Episode 78: Put a Ring on It

This week's episode has been sponsored by Oh My Bod, shifting the evolution of pleasure. Hello, I'm Suzanne Noble, and I'm Zoe Noble, and you are listening to Sex Advice for Seniors, and we are incredibly excited today to be joined.

I'm so excited, Suzanne. We're going to talk about penises and men's health.

We are. Our favorite, one of our favorite topics, with Dr. Elliott Justin, who is from FirmTech. And Elliott, welcome. So glad to have you with us.

Thank you.

Great. So tell us a little bit about your background and yeah, and sure.

Well, my background, I'm an emergency medicine physician. And as we were discussing earlier, short of a heart attack or a stroke, nothing concerns a man as much as a limp dick. So I'm 70 years old. I'm fortunate to be in good health. I can make love every day. And I really hadn't thought much about this issue, but I was aware that it's alarming to many men because the numbers are really distressing. 50% of men by age 50 have erectile dysfunction. By my age, it's a little bit over 70%. And there are so many common causes of it— diabetes, hypertension. One that doctors don't like to talk about is medication side effects because doctors don't esteem sexuality. They don't recognize how they feel comfortable talking about it. And they don't, and they also don't, they don't recognize, they kind of minimize importance. They'll, they'll place, say, high blood pressure is more important than sexual function, or depression is more important than sexual function. But if you're prescribing medication to someone that makes things worse for them sexually, you're probably making their blood pressure worse. You're probably making their depression worse as well too. Doctors, we are kind of assholes about this. I assume in the UK, just like in the US. We don't ask about someone's sexual health. I've never had a doctor ask me about my sexual health, the status of my marriage, um, warn me about the sexual side effects of a medication or, or a procedure. So we need, we as doctors need to pay much more attention to these issues. So about 3 years ago, uh, I was involved with medical technology. I'm very interested in wearables. Many, many years ago, I founded a company called SwiftMD that was the second oldest telehealth company in the United States. It's been sold since then. And that may be, I've become interested in tools that could be used to manage people's health at home. I'm also really interested in providing people with the knowledge that physicians should have, but empowering people with that knowledge because people aren't motivated by secondary gain. They don't want to bring you into business. They don't want to do surgery to you. They just want, we just want, we want more information about our bodies, especially in this area. So, We live in this wonderful age of healthcare wearables— smartwatches, smart rings, smart bands— but there's a gap, which is sex. So, and so I talk about sexual health gap, I'm not talking about novelties, you know, it's not like— a novelty to my mind is, Suzanne, you didn't know this, but Zoe and I are having an affair, and we each have vibrators inside of our bodies right now, we're vibrating each other, you can't tell. That's kind of cool. It's a nov— but that, that's a novelty. It's not telling us anything about our health.

Yeah.

So if you give people data, if you, as the cliché goes, if you track it, you can hack it. So we want to give people data so that, that, that, and with the, they can then measure the impact of diseases like diabetes, hypertension, or orgasm killers in women too. Uh, antihypertensive medications, antidepressants, or diet, exercise, and supplements. Because when we're ignorant, we're, we, we have hopes and where the hopes are doped and they're, it's a multi, multi-billion dollar international industry, whether it's illegal, you know, rhino horn in China or whether it's nitric oxide pills, you know, all these pills are sold over the counter to improve men's and women's female sexual health. Yeah, I just, you know, look, I don't, I don't, especially after COVID, I don't particularly trust the conventional doctors. Uh, we've been scammed badly, but, uh, it doesn't mean that, that the naturopaths or homeopaths have, are offering things that are particularly objective either. Uh, so that's, there's importance of data. So 3 years ago, a urology professor, um, at the University of Utah said, I want, he wants to come up with a way of counting the number of nocturnal erections that men have. And I thought, my language, what the fuck for? I mean, we know, we know about morning wood, uh, we laugh about it, but what, what, what is going on here? There are actually 10 or 15 papers, 12 I think, last count, showing that the number— if you, if a man could track the number of nocturnal erections and that number went down, it'd be the leading indicator of a cardiovascular problem or medication problem until proven otherwise. Well, that's really, really powerful. Wow. So people track their blood sugar, they track their blood pressure. And what do men care more about after all? The status of their erections or how many steps they took yesterday or what their weight is. So when he said this to me, I thought, well, nocturnal erections, what we can do better than that. Because what men and their partners are really interested in is what's going on when trying to have sex.— So, that's— So I said, "Well, let's come up with a ring. Let's embed sensors into a cock ring."—

Yeah.—

And let's come up with the world's first smart cock ring. Now, it has to be different than any other cock ring, because cock rings right now— this is, you know, I mean, women like to complain there's never enough attention paid to them, but you got all those fucking vibrators and dildos. Men have shit. They have these large, Fleshlight strokers, it looked like something you could beat someone to death with. And I certainly know— I mean, anyone who claims that this is an improvement on the human hands, of human vagina, is lying. They, they are not. So, I mean, a Fleshlight doesn't have a brain. A hand attached to a man or a woman has a brain attached to it and could deliver a lot more pleasure than any strokers. So that's the strokers. So if the problem with cock rings is that they've been made the same way for 150 years. It's a hard silicone ring. It's essentially a noose or a gasket, like you're lynching your dick, or you're putting a plumbing apparatus on the penis. So a man has to have— this is not— now we're getting to a common problem with seniors. You have to have an erection first for these rings. You have to get blood in. Well, a lot of older people have trouble getting blood in because they're diabetic, hypertensive, uh, they have more higher incidence of performance anxiety. So if you put— if you had a ring that did not block the arterial flow but only constrained the venous return, you then would have a ring that you put on discreetly, uh, or could be— or even more importantly, could be worn for longer sex sessions. Because another problem with these hard, cheap rings you get in a sex toy store is that, uh, they really— after 5 or 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes, they get up to be uncomfortable. They can be dangerous, especially dangerous in men with high blood pressure, diabetes, after like 20, 30 minutes. You want the damn thing off as well. Now men will put up with pain because a guy with a hard-on, you could probably stab him in the back and he'd be like Yvonne Russell, you know, so— but they're really uncomfortable and they're made the same stupid way. So my thought was we have to change the form. Before we embed the sensors, we have to change the form and the material. So I really have to thank thank my wife for this. She has a stress ball on her desk, and I thought, oh, why are we making cock rings out of silicone? Let's make them out of elastomer. Elastomers are soft. The great thing about elastomers over silicone— and women understand this more than men do— women wear bras. Bras have a silicone strip on the back. Uh, that gets to be uncomfortable at the end of the day. You want that thing off. Imagine, Zoe and Suzanne, if you were asked to put on a bra that was 3 sizes or 4 sizes too small. He would say, get this fucking thing off me right now. This is— get me out of this. Well, that's what a cock ring made out of silicone is. It's essentially a silicone band that's too small. So I was, um, I was scratching my wife's back after she took a bra off. I would say probably half the heterosexual sex in the world starts at night when a woman wants a back scratch when she takes off her bra. And then I noticed this incredible feature on the bra, a hook. And I thought, oh duh, why, you know, a bra— women don't put on bras over their head. Well, maybe a sports bra. Women don't put on bras over their head. A bra is a ring that opens and closes with a hook. Yep. And I thought, why don't we make a cock ring with a hook? Because then it's easy on, easy off, it's safe, um, and And then if we make it out of a soft elastomer, it could be worn for hours. Yeah. So that's the origin of the being a back— the background story of the form and material of, of the ring. And we have patents for on it. Uh, and we sold over, well, of the rings without the technology, which is simply a superior, superior cock ring. We sold over 10,000. Let me get to the tech and then I'll get back to why rings are quite tremendous. So we, we worn overnight. This device has a pressure sensor in there, strain gauge in there. And as the, and then it goes on differently. You drop, the man drops his balls into it. I don't have a dildo here. I should. Penis is in one end. Yeah. Test, you know, testicle, testicles are, are in the other end. Yeah. Uh, so worn overnight, we count the number of nocturnal erections. And as I said before, that's a leading indicator. So leading indicator is really powerful statement to make in medicine. Blood pressure is associated with heart attacks and strokes. Nocturnal erections indicate whether you're gonna have one. So 50 to 60% of men who have a declining number of nocturnal erections will have a heart attack in 3 years. It's 88% of strokes can be picked up, vulnerability for stroke can be picked up by following nocturnal erections as well too.

And this, this is like real data.

This is real data. Yeah. Yeah, amazing.

I mean, it looks like, because we don't have video, we don't use video on our podcast, but it looks like, no, no, you can show us anyway. Maybe we'll do something, but it looks like a bit of a Fitbit. I have a Fitbit. It's a, what did we just call it? A dick bit. Yeah. A dick bit. A dick bit. Yeah. Attached to like something stretchy. So the stuff that's, that's currently measuring my pulse is similar in a way to measuring your erections, kind of, right? Kind of.

Yes. We're measuring the duration of erections, how long the erection lasts, and we're measuring how hard they are. All right. Wow. So utilizing that—

And is that from the pressure of the penis against this? Against the sensors. Oh, against the sensor.

Against the sensor. I'm just saying. And then we, then we provide people with, we call it an erectile fitness score. Because before there's dysfunction, there's fitness. And we want people to think in terms of fitness. I don't have ED. I like my sexuality where it is. How can I keep it where it is? Well, data helps. Uh, I do have ED, or I'm too poor. I've just started a medication. What's going on? What, how's this medication, you know, impacting me? So, you know, if you have data, you can then we're giving people objective, personalized information. So one of the ways in which doctors, again, are dicks is if the three of us on this call decided we had depression and we went to see our family doctor or psychologist, psychiatrist, they would put us on the same dose of antidepressant medication. Regardless of our gender, regardless of a difference in weight, regardless of a difference in age. And that's just stupid. Uh, yeah, because so if you have, if you can provide people with individual data, uh, they then can titrate the medication. We have people using our device for that, for that very reason. Now, we recommend, of course, that people discuss, so don't change their medications on their own. They discuss it with healthcare providers. But we also know that's not the way people are. So, yeah, people, especially when people are reluctant to discuss issues of sex with healthcare providers. So, but we have people, we have doctors as well too, who are utilizing our devices to titrate personal responses to medications, especially antidepressants, antihypertensives, or anti-baldness medications, which can, which are those medications, finasteride, are associated with higher incidence of impotence in men.

And can I ask, um, do they have to— how long do they have to wear this for? Is it something that they wear every day, or is it something they wear once a week? Like, what— how often do you advise using it to track your nocturnal erections and to then discover where you are on this, on the nocturnal erection spectrum? Sure. That was Bloody difficult to say there. Well, that's— that's erection spectrum.

Spectrum, yeah, the, uh, that, uh, journey from, um, fitness into dysfunction, which— and we want— we want— and we want to help people stop going down that pathway. Uh, the device, um, we recommend that people initially wear it for 4 nights. Okay. It takes about 4 nights. The sensors need to calibrate to the individual penis. Yeah. And, and that's 4 nights. We give people a score. And after that, if— now obviously if you're starting a new medication or you have a new partner or you're wondering about the impact of whatever, a recreational drug, or the impact of, of some supplement, you know, on your— you can take more readings. But I'm in good health, so I, I would— our recommendation is after the initial 4 readings, if you're normal, Depends upon your age. I'm 70 years old. I check my blood pressure once a week. I would try— I check my, my erectile fitness score once a week. You know, if I were 45 years old, I might do it once a month. Uh, yeah. Or— but it depends upon whether, you know, what one's underlying conditions are too. I think someone who's diabetic, hypertensive should check in, should check in more often.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really interesting. This is fascinating.

Yeah, well, it's world's first technology. I mean, there are— there's no one I mean, there are 4 papers that have been accepted for publication. Uh, there are another 5 or 6 papers that will come out this year or early next year. I mean, this will become, I believe, the standard of care, not necessarily our device, but the data will become the standard of care. So, I mean, for example, if, um, if all 3 of us on this call went to a doctor and said, uh, you know, uh, my pulse feels irregular and sometimes I feel like I'm gonna faint. And the doctor just put a finger on our pulse and listen to the stethoscope. We think, what the fuck is this, 1880? I mean, I want a— I want an electrocardiogram, check my blood pressure. How about a CT? How about a CT angiogram? I, I, you know, but that's where we are with, with gynecology and sexology. Yeah, gynecology and urology when it comes to sexual health. Most of what we do is based on opinions and speculation rather than, you know, objective data. Yeah. So at both extremes, let's take both extremes of this. If, uh, if a man is having, is having say 3 or 4 good nocturnal erections per night, because the average man has 3 to 5 per night, uh, and he can't get it up with a partner, there's something wrong in the relationship. Right. This is, uh, and at the other extreme, this particularly relates to older people. If, um, if someone's not having any nocturnal erections, someone's getting wrist fatigue or jaw fatigue for nothing because it's just not happening. That, that person has a medical problem and, and needs to see a doctor. And, and so that can— this information can be both disruptive in a relationship or very helpful in a relationship because it helps, it helps people, helps a couple our individual to better understand what's, you know, what, what's happening.

Well, and here, you know, here I am to help the, the people who are medically sound having trouble in their, you know, in their relationships that are affecting sex. And sometimes it's not even the relationship, it's the actual sex that they're having because pornography is our de facto sex education, and that leaves a lot to be desired in how the kind of sex that we're actually having.

So, well, pornography certainly can delude people as to what's going on. It's not, it's not an HB world out there. But in terms of older, older people, when, you know, and, and I call them my patients, but they're really, they're really my customers. But I've spoken to more people about more older people especially about sex in the last year and a half than I have the entire rest of my life. And it's become clear to me, one, that they're not telling their doctors what's going on with them. Yeah. And because the things that people talk about are, I get an erection and I lose it. Well, doctors don't— so most men's problem is not they can't get it up, it's that they lose it. Yeah. And they lose it because they have— because they, they're saying they have, um, I call it venous insufficiency. So doctors think about ven— they think about venous leak syndrome, which is something men are born with, where you have weak veins and you can't get blood in the penis, but it doesn't stay there. But every, every man, frankly every woman too, and we all get venous insufficiency as we get older. If I sit in a plane for 5 hours, sit at the desk for 4 or 5 hours, my socks will get a little bit tight. Yeah. My rings will, will, my fingers will swell a little bit if I dangle my arms. I'm older, uh, so we have, we have muscles, tiny little muscles around our venules, little veins that pump blood back to our heart, and they weaken with age, uh, and the veins get, the veins get baggier as a consequence. So, uh, most— so one of the problems with the way doctors just don't listen though, so, and, and you see in the medical research too, the medical, medical research on, on ED groups together as one, as ED, men who can't attain with men who can't sustain. Well, men who can't attain erection have much more severe problem, and they, they need different type of help. Men who can't sustain erection, one, they need to think about why, why is that. Well, one, you're getting older. Two, what medications are, are, might be contributing to that. Three, what's going on in the relationship? People don't want to talk about boredom. Yeah. So Why do people go to porn? One reason is they're bored. Well, people, you know, couples need to talk about this because when they put off sex because they've lost confidence, they're bored, you know, whatever, you can talk your way through that. So what's great about Our Ring in terms— and in fact, it's changed our marriage. I'll personalize this. My wife is 7 years old as well too. Uh, and we, we make love differently now because, because of the ring. We don't— I don't— we don't have sex without the ring. Not the ring with the data. We make a ring, we make another product called a Maximum Performance Ring, or Max PR. Well, this is the only doctor-designed ring. It's a little bit tighter than the ring of the technology. This is the only doctor-designed ring to geared to both to help a man sustain an erection but also produce more powerful orgasm. I'll talk about sustaining in a moment. So we have— we looked at— we looked at 22 men, age 27, age 70, uh, and we wanted— again, we did— we didn't want to block the arterial flow in, which might constrain the venous return. And we did— we compared our ring, Maximum Performance Ring, to the Dallasville which is the most common PD5, Viagra-type medication in the United States, probably in the UK as well too. And I don't know any guy over the age of 50 who's not taking it. I know guys under the age of 50 who take it, whether they need it or not. And part of this is it does have a profound placebo effect. I mean, I got guys who I prescribe it to tell me, "Just knowing I have it in my night table makes me more confident." That's how powerful placebo effect is. So the PDE5 medications put more blood into the penis. But if a man can get an erection, his primary problem is not getting blood into the penis, it's keeping the blood there. And PDE5 medications are not particularly effective at doing that. So about half the people who take PDE5 medications say they don't work. Well, not that they don't work, the guys, they don't, you don't really need them. So we did a study of D2 messins. D2 messins, T2 max is the time to get an erection. D2 max is the time it takes to lose an erection. And we looked at, at, uh, after climax, no stimulation, because we want to try to eliminate as many variables as possible. So the time it takes for erection to go down is about 35 seconds, and at 25-35 seconds in an average man, uh, the time it takes for an erection to go down with the Dalafil 10 milligrams was a little bit over 2 minutes. And when I say to go down, I mean penetration is impossible, too soft to penetrate. With our— with the Maximum Performance ring, it's a little bit over 4 minutes. And with the ring and the dowel altogether, it's a little over 5 minutes. So the longer the erection takes to go down, the more blood is being retained. The more blood is retained in the penis, the better the— the more sensation that a man has, because the more blood. Same thing with women with clitoris. The more blood is retained, the more sensation there is. So what's— and there's going to be 1 or 2 papers about addressing this, utilizing our device this year. What's the takeaway from this? Well, takeaway is, man, if you want to last longer and have more— get harder— stay harder, rather, not get harder, stay harder. We don't get hard. We make people hard. We help them to stay hard. Put a fucking ring on it and take a pill. And then if for the most pleasure, take a pill as well. So in our lifetimes, you ladies look a little bit younger than me, but it's really our lifetime, our generation, vibrators went mainstream. My mother's vibrator was in the bottom dresser drawer of the supply closet, you know, and she told me never find it. We know what the fuck it was. She said it was a massager, you know, whatever. I don't remember what she said. But, uh, my, you know, my wife, probably like you ladies, owns— I don't know how much she owns, but she, but she, and she varies what her favorites are because, because the market is really addressed. If you want a rumble, you want a buzz, you want this shape, you want that shape. The market, the vibrator market is enormous, uh, and they've gone mainstream, uh, and, uh, you know, my daughter, her generation, they take them on dates. So back in the '70s or '80s, there was a certain shame about using a vibrator, and that's not the case at all right now. You know, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're normalized. Um, the— that hasn't happened with cock rings. Cock rings are still in the closet. Uh, and one of our goals—

I don't know if that's true. I mean, how long ago were they out of your closet? They were definitely in my closet. I mean, it's funny because I'm, I'm living in the Grand Canaries and I brought with me just these little stretchy, they're like elastic, they're like silicone, but they're stretchy, right? And they're a ring and they're super easy to go on and stuff like that. And now I've tried them a couple of times with some people and they're like, can I take this home with me? Sure. Yeah. Yes. I'm like, yes, of course you can. 'Cause it was like 27 cents. Sense, and you can have that. It is my gift to you. But it, you know, I— they're not embarrassed using it is the point, right? So I think rings have gone away from being embarrassing, certainly within the kink community. They've been around for a long time. And, and, and I think there's a certain element amongst older men that are now recognizing the benefits of using ring for just keeping the blood in, you know, in there without, without going, as you say. I'm, you know, there was some question I had about the, the power ring. So what I'm trying to understand, because I really do understand how rings work. Yeah. What is the— what's the thing that, that is in your ring that's giving it that extra boost? What is—

what, what is it actually? What boosts the erection? Nothing.

No, the ring, the power ring, that's the different one from the other one. Oh, the Max PR. The Max PR, like what is it, what's it actually doing to give it that extra?

It's the right amount of pressure over the urethra. So, we, again, our goal was to increase the ejaculatory phase by 50%. No one has ever, I mean, I'm one of our distributors in the United States is Doc Johnson, the largest sex toy distributor in the United States. Abe of the world. And we also have worked with Ecom, EQOM, they're in the Netherlands. They're an enormous sex toy distributor. Yeah, yeah. And none of the rings that they're selling have ever been tested material-wise to generate, to increase the ejaculatory phase. So, I mean, you can achieve that effect with other rings, but you have to play around with it. Whereas ours is actually tested on men. For the right degree, if you will, of stretch, you know, um, you know, sponginess, if you will, of the ring, so that it could comfortably have that effect. Now, you can do the same thing with a lasso. Yeah, but you've got to play around with it. I mean, you can— with the lasso, you can actually choke off the, uh, the ejaculation. Choke off— I mean, you get retroejaculation. That's uncomfortable. It also has a risk of infection. As well too. So the goal— so that's, that's, that's what's special about the Maximum Performance Ring. Oh, it also has, it also has, it has the same, you know, hook feature that the regular, that the regular ring does. And it's also a penis scrotal ring because one of our goals is— so with the simple rings, they had no impact on the testicles. So the testicles are actually a secondary erogenous zone. What happens to balls during sex? They're up, they're down, they're here, they're there. Where the fuck are they? What, what, what, what does a man want with balls during sex? We'd like them to be caressed or stroked. Same thing a partner wants with balls during sex. Yeah. Um, so our ring not only goes around the base of the shaft of the penis, but it goes around the top of the testicles. By going around the top of the testicles, we accomplish 3 things. One, we, we hold a little bit more blood in the testicles. Two, that means that by holding more blood, they're now more sensitive to touch. Three, They're in an inconsistent location for someone to grab. So, you know, my wife calls it a bra for balls for that reason. Bro. Bro. I'm a big fan of the scrotum.

Yeah. Yeah. Zoe loves the scrotum.

Sure. She's a scrotum lover. But otherwise, they're without a ring, without a ring around the top of the testicles, they're You know, they can be inside, outside, you know. And so, you know, you think about, well, look, look, women who have, who are, have larger breasts, what do they do with their breasts during sex? They bind them. They bind them because it makes them— I mean, by bind, I mean they wear a negligee or they wear— yeah, yeah, that's what my wife does. Otherwise, they're here, they're there, they're, they're not where she wants them to be or where I want them to be.

Uh, so I'm, I'm all for having my husband's scrotum served up to me.

You should get a Max PR. You're going to love it. Yeah.

I know what I was going to say. What I was going to say was that when, you know, when as an older person, you've got, you potentially have heart disease or high blood pressure, low blood pressure. Often, you know, I speak on, I remember my father, I think it was, and I think my mother as well. They were sent home with patches that were connected to a machine that would start testing their blood pressure throughout the day to understand what was going on, to see if they were at risk. Right. And, and this— these sorts of things are very common when you're older and they think you might have a heart problem is they send you off with these— with a Holter. They look like You know, monitors. Monitors. Thank you for that. Right.

It's called a Holter monitor. It monitors your— it's cardiac monitor. Exactly. And I thought the thing about my—

your, you know, your FirmTech device is that why are the doctors not sending men home with this? Right.

I don't know about that. You know, that's why.

Yeah. But to me, it's like a no, you know, like where the market is, the biggest potential market is in potentially diagnosing heart disease, all these conditions prior to those, to somebody having a heart attack, having a stroke by saying, look, you're a guy. And one of the ways that we test this is through your nocturnal erection. So we're gonna send you off with this device, off you go. We're gonna, you're gonna wear it for 4 days. You're gonna come back, you're gonna show us the data. And we're going to see what's going on here because this is a clear indicator of potentially you're at risk. And that's right. We can sort this out before—

this is the future, Suzanne. This is, this is the future as I envision it.

It's not a— for me, this is like it's a lovely consumer product. I love it. Don't get me wrong. But for me, this is— every hospital needs to be giving these to men, to be going to them look, we know that a certain percentage of you are going to have heart attacks, are going to have strokes, are going to have this, and we can help prevent this by just letting you go away with this or buy it or do whatever the fuck you want with it for, you know, for 4 days and then come back and show us the evidence and then we can rule it out or not rule it out, right? I mean, that's the thing that's really exciting because we have spoken to people in the show about the fact that erections are so important in determining whether or not you are at risk of heart disease. And, and I think a lot of men don't take it seriously enough, frankly, because I, you know, when I notice that in intimate moments, in new situations where I know that they should be, you know, where I can— they're older guys and stuff, and stuff's happening— I, I think about that.

I'm like, you've spoken about that, Suzanne Noble, here. Yeah.

Well, two things. One, I, you know, uh, the, I think this is like a sixth vital sign and I am confident that, uh, within two or three years, that's what, so we have all this research that's gonna be published. You're all, we, we've been to the European Society of Sexual Medicine show now twice. We'll be back in Europe in May for the European Federation of Sexology. Uh, we go to, we, we're, we'll be at the American Urology Association in, you know, this spring as well too. We're publicizing it, but the research is more important. As the research gets published, as doctors speak at the podium about our device, and they are starting to do it, uh, this will become a standard of care. And, and, and, and, and a standard for research as, as well. Uh, and it's going, so just the way, as I said before, you, if you went to a doctor, they didn't check your blood pressure and get a cardiogram and think, You know, what is this? It's gonna be the same way. And it's in the same way for women too, because we've developed a device for women as well. We're talking about men here, but we have developed a device. We've tested on 38 women to measure the health of the clitoris. And health of the clitoris— men and women are actually— there are ways in which we're different and there are ways in which we're similar. And there's so many ways in which our sexual organs are analogous. Women have nocturnal clitoral arousal. We don't. No one's No one really, since Masterson-Johnson, has quantified it. And so we don't really know. I'm assuming it's going to be just like men. I'm assuming that women are going to have— I'll make it up— 3 to 5 episodes of arousal while they're sleeping. And that number is going to be predictive of or revelatory of the cardiovascular health or the reaction to medications. So postmenopausal women lose their hormonal protection against atherosclerosis, diabetes, hypertension, They have all the same problems that men do. Premenopausal women have problems that men don't have, and they're— yeah, they're, they're, they're pharmacology related. They take anti— antidepressants 4 times, 5 times as much as men do, younger men, uh, and they also take hormones for birth control. And both those things kill us of sexual pleasure, and no one knows what the right— again, no one knows the right doses. So people, if women had data they could then hopefully get the benefit of these medicines without the side effects, or frankly just decide, I'm going to live without it because the impact on my sexuality is so obvious. Why would I take something that's killing my sexual performance? So this area of extreme anxiety, especially for younger women, difficulty having orgasm, becomes— some, it's gonna be large. I think it's gonna be largely resolvable once, once people see the, objectively see the impact of these medications on them, or once they, um, in a relationship can sort out, well, is it him or me? Uh, so that's, you know, so I don't have the money right now to take this female device, commercialize it the way we have with the male device. We've sold like 11,000 male devices. Female device. I just— it's really a question of money and time. I will— we will do this, um, and we will do this not probably this year, but probably '25.

Great, glad to hear it. And that—

right, that's really, really important for older women as well too. So it's, um, but the ring— but in terms of, um, the value of the ring itself, I can't emphasize— and you get this, Suzanne Noble— it's so important to put a ring on.

Yeah, because put a ring on it. Who was it that said that?

I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, um, people just celebrate their wedding, their partnership or wedding anniversaries by taking a knee and putting a ring on.

Anyway, where can people find your— more to learn more about the device, about you? Where can people find you?

Sure. You can find us, me, at myfirmtech.com. You can reach me directly there. It's Elliot, E-L-L-I-O-T, at myfirmtech.com. And to any listeners to your podcast, if you use the promo code, I know Elliot, I, not know, I-K-N-O-W Elliot, E-L-L-I-O-T, one T, not the British spelling. There's a 20% discount. Uh, but I'm happy to talk to people about their issues. And so one thing that I, uh, I did— we didn't get to is prostate disease. Since we're talking about sex and the elderly, we need to recognize that a significant number of men are going to have prostate disease. Uh, and when these men get operated on, it's, it's, it's a killer. Uh, so 40 to 80% of men who get operated on are impotent. After surgery. And the recovery period is protracted. Yeah, yeah. It really can take, can take 1 to 2 years for men to recover. And most men don't recover unless they do their exercises, take their medications, pump, etc. Many men give up. So our device is really valuable for these men for 2 reasons. One, they can see that they're recovering, if they're not with the nocturnal erections, before they experience their recovery. In bed. We have men and doctors who utilize the device for that purpose. There's also a specific messy problem after prostate surgery called climacturia that I never heard of until I had men call me up and tell me they were using our ring for climacturia, which men, they urinate when they climax, which is kind of bedroom unfriendly unless you're really kinky. I guess if you're really kinky, that's okay, but it's kind of bedroom unfriendly. So there's this woman in Australia who's doing a paper utilizing our ring, um, you know, for this very purpose, and she finds it to be effective 95% of the time. The, the climacturia resolves when men have our ring on. They like our ring because our ring is soft and comfortable, and also older people like to have sex for longer periods of time. I, I, that's when I talk to sexologists or urologists about how, well, the average man comes in 7 minutes. It's not talking about a 70-year-old man then. And frankly, you're not. So it's the same thing with when they say the average woman comes in 14 minutes. Well, you're not talking about a 70-year-old woman either. So the great thing about the ring—

In my dreams. 140 minutes, maybe. Yeah.

Well, also you want Why would you want to just come in 7 minutes? That's like having hors d'oeuvres. Okay, I'm done. And that gets to actually another point I'd like to discuss, and I'm certain you women would agree with me, which is that people need, especially older people, to plan for pleasure. Younger people too, but younger people, they plan for pleasure. Yeah. If you're in a long-term relationship and you rely upon spontaneity and you're older, well, you're tired, you work, you take your you drink, you know, it— you end up putting it off, and then you lose confidence. And next thing you know, next thing you know, you're putting off pretty fucking regularly. So, you know, Zoe and Suzanne, if you're coming to visit me in Montana— uh, by the way, come, I'm a really great chef. I'm probably—

my house is probably the best restaurant as well. And you're really funny. Oh, thank you, thank you.

If you come— if you're gonna come, come here for dinner, it'd be special. So I wouldn't like, you know, It would be like, you know, you ring the doorbell and I'd say, oh, what's in the refrigerator? Oh, we got some leftover rotisserie chicken. Let's just heat it up with some ketchup on it. You know, I would plan a meal because it's more enjoyable. With a ring on. With a ring on it, right? Everyone gets a ring and comes to visit. You want to put it— you want to, you know, the point is when it comes to sex, people— I mean, to some degree, porn is— I think porn can be invidious, but it also can point people in the direction. Plan. If there are things that you, that you like in porn, show it to your partner. Hey, here are 3, you know, okay, you don't like the way it looks, it's vulgar, whatever, blah blah blah blah. Here are 3 things that we don't do that I'd like to do. Let's plan to incorporate these things. That goes, that goes for women as well too, because 40% of porn, according to Pornhub, or close to 40% of porn is watched by women.

Um, anyway, we have reached way beyond our 30 minutes. Of, but we usually stop. But we've enjoyed this so much, and, um, we will, we will put your promo code and all of the website links and all the stuff for your devices. It's just been super fascinating. I am really, yeah, just love, loved hearing about this. I'm a big cock ring fan, Zoe's a big scrotum fan, so yeah. You gotta meet my wife.

Hey, Annie, come on for a second. We stopped recording, but Suzanne is a big cock ring fan. Zoe's a big scrotum fan. I think you're a fan of both. Scrotum, balls. Here's a—

Lovely, lovely to meet you. Lovely to meet you. You are so lucky. You are so lucky. If you find another one like him, if you find another one like him, can you just send him over to London? Will you? Will you?

Yeah, we're going to be in London. Our daughter lives there. One of our kids lives there. We're going to be in London in May. Uh, love to get together.

Yeah, let's do that. I sing as well. I've got a gig in May, so you might even be able to come see me sing. That'd be so cool. Anyway, that's all from me. And that's all from me.

I was—

Elliot, lovely.

It's a pleasure. Okay, bye-bye.