Is Red Light Therapy the Answer to Aches, Pains and More Movement?

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. Move over omega-3s, red light therapy is in the house. Hey, is red light therapy something that you've looked at? And if so, have you looked at it in this way? Is it something that could help you with knee pain, plantar fasciitis? We unpack it all in this episode. I'm Debra Atkinson and you're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you know to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with the science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. It's not just you, but it's the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert and international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause-and-beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week, I interview experts behind the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy you want, need, and deserve. Okay, so imagine you're a 41-year fitness expert who's also a health and wellness coach and an expert in supporting women in midlife, menopause, and beyond. You get some things in the mail. Sometimes they're good things, sometimes they're just things, sometimes it's you left to sort it out. So today's episode is actually kind of a part of that sorting out. I have tried red light therapy. I, in, in fact, within the span of about a week, I've been sent two products to try. And you're hearing the interview today with one of those science geeks behind the scenes, and he is lovely. By the way, he has a voice for podcasts, so I— you've heard it here first— he may soon have a podcast, or he should. But I want to explain to you the value of this. Red light therapy is no longer just for the rich, although you can pay a lot to get your own or to go and use it. And it's no longer just for pro athletes. It's a revolutionary tool potentially for midlife women and their partners, spouses, to take control of health, vitality, and pain. All right, so whether it's about reducing inflammation— we're talking of the chronic kind— relieving pain, or Improving your skin. This science-backed therapy is changing the way many people approach wellness. So if you're not yet on the bandwagon, you're starting to see things about red light therapy in your timeline. And because now your antenna is up, because I'm talking about it, you will today. Either it's that or it's AI listening in on our conversations. But this episode unpacks red light therapy, what it is, how it works, and whether it can be useful for you on your gut health plantar fasciitis, knee pain, and so much more. My guest today is Forrest Smith. He grew up playing competitive sports in Atlanta. He regularly participates in rugby matches, trains CrossFit, which ultimately led him to develop Kinion's Lab Move+, a modular targeted laser therapy device for neuromuscular pain and inflammation. So I'm going to backtrack and interpret right there, and I want you I do this throughout. So neuromuscular— neuro is brain, muscle is muscle— the connection between the brain and the muscle and inflammation is really where red light therapy steps in. So here we go. Stay to the end, and if you're intrigued, if you're interested, keep staying. I will show you how I use mine, how I've used it to get rid of a little knee niggle. I Never Knew I Signed Up For. Forrest Smith, thank you so much for joining me.

So happy to be here. It's really going to be an exciting discussion today.

So you have quite a background. So I mean, first of all, me as a, you know, geek in sports and exercise science and psychology, actually a lot of years of competitive sports. So I intuit, and I could be dead wrong, but I intuit that you might have had a few aches and pains and Where did this whole idea for the therapeutic thing that you've evolved, where'd this come from?

Essentially, I've played competitive sports my entire life. And, you know, I started startups and we would build them to— as an adult kind of started moving more and more time towards work. And, it's one of those things where you kind of boil the frog and you don't really notice that you're shifting away from your traditional values of training and fitness and health and wellness. And, I hit my mid-30s and I I'd just kind of gotten in terrible shape. I injured my knee, I tore a meniscus competing younger and I kind of let that stop me moving forward with movement and training and fitness. And, it's had a really negative effect both on my physical well-being but also my mental health. And, I don't really like taking pharmaceuticals. And so, I was really looking for something that could get me back into to movement and to training. And, we looked into a number of different technologies for helping to heal soft tissue and just kind of non-pharmaceutical approaches that could really move the needle from a pain and inflammation standpoint. And, what has turned out long-term is the inflammation is actually more important than the pain. But yeah, what came out of that was a really deep kind of tens of thousands of hours dive into photobiomodulation. And laser therapy and developing our own kind of wearable kind of— I've got one on now— clinical-level laser device that really what we saw in the space was there was a number of different companies developing LED products, but we couldn't out of those LEDs squeeze the correct number of photons delivering internally to tissue for dosing soft tissue like cartilage and helping people heal their joints and get better blood flow. And so, we had to go kind of develop medical-level product and try to keep that as cost-effective as we could. And, that's how we came to develop the Move+, which is a wearable sub-$500 medical-grade laser device when most laser devices are $10,000 minimum and really kind of $50,000 to $100,000 is the clinical and professional-level versions. And, we lucked into some things from a laser standpoint. There's some new technology coming down the pipeline that really supported us from a vertical cavity surface emission lasers. Smaller, less expensive, easier to scale up. And we had some good friends who actually made lasers. And so, we spent some time with them and developed the product that we have here today.

So good. Okay. So, we're going to dive into this. But for my listeners, I would love to— let's go back to square one. Like really, I mean, tell me about red light therapy as if I'm asking ChatGPT to explain it so a 5-year-old can understand it.

Sure. I think how we look at it now, and we've really developed out a really strong team from a physiology and technology standpoint and have gone deeper and deeper on this because it's our commitment, it's our mission to help people improve their quality of life in the most measurable way possible. And so, to be able to do that, we have to understand how the functional mechanisms of photobiomodulation or red light therapy work. So, photobiomodulation is kind of a technical term that's used in the research and health community around red light therapy. And, it's also not constricted to red light, so it's also kind of infrared, near-infrared light as well. But, if you think of kind of starting from pharmaceuticals, if you think of introducing a new exogenous molecule into your body, what you're trying to do with that is you're trying to trigger signaling in your body that's with different types of pharmaceuticals trying to do different things. And, one of the downsides for pharmaceuticals though is that it's very difficult to minimize down to just the positive effects of that. So, you always see these kind of side effects from these. With light, there's different molecules in those same signaling pathways from a gene expression and from these molecular signaling pathways in your body that are triggered by light. And so, you have to have the right kind of photons. So, is it the right wavelength? Is it the right power level? Is it the right frequency? There's a number of things to dial in and there's a lot of testing. And, that's where we spend our time really parsing what are the physiological impacts of these different changes and how do we target these specific proteins and signaling pathways in a way that's going to provide byproducts that are not negative, that are positive. And so, as an example of how that works with these different photoacceptors, if you think about hemoglobin, it's a, you know, what we kind of come into with a biology class in high school is hemoglobin is a carrier molecule in your body. That carries oxygen to your different tissue to help it kind of maintain an oxygenated status. What we've found over the past, really this decade, this last decade is a shift from this two-gas system of the body, which has been carbon dioxide and oxygen that we all kind of grew up learning and understanding to a three-gas system that includes nitric oxide.. And so, hemoglobin, what we find is it's a great carrier for oxygen, but it's also a competitive carrier for nitric oxide. And so, our 808-nanometer infrared wavelengths trigger this hemoglobin to release nitric oxide into the bloodstream. And there's a number of knock-on effects from that. One of them is nitric oxide is a dilating factor. So, it opens the blood vessels up and you see more blood flow coming through. The second is that hemoglobin is actually binding oxygen and nitric oxide at competitive binding sites. So, if you remove the nitric oxide, you can bind more oxygen in and deliver more oxygen and deliver more blood flow because of the dilation of the blood vessels. So, this is one example of a photoacceptor in the body that we target and trigger with the wavelengths that we're using. And, we have ongoing kind of medical research and, again, also technical research around the types of lasers and the types of emitters and how we control that light blend to trigger optimal outcomes in the physiology. And so, I think you geek out on things too. I tend to lean towards the geek side of things and go a little bit deep on these. So, if I dive into those rabbit holes a little too deep, just grab me by the ears and pull me back out.

Well, let me just say you are a very unique 5-year-old. So, there's that. But, there's a couple things in here that I really— and I want to ask because if you happen to be the podcast, you're watching it on YouTube, you're seeing what's going on, or if you've seen a clip somewhere of Forrest, you know he's got one around his neck right now, which is very interesting. So I want to ask, obviously if you had it on your knee, I wouldn't be seeing it. So there may be a reason just visually you're doing that. But I also want to ask, what would be the benefits? Who would be someone who would wear this and use it around their neck? And I'm gonna tell you that there are a lot of women listening and/or watching who hold their tension in their upper back and neck, and because of it they're triggering migraines, and/or they may have lost the cervical curve in their spine, so their, their alignment is not great, and that is also contributing. But outside of that, talk to me about when, when would I ever put that on? And I want to go into protocols, but solve my curiosity first right here about this.

Let's scratch that itch for you. So, uh, We work with a lab out of Japan who have developed a technique that they call the proximal priority therapy. And, it's based on the idea that you can treat— it's called remote photobiomodulation or remote light therapy. You can treat one part of the body and see outcomes in another. And, that's essentially based on the idea that these on your neck and how I have— and if you're unable to see, I'm just kind of indicating that the two modules are vertical. On the sides of my neck. So, on either side of the front of my neck, this is where your largest blood vessels are in your body from a volume standpoint. And so, what we're essentially doing with this proximal priority therapy is dosing the blood as effectively as we can. And, there's one other thing that we combine with this for kind of a protocol which has been referred to in the literature, the medical literature, as remote photobiomodulation. So, again, treating one area and expecting outcomes in another. So, treating the neck is a great piece. Treating the lower abdomen for your gut is something that I combine with this. And, what you can expect out of these two types of treatments is actually a really wide range of things. And, I'm glad that you mentioned that you have a strong female audience for this. One of the things that the Japanese laboratory has done with a very large study, so 229 women, who had been infertile for at least 5 years were in a study using this proximal priority therapy with the idea that they could reduce systemic inflammation. And, that by reducing systemic inflammation, this would have a positive impact on their fertility status. And, having had all of them completely infertile, the outcomes for this were really, really powerful and substantial. And so, what they saw was 29% of the patients who were using this proximal priority therapy by treating the neck and the gut were able to become pregnant, and 22% of them brought through to a healthy delivery. And so, it seems like a very strange, like, okay, we're not treating uterine or ovarian tissue, how much impact can we have? That's a massive, that's a huge shift taking people from infertile to fertile. And this is something that we see both from a female fertility standpoint, but other things that are kind of linked with gut health. So, things like autoimmune disorders like asthma and multiple sclerosis have also been treated with proximal priority therapy and showing substantial increases in positive outcomes. And those studies aren't quite as big as the fertility one, but I think they probably speak a little bit more intuitively because we kind of know of our gut as our second brain and a seat of health from an immune standpoint. But, these autoimmune kind of impacts, we don't have a cure for asthma. Being able to move the needle for asthma users or asthma sufferers to be able to use a product and reduce those symptoms is a really powerful thing to be able to see. So, we're just at kind of the tipping point of a lot of more research kicking off in this and there's some great things happening. It's such an exciting space. But, a lot of these things where it's a general health, kind of systemic health impact, you can see a positive outcome from using this, this neck and lower gut treatment.

Okay. So when we're talking about this systemic inflammation, this gets me very curious. So I would say for midlife women, it's like, boom, you punched your ticket. You didn't even know you wanted to go to the circus, but you're at the circus and now you have inflammation simply because you're in perimenopause. And so weight loss resistance is a big thing. They're doing all the things, they're, they're making an effort really in changing habits. And sometimes there is a, there's a mismatch. We're doing what we were taught when we were 20 or 30. It's not going to work now. But when a woman even does get that dialed in, there often is that lingering inflammation. And sometimes that's because of insulin resistance. Yes. Also, thank you hormones, right? So, so we know there are lifestyle habits that can benefit, that will help that. But I would think that if you were rounding up a whole team, then am I correct in saying that red light therapy can also help this?

Yes, absolutely. So one of the things that we've seen from this is, uh, so addressing some of the hormonal changes that happen with, uh, perimenopause and menopause. Perimenopause menopause more. Once you're hitting menopause, it's something that's harder to modulate. But with the perimenopause— Yeah.

Well, you're flatlined.

So, it's like, yeah. So, it's harder to get it back up into what you'd like to see from those hormone profiles. But we're seeing things from— so, insulin resistance and kind of blood glucose responses from treating white adipose tissue around the abdomen. So, faster kind of use of the ability to trigger use of your kind white adipose tissue as energy. So, mobilization of this into fatty acids that you can actually use from an energy standpoint. And, I think one other one that is really powerful and it's still in the incipient stages of research, but all of the existing studies have been very positive and substantial, they've just been smaller studies, is thyroid treatment. And, we see that as a really commonplace kind of trigger for a lot of women relative to weight gain and relative to hormone profiles that's hard for people to manage. And so, the use of photobiomodulation on thyroid, the dosing is lower than we see for the other parts of the body. So, just as a protocol, it wouldn't be, for example, 15 minutes with this device as I'm using on my neck and my gut. But, if you're targeting your thyroid, you're looking to 5 to 6 minutes with the Move+. You can also supplement with vitamin D3. So, my business partner has Hashimoto's. And so, if you think of kind of like hypothyroidism, that's kind of like the— that's at the far end of the spectrum for it but has reversed this by being able to treat and then take supplements along with— treat with red light therapy and take supplements alongside of that. And so, there's some really powerful triggers for this and I'm happy to provide. We spend— our research lead and myself spend, you know, thousands of hours in these papers. And there, there's 7 or 8 really powerful studies around hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's, and then combining supplements with red light therapy to be able to reverse these, these, uh, these outcomes.

That is crazy and great news. However, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say this out loud for my, my listeners. This is an audience who grew up and, and I think maybe all of America is a little bit more like this. You said, you know, the ideal for working with thyroid would be different than maybe for gut health. And so 5 or 6 minutes as opposed to 15, this is an audience who is, uh, not going to adopt to that really easily because we think more is better, right? Yeah, we were like, 30 minutes, I'm going all the way, right?

No, I love it. I, uh, oddly enough though, you notice— I, I noticed these same patterns in myself. Like, whenever I injure something, I know these protocol and the timing that's going to dose that best. But I also intend to kind of overshoot that by 5 or 10 minutes just because you do have that sense that it's really going to, like, this extra bit is going to help me out a little bit.

So true. So, so for somebody who's using this as a tool, is there a, okay, if this is what you want to target, then here's the protocol for that. Is there, is there a Bible? Because otherwise, how would I know as I'm using that And where I've used it, by the way, I've used it on my knee. I never was that person, and suddenly I'm a little that person. Yeah, I'm like, where did you come from? Right? Like that little noisy thing. But that's where I've been using it and focused on it. But how do I know? You know, is there a way for users then to get access to what you have stored up here between the ears?

Absolutely. We have on our website different downloadable— Oh, sorry. I lost you there for a second. No, I was just going to say we have different protocols that are downloadable from our website. And so, we provide those in kind of a PDF form if you want to download it or a video. We've just found that people also kind of respond well to digesting videos a little bit easier. And we try to make them as kind of approachable and like non-technical. They have to keep me off the videos. I lean into the technical side a little bit too much, But it's nice. We have a number of different medical professionals that we work with that help us make videos for this, and they're using the devices in their clinic. And so they've been sending people home with protocols, and they do a great job of it. And so we work with them to just capture that on camera and make a video version to be able to distribute as well.

That is beautiful. I would love to hear, and I'm sure that everyone here would, are there some instances, I'm sure you have some wonderful testimonials. Tell me a little bit about, you know, a story where this really changed the game for somebody, changed their life. And if I can, I'll plant this seed if you can pull these out, but I think we're reaching a point, many of us, where it's sometimes comfort and/or pain is our limit. We want, we want, and we intend to be more active, but we've got this obstacle and we don't know how to get rid of Hey, this is Debra Atkinson. I love creating the Flipping 50 podcast for you, and I have for over a decade. I also love helping midlife women shift not only their physical energy but their beliefs about what effective exercise looks like and how much it can positively and powerfully impact your life. How you menopause and exercise in menopause determines how you will live, not just now but decades from Now, if you're not exercising right now, you're getting tired, not stronger, or you think you don't have time or the energy to exercise, do a 5-day flip with me. I'll send you one short video a day for 5 days. It's just 15 to 20 minutes long, so you can see exactly how I plan out a fitness plan for myself and for thousands of clients I've worked with. You can get this at flipping50.com. Right now. What are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 together.

It's terrible. And I think, you know, for, for us, one of the things that we've been working really hard at is helping. We have an entire program called the Pain to Possible program, which both kind of combines how do I treat with this device, but also how do I get myself from— I, you know, we have people And it, it makes me a little bit emotional because that's what we started the company for, is to help people like this whose wife couldn't walk across the grocery store. And like, now she can. Now she's walking upstairs and running. And it's— sorry, it's just such a, such a great thing to be able to see though, us kind of setting this goal of being able to impact people's lives and make a meaningful change. With them in how they can really get out and move and enjoy their lives. And it feels like adding decades to what they're actually able to do from a lifespan. And we stay in contact with a lot of— we've done thousands of calls with our users and we stay in contact with a lot of them. And the testimonials and the outcomes for these are just so powerful. And I apologize, but it's, you know, it's just a great space for us to be in because that's, that's the, the, the goals and the, the mission that we set for ourselves is to really move the people, the needle for people who are in that space.

Yeah. That's, that's like an amplification, I think, of, you know, we used to, so when I was in physical buildings more so than, you know, being a digital entity, you know, we used to say it's the best job in the world. You know, I, it didn't matter if you work at the front desk. In fact, that's one of the best places cuz you don't see people leave in a worse smooth than they came in ever, ever. And in what you're talking about is really amplifying that. So, so congrats, you know, to having a job that lets you get up in the morning and that's what you do, and you can go to bed and say, here's what we did today. That's, that's pretty cool. We also have an audience here, you know, no pressure, but instant gratification is like our second, our middle name, you know. So how long, you know, and I'm sure I'm sure it's varied and different based on how problematic was it, you know, but can you give some examples of how quickly?

Yeah. No, no. I think we've really been kind of— we keep a close eye on this because we hold ourselves accountable for those differences. So, we want to be able to deliver outcomes for people, not sell products. And so, we track it quite carefully and it does depend on the level level of traumatic tissue damage that you've had, whether it's old and recovered and it's still kind of generating more inflammation. For example, I tore my meniscus and the same things happen. But, in general, for larger tissue masses, so knee, hip, shoulder, elbow, neck, lower back, we're looking at generally 2 to 3 weeks to see meaningful changes. And then, those changes continue on over time. Some people see very powerful changes after one treatment. And again, those are typically more on the acute side of injuries. Where that's been something more recent. If it's an older injury, typically the older it is and the more traumatic the tissue damage is, the longer it takes. We also do try to set reasonable expectations. When you're treating kind of hands and feet, there's less tissue for us to interact with. And so, those typically take more like 4 or 5 weeks before you start seeing a substantial change. And again, that is less than optimal, we think, because we do want to be able to provide kind of short-term meaningful impacts. But if you you have osteoarthritis, there's no other way to kind of get these foundational impacts. And so, there's no other kind of net positive treatment that you can have whether pharmaceutical or surgery or anything. And so, what we try to encourage people to do is just stay consistent. If you can stay consistent over those 4 or 5 weeks, for example, with osteoarthritis of the hands or feet, you actually see these benefits. And then, once you see the benefits, you're going to continue using the device longer term. So, that's really kind of our suggestions for it is stay as as consistent as possible through the early days, there's also some things that would block you from achieving the results that you want to. And so, occasionally we get people, we book in calls, my partner and I have put our calendars out there for anyone who's not getting the results that they expect out of the device, book in a call with us because we want to help you either understand where we've gone wrong with our product or how you're using it incorrectly. And so, as an example of that, if with knee pain. If you have your knee at a 180-degree kind of flat, you've put it up on the bed and you're treating, it closes off the channels that we need to access the synovial fluid where your inflammation is. And so, that's one example of a trigger point where you might not get the results that you're expecting in the time that you're expecting because of the usage case. And, we have similar kind of examples around elbows and shoulders and things like this.

I'll stop that right now. Okay, thank you. So I want to ask, because I know there's listeners here, because I mean, every day in our Facebook group we're, we're having people ask these questions. So I'm going to ask as if I'm trying to ask for you, if you happen to be listening. Plantar fasciitis is a big one among women in midlife, you know, and, and the one thing I hate about plantar fasciitis for so many is they've been putting up with it for 2 years and they just think they're going to deal with it for the rest of their lives. I mean, it's, it should be be passing through, not staying and residing. So, um, talk a little bit about that. So let's say I've got plantar fasciitis. Is that a daily thing? Is that a multiple times daily that I'm gonna need to do this?

So we've, we've seen, uh, that essentially if you treat morning and evening for 15 minutes each, then you can increase the speed at which you recover. But that when people try to do this, oftentimes they'll fall off the consistency. So, it's much better to have every day, for example, in the morning. And, one of the best ways you can do this is to habit stack it. So, for me, I have my coffee every morning. There's not a morning that goes by I don't have my coffee and do something.

Or somebody's going to die.

Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, that's right. So, during that time, I put the device on my neck, my lower abdomen, and my knee if it's flaring up, and occasionally my lower back because I'm a tall guy and I CrossFit and that kind of tends to kind kind of throw some kinks into the lower back and the rear chain. So, what I found though is that as we're advising people to habit stack, we also want to make sure that those habits are historical habits, not kind of aspirational habits. Because one of the things we'll hear is, "So, I should do this with my meditation daily." And it's like, "Okay, how many times have you meditated in the last week?" "Once." "Well, probably you want to do with your Netflix instead of your meditation or something like this." If you're eating Cheetos, it doesn't We're not here to change that just yet. We'd love to see you kind of shifting something healthier from a dietary standpoint. But, whatever you're doing on a daily basis that you're extremely consistent about historically, fill this in with that and you'll see a really big consistency lift. And, with the consistency lift, you see the outcomes. And, that's what really drives the outcomes is staying consistent with the treatment.

That is awesome. I love that. There are so many gems in that. Okay. And you know, you also wanna be careful, right? So you're pairing that, say, with meditation for those of you who are doing that, sticking to it. You may meditate for 15 or 20 minutes or more, but you're not doing this. So you have to be diligent and say, okay, well, this I'm supposed to do 5 or 6 minutes if it was for my thyroid. So see, I was paying attention. All right, that was great. So talk about, and again, if you're watching the video, you get what I'm saying. He's wearing it around his neck, so it's like a necklace. Attached, right? So, if I'm using it on my gut, I'm laying it across the top, or if I'm using it on my back, a bigger, broader area, how is it that I'm using it?

So, sorry for everybody who's not able to see this, but I'm gonna just do a quick demonstration. We have— it's a modular device, and so there are straps between the different modules. So, for my gut, typically I I pull them down to where you can kind of see these straps are minimized between the modules. So, they're as tightly packed as they can be together. And then, we have an extender strap, but to be honest, personally, I just kind of tuck this into my waistband in my lower abdomen about 2 inches below my navel. And, that's the gut treatment that I've been finding the best outcomes for. And, one of those things that's really probably worth noting on this is if you can make it through the the first 2 to 3 weeks of this, my experience, and I think this is not just anecdotal, it kind of marries back to the medical literature in the space, is you feel better, your mood increases, your dopamine levels. So, your gut produces a lot of the dopamine in your body. And what you see is neurotransmitters like that being generated in your gut are generated at a higher level. And for me, I didn't notice it for the first 2 weeks, but after 2 weeks, I was just in a good mood. And, And feeling, you know, that they, in most of the studies, they call it affect. Uh, my affect or mood was just lifted and you just feel amazing on a daily basis.

So good. Okay. I've got two questions I want to ask you. Um, so when using it, I'm going to, I'm going to backtrack to the plantar fasciitis for, for instance, and this applies to a lot of things other than the gut, not that, but so if I'm using it to self-treat and I want to be careful with that, right? We're not, we're not diagnosing here. Anybody. Just want to make sure that you know where your pain is, you know where I'd love some relief right here, so you're using it on a specific area. If I am, do you advise that I rest and recover and I'm not testing it, or do you want me to use it and try, try going for a walk while I'm using it? What's your recommendation there?

Typically movement is going to be better, uh, so if you can lean into the movement, uh, and we found this again, one of the things that we've seen with One of our scientific advisory board is a Premier League soccer physio. And so, his job is keeping million-dollar players on the field. And, one of the things that they're seeing from the physiology standpoint these days is really leaning into embracing movement as quickly as you can. And, I would say you have to gauge what that movement needs to be. For some people, that's a— so, as an example with knees, we see a lot of our users have osteoarthritis arthritis, and we could take plantar fasciitis, you wouldn't want to go running on it immediately. What you might want to do is go walking and set a comfortable distance for yourself and then extend that distance over the 2 to 3 weeks as you're using the device. And, what's going to happen is that does bring more acute inflammation to the area, but acute inflammation is actually— there's a differentiation for this. You don't want the chronic inflammation, and so the device will help you you kind of tamp down the chronic inflammation and you're going to bring more growth factors and healing factors into the area by actually triggering a little bit of acute inflammation by going to actually have the movement of that tissue.

Brilliant. Super helpful. Okay. And then to stay consistent, we've got a lot of movers and shakers here. Like we're traveling here, we're going there. So any problem sticking this into my carry-on? I can get through TSA, no problem, it's not going to damage it?

No, we specifically addressed that with the FCC clearance we have for it. Some of the earliest adopters for the device were professional athletes. And so, one of the first things their physios and they said was like, "Hey, I can get this on my guys. This is going to be great. I want to put it on them on the plane between games." And so, we got our FCC clearance to be able to take these in. And, I travel with mine everywhere. I I really miss it when I don't have it.

That is— that's awesome. And so I want to ask this. So with anything, if we were talking today about supplements and omega-3s and how wonderful they are, I wouldn't just want somebody listening to go to their corner pharmacy with a W and just buy anything off the counter. And, and not to throw anybody under the bus, right? Wink wink wink. But I would imagine that red light therapy products are similar. There's all of a sudden, oh, there's a market for these. Somebody who has maybe lesser of a heart, you know, comes out with one. How does, how does a listener distinguish, say, the Move and the quality of it from another product, or know this is, this is what I need for what I'm dealing with?

So, I think one of the things that we found with this is that we didn't necessarily want to build lasers into the device. What we found was that as we modeled how photons need to be distributed through tissue for the best outcomes, we had to have lasers. We couldn't really get around that. And so, the best devices have lasers. And typically, there's a regulatory path for that. So, they're either Class 1 or Class 2 laser devices. They're going to be the dosing models from these companies. So, the simpler companies and typically what we see is, and I didn't want to again kind of generalize too much, but what we see for a lot of these is Chinese companies that make LEDs, strap them to a board, and then don't really have an idea of how these kind of light emitters trigger different applications of kind of responses and adaptations in the body. And that's one of the downsides for this is that with any growing market, there's going to be good actors, there's going to be neutral actors, and then some of these are literally just bad actors. And you're seeing dosing models that would actually kind of trigger poor responses out of the body. You never really kind of go below zero, but you can really kind of— many of them, and I think this kind of goes back to the point that we've seen, we've talked about earlier is a lot of times companies will advertise around the level of power they're able to generate. And, what happens with the dosing is it's kind of a sine wave. So, it's what's called a biphasic dose curve or an Arndt-Schulz curve, which means that the more you emit, the better up until you hit a peak. And then, after that, your results or your outcomes are less. So, it's not negative, but it's less than it should be. And so, we see a lot of that with different kind panel systems. Panel systems are just not very good or effective. It's great because it's a first-generation product that lets people know what this type of technology can do and makes them more aware of the ability to use light to trigger their adaptations in their body that they would like. But, the actual efficacy of those products is not very good. And so, yeah, I would say the FDA piece, the laser piece, and then really just kind of doing a bit of digging on whatever brand you're buying from because we do have some positive competitors and people who are doing positive things in this space. We have our own methodology for it and we tend to think that we're correct and justified in the direction that we're going with it. But yeah, there's a number of different kind of clinical devices in the space. Thor Laser, James Carroll and his team do great devices. They're mostly clinical devices, so they're going to be $10,000 to $15,000 starting. And, they make very good beds that are $100,000 to $150,000 starting, but they're very very effective and they do their math on what works for it. We've been trying to kind of democratize this a little bit more and give people something that's a little bit more affordable and meaningful for them to be able to use at home without breaking the bank essentially.

So good. This has been so insightful. First of all, just red light therapy for somebody who needs a better understanding of it and for understanding, am I a candidate candidate is, is what I'm dealing with, a candidate for getting support and getting help. And you've heard here so many things are. You also have something really special. So quite often there is, at the end of the show we say, you know, there's a special link or place to go, but it's pretty juicy for this one. So for us, I will let you unwrap the present. If you want to talk to them a little bit, we have a link in the show notes, everybody. It's flipping50.com/redlight. And when you go there within the next week, Forrest, you want to do the big relay? I will do the drum roll, you can do the big reveal.

All right, I love it. Yeah, we, we really wanted to kind of help, you know, support your, your audience and give them an opportunity, uh, to take advantage of our 30-day, uh, trial. And so we've lowered the barrier by taking $100 off, uh, and giving free shipping. So for the next week, we're going to have $100 off and free shipping. And then after that week, uh, we'll stay with the free shipping. But, uh, this is, this is hopefully a good opportunity for your audience to be able to to bring this in, to try it on themselves, and to see the impacts that they can have on pain, mobility, plantar fasciitis, just getting back into a functional and movement-based life.

So good. And thank you so much for that generosity because we also— so we agreed, you know, we're talking about women primarily, you know, between 40 and 70, but we also operate here under the belief that midlife women are some of the biggest health influencers in the world. So whether it's their younger sons, daughters, or people they mentor, or it's their partners and/or parents and outlaws or in-laws, depending on your feelings on that, but you know, they influence a lot of people and somebody inevitably is, is dealing with something. So thanks so much for helping to spread the word about, you know, another possible way to help yourself Yes.

Stay away from the pharmaceuticals and use something that can actually benefit you longer term. And I think that's, again, that's our goal and our mission. So I really appreciate the discussion today and the amazing questions and the ability to kind of talk about that a little bit with your audience because it's, again, this is a way for people to stay healthy and stay away from things that can damage them long-term as pain treatments.

So great. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. To listen and access a decade of episodes and the show notes, visit Flipping50.com, where you'll be able to find all of our prior episodes. And I made it easy for you to make the most of your listening time by selecting 5 specific areas most commonly high priorities for our community and giving you top 10 lists if you let me know you'd love them. If you know a midlife woman, or a soon-to-be one who wants to optimize her midlife energy and time with the right exercise and lifestyle changes and a mindset shift about just what is possible, share this podcast with her and I thank you. There is no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife woman.