Benefits of Vagus Nerve Stimulation

Welcome to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast.

I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow. The website, this show, and our newsletter all focus on making the science of advanced nutrition and greater overall health accessible to everyone. Buckle up for our latest episode to get ideas, tools, and practical knowledge you can use to improve your health and move towards your perfect version of ultimate wellness. The Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast shares interviews with nutrition experts, health researchers, and everyday people that have changed their lifestyle and nutrition to support greater health. You'll learn how to implement lasting change and create new habits that support greater wellness and a happier, healthier life. Please visit healnourishgrowpodcast.com for full show notes and links to our guests.

Vitaly Smojurovich is the co-founder of Pulsetto. His journey from corporate burnout to biohacking pioneer is truly inspiring. Vitaly has developed a groundbreaking vagus nerve stimulator after experimenting with over 100 sleep biohacks. Despite past setbacks, Pulsetto is now scaling rapidly, hitting over $1 million in monthly revenue.

Hi everyone, welcome to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Today I'm joined by Vitaliy and I, I got the first name going pretty good. I'm not even gonna attempt the last name, so I'll let him share that. And of course you will have heard it in the bio here prior to the recording. But welcome to the show. Today we're gonna talk about all things kind of vagus nerve, what that even is, why it's relevant to you as a person, out there listening to this. And Vitaliy has a big interest in sleep and kind of a past with some things where he was super into biohacking. So this is gonna be pretty interesting. So Vitaliy, all that being said, can we start by you just sharing a little bit about yourself and your background in the biohacking? And I, I would love to really chat about that sleep experiment you did, cause that was quite impressive what you did with that.

Yeah. So before creating Bulsetto, I'm one of the co-founders of, of, of this company. I was working in corporate world in, in, in, in, and basically in the sleep industry. You know, I, I I was working in different countries, in different locations, and I was responsible for sleep products. So naturally sleep topic was always somewhere near, you know?

Mm-hmm.

You know, one day I decided to go deeper to this topic. I had some issues with sleep also. So it was like, oh, I was working in sleep industry, but at the same time I was sleeping bad. You know, I was working like a crazy for 16 hours and et cetera. And then when I was 29, I got panic attacks and sonax, and it was terrible experience that I remembered. I said, okay, I need to change something. And the starting point was sleep. Yeah. Because I was near this, let's say, field and topic and et cetera. So what I did basically at that moment, I just took around 70 factors, which has some kind of scientific publications, you know, and et cetera. 70 things. I will explain what those things mean. And I took those things I just listed and then, you know, I started this kind of 100-night experiment, which means that I took one thing from those 70 lists. Yeah. And then 3 evenings in a row, I consumed this thing and, and, and I was measuring my aura at that moment. I was one of the first aura users. It was not like a scientific study, but, you know, I saw some trends and how it's affecting my trends and etc. So the first thing what I tested, it was kiwi as a fruit. Don't ask me why, but there are some scientific studies which show that if you will eat kiwi before sleep, you will sleep better. Yeah. So I ate kiwi for 3 evenings in a row and I just wanted to understand is it really somehow improving my, like, sleep trends and et cetera. So this was like a starting point. So this kind of things, like 70 things I tested during 200 nights, basically. It was a lot of bullshit, sorry to say, a lot of shit. To some point, my wife in the beginning looked at me very crazy, for example, because I turned the bulbs to the red light bulbs, you know, in the bedroom. Then I was some specific flowers because there are stories about some specific flowers for cleaning the area, etc. I was consuming cocaine 3 evenings in a row, huge amount of cocaine. I just wanted to see how badly it's affecting my sleep. I was consuming alcohol for 3 nights in a row. I was doing, uh, a lot of supplements, a lot of food things, a lot of bedroom changes, a lot of body changes, you know, and etc. So from those 70 things, now some of them was really nonsense, but some of them was really big, uh, game changers, you know. And, uh, then after, after this experiment, I realized that you know, how better I could speak, you know, because before I thought that, you know, okay, it's like normal, something like that, you know, I have some issues. Generally, I, I am fine. But only when I started testing on myself, I saw what kind of changes can make a big difference, you know, then I realized that it's a big gap between normal and good, good to great, you know. And after those 200 nights, I really understand that, you know, you can improve yourself very much. And then it's completely affecting your productivity. It's completely affecting your energy levels, you know, your sharper mind, you know, et cetera. So this is how I went to biohacking after sleep. You know, it was more topics, you know, it was stress topic, it was food topic, it was, you know, uh, physical activity topic. Sleep was the starting point of my journey to the biohacking.

I, I absolutely love that you did. That sounds like something I would do. I haven't done it yet, but that's very interesting. Uh, when you were doing the 200 nights of the different things and doing 3 nights in a row, was there any specific thing that you tried that you could see like on your Oura Ring that it had a really big impact on either your HRV or your REM or your deep sleep? What was the thing that you found that was like kind of like, whoa, this might be the thing?

So it was something like 5 big conclusions, you know, from my side. The first, I mean, let's start from that there are game changers and there are nice to have things. A very good example of this is that, for example, you can read on Google somewhere that, for example, you can eat, you need to eat pistachios. Yeah. As a nut, because in pistachios you can find melatonin and melatonin is good for the sleep and et cetera. But I calculated, right? You need to eat 400 grams of pistachios, 400 grams, which already seems impossible in order that you will, uh, accumulate around 25% of melatonin with what you can do naturally. So for example, 2 hours before sleep to reduce the light. Makes the bigger difference on melatonin than 400 grams of pistachios. So this was the first conclusion, that there are game changers like those 2 hours before sleep to maintain the darkness and etc. And there are nice things like, I don't know, flowers, kiwi, and etc., but they are not changing your, like, sleep area. And basically I'm always saying to my friends, you know, those people who are asking about sleep. So there are 5 things, you know, first of all, the bedroom must be good. So it means the darkness and the cooling effect. It's very important. Temperature around 18, 19 degrees. And I saw a lot on my, on my, on my data also, whenever I dropped the temperature or whenever I was sleeping in the cooler room, you know, automatically, let's say the level of deep sleep was increasing, you know, the darkness of the bedroom is also very, very important, you know? So if you have some kind of light coming from the, from the outside, you give good I mean, to cover completely. The first is bedroom. The second is the disturbances. You need to minimize the bad things. Maybe you don't need to create new things, but you just need to minimize bad things. So one bad thing is the light. Very big game changer, huge game changer. Even now, for example, in wintertime, my wife, we have tradition one day per week, we are completely dark mode, completely dark mode. We have candles and some kind of this real light, but I mean, no LEDs, no nothing. Yeah, once, once per week. Perfect. Perfect. Let's say day for the relaxation, you know, for the switching off your mind, you know, completely, and et cetera. So this is the one disturbance. Caffeine and alcohol are two other disturbance. So you can reach a lot of improvement of sleep just, just cutting those disturbance. Just if you will do just this, you know, it'll be huge difference. The third point is, uh, is, uh, stress. Uh, because, uh, it's a huge, uh, antagonist of melatonin, which means that if you have higher level of stress in the evening, you will not produce enough melatonin, and then, you know, you will have issues with stress. So stress is huge topic. There are a bunch of ways how to reduce this. Maybe stimulation is one of the ways, you know, but it's not only one way, you know. You have— you can meditation, you can Breathe. You can do cold showers. You can go to sauna. I mean, there are, there are things what you can, that you can do. The, the fourth, you need to have routine. You are, you are like a 3, 2, 4 things what you are doing before sleep. I have my own routine. It's like a 10, 3, 2, 1. It means that 10 hours before sleep, 3 hours, 2 hours, and 1, 1 hour before sleep. So for example, 10 hours before sleep, I'm not consuming alcohol, caffeine. 3 hours before sleep, I'm doing some physical activity, like just No need to run marathon, but just walking and something. 2 hours before sleep, I'm trying to get into dark mode and then, uh, cooling the temperature of the room. I, in my case, I have Klima, so I'm just decreasing the temperature of the room to 18, 19 degrees. And then 1 hour before sleep, some stress management. Doesn't matter, or you will be able to settle for 5 minutes, or you will meditate for 20 minutes. I mean, something which is related to the stress reduction. So this is the fourth, you need to have routine. And the fifth, uh, the morning, uh, basically routine, but basically it means that you need to get the day, uh, sunlight. I mean, this is one of the most important things in, in, in, in order to, to let's say maintain, uh, good balance of the circadian rhythm, et cetera. So those five are, are, are, are like big difference. I saw in a lot of my, my, my data, because after those during the night, I started to make stacks, you know, I just started to combine things and I saw huge improvements in sleep quality and sleep quantity. You know, for example, if you're combining, let's say, the dark mode with, with, let's say, some stress management, you know, exercises. So but at least something from this 5 list, if you will do, you really can improve little bit, little bit, you know, and etc. Because with sleep, the most important thing that You don't need to think that you need to improve drastically. For example, if you add 15 minutes every day to your duration of sleep, just 15 minutes longer you will sleep, or 15 minutes earlier you will go to sleep. In one week, more than 2 hours. So I mean, this is the point that you don't need to make a revolution in your life and start to do those all 5 things. Just one thing from this, what 5 list, what I mentioned previously. Can make this kind of small change, and then this small change can accumulate to the big differences.

If you're like most people, you may have trouble sleeping on a regular basis. This can be so frustrating since sleep is maybe the most underappreciated and most important part of health. Over the years, I've tried many different biohacks to improve my sleep. If you're looking for more ideas on this, be sure to check out healnourishgrow.com/bettersleep where you can find my 6 best tips for better sleep along with a free sleep challenge. However, if you feel like you've already tried everything, I discovered a new tool that may be able to help— the Beas Sleep Mask. This innovative new tool harnesses the power of neurofeedback to give you a gift of great night's sleep without you having to do anything but simply put it on. The sleep mask uses the power of neural music and spheric sound to calm your vagus nerve and impact brainwaves. One group of participants using neural music for sleep over 14 days were able to fall asleep faster and double the amount of restorative deep sleep each night. There are numerous studies on using neurofeedback for sleep, and now you can use it yourself outside of the lab. It's designed to be comfortable for side sleepers and doesn't radiate EMF. Place an early bird order to get a steep discount as well as a free lifetime subscription. You can get this deal by going to healnourishgrow.com/bia. The mask is on pre-order but will be shipping very soon.

Yeah, those are some really amazing suggestions for sleep and I think that, you know, the fact that when people do it, it is interesting, like having the Oura or a tool like that where you can kind of see what changes you make really affect things. I agree with you. One of the biggest things for me was, and I'm at the age where I was starting to, you know, get a lot of hot flashes and be sleeping really hot. And I got the cooling mattress like the Ooler. There's a couple of them. There's like Eight Sleep. I have an affiliation with one of them. But man, getting that coolness in the room, like on the bed, that improved mine amazingly. So that, that one I think is one of the most important.

Is this the big happiness of being this biohacker, which means that you will test on yourself. Now, for example, in the last year I test a lot with CGM, with the continuous glucose monitor. I mean, also you cannot imagine how many things you can test on yourself because this is very personal. I will eat banana and you will eat banana. Our glucose spikes will be totally different because it depends on our genetic, on our gut-brain, you know, gut, uh, microflora, you know, and etc. So I mean, you can test a lot of things to know. For example, I was consuming different carbohydrates on my empty stomach. I just wanted to see how, let's say, uh, how it's affecting me in the long term with the glucose. I was eating like, uh, I don't know, uh, this, uh, bread, potato, rice, and et cetera. Me personally, for example, rice is spiking, uh, glucose to such a huge, uh, amount of level in, in 2 hours. The spice still exists on very high levels. For me, the rice is not good. And this I know only from this biohacking testing and experimenting with myself. But it doesn't mean that it's good for you. Yeah, because maybe it's, you are totally different, you know, and et cetera. So this is the, the, the, the, the greatness of the biohacking that you can use the tool like a CGM or like, I don't know, Aura or whatever. Yeah. And just see the changes in your data, you know, on your personal data. So. I think this is the, the, the, the most, you know, amazing thing.

Yeah, I totally agree. And you, so you mentioned that you were working at a very stressful corporate job and you mentioned stress is one of the things for sleep. And I think before we, before I hit record, we were talking about something recently that you got into more related to stress and also, you know, with using the Pulsetto, how that can affect it. So I'd love it if you could share a little bit more about what you've been learning about the stress part and you had a specific name for it, I think.

Yeah, I mean, the last 3 and a half years I'm quite deep, uh, in, in this topic. It's a stress resilience, basically. For me, the stress was always like this kind of mysterious, uh, thing, you know, because everybody blames stress. Yeah, everybody. I mean, you are bad at work, it's stress. You have illness, it's stress, you know. Everybody blames stress. Yeah, but not so many can track it, can measure it, you know, can somehow feel it, you know, and, and, and et cetera. And for me, I'm always this kind of person, you know, that what you cannot measure, you cannot improve, you know, and you cannot control, you know. So I want to somehow to, so, so, so this, this is my big passion, you know. I want to somehow structure this, this, this stress and et cetera. And it's quite a deep topic, quite a young topic, you know, if you're, if you're going, uh, because for example, in, in case of sleep, you have a lot of data or a lot of studies right now and et cetera. In case of stress resilience, basically it's quite a new science for us. Basically what it means that you have like a, like a blue, you can build it, you know, because you avoid stressful situations. It's impossible. Yeah. It'll be more and more stressful situations, but if you will have stronger stress resilience, you will recover faster. Yeah.

Yeah.

As a human being, we are switching on between parasympathetic nervous system. It means rest and digest and this sympathetic sympathetic nervous system, which means fight and flight. And we are always switching, you know. Now the problem is that we are switching too many times per day. If previously, let's say, we was in majority of time in those parasympathetic rest and digest, now, now, you know, 50 times we are going from those parasympathetic to sympathetic. I know every bad, bad message, every bad man, bad, you know, WhatsApp message, every Instagram story, you know, every bad driver. You know, creates some kind of, let's say, urge and, you know, bad feelings, you know, for us and etc. And then it's a big probability that we will be in this, in this, you know, in this loop, and then it will become the chronic stress, you know. But then the chronic stress is very bad, you know, for us because it's creating like an inflammation. Oh yeah, oxidative damage, you know, for our body and etc. So if you have this strong stress muscle, then you will recover, then you will switch faster the parasympathetic nervous system. So this is very important and you can measure the stress muscle, you know, one of the metrics of the stress muscle is HRV. So the higher the HRV, basically the stronger muscle you, you have. So for example, if now let's say very roughly, if you have 50 HRV as a, as, as a metric, you have like an average HRV. If you have like from 50 to 70, it's, it's already, you have like a stronger muscle. Person. If you have above 70, you're already, let's say, on the very good level. Uh, more than 90 is elite. Yeah, so it means— and also very important thing that you can train. So it means you can improve by doing some specific exercises, some specific, uh, routines. You can improve the HRV, you know, and by improving it, you will build the muscle. So it means that if you will have more stress, you will have faster, you will respond, you know, and you will recover faster. So this, this, this, this is the science in, in, in, I don't know, in 5 minutes, but that's what it's much deeper, you know, of course I'm just trying to simplify everything.

Yeah.

And in relation to stress, I think one of the nice things about tools like the Pulsetto, for example, and for those of you that are just listening and we're not watching on YouTube, if you can go to the video, you could actually see what it looks like. It's kind of just a device with some electrodes on it and it's got a button where you turn it on. So it's very simple, but it just goes around your neck and rests on the vagus nerve. And I guess what I love about tools like this is it can be very challenging to get somebody to meditate, for example, you know, to take the time to do that. But what you do with this device, you just turn on the app, you put it on, and it, and it kind of does it for you. So to me, it's kind of like a no-brainer for people to try this and see if it has a good effect. And so I'll just share with you that I, I only recently got it, and I did notice on my Oura Ring that the day that I did it— I can't remember if it was the first or the second time— but I had some really amazing sleep stats that night, like much more, uh, REM and deep sleep than normal. And also just more solid sleeps. I can't say for 100% certainty that it was the Pulsetto, cuz you know, you never know. There's always so many factors. But I really think that, you know, something like this, if you have stats from yourself previously and then if you got really consistent with it, did it for say like 30 days, something like that, you might be able to more accurately see if this is something that's helping you. But all that being said, I would love it if you would share a little bit about like what the vagus nervous nerve is and why it's related to stress. And then how does a device like this, you know, help people affect the, you know, different outcome?

Yeah, I, I will answer this question and then I will add that, for example, right now we have like a new feature on our app that you can connect your Oura or Apple Watch or whatever. With our device and you can get the data of your heart rate, of your heart rate variability, of your sleep, of your stress. And then you will, you will see in the, in the, this is our future. You will see that, for example, after the stimulation, how the heart rate is changing, you know, et cetera. Uh, and, and, and we will play with this data to create like a very personalized protocols that, for example, if you want to improve HRV, you need to do this specific protocol of Pulsetto Plus. Some behavior changes in case of, I don't know, sleep or, or other behavioral things. Uh, and now, for example, we are working even with Oura because we see from our current— we are connected, yeah, or a link with setup that sleep latency means that how fast you're going to sleep. Yeah, problems of the people who have like, uh, with, with, with sleep because they They're so stressful, you know, they can't, the racing mind not allowing, you know, to go fast to the sleep and then they are like, you know, challenges. So they're waking up in the middle of the night and they cannot go to sleep anymore. So, but back to the vagus nerve topic. So the vagus nerve is like one of the longest, one of the unique nerves in our body. Connects basically the brain with the internal organs. The uniqueness of this nerve that It has branches in every organ. Yeah. So every organ has some kind of branch of the vagus nerve. Basically, it's not like a one cable. It's not, you get it to imagine the nerves like a cable. Yeah. It's a, it's like a net, uh, more than 200,000 fibers. Yes. Connections to the different organs and et cetera. And the brain communicates with the gut, with the organs. The vagus nerve. So for example, order for the brain to understand our liver is producing good, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and performing good. Let's say the, the liver sends a signal via vagus nerve that, let's say, all those markers of liver is okay. And then the brain sends the signal that, okay, if it's okay, then for example, you can reduce the heart rate, you know, please give it to, uh, blood pressure is reduced, et cetera. So it's always communicating. If you have issues with the, with the, or it's not so strong, let's say, or the tone is, is very low, then you have this kind of brain, then you have brain fog, then you have tiredness, then you have miscommunication between those brain and, and organs. And then you have kind of fat issues, IBS, and et cetera. So basically damage or dysfunctional, uh, vagus nerve. One more time, HRV is one of the metrics which represents the strength of the, of the vagus nerve, how fast you, you basically you can switch the parasympathetic nervous system. So vagus nerve, when you're activating it, basically it's switching on this parasympathetic nervous system, which is for relaxation, for digestion, for cooling down yourself and et cetera. Uh, we activating that because on the next side, uh, I'm going Sides of the neck, you have approximately 60% of all the fibers.

Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking the subscribe button now. We'd also love it if you could post a review on iTunes. It helps us so much by allowing others to more easily find us. The Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast wouldn't be possible without listeners like you. Thank you so much for your support. Now back to the show.

You remember I said the vagus nerve is around 200,000 fibers of network, yeah, of those branches and et cetera. 60% of them are on the neck area. That's why we created this device, which you need to put in the neck. You need to switch on the, the, the, the, the, the button. It's connected to the app. And then we are creating quite deep electric current, which goes under the muscle to the nerve level. And basically in 5 to 7 minutes, we are activating this nerve. And when this nerve is activated, you're switching on this parasympathetic nervous system. And then all parameters going down. So let's say blood pressure is decreasing a little bit, heart rate is decreasing, HRV is increasing because it's also one of the metrics of the, of the, of the relaxation of, of those stress resilience and et cetera. It seems simple. Yeah. Electricity goes under the muscle to the nerve. Where is the biggest, let's say now our work and, and laboratory work that if you are activating different Different vagus nerve fibers are responsible for different things from those 200,000, you know, some of the fibers are responsible for the parasympathetic nervous system. Yeah. This heart rate drop, et cetera. Some of the fibers you are switching on, uh, and increasing the level of acetylcholine, very important neurotransmitter who's participating in inflammation management, you know, and migraine, for example, acetylcholine. Improves the, the level of nitric oxides, which is like a, you know, very important factor for the migraine. And that's why there are a lot of studies about vagus nerve stimulation and migraine, vagus nerve stimulation and inflammation. Some of the fibers that are for gut-brain axis and those kind of things like IBS and et cetera. So different fibers has different role in your body. Now scientifically, this is the point that with electric signal like voltage jump then pulse wave on both side we're trying to activate different levels of the vagus nerve fiber so this seems simply simple product but in reality I mean where we want to go you— you want to have like 20 different programs from there under— under— under— whenever if you got issues with IBS or just switching one program if you have issues with migraine you're switching other products I mean, you don't need to wear like 20 devices. It's like, it'll be one device, but the different electric signals who will tackle different fibers for the different metric of, of, of, of, of, of health. So this is where we are going, you know, and this is our, like, uh, the biggest challenges and, and, and biggest issues right now. And like experiments, tests, scientific studies, you know, and et cetera.

Yeah. When we, I, um, was first exploring the device, I actually went on PubMed and was looking at vagus nerve stimulation and. Kind of what things that they were addressing with it. I definitely saw migraine come up in some of the gut things that you mentioned. But when you, when you were doing the research for this device and, and, you know, now you've been so immersed in it now for years, what are some other than what you've already mentioned? What are some other conditions besides stress, migraine, and IBS that there's good data for or that you even have anecdotal evidence for helping a different situation?

Well, cognitive performance. A lot of data about cognitive performance, memory especially. So a lot of studies with the army, military guys in this topic. For example, if you do have sleepless night, so no sleep, and it's like very typical situation in, in combat situation in army, then you have a lot of mistakes because of those cognitive issues. But then if you are doing after sleepless night, vagus nerve stimulation, you're reducing mistake level very much, you know. So this is a lot of studies, uh, uh, in this case, blood pressure, but not in all cases, but it's also part of the parasympathetic nervous system, you know, because when you are this in this parasympathetic, everything goes down, you know, blood pressure goes down. The, the, the muscles are relaxing. The, the, the, the heart rate goes down. Quite a lot of studies, pressure that you can really regulate the, the blood pressure. Now there is one device, exoskeleton stimulator, which basically can treat arthritis, right? Inflammation-related disease. It's implantable design. The device is not like, not like we have implantable device, but they already have FDA approval for arthritis, which is, I mean, huge problem and etc. Migraine and cluster head pains. Pains like a 10x migraine, it's even stronger, you know, and, and et cetera. My wife, she has palpitations. This was the reason why I dig deeper in this topic, uh, 5, 6 years ago, you know. So this is, this, this is topic. Now, for example, in Lithuania, we are running clinical study about, uh, forest bathing activation. We are even measuring the cortisol level of the hair. Yeah. While Best metrics to know because there is a cortisol in the hair and you can measure before and after the hair levels of cortisol, et cetera. But here still on the main topic, parasympathetic nervous system. But for example, PTSD, also a lot of studies with also with military, especially ex-veterans and the people who have PTSD in general. It's related with parasympathetic nervous system, but it's little bit different topic. So PTSD and, and vagus nerve also quite a big amount right now coming, you know, on, on, on public field.

That's pretty exciting. And I think, you know, on the underlying part of all of that is if you get better sleep, pretty much any, any condition that you have will be improved. So I think just that in and of itself is pretty amazing. When you are sharing this device with family, friends, and I know that there's like a specific protocol and on the app you can choose stress or pain relief or whatever, and you said there's some other features coming. But what are your recommendations for people to use this? Like, is there, you know, is there anything like don't use it more than 3 times a day or using it once a day is optimal, or does it depend on the condition? Like, how would you suggest that people most effectively use the device?

At least once per day. Perfectly would be twice per day, 5 to 7 minutes per stimulation. There are different timing things for the stimulation, but like I said, 5 to 7 minutes is enough to activate the vagus nerve based on our studies. So you can do it, for example, before sleep, just 1 hour, 30 minutes before sleep, just to put like a first 5-7, and then, or in the morning, or even you have this kind of stressful, before the stressful event. Yeah. You have, I don't know, stressful meeting or you are going on stage or you are going to the dentistry, you know, to, to, I mean, I'm just saying my Customer cases, yeah, where they are, the pulsetto. And there are a lot of cases that, for example, one professional poker player is, is using before the game because he's full of stress. So I mean, in the morning and in, in the evening, 5 to 7 minutes. The, the, the, the good part that it's hands-free, uh, so you can multitask. I mean, you can do whatever you want. You can watch TV, you can scroll the telephone, you can I mean, at this moment I'm personally working with a lot of sport, professional sport players. So they usually, they are doing also before sleep because they have big issues with sleep after especially games and etc. So they are using when they are in the, in the, you know, doing some procedures like, like stretching or, or putting the legs on the, in the cold, uh, you know, they're just using as the, as the, as the tool and then scrolling and just relaxing, you know, and etc. So the same with you, you know, before sleep, whenever you watch TV, you know, just can 5 minutes put the device, you know, and just, you know, try to wind down, you know, and—

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the sports performance cuz I actually was on the website prior to meeting me. I did this just before our meeting, not cuz I thought this was gonna be a stressful meeting, but, but because I saw you say that you should be using it 1 to 2 hours after training, which I did today. And so can, can you share a little bit about why for athletes this is useful? So for example, I, you do a weight training session and then I came home and I, you know, ate my protein, ate my lunch, whatever. And then I used this, I pressed, um, the pain setting on the thing because that's what you recommended. And can you explain like why that's useful after training, how it helps recovery?

If you've been around my content for a while, you know that one of my favorite things is making and eating gourmet food and pairing it with wine. You might think you can't enjoy wine though while trying to lose weight or stay in ketosis, and if you're drinking traditional wine, you might be right. So many wines are mass-produced and full of sugar and other garbage additives that can wreak havoc on your health goals and just make you feel bad. Fortunately, I discovered Dry Farm Wines. I've been drinking their wine for years now, and I love this company. They individually test small batch wines produced by vintners that are committed to the practice of dry farm production. Some of my favorites have been the Blaufränkisch variety from Austria and all of the wines from the Loire Valley in France. Dry Farm Wines are free from excess sulfites and mold that can cause adverse reactions and hangovers. With no added sugar, each wine is tested to be under 1 gram of sugar in the entire bottle. Yep, you just heard that right. There's less than one carb in the whole bottle of wine. They're also slightly lower alcohol, which means you can enjoy a delicious wine pairing at dinner any given night and not end up with a hangover. You can receive an extra bottle for just a penny with your first order by visiting dryfarmwines.com/healnourishgrow. I'd love to hear what your favorite wine is after you try it, and be sure to tag me on social with pictures of your wine and delicious dinners. Again, that bottle of wine for a penny is at dryfarmwines.com/healnourishgrow.

Www.bifarmwines.com/healnourishgrow. So basically what now we are looking at, there are 3 situations when the sport people are using the Pulsetto, basically 2, and the third is 50/50. So before sleep, especially after the games, they have big issues. Typical sleep time is 3 AM after the games. It's like a typical professional sport player, due to many reasons they are going to sleep 3 AM. So for them it's a, it's a big factor. Especially if the next day is the training already and they, they have just, I don't know, 5 hours of sleep or, or 4 hours of sleep. Then before the competition, but not always because they're, they're very superstitious, you know, and they have their own routines. But especially those who have very stress, stress, stressful things. But it's, it's 50/50. Some trainers don't want that they will relax so much because some trainers want that they will go to the fight and flight, you know. They need an accelerator, they don't need, you know, brake, you know. So some trainers don't want that, they will use it for before the game or competition because other, they want this kind of adrenaline mode, you know, and etc. So it's like I said, it's 50/50. And then the next is in the morning after very hard training because usually what we see from the sport people that HRV, one of the metrics of this, let's say, recovery and etc. It drops 40% after very hard— like if you have benchmark, I don't know, your average base HRV is like 100. Let's, let's imagine that after a very hard training or competition, it drops minimum to 60, like 40, 40%, which is huge, which means that you are not fully recovered, which means that you are not super stress resilient. It means that you are very sensitive, you know, which means that you can be affected with a lot of those mini stressors and etc. So with wearing Pulsetto, they're trying to decrease the level of drop. It's not like a, it's not a magic stick, you know, you cannot expect that, you know, after hard training, you know, you will stay, remain on 100 HRV, you know, but you can, from our data, you can, you can decrease the drop, let's say from 40 to 20, something like that, which is still quite significant, you know, et cetera. So basically the main idea is to control the HRV, you know, because it's really decreasing, you know, after, after hard physical activity.

Yeah, that's amazing. I love so many good use cases for this, and I love that you were able to like really share with people kind of your personal experience, because I think often when people create a device like this, it's often out of some kind of personal thing that happened to them, right? Like you said, your wife has migraines, so that was very helpful, and you'd been under a lot of stress and not sleeping well. So I love that you were able to find something and then bring it to market that can really help everyone. So all that being said, I would love it if you, if there are any final thoughts that you have or anything that you'd like to share that we haven't already addressed either in relation to biohacking or the device.

I'm always saying, probably I want to say two things. First of all, really experiment with yourself. I think this is the uniqueness of biohacking that you can do on yourself. You're a very personal, very unique human being. You have your own, I don't know, glucose spike, your own sleep metrics and et cetera. So I think this is The important that you experiment, which means that you will take care of yourself. Yeah. And this is the second point that you really need to take care of yourself, especially of your mental. Uh, for example, me personally, it was a period of time last month, my typical average week, like a working hour, it was 70 hours. It's huge. So, I mean, with this kind of huge workload, it's very, it's very, it's very, it's very possible that you will burn out. Yeah. So I understand this and I'm taking care of myself a lot about the stress resilience, mental health, and et cetera. Pulsetto is the part of the routine. It's not like a, like a, like I said, it's not a magic stick. I am really spending a lot of time on my mental health, you know, just to recover, to have good sleep, good nutrition, you know, I'm taking care of that. A lot about high-intensity interval training. I am doing, uh, like, uh, like, uh, health awareness journals with the thoughts, you know, what kind of activities decreasing my energy levels, what kind of activities increasing my level energy. I'm doing some parasympathetic nervous system. I'm taking care of myself, you know. So I think this is the very— doesn't matter like, uh, mom Or you are people, or you are just a random person, you need to take care of your mental health because nowadays, you know, it'll be more and more stressors, more pandemic, wars, other situation. So mental health is becoming, you know, more and more important. So take care of your mental health.

Yes. Amazing advice. Thank you so much again for joining us today and sharing all your knowledge and your passion for biohacking and for creating this device. Hopefully we will see more from the future about this, the studies that you're doing. For the final thing, if anybody wants to check this out, I created a link and it's healnourishgrow.com/pulsetto. So super easy to find. And like I said, you go to the website, there's a special section for athletes where, um, Vitaliy speaks about some of the benefits and then you can also just find out all the information there. So thanks again. I really appreciate it.

Thanks. Thank you very much.

This has been the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Again, I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow. You can find show notes for this episode at healnourishgrowpodcast.com. If you have feedback on today's episode or questions about the content, please email us at podcast@healnourishgrow.com. We'd love to hear from you. Be sure to sign up for our email list at healnourishgrow.com and subscribe to the show with your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Join us next time for more information that helps you live your best and healthiest life. Thanks for listening.

Content on the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast does not constitute medical advice.

Content contained in the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast is not intended as medical diagnosis or treatment. Neither the company nor its owner, Heal, Nourish, Grow LLC, nor any of the company's employees, agents, or guest speakers provide medical advice. The content provided on Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult your medical provider with any questions about what health practices are right for you.