Neuromodulation Tools for School and Work Performance: 99

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.

Guy Odishaw is a neurofeedback practitioner, bioelectric medicine, and craniosacral therapist who founded Bhakti Wellness Center in 2006 with a mission to support both the needs of healthcare providers and healthcare consumers alike. Today, Bhakti Wellness Center is one of the largest, most diverse integrative medicine clinics in the country. Guy's 30 years of clinical experience specializing in treatment-resistant chronic pain, traumatic brain injury, and psychoemotional trauma informs his approach to brain health. Additionally, his 20-plus years as a meditation instructor and facilitator of courses on personal growth help him understand how to support clients through the potent changes arising from neurotherapy. Brain training does not only alleviate unwanted symptoms, it can also facilitate positive changes in one's whole sense of self and relationship to the world around them. Guy is the co-founder of the first integrative student health clinics in the country at the University of Minnesota, the Bhakti Brain Health Clinic, neuroimaging and neuromodulation, the Minnesota Bresdin Clinic, dementia prevention and treatment, and the Cerebral Fit Brain Training, a nutraceutical, electroceutical company.

Hi everyone, welcome to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Today I am joined by Guy Guy Odishoff. Easy for me to say, right? It should be easy to say because this is the third time that you've been on this show and happy to have you back. Before we get into the topic of the day, Guy, can you just share with everybody— I've read your official bio, of course, like always, but could you just share a little bit of your background and how you got into this work and what makes you so passionate about helping people in the way that you do?

Well, great to be back. Thank you. So my background is primarily in integrative medicine and kind of two main tracks for me, you know, my private practice as a practitioner, but then in some ways really my more full-time job, which is, you know, building clinics. My biggest clinic is a large integrative medicine clinic with 30 providers kind of across the spectrum of care from allopathic MDs all the way to energy work of various kinds and everything in between. And then my own private practice has been primarily kind of on the orthopedic side, pain, trauma, working on the body. But then over time, I got interested in bioelectric medicine and, and then that led me down the path of bioelectric medicine. And then that led me to brains in particular. And now I spend most of my time working directly on the brain with neuroimaging, neurofeedback, neurostimulation, neuromodulation. And so, so now my private practice and my clinic life are much more similar as I've kind of dropped the big integrative clinic and moved to a more focused, you know, kind of brain-centric bioelectric medicine specific approach for brain health.

Yeah, I love that. And it, it, the fact that you've done so much work with these clinics and have that background, I think makes you really uniquely positioned to have a lot of knowledge across across various subjects. Um, and when we chatted before about what we wanted to talk about today, because you are such a wealth of knowledge, but I thought that the topic that you proposed was really good because it has to— almost everybody has a child in their life in some way, whether it's a niece, a nephew, their own child, um, something like that. Somebody they know is probably in school in some capacity, and one of the programs, um, that you've been working on has been with children specifically. And certainly since the pandemic, there has been a lot of changes in schools, a lot more stress in schools in a lot of ways, and the teachers are fighting a lot of this too. So I'd love it if you could just share some of the things just more broadly now in the school system. What are their challenges? What kinds of things are children experiencing? And then we'll get into obviously kind of the ways that you deliver the brain health part, how you can actually help them with some of these methods that you have.

Yeah, this is a favorite topic of mine and program that we're developing at the clinic. So I'll, you know, go back. I don't know. I, you know, I have a mantra, don't do the math, right? I'll go back about 40 years. But when I, when I was first in college, I went in for education and I got, I don't know, about 3 years into the program. So far enough. Where I was doing internships. So I was out in the schools and I learned very early on that I was not wired to be in the elementary school setting. Like, it was just clear, like, hey, nope, this isn't going to go for me. It's not going to go well for the children. So I moved on to then post-secondary, uh, or secondary, and then had a similar realization. There that, nope, still this is not a good match. Uh, eventually, uh, into adult education. And then that's where I was like, okay, this is my place. I can have a, a reasoned conversation with my students. Um, and, and, and that worked for me personally. But I, so, so the, what that gives me is an immense respect for the people who can be in the classroom, um, you know, K through 12, really, but we tend to focus a lot on, on K to 8. Um, and, and so I've always had that, right? The thing that I, I couldn't do immense respect for the people who do it. But now when I listen to, uh, my, my, you know, clients who are teachers and friends and neighbors, but mostly, um, the, the detailed stories I hear from my clients and what, what an average teacher puts up with today is so far removed from my worst day in the classroom, which today any of the teachers would beg to have that be like their best day isn't that good. And so again, hard for me to imagine that, that these folks get up and go back to work every day. And do what they do with the, with what they have to deal with in a classroom in terms of behavior and, and, and not that any of it's considered acceptable. It's just the ability to try and manage it. And, and what are the resources that, that a teacher can call on, whether that's parental involvement, administrative involvement, their, the, the problem has outscaled the available resources. And that's, that becomes the, that, that's what we hear over and over and over again from teachers is the overwhelm.

And I mean, I'm sure people can imagine that there's any number of things from behavior, but the reasons for behavior I think might be a little bit interesting to go into because one of the things that, uh, I've heard from previous guests and that I have seen data on it myself is that the incidence of ADHD is, is climbing, as is people that are on the autism spectrum. And all of those things kind of come along with behavioral challenges for sure. And sometimes severe enough that it puts them in an individualized education program kind of situation. So that's a little different. They might be in a classroom with other kids. Are there other things outside of those— two things that I just mentioned that teachers are experiencing? Is it, uh, that the parents are involved in a different way or the kids are acting a different way, or is they're on their phones all the time? What's, what's the thing that you kind of hear the most that makes it more challenging for them?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it's, it's so multifactorial with sometimes small, but sometimes large, uh, shifts across many different points. In the average child's life. And so everything you just said, but there's so many variables within that, you know, so it's, I think it's too easy to simply shift towards the parents and just say, you know, all of this lands at you. Or as maybe certainly teachers would say, or, you know, anybody in the school system would say, Too often it's, it's the other way. It's oriented towards the school and to the teacher and saying, this is all on you. And, you know, you are the origin of the problem and you need to be the origin of the solution, figure it out. And so we tend to have this kind of back and forth, teachers pointing to the family and the family's pointing to the teacher. And, and there, there's truth in all of that. So, I mean, this, there's just so much research we could, you know, go through around what seems to be the explanation for the changes we're seeing. As you mentioned, the, the increase in, in kind of diagnoses of, of various conditions. So on one hand, like, yes, I want to hold that as, as valid. But on another hand, I think we have to look at this is too, too much of a common approach in our culture. Is, is to put a di— a diagnostic code on something, you know, make it a pathology, make it a condition, and then wanna treat it. And like in, for the cases where that's true, absolutely. But we need to, you know, really be able to pull apart the, the places where, you know, a child doesn't need a, a, a diagnostic label, they need something else. But so some of the great, the research, Jonathan Haidt's research on the impact of the smartphone. So social media and that, I mean, I think the research there, the statistics, I think it's undeniable how big of an effect we could argue over that, but it's a significant impact that it has had. On, on, again, on the, in terms of the person, it isn't across one system. We can't just say it's attentional, like, oh, it's just, it's what's led to this ADHD epidemic. No, because it, it is, it's about the person's kind of self-esteem. It's about their reward system. Like we see this so much in the brain clinic in when we're looking at brain imaging. And we're, we're seeing just this recurrent pattern in mostly children. We see it in adults, but it, but it is much higher prevalence in our younger clients is this dysregulation in what we could shorthand to say kind of the reward system or the self-regulation system. And it maps very well from what happens to us when we engage in kind of modern technology, screens, social media, but it isn't all only that we could talk about the gaming and the gaming doesn't have to be kind of the first-person shooter type game that people get all excited about. It, it could be Wordle or, you know, anything where that device becomes your primary form of engagement and it's driving the dopamine system. And people are disproportionately spending more time engaged with their device because of how it's driving the dopamine system, the pleasure system, the reward system.

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Farmwines.com/healnourishgrow. And then they're not doing the other things they need to be doing, right? So if, you know, it's parent, if it's a parent on the device, it's the parent not parenting. If it's the child on the device, it's the child not childing. And right. So, I mean, this is, this is, it's massive. I mean, and I'll just, so my, my family was just here visiting. So my adult children and the grandchildren. And I would have these moments where I'd walk into the room. And so the whole family's sitting in the living room and everybody's on a device. And, and I was like, like, in my own home.

It's unbelievable. It's almost, I have honestly almost given up at this point because it's almost impossible to be in a group and to not have at least somebody in the group on their phone at some point, which is, which is just a really sad state of affairs. Before we move on with that, I want to go back to something that you said about dopamine because it reminded me— I heard an interview recently, um, and they were talking about, uh, the dopamine system. I think it was an addiction conversation, actually. And the person said— and it was something I had never really thought of it in this way before for some reason, but it's something so simple— and it's just that we have gotten with all these devices and online shopping and all these very addictive type behaviors that we it's all available with no work. Like before, at least to get a dopamine hit, you had to work for it a little bit. Like maybe you had to go for a long run or something to get your dopamine hit. But now you literally just click buttons or somebody likes, you know, likes something on your social media or whatever. And people are just getting these dopamine hits all the time with no work involved. And I think that that disconnect from the work and the reward is maybe at the crux of how we go after it. I don't know. What do you think about that?

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I think the no work thing and that this is a system like any other system in the body and it can fatigue. It will adapt to its environment. And so if, and it's not an if, but you know, when people engage in these activities, that deliver them dopamine, you know, free, right? Just moment after moment after moment after moment, you can scroll, scroll, scroll. And if, you know, TikTok runs out of dopamine for you, you can switch to the next platform and then to the next platform and, and, you know, just keep juicing the system. Well, the system starts to break down, right? That we get, we get a dopamine fatigue. And so then the, you know, there's a need for more and there's the dysregulation, you know, downstream. From when that core mechanism starts to go awry. So yeah, I mean, it, it, there's so, so much right in this system right here, right? Like it could be enough to say, okay, like if all we did was focus on fixing this, we would have a large demonstrable positive effect on Culture, society, and then here, if we're talking about schools, on what's happening in schools. If we just change this mechanism, but of course that's not the only mechanism, there's many at play, but it's part of what makes this conversation, I mean, it's an important conversation, a good one, a challenging one. And part of the challenge is there's this tendency to kind of want to make everything down to a single variable. Right? Like we have this idea culturally of a, of a silver bullet, like there's one solution. Right. And so we have that mentality, like somehow we could solve the problem of education or the quality of life in our schools, outcomes for our children through some singular magic fix. And, and No, it's, that's just no.

I know we wish it did. We wish we just had a magic wand.

Yeah, exactly. We really need to have this. There's all of these issues going on. And then, you know, we come with a very, like our clinic comes with a very specific place where we engage and we help solve one of the thousand issues. It happens to be that ours is, is fairly far up in the stream, which is, you know, what we, we say in our clinic, our mantra is we regulate dysregulation. So we could take a lot of the specifics we get into, say we're talking about the dopamine network, but there's also the self-esteem and there's just so many different aspects of self. If we regulate the dysregulation in the brain, that's very much a kind of a catch-all for all of those different subsystems that we could talk about that might be going on to the attention system, the reward system, the, again, self-efficacy. Just, you know, cognitive function, like just pure intelligence and how well any one brain can navigate the landscape of school academically, but also socially. So when we regulate the brain, we actually get a lot of value out of that because it's not a singular intervention at a behavior, right? We're kind of out on the surface. We're regulating the mechanism that is the architect of all behavior. And, and so, and then also it isn't just for students, you know, we encourage teachers to use these devices to help regulate their nervous systems. We encourage parents to use them. So the goal is, you know, we, again, we say in our, our, our ideal client is anybody with a brain. That's a pretty large population. So if we look at all of—

sort of, sometimes.

Yeah. If we look at—

no, all kidding aside, it's for everyone.

It is for everybody. It's the toothbrush for the brain. But if we look at all of the people involved, if all of those people were more well-regulated, that would have a dramatic positive impact on the entire process. So even though, like, we fully acknowledge we're coming in with, you know, one solution to a multivariate problem, it is a solution that actually has a lot of downstream positive effects. And, and that's part of why we're passionate about it is this simple intervention can have a massive positive impact. And it's been shown, I mean, there's decades of research, you know, in general across healthcare for neuromodulation. And I should just say, just to take out any sense of mystery here, primarily what I'm talking about is a device that does audiovisual entrainment. So it's a neuromodulation device that uses light and sound and a microcurrent to modulate the central and autonomic nervous system.

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Very, very simple, benign, harmless I tell my clients, you couldn't hurt yourself with one of these unless you trip over it. Right? Like it's giving the body the inputs the body has been doing for as long as bodies have been bodies.

Right?

It's taking light, which we all use light to function. It uses sound. We use sound to function. And then we are chemical electric beings. So electricity is part of our makeup. So delivering a bioidentical electrical current. Is, is all stuff that the body is 100% uses all day, every day to function. So we're not putting in some, you know, synthetic exogenous force that might compromise the system, right? Which is more like you could think like pharmaceutical, right? We're going to put in a synthetic chemical that is going to impact part of the system positively, and then part of the system not so positively, hence side effects. We're all familiar with that model. What we're talking about here is just using natural functions of the body to help regulate the system. So it's a benign intervention. They're low cost. They cost about $600. But the, that we're regulating the brain, that's, that's why it has high impact.

And do you find that people are generally more accepting of this kind of program because it doesn't really require them to sort of do anything really? They just put on this device and I'm picturing, I don't know, you'll have to describe it to me because it's so far in my head. I'm picturing like some kind of, you know, helmet kind of situation that they put on their head, but maybe you can describe the device a little bit and speak to, you know, the ease of use, if that's helping some of the results, because there's not a big barrier to getting people to say meditate every day, for example.

Right. So, so a couple things in there. I'll quickly describe the device. So it's a set of glasses that have pulsing lights, headphones that have pulsing sound or binaural beats. And then ear clips that have a microcurrent. So, so that's, that's what we're doing. So you put it on like, yeah, you know, most people, they kind of laugh. They're like, I look ridiculous. It's like, yeah.

So, you know, maybe, maybe you can get a photo that I can clip into the video at some point and just so people can see what it looks like. That'd be awesome.

We'll get you that. But, and also, and glad, thank you for saying that is I will send you some of the documentation that we give to clients around IEP programs for school funding. And we're, we're in Minnesota, so all of our stuff is geared around what's available in Minnesota, but some of the programs are federal. But even what I would encourage, even if a person isn't in the state of Minnesota, is your state likely has a program like this, even though the, the, the name might be different and some of the particulars might be different. But what we, we provide our families, teachers, school administrators with are kind of a, the, a template that allows them to access county, state, or federal funds. To help either buy these devices for a school so that they're in the school, students can access them there, or staff, or some of the programs will, will pay for these devices for the family to have. So it'll go home with the student. So I'll get you those as well. So you can put it in the show notes and people can download them there and take a look at this information. So we've, we've had social workers who who navigate these programs to help get their clients assistive technology. We use the same pathway that they might say, get an iPad for a student to get this assistive technology, same process. So we'll get that information. Yeah. So the, so the device, it, you know, it is kind of goofy, but once you have it on, you can't see yourself.

So, right. So you're like, you may feel ridiculous, but you won't have to look at yourself doing it.

Exactly. You don't know how ridiculous you look. So, um, uh, and then the, the other part of that of course is the effect, right? When people start to experience the effect, that goes a long way in, in counterbalancing the like, oh, I have to put this thing on and wear it for 30 minutes a day. Or, you know, and, and the, the 30 minutes a day isn't a, an, you know, an all-encompassing accurate treatment plans highly vary depending on the person and what's the nature of the dysregulation and, um, you know, but a common one for students. So let's say the issue is focus and concentration for whatever reason. Lots of things bring out, you know, focus and concentration. It could be ADHD, it could be anxiety, um, could be, uh, like post-concussive syndrome. You know, there's any number of reasons why people have attention challenges. So you can, the device, you can get a set of see-through glasses. This is a very common thing we do with our students who have attentional issues is we'll have them wear the device when they're doing their homework. And, and you, you see like within minutes, and this is the thing that it's hard for people to believe until they see it, is you can take a child and who's got attention difficulties, have them read a paragraph and maybe they get 3 sentences and they're already distracted, but you get them through the paragraph, you say, what did you read? And they don't, can't really tell you. We put the glasses on and then they read 3 pages and then they can tell you what they read. And that, that's the difference. And, you know, we, we know from neuroimaging that within 3 minutes the device is changing brainwaves, right? So we, we know that it works. People are, you know, find that difficult to believe that, you know, it's like they've spent, you know, 5 years where school has been difficult and they can't do it. And now all of a sudden I put on this device and I can read and comprehend what's going on. And it's really just a simple matter of, again, regulating dysregulation. We can get incredibly, you know, complicated in describing the nature of the dysregulation, where it is, what form is it, an, you know, a theta, gamma, you know, a phase amplitude coupling issue. Sure. I mean, there's all kinds of that exists and that's the work we do in the clinic. But the simple form is if we regulate the dysregulation, we can improve function. That's it. Like, it's just that simple. And so this is what, this is, you know, one of the ways we use the device is simply that to help children be able to do their homework faster, you know, kind of more accurately, have better retention, less anxiety, you know, a better outcome. And when you start to iterate that, right, if you can take away that anxiety of I have homework and, and I'm not going to understand and it's going to be frustrating and I'm probably going to have a fight with my mom or my dad around it. But then that doesn't happen. Or again, without being overly dramatic, let's say there's, you know, in the beginning there's less of a fight about it and the struggle is less of a struggle and the outcome is a little bit better. But when that iterates day after day after day, what we see in not that long, weeks, months, uh, there isn't the fight to do the homework. The homework gets done. It gets done well. There's retention. Anxiety goes down. Self-esteem goes up. Performance in school. It translates into school. In schools where they have students wear these devices, and we have schools mostly special ed, smaller classrooms, but it doesn't have to be limited to that, where they'll have the students wearing the device in the classroom when they're doing certain projects together as a group. And we see exactly the same thing happen there, where the challenges that the students had, the resistance, the acting out because of the anxiety about having to do the math or the reading or the, you name the activity for any given student that's anxiety-producing, regulate the nervous system. They go into the activity with less distress, less acting out. They do better at it. There's more learning that happens, which means just that in and of itself is gonna mean they're, they're going to do better the next time and they're gonna have less anxiety. More learning, better outcome. When you add, have that additive across all 10 students in the room, what you get is a classroom that functions more like what we all would like to see an optimal classroom be, which is students are generally, you know, well-regulated, they're cooperative, they're excited, they're curious. They're engaged in the activity. There's, there's more positive social interaction that becomes reinforcing for the whole collective activity of school. And then that has an effect on the teacher.

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When the teacher is, is managing a classroom of more well-regulated students that teacher's stress level goes down. They show up with, you know, more of the goods, more resilience. So now they have more to bring to the classroom and they have students more able to receive that. And the whole collective moves forward and more of what we want from the educational process happens.

Yeah, that sounds like the ideal scenario. I don't know why anybody wouldn't want that. Um, if you're, what you're describing is like, school nirvana, basically, right?

Um, absolutely. And, and, and, but this is the thing, like, like, like you said, like, who wouldn't want that? So I'd mentioned before we came on air about the, this program that ran in Minnesota about 20 years ago. And it was a, um, as often these, uh, projects in schools are, it was a passionate teacher who was aware of this technology. Advocated to bring it into the school, put together a group of people here locally, specialists. They implemented what was going to be a study, but it turned out, I mean, the study was very positive. Program lasted a number of years. When the, so what the program was doing is using audiovisual entrainment in schools. They would use it in various ways, but much the way I described it, you know, groups of students in a classroom. Doing audiovisual entrainment in the class as a group. And when they measured the, you know, the various statistics, the outcomes, academic, social, you know, parental happiness, teacher happiness, measure all the statistics, everything improved, right? So it's great. There's just no doubt there is a cross-the-board positive effect here. And, and not just on one test, but we, they followed these students, you know, for the years of the program and they continued to excel through their academic career. So everything about it positive. When the teacher retired, the school ended the program and, and, you know, to this day, you know, now we're, we're kind of picking up 20 years later where they left off. And you know, when we saw the statistics and saw what was happening in our own client population, we went to the people who did this work and said, what happened? Like, how did this not just become, at least in this school, the, a norm that got iterated across all classrooms and all grades and has maintained. And it's this. Strange phenomena that happens and we're all familiar with it. Like we know, we've been told ever since I was old enough to realize I was being taught anything. I've been taught the value of exercising, you know, eating well and exercising, right? Lifestyle medicine. How many of us actually do it? Right. As a population, We're, we're, you know, immersed in this information from birth on. We're surrounded by it, but how many people actually exercise 30 minutes a day and eat zero processed food and, you know, minimize their carbs and maximize their, their protein? Like 0.001% of the population.

It's a very small number. I know that I heard a recent stat about how many people regularly exercise and it was astonishingly low to me. I want to say under 20% that people that exercise on a regular basis. And I was just really blown away by that.

Right. So, so if, if like these basic things that are self-evident, right? We don't need randomized double-blinded placebo control studies. To know that getting some exercise is better than not getting exercise. And again, I'm not talking about ultra marathon. Like the choice isn't sit on the couch or do a triathlon, right? It's like sit on the couch or, you know, go walk a couple of blocks, right? Like that's where we're at. Right. And we just cannot get that adopted at scale. Or again, a simple thing of Highly processed food is not good for us. Self-evident. We don't, we have the studies, but we don't really need the studies to, and we can see that having the studies doesn't change behavior. People always say, well, Guy, what's the evidence for this? Well, there's 60 years of evidence, right? But, but the evidence doesn't change behavior. So there's just a, like a, you know, we've, we have encultured a, I don't even know what exactly to say, right? Just kind of a resistance to doing what's good for us, no matter how it comes packaged. And, and that's our biggest challenge. And that's what we face with, with this program. And, and, and, and again, back to that example of here's a school where they're doing it and, and we're seeing positives across the board, right? No negative side effects, no adverse effects, not a single one. Positive change. You would think this is a natural, like this school will just continue this program. Nope. As soon as the teacher was not there to advocate for it, it ended. And, and we see the same thing today. I mean, we're getting better uptake, right? That they were able to get it implemented in one school. You know, we're probably in 5 or 6 schools right now. And, and so that's, you know, good in that, in the sense of uptake is better, but it's still the same thing. It's because there's somebody in that school that is passionate about this and they are, you know, paring down the barriers and, and, and implementing it through just sheer will. And that's great. But I have no doubt the moment that person stops being a passionate advocate, the momentum, right? Or really the inertia for status quo will, you know, these devices will be sitting on a shelf someplace and nobody will ever look at them again. And it won't be because there isn't science or because they don't work. It'll be because of an inertia that is just not about doing what's good for us.

Which is a really sad statement. Um, but I'm sure some people will be hearing— there'll be probably 2 or 3 different kinds of people hearing this. There's gonna be one that's gonna be a teacher, hopefully, and hear this and be like, oh my gosh, I need to get this started in my school. So we'll have that resource that you mentioned in the show notes where they can learn more about the program, get in touch with you if they need to, for example. And then I can see some other people that are gonna be like, okay, I don't have time to try to implement this in my school, but I have kids and I think this would really help them. If they can't go through one of these federal programs where it's more related to a school for funding, is this something that they can buy at the Cerebral Fit website? Or if they reach out to you, can they learn more about how to get this device so that they can at least implement it in their own home?

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Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So, so they can purchase them. They're easily available online, whether it's through the CerebroFit site or the Bhakti Brain Health Clinic. So that's my kind of brick and mortar here in Minnesota where we're doing these school programs through the OctiBrain Health Clinic. So available there. I think the site is Tech4Brains with the number 4 in there, Tech4Brains. So these, so the devices are easily available. We sell them. So $600 for a basic one. If you put some, like add in the see-through glasses, add in a few other accessories that can be helpful in certain instances, you're still all in at about $750. Not expensive at all, considering the significance of, of what it can do in terms of changing a life course. And it isn't really a single-user device. So often there are multiple children in the home, there are adults, and everybody can use the device. And, and that's again, where we see the best outcomes is you can regulate a whole household, not just one person. Right. One more well-regulated person in the midst of an otherwise dysregulated environment, not as good as regulate the whole environment and everybody moves forward, you know, more fully than if you presume that, you know, you know, our one child is struggling in school. So they're, you know, they're the problem that we're going to fix. Like that's That's again, that kind of pathological approach where we really prefer more of a positivistic approach, which is just optimize the brain no matter who you are. Right. You'll do better with a brain that does better, period. Right.

Now say you're, say you're a fairly regulated person versus a fairly dysregulated person, just naturally, or by the nature of your brain or by the nature of the other behaviors you do, maybe the exercise, the meditation, you know, you are one of those 1.001% of people that are doing things. Say you bring that into your house, theoretically, is the person that's already more regulated— I mean, they'll still benefit, but maybe they don't need as much time on it, or is it kind of a time and dose, um, response, or is it more like if you're severely dysregulated, you might want to do it a few times a day kind of thing? Can you talk a little bit about how it works as far as, as the regulation?

Yeah. Um, I'm going to say one other thing about the acquisition. So we also have a rental program that is also a rent-to-own program, kind of like a payment program. So people can rent a device for $75 a week, and that gives them a chance to try it. And the question there isn't so much, is it going to work? Because a week is not a lot of time to know. The question is, is am I going to do it? That's the first question that a person needs to ask. They get this thing. They take it out, they put it on, they go, this is ridiculous. I will never do this. Pack it up, send it back. Great. You just saved—

Okay, that's awesome.

You saved $525.

That was great.

But if the sense is like, yeah, okay, this isn't so bad, right? I'll do this. Then, you know, you run with it for a couple of weeks and now you can start to ask the question of, does this seem to be helping? Yes. Great. You know, then just make the payments, pay it off, and away you go. So we really try and, try and take, you know, money as, as a barrier and minimize it as much as we can to make it so people can try the technology to see if it helps. So whether you purchase it or do a, you know, a rental, there are options. And then again, the kind of different financing through the school systems, and I'm sure there are others. People can use county, like CADI waivers, disability waivers. So all kinds of options. Now back to your question. So protocol. The device has 25 different protocols on it. So there's some, you know, kind of getting to sense of like which, which of the 25 is kind of right for me. Some experimenting there. They vary in time from maybe the shortest at 7 minutes to the longest at 80 minutes. So there's a little bit there in terms of protocol and time. And then how often? You know, these are more challenging questions, right? Because so much of this is going to be driven by personality more than rationality, right? Like what I might articulate. And my, my big believer in the optimum treatment plan is the one the person will do, not the one I can think up. Right. And so if a person is, is willing to put in, let's say 30 minutes a day then great. Like if that's what they're willing to do, there's no sense in me saying, I need you to do it 30 minutes twice a day. 'Cause they're not gonna do it. Right.

So, and is this something that people could do, like say I'm sitting here editing our video for the, for the channel, or I'm doing some other kind of work. Could I have it on then? Or could I be on the treadmill walking for half an hour while I have this thing on? Talk, talk to people about like how to habit stack it or how to integrate it into their day because I think no matter whether it's a device or meditation or whatever it is, if you can kind of glom it onto something else and multitask, as much as we hate to do that, like, probably for our brains, it'd be better if we just like chill out every once in a while. But realistically, if we want people to do this, they'll probably feel like they need to be doing something else. So if you can just chat about that a little bit, is it as effective? Are there certain activities that pair better than others kind of thing?

Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So this is very much the the frame that I use when talking with, with clients is, um, it needs to be integrated into a lifestyle. And, and, and if we do that, we can be successful. So yes, the see-through glasses, although they're really made for task-based activity where you're trying to increase performance in that activity, you can use them in other places. So again, you could be on the treadmill. You could be on the computer. I do it frequently. Like, I will— my team, you know, has, has— they're all like finished laughing at me for my different ridiculous things that I do. You know, I got a nasal laser in my nose and, you know, glasses on and maybe a, you know, a red light mouth guard in. And, and they're just like, whatever, guy, you know, sure. So if I'm in a I'm in a Zoom meeting and it's just, you know, one of those meetings where you have to be there, but it's not all that exciting. I will put my glasses on and put it on kind of a brain brightener, you know, like a stimulating protocol to help me stay more engaged in the meeting. And it's just that simple. So, so there's any number of places that we can kind of weave it into our day. And I'll give you a great example. So for, I don't know, a few years, my wife had an audiovisual entrainment system sitting next to her on her nightstand and wouldn't use it. And it was the— had the opaque glasses, the non-see-through glasses, and the chances of her taking 30 minutes out of her day and laying down and doing nothing and doing a treatment, clearly zero. Like 0% chance she was ever going to do that. She's just not wired that way. I'm a meditator. So for me to take 30 minutes and do a session, no problem.

Right?

Like, like I'm wired to do that. And it's part of my day. For her, no. So then I've got the see-through glasses for her. Well, now she'll happily put it on in the morning when she's having her coffee and, you know, toodling around the news sites and Facebooking with friends. So that was it. Like, that was the solution, was find her a way that she could do it while she was doing something else. Now doing a treatment every day isn't a problem. So yeah, I'm very much a believer in you figure out how you as an individual are going to integrate this, and then that's what you do. Yeah. Turn it into a part of the routine, part of a ritual, part of a habit, and then it gets done. So, again, so I'm, although I can be prescriptive and say, well, given what you're going on and the symptoms and all of these things, this, this is the protocol you should do and you should do it like this and like, great. But again, if the person isn't going to do that, then that whole activity was a waste of time. And so I really work more with people from what are they willing to do? What can we get? Because the nice thing about the device is, as I said, 25 protocols, uh, there's 9 different benefits one gets from doing audiovisual entrainment. 8 of the benefits are the same across all 25 protocols, right? So you get the bulk of the benefit regardless of the protocol you do. The 9th thing that is protocol specific is kind of the state, right? So if it puts you into more of an energized state, more of an alert, aroused state, or more of a relaxed awareness state, or more of a meditative internal state. And then we go down the scale, like even more into kind of a drifty, dreamy state and then sleep. So state is this other piece. And that's fairly simple. If a person is, is like, you know, I'm doing this before going to school as a way to optimize school. Does that person need, you know, more arousal? Does their system need to be, um, uh, you know, kind of boosted? Or are they the opposite? That what they need is actually to be calmed and settled to make their school day better. Then we just pick the protocol that has that. State effect, but the other 8 benefits you get no matter what protocol. So the way we make, we can make the whole process simple. And I'll say, you, the person doesn't have to do the glasses, the headphones, and the ear clips all the time. You can pick and choose. So if the glasses are, it's not an appropriate place and it would be easy to have earbuds in and just do the binaural beats, do that. That's nice and easy. And then the other one is the, the transcranial stimulation, the ear clips. Again, super simple to just run that wire up your shirt, clip it on your ears, put the device in your pocket, and just go about your day doing whatever you're doing. And again, you can have a student sitting in a classroom doing the transcranial stimulation with, with zero interference in what they're doing in terms of class. Work and what's required of them physically.

Yeah. Amazing. This sounds so useful. So you already mentioned your various websites a couple times, but to wrap it all up here at the end, again, we mentioned that all of this will be in the show notes, but you can use, share with people where they can find you. You mentioned you're in Minneapolis if they happen to be in that area. But where can they find you online? Are you active on any social channels and what's the best way they can get in touch with you?

Sure. So the Bhakti Brain Health Clinic. So this is a mouthful. So bhaktibrainhealthclinic.com. What might be easier for folks is cerebralfit.com. So just cerebralfit.com. So either of those sites, you'll find, you know, my, my direct number, direct email, so you can reach out that way. We have a free consult that we do with folks, so you can book that right online on either one of those sites. And so if this holds interest for you, or if you're a teacher or a school administrator or a parent who, who has a child in a school and you feel like this is something you might want to bring to the school, perfect. Like reach out, let's schedule a consult. Let's talk about what makes sense again, either for your personal, you know, regulating the dysregulation. Or maybe you think that you are fine, but, but other people need it and you would like to help bring it to them. Great. Either way.

Either way, you should still probably use it yourself too, right?

Exactly.

Well, Guy, as always, it has been such a pleasure chatting with you and thank you so much for sharing about this technology and how it can help both students and, and teachers. I personally feel like this should just be a federal program. It should be in every school and maybe we'll get there eventually, but thank you for doing the work that you do to kind of make those things happen.

Well, thank you, Cheryl. It was a delight chatting with you again. I look forward to more.

Sounds good. Thank you.

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. 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.