soft. Brass is ideal for that.

The interesting thing I was thinking about with this is, you know, a lot of people in terms of their home design do not have properly grounded outlets or there are dirty electricity surges in terms of the AC current in the home or in the environment where they might be working out. So based on this, have you ever looked into whether or not one needs to use like a dirty electricity filter that the Vasper is plugged into, like a greenwave dirty electricity filter, or have you built in some kind of surge protection into the unit itself when it comes to these AC surges that one might be getting through their feet if they were working out in the Vasper? Does that make sense?

It makes sense. Yeah. We have a, we have a surge protector built in. But again, you're. When you're on Vasco, you the the ground, you're just connected to the grounded part of the electrical device. And. So the idea is to simulate you're walking outside barefoot, basically.

Yeah, yeah, I get that. But I guess what I was wondering was if someone's working out, let's say they have a Vasper at their home or in a health club or something like that, and the Vasper is plugged into an outlet that's not properly grounded or there's a high amount of AC surges in the building, would that be a concern at all?

It would not be concerned about as far as getting. If it's not properly grounded, that is a concern. So there's a test that you can do for that. And there's a pretty well known researcher, Clint Oberg, who basically designed those organic cotton sheets that have silver wires. In it, and you plug it in to the grounded receptacle. And when you sleep, you actually experience this earthing effect. And with those devices, there's a piece of equipment, basically a plug that will check whether your device, your plug is actually properly grounded. We have site requirements that spell that out when we install equipment.

Okay, that's good. Yeah. And I actually. I use a lot of Clint's project products. I think it's ultimate longevity. I interviewed him. It was a very popular interview when it came to a lot of these myths and truths about grounding and earthing, what it can do for the body, and the development of these sheets that he made that I often travel with, as well as desk mats that you can stand on for grounding and earthing. As a matter of fact, right next to me, I'm walking on my treadmill right now, but right next to me are Clint's mats. And basically there's a wire coming out from the mat goes through the door of my office, and it's plugged into a metal stake that goes into the ground in my backyard. So I'm basically standing on a safe, grounded surface the entire day while I'm working. But it is pretty cool that you've built this grounding technology into the brass plates that you're connected to when you're working out on the Vasper. And when you were first developing this, back to your story of having arthritis and diabetes, was that the first thing that you looked into was the effect of grounding and earthing as far as how you felt in terms of your arthritis and your diabetes?

It was not the first thing. It was the third thing.

Okay.

First thing was compression. Second was cooling, and the third thing was earthing. And I knew Clint back then.

Oh, you did? Okay, Interesting. So he helped you out with the development of the device?

No, I was aware of the sheets, and I was buying his sheets seats back then already.

Okay, got it.

I just knew the concept.

Got it. So the compression, which you've also called a couple of times blood flow restriction. I have done some podcasts. I've talked about how you can use Katsu bands or blood flow restriction bands during a workout. You know, and the TLDR on that is essentially, you are fooling a muscle into thinking it's lifting a heavy load because you're restricting blood flow to the muscle. And the response to that physiologically is you get the same type of muscle building or fitness response you'd be looking for from using heavy weights. But you can do so with lightweights or with Just your own body weight. I just got back from Park City, Utah and all I did was work out in my hotel room and the bedroom I was staying in. But I just put on blood flow restriction bands and do a series of squats, push ups, pull ups, etc. I don't, I don't really travel with a Vasper, although you need to, you need to eventually make a fold up travel version of the Vasper, Peter. But anyways, I've been a fan of blood flow restriction for a long time. I'll even use it during walks, use it during swims. I've got a few podcasts about it that I'll link to if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.comVasper2 BenGreenfieldLife.comVASper2 because this is my second interview with Sebastian. I'll, I'll link to, to some of my previous episodes on blood flow restriction training. But you kind of have a unique approach in terms of how you develop the compression and the BFR in the Vasper. So tell me about how you, how you kind of became aware of compression, what it did with your arthritis or your diabetes and kind of how you built that technology into the Vasper.

Thank you. So you know, the vascular compression again is just like cooling. It's, you know, used extremely loosely and many people don't understand the details that are involved. So for example, when you use Kaatsu or conventional restriction blood flow restriction exercise, you're applying significant amount of compression that basically is closer to what a tourniquet would be accomplishing. So you're compressing the peripheral venous returnio, compressing the deep veins as well as the arterial flow. And that means that you can do some anaerobic exercise, but you cannot do aerobic exercise.

Well actually, actually I want to correct you real quick because if you buy the cheapo blood flow restriction bands like on Amazon or whatever, or you do like I used to do when I was bodybuilding and literally just use elastic bands or elastic tubes that you pick up in the gym to tourniquet the joints, which was just like an old bodybuilding trick to allow you to build muscle with lighter amounts of weight or to get more lactic acid accumulation in the muscle. Those kind of cheap bands that you just pull on and tighten, those do restrict the venous return in the way that you've just described. They, they really cause like a tourniqueting of the muscle that can long term result in nerve damage, inhibited blood flow, sometimes muscle damage, et cetera. If you not very careful with how you use them. The Kaatsu devices, and this is, I think, one reason why they're a lot more expensive, are pretty precisely controlled by a handheld unit that controls the millimeters of mercury that build up, allow for venous return. And also the way those devices are constructed, even though they look just like a band, there's a tiny tube inside of them that inflates that allows for restriction of band the blood flow into the muscle, but not restriction out of the muscle. So I think with the Kaatsu devices, you actually get rid of a lot of the risks that you were just describing when it comes to typical blood flow restriction training. But you're right, there are some subtle nuances when it comes to compression, as far as what you need to be aware of with these devices that you're using.

Well, the fact is that when you use Kaatsu, you're compressing the muscle well over 100 millimeters of mercury. So when you're using anything that goes over 100, 250, they go as high as 250 millimeters of mercury. You're compressing peripheral venous return, you're compressing deep veins, and you're compressing some arterial flow. You're correct that, you know, they have an air controller that actually tells you, basically, you can regulate, you can reduce that, and you can increase it. You cannot do that with the cheap bands that you just talked about. But the fact remains that you're applying a very significant pressure that goes way beyond the venous return. What we do with Vasper is the default pressure on vasper is 65 millimeters of mercury on your legs and 40 millimeters of mercury on the arms. So what we're doing there is just applying very low peripheral venous return that is below your diastolic levels. So when you're on Vasper, your arms and legs are anaerobic, but your chest is aerobic at the same time. You cannot do that with Kaatsu or any other device that applies pressure over 100 millimeters of mercury. It's simply dangerous and you can actually end up with lactic acidosis.

I think you definitely need to be more careful with the Katsu devices. I currently have my Vasper set up at. I think I have it set at 75 to 80 for the legs, and I typically go 40 to 45 on the arms. And with the vigorous nature of the full body movement, that seems like more than enough to experience the burn, so to speak. And I do want to talk with you a little bit more about this. Lactic acid component, because you mentioned lactic acidosis. But it's my understanding that the acidosis that builds up when you are compressing blood flow or doing blood flow restriction is something that winds up causing a rebound response when you take the bands off that cause vascular endothelial growth factor and brain derived neurotrophic factor to build up in the brain. And so you get kind of this cognitive sharpening effect, which I think some people who have done BFR Ka2 training or maybe have used the Vasper have noticed, but that lactic acidosis is also used as a kind of signaling effect for hypertrophy and for mitochondrial proliferation and satellite cell growth. So you don't want to completely get rid of the lactic acid, right?

No, you don't want to get rid of lactic acid. Absolutely. But you want to. So 80 millimeters of mercury is the maximum that you can go on Vasper. You cannot go higher than that on the legs. So again, it's below 100. So back to the point that I was trying to make before. If you do it smart, you can actually achieve aerobic and anaerobic exercise. And when you add cooling to it and grounding that we already discussed, then you end up with what's known as the Vaspor effect. So we can spend a long time talking about compression alone or grounding alone or cooling alone. And it's not going to get us to where we want to go to because it's the combination of those three with very precise pressures, with very precise temperature control and very specific grounding that gives you the Vasper effect.

Well, regardless though, tell me about the cooling because I think it is important. We talked about the grounding and the earthing and the millimeters of mercury and the actual pressure used being important for the compression. But what about the cooling? Is it just coming down to that 50 degrees or 55 degrees Fahrenheit, water circulating through the cuffs that is the secret sauce here. What's the actual cooling element designed to achieve?

Okay, so first of all, let's start with what we are dealing with. 8% of your body weight is your blood. And if you do intense exercise, significant amount of the blood goes to the skin in order to sweat. Your core body temperature goes up, your blood vessels dilate, your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure goes up. So your the efficiency of your exercise is going down significantly when those things are in place. So the idea of the cooling that we've designed with Vasper is to prevent sweating, which means that you're doing Exercise that is considered, especially by your endocrine system, to be a very intense exercise. However, your core body temperature is normal, your blood pressure is normal, your heart rate is normal, and you're getting significant amount of more efficiency in recruiting the endocrine system to trigger your hormones which are basically designed to rebuild the muscles back to pre exercise condition. However, when you're on Vasper, there's no muscle damage at all. So you're getting this massive amounts of surplus endocrine system, surplus hormones, anabolic endogenous hormones that you would not have access to during a conventional exercise because if you do damage the muscle tissue, whatever hormones you recruit are used to rebuild the muscle. In fact, many athletes who overtrain actually go backwards because they are not able to rebuild the muscle because the muscle was damaged past the amount of hormones that they recruited. So I'll give you a great example. There was a triathlete, a 42 year old woman who just finished a triathlon in Colorado and she qualified for the Ironman Kona. So she had 10 days to recover from the previous triathlon and get ready for the world championship in Kona. So I just told her to do Vasper once a day for 10 days. That's all she did. She flew over there and did her race, reduced her race time by 50 minutes, 5 0, which is unheard of for an elite athlete. You know, if you cut two or three or four minutes of your race time, that's great. She reduced it by 50 minutes. The reason she did that is because we took care of all of her overtraining, all of the overtraining issues that where the endocrine system was still repairing it. All of those issues were repaired prior to her doing the race and that's why she was, she actually learned how good she was first time in her life.

Yeah, I've experienced very similar effect in terms of being able to work out on the Vasper, even if I've been sore from a previous day's workout or I want to exercise day after day after day with cardio and feel like I can still push. And I do agree that you experience a lot less soreness. And despite you pushing pretty hard on the thing, the heart rate and the blood pressure seem to stay pretty low. But back to your, your, your story from Hawaii. Did you just kind of like string all this stuff, stuff together like out in your garage or what did it look like when you first started looking into all this?

I, I have a, I converted a tractor shed into a lab behind my house and the first Thing I did was I. I bought a window air conditioning unit and that was converted to cool water rather than air. And I bought a very inexpensive, I think it was a Nordic Track. That was the first unit I bought at a garage sale and some big cuffs on ebay. And that's how I started. It took eight years to figure all this out. And I was involved in, know, in outrigger canoe racing, which I'm sure you know about. Yeah, in Hawaii, you. You race outrigger canoes. And after, after I used this very crude prototype for about six, seven weeks, the coach put me on the first seat. So when you. When you look at an outrigger canoe, there are six seats there. And the person who's the stroker number one seat, has to have maximum amount of strength. That says that's your stronger person because he's pushing quiet water and setting the tempo for the people behind him. Five people behind him. So after about seven weeks of using Vasper, the crude, very basic, crude prototype, the coach put me in the first seat. And when we came back to the port, all these guys, you know, I looked behind me and everybody behind me was half my age. So when we came back to the port, all these guys stood around me and says, peter, we need to know what kind of drugs you're on. This is not normal what just happened. And I said, well, I'm not on any drugs and I never will be, but I'm developing this prototype for myself and I'm looking for guinea pigs. So if you guys are interested, you know, I would love to. I actually needed five people. So I ended up with five men. They were all men and they were all older than me. I was 50 then. The next guy was 59, 60, 74 and so forth. And all of them were coming on regular basis, three, four times a week to my lab and using it and experiencing some pretty significant improvement in quality of sleep and other things. And after about three months, there was a woman that showed up. She was, I think around 65. And she said in front of me says, peter, I don't think you know the meaning of menopause. And I said, well, obviously not from personal experience, but I know menopause. He says, no, you don't. Menopause means men on pause says, what the heck have you done to my husband? You know, I was enjoying my menopause. Life was great, and now this man wants sex all the time. So we. I sent him to have his testosterone levels checked, and he was 70, I think 72 or 73. His testosterone levels were 980. Free testosterone.

Geez.

Which is quite high for somebody.

Somebody in that 980 wouldn't be free. 980 would have been a total. That'd be unheard of for free. Yeah.

Okay, so total testosterone. But anyway, that was when I realized what was happening. I realized that we actually were tapping into the endogenous anabolic endocrine system, which is something that has not yet been done before, and that type of combination. So. Because again, it's not just the compression that triggers the hormone release, it's the cooling and it's the grounding. It's the, it's the entire. The combination of those three things. So anyway, it took me eight years to figure this out. And then we tested it with a large group of people in Honolulu and the results were beyond what we expected. And then the very first team we started to work with in California was Santos of Sharks.

Okay. The hockey organization.

The hockey team.

Yeah.

So this was about 10 years ago, more than 10 years ago, and we saw some pretty incredible results. And it was interesting that people that used Vasper, not only did their performance increase, their regular workouts on conventional exercise were much, much better, but they would get into the flow state much faster as well. And you know, hockey, again, is a game that is very, very fast and you cannot go into your brain and dwell in it. So we would, we would watch those guys basically doing a practice game. Each one of them was wearing a strap, so we would know their heart rate and the percentage of their VO2 max. And the guys that did well would not. When they would get a puck on a stick, they would just go into the flow state and pass to the right person or score. And the people that did not would basically either lose the puck or not score or not pass to the right person. So. So this flow state was something that again they reported was part of the effect of Vasper. And sleep was the other one. So, you know, when you lose a game, it's very difficult to sleep after that. So most people don't sleep and they wake up tired the next day and then a day later they lose another game. So we have a very unique sleep protocol for athletes that. That is a 10 minute, very easy protocol that you do at night before going to sleep.

Is that because I know the Vasper has a dashboard with a little pad where you select your workouts. Mostly I just use the athletic performance ones. Is that on the recovery screen?

It's not programmed in into the system because we basically suggest it for different people. But it's a zero sprint protocol. Actually it is programmed into the recovery screen.

You're right.

And I think it's, it's also on personal fitness, but it's called the Freebird. Freebird protocol has zero sprints.

I have seen that one. Okay, so that's, so that, that's one you would do later in the day. And you've seen an improvement in sleep parameters?

Yeah, especially for athletes. The idea is to basically drain whatever cortisol levels you have and flush out lactic acid and slightly reduce your core body temperature and the nighttime cortisol levels drop significantly. So the lower the nighttime cortisol levels are, the better you will sleep.

That's interesting. Now, have you ever, have you ever had somebody ask you why can't I just, you know, like put on blood flow restriction or Katsu bands, not too tight as we've already discussed and just go walk around barefoot in the cold, you know, go for a swim in cold water or something like that? Couldn't you get the same effects with less of a dent in your pocketbook than buying a Vasper?

We could not. So you know, if we were talking about, you know, meditation, acupressure, acupuncture, all of these things are beautiful for your body and I'm sure what you just mentioned, swimming in a cold water would be okay. None of those things. You can apply mainstream science to Vasper. All three scientific principles behind Vasper. You can apply mainstream science. So if you go to vasper.com and then you go to science page and scroll all the way down where it says resources and you click on resources, you would see the actual clinical trials from well known teaching institutions like University of Massachusetts and many others that actually list specific scientific results where they actually do double blind study. University of Massachusetts and Cantu Concussion center did a study on concussions. So they had a, a group of mostly NFL athletes who all experienced significant amount of concussions and they had a control group and a Vasper group. So the control group would do the standard treatment for concussions and then they would get on Vasper. However, they would not get the, the cooling or the compression. They would just do identical protocol that the Vasper group did, right?

Like, like, like. So they do like a full body training. Like I did a Vasper this morning. It was eight 30 second sprints. It was a Super 8 protocol. I think it had like two minutes of recovery in between each sprint and then a warmup and a cool down. And what you're saying is in some of this Research folks would do that both full body, like with the Vasper, but without the compression and the cold and the grounding. And then they do it with. And you saw a significant effect, huge effect.

So that was published in the Journal of Neurotrauma. Journal of Neurotrauma is the highest peer reviewed, most respected brain injury journal out on the planet. So this is where we are. We are in a very precise space, scientific space, where you can apply mainstream science to everything we do. If you jump in a cold water, you would experience something, but you cannot apply mainstream science and have very consecutive results.

Yeah, that makes sense. There's a lot of environmental variables. Now, what about testosterone? Was that all anecdotal or did you guys do any studies on endocrine response to this thing?

Absolutely, we did studies on endocrine response. We did that with a baseball team, and we saw a significant increase in the amount of testosterone. That's super easy to do. And we've had many, many people, huge number of people, especially men, who have seen that as a significant, obviously favorable side effect of vasper. We have a gentleman here in Palo Alto who is a triathlete as well. He's 80 years old and his testosterone went through the roof.

It is kind of interesting because you got the old Russian power lifter trick of icing the balls. There's a lot of men anecdotally reporting about the effect of cold thermogenesis on their total and free testosterone. There's been a variety of studies. One that recently came out on sexual satisfaction in response to regularly performed cold thermogenesis in soldiers. They saw an increase in that, even though I don't think they measured testosterone per se. This was more libido and sexual performance and satisfaction. But do you think it's mostly because of the cold that will cause that endocrine response? Or is there something about the grounding and the earthing or the compression as well that would affect testosterone levels?

People ask me those questions. That's the exact question all the time. The answer is that all three factors produce the result. I never, you know, everything I've ever done professionally in my life was 100% based on science. What means you have to dial in everything precisely. The liquid, the cooling temperature is precise, how we do the cooling and which parts of the body we cool and how we do the grounding and all of that has to be very precise. So nothing about what we do is anecdotal, Ben. It's all pure 100% science. And that's why teaching institutions when you're in academia, you have two choices. You either publish or perish. So people want to publish and you don't want to publish stuff that's already been published. And we come in with a very unique piece of equipment which is basically an alternative exercise device. And we cannot claim any, or discuss even any type of health benefits or anything that has to do with medicine because we are not licensed or authorized to discuss medicine. We cannot be practicing medicine. But the people who do practice medicine, the reason they love our equipment is because it's so easy to apply mainstream science and get very specific results that you can publish.

Yeah, tell me about that pararescue trial you did. That was interesting.

Well, we found that their overall well being definitely increased significantly. The energy levels increased, all of that. Their performance increased. But the most significant finding was the nighttime cortisol. The nighttime stress hormone was decreased by about 48%. I don't, I think it's 48 or 47%. And that is what accounted for their significant, significantly better days after vasper, after they slept. So most of these people, you know, when they get up at, in the morning, they, the first thing they do is put on a pot of coffee on. And when they did vasper, they actually forgot to drink the coffee. So 50% of your nighttime hormone production actually happens between the second and third stage of sleep, just before the REM sleep. So 50% of that happens. So of course children always get it. This is why when your child wakes up in the morning, they'll never ask you for coffee. But with adults, that's why they, that's why people drink coffee because they wake up in the morning having missed that 50% nighttime.

Yeah, sometimes, I mean, I drink coffee because I like the taste and I think it initiates a morning bowel movement. I think sometimes people need the coffee, but I mean, some people just do it for enjoyment, right?

Yeah, of course, sometimes they do it for enjoyment. But when, when in this particular case, what we notice is that the need for coffee, the reason you enjoy the coffee is you enjoy the effect of the coffee, which is increased blood pressure, more blood flow to your brain. That's why people like it. So yeah, you like the taste, but what you really like is the effect of it.

Yeah, yeah, in some cases. Yeah. So, you know, this trial, it obviously found a lot of things as well as, you know, robust amount of research. We could spend hours talking about the research on the website and there's a, a lot there I'll link to if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com vasper2 the number two I'll link to the website and to the research. But I've been thinking a little bit since you were talking about the testosterone and this idea of cold, you know, the other modality you'll see a lot of biohackers talking about is red light therapy, you know, especially on the gonads, for example, for an effect on testosterone and free testosterone. And then you'll also see people you know, before they do blood flow restriction training, taking things like lactic acid buffering agents like arginine or citrulline, or using nitric oxide precursors to increase blood flow and vasodilation. And it kind of makes me wonder a little bit, whether in research or anecdotally, do you have or have you seen people doing things like putting a red light panel next to the Vasper or taking certain supplements or combining it with certain modalities? For example, I have a Liveo 2 set up next to my Vasper, which is an oxygen training device. It allows me to, for example, with the flip of a switch, breathe pure oxygen while I'm doing an interval and then flip to hypoxia for a, for a back and forth oxygen flushing effect. You know, that's one example. But do you have other examples of things that you've found to be beneficial or heard to be beneficial when combined with the biohack or with, with the, with the Vasper as far as like biohacking modalities or supplements or anything like that?

Okay, okay. So we did actually and we are coming out with a new product that's going to be called Vasper Breath. And this is a interval hypoxia training after Vasper. So back, you know, back 1,000, 2, 3, 4, 5,000 years ago, people that lived close to where there were caves and somebody would get sick, they would take a person down to the cave for a week and they would come back healthy. So optimizing the oxygen to the body actually provides a very, very significant health benefits. So the people that developed that to a very high degree, that comes from India and that was from Ayurvedic medicine. Ayurvedic medicine is the oldest medicine known to man. Over 6,000 years ago, over 6,000 years old. So in that philosophy they would look at a lifespan not in terms of time, but in terms of number of breaths that you took. So from the first breath that you take when you're born to the last breath you take when you die, that's your life. And if you knew how to breathe, your life would be expanded, but more importantly, the quality of your life would, would improve tremendously. So the Vasper breath device basically does the. What's known as Pranayama. Pranayama was the technique that was developed in ancient India, still being practiced to this day. And that's basically, that's this whole science of breathing. So to become a Pranayama practitioner, you need to study for extensive period of time and practice it in order to be proficient. So this particular device, you put a mask on your face and you recline on a chair and it administers this pranayama to you in anywhere from 35 to 45 minutes.

Is it altering the amount of oxygen in the air that you breathe?

It's altering the blood oxygen. The oxygen in the blood.

How's it doing that?

Special filters. And so, you know, there's a tremendous amount that you can read up on it. Because in 2019 there were three scientists that received Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology by applying mainstream science to what I just talked about. So the reason most people don't know about it, because in 2019, the COVID took basically the entire news cycle. But again, those people did their work and they applied mainstream science to it and they show exactly how it works. So I think the best would be to look at interval hypoxia training device. And there's different devices that apply this technology differently. We found one that works beautifully with Vasper. It's actually complementary technology. So when both Vasper, you use this Vasper and Vasper Breath in concert, you get cumulative results at the end.

Is Vasper breath available right now or will it be out by the time this podcast comes out in a few weeks?

Yeah, in a few weeks we will have that available, correct.

Okay, cool.

Actually, if you were to come and visit us here, you could, you could use it. You could use it today. Where?

In Hawaii?

No, in. Right where the jet took off in California.

Oh, okay. Okay, got it. Interesting. Hey, you know, I have another question for you because I seem to recall seeing some amount of research on this. I just got stem cell therapy a few days ago and based on a little bit of data I'm seeing, I've seen on stem cell proliferation, these combined modalities. I've been doing the Vasper, you know, since, since my stem cell protocol. Have you guys actually done any research in house or have you seen any research on these combined technologies and their effects on stem cells or longevity?

There was a pilot trial done in Edwards Institute, which is sort of the largest orthopedic hospital in the country, it's in Florida. And Dr. Adam Anz did that. I could share that with you. And he was doing PRP procedures. And what he discovered is that when he would put somebody on Vasper and then do the PRP procedure afterwards, he realized that not only would the actual stem cell number go up, but the motility of the stem cells would increase significantly. So this was not an extensive research, it was just a pilot trial. But again, it does basically point to the fact that Vasper is triggering the endocrine system.

Yeah, exactly. For the hormone function and the stem cells. There's a lot going on there. And again, like I mentioned, even though you can use it every day and just simply for the reasons you've described, you're able to do so because you recover pretty quickly from it. My go to modality right now is three times a week I do a 21 minute vasper session. I mostly do the burn baby burn, which is a few 30 and 60 second intervals. I do the one that's, that involves some 1530 second intervals. And then the Super 8 fusion I think is called with the 830 second intervals. Do you think three times a week is adequate with this? Is there like a sweet spot as far as how often to use it?

Well, the fact is that you're not damaging any muscle tissue when you're on Vasper, so you can do it every day. We have people that own these machines at home that do it every day. And prior to the pandemic, we would sell 50% of these machines to hospitals, sports teams, chiropractors, doctors, and the other 50% would go to private homes. And then it became obvious that when your natural anabolic hormones go up, your natural immunity goes through the roof. So at this moment, 80% of our sales go to private homes.

Wow.

But again, what we love doing is everything we do is based on pure science. It's not value hacking, it's not hacking, it's not trying and see what other people will report anecdotally, because anecdotal evidence.

Is very.

You know, it's very personal. A lot of, you know, we have tons of stuff that we watch on YouTube and Internet and a lot of suggestions for diets and losing weight and all of these things. And the fact is that, you know, some of those would actually help you. Some of those may not make any difference, but some of those might take you backwards. And if you use mainstream science and if you can do double blind studies and if you have Nobel Prize scientists working on the same thing you are, then I think the consistency of the results is much more reliable.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And you know, I do a lot of speaking with these health facilities, gyms, health clubs, even these biohacking centers that do peptides and IVs and red light and cryo and whatnot. And they always ask me what should they do for the exercise portion. I tell them, you get, get a Vasper and arx. Like that's, that's my home gym. I get single set to failure train on the ARX, that's 20, 25 minutes. I do full cardiovascular modality on The Vasper, that's 21 minutes. And it's, it's kind of like a minimum effective dose of exercise. It's still difficult, you're still working hard, but man, it is super effective. And you know, I think it's probably due to some, some type of epinephrine response or endocrine response to the Vasper. If I do that and then I go and do my weight training after I do the Vasper, I mean, you feel way stronger and the effects seem just incredible if you do the Vasper and then move on to a little weight training afterwards. So I found that to be pretty effective. Do you ever go lift weights after you use it?

I have done it a few times. And yeah, you're right. But a lot of athletes I work with do exactly what you just discussed described and they see the same effect. Yes.

Yeah.

And we, and so there's, there's a scientific, you know, answers to all of these, all of these things. And you know, recently, it was about eight months ago, I installed two of these machines in a longevity center in Costa Rica. And they asked me if they want to, if I would like to have them check my biological age. So my chronological age is 75. I'm 75 years old. They determined that my biological age is 42.

Wow. Congratulations.

So that's after two days of doing blood work and treadmills and all of that. So there's something to it, obviously. And again, sticking to pure science and having double blind studies backing up what we're doing, it's just a lot of fun because I'm comfortable in that space.

It's a cool device, literally and figuratively. And not only am I going to link to the previous podcast that we did that took another dive into your history and some of the subtle ins and outs of this Vasper technology, but I'll also link to some other related episodes I've done on things like blood flow restriction, compression, cold, et cetera, and put all those in the show notes because it's just a fascinating area of fitness and I think it's kind of lesser known than some of the typical modalities of just hopping on an exercise bike or hitting the weights. So that's all going to be@BenGreenfieldLife.comVasper2Vasper the number two I think we have a discount code for this thing if you want it for a health club or a gym or a sporting facility or your own home gym. And Peter, thank you so much. We're out of time, but I'm going to link to all this@bengreenfieldlife.com vasper2 vasper the number two and you guys can leave your questions, your comments and your feedback over there as well. So thanks so much.

Peter thank you, Ben. I also believe that the best pharmacy is inside your own body, so I'm on the same page with you.

Yeah, awesome man, awesome. All right, well, I appreciate you and I'm looking forward to getting this out to folks and letting them learn more about the Vasper man. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you sir.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it, or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items. But the price is the same for you and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion llc, the makers of Kion branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use support and with full authenticity and transparency recommend. In good conscience, I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.