High Blood Pressure: The Silent Killer And How to Fix It

High blood pressure is often called the silent killer, especially when it comes to midlife women, because it damages our body without symptoms until it's too late. And blood pressure is tricky because at various times throughout the day, when you're stressed, when cortisol is rising, this could be changing, and we're not necessarily aware of it now. There are things that we can do, obviously, with medication, but also there's a big link to exercise, specifically isometric exercise, and how this can. Can help drastically with this. Today I want to dive a little deeper into this. I've got Mark Young here, and we are going to be talking specifically about the Zona device, in addition to isometric exercises, and how this is something that you could do at home to really challenge and affect your blood pressure in really positive ways. So thank you so much for being here today, Mark.

Well, I appreciate the invite, Natalie. It's always my pleasure to talk to you.

So I want to back up a minute. I know you're very involved, obviously, with Zona, and I've got a lot of questions I'm going to ask you there about the device, which I've been using and my husband's been using at home. And it's very different than what I originally imagined it would be for. We're going to get into that. But let's just talk about blood pressure in general and health in midlife, because I know you've got a pretty strong background, like, even coming from working with Red Light, you're kind of always on the cutting edge. But what are your thoughts in general about blood pressure and where isometric exercise fits into this?

Yeah, the giant question, Natalie. Wow. We started with something that big. So, yeah, I love that we're having the conversation about blood pressure because, as you mentioned in your introduction, like, this is a silent killer. This is, for many people, it's something that's lingering beneath the surface almost like that time bomb, waiting for something to happen. And I think there's a lot of misconception around what it is. I think there's a lot of misconception about how it, quote, unquote, suddenly happens, because nothing suddenly happens with the body. And when we're trying to have those conversations with people, usually what I refer to as the source and origin, that is there' a reason things are happening in your body. And I'm going to be a little controversial when I say this, but hypertension has been given an indication as a disease state. And I'm actually going to. You know, I could place an argument here while it's probably not the topic for the context here, but hypertension is a symptom. And when we're noticing rising blood pressure levels, something else is going on in the body that's causing that. And I would say that, unfortunately, my belief, I'll say this for me personally, that is our healthcare system is about symptom reduction. They're not about the, you know, getting in and figuring out exactly what the original source and origin problem is. And if all I'm doing is taking the Tylenol to make my knee stop hurting, I didn't fix the problem. That's making my knee hurt. And likewise, I think there are some serious issues taking place with people's physiology because we are, as you mentioned, you know, we can certainly control blood pressure through medication.

Yeah.

But all you're doing is reducing the symptom. Why do you have high blood pressure? Has still not been answered.

Yeah, I feel that very same way about cholesterol or even blood sugar, diabetes, you name it. Everything falls. Falls into this, you know, and blood pressure is this thing that I feel gets overlooked a lot because it's not showing up on your lab blood work. Right. Like, you don't necessarily see that there. And it changes throughout the day, obviously. Like, you could. Somebody could say, well, I always have low blood pressure, but what's happening when they're stressed or when something is changing there, we're not really looking at that. And this is a personal topic to me because my dad actually died at age 49 of heart disease, and he had very high blood pressure, and they had just put him on medication, which did not fix the problem, and he literally died of a heart attack. So this is obviously a very important topic, and I think many people are not thinking about this now. When people just go and take a medication to lower blood pressure, which lowers the number, and you're not looking at the root cause. What do you believe? You personally believe some of the root causes of this higher blood pressure is.

Well, ultimately, by definition, blood pressure being high is because the heart is just working harder to push blood through what would be smaller openings, meaning the cardiovascular system. So when pressure, if we think of pressure, I always refer it to a garden hose. Right. Like we were all kids and kinked the garden hose. Yeah. And, you know, and watch the water start dripping out for a minute, then all of a sudden you unkink the hose and the water all spurts out and so on. But pressure is really the amount of force that's required to push blood from start to finish through the Cardiovascular system, the higher the pressure, meaning that what's happening is that it's taking more work to push something. Because imagine the case that you're trying to even like blow into a balloon, right? The harder the pressure, the harder you're working to make that happen. High blood pressure is typically caused because the cardiovascular system is contracting, that there's either it is in some kind of spasmic state which is causing it to contract too much, or that there's a buildup often on the insides of that cardiovascular system, like the clogged arteries that people are learning about clogged arteries. It's plaque buildup. It's any number of things that could be happening there. And it can also happen just based on arteriosclerosis, which we hear, which is actually the hardening of the blood vessel lining, specifically the endothelium, which we'll get into, I'm sure. But what happens is the blood vessels, they're not limber anymore. It's like having an old garden hose that's just not flexible anymore.

I've never heard that analogy. And I'm absolutely. I actually love this garden hose analogy because that makes sense to me. And I'm sure everyone's picturing that. You picture a kinked garden hose, and if you can create, you either have to unkink it radically, like you pick it up and do that, or if you create even more pressure, it could forcibly make it come through, but not without more damage or more issues or other consequences. So I actually love that analogy. How does stress play? And I know this is a bigger question, but how does stress create that high blood pressure?

So stress is an interesting one, because when most people are referring to having hypertension or high blood pressure, you know, you mentioned your father at age 49, which. That hits home. I'm 49 right now.

Right.

And literally just. I can't even imagine. It feels like my life is barely beginning, much less to a conclusion. Right. But when we talk about hypertension, for most people, they're referring to age related hypertension. And that age related hypertension is also. I don't want to call it normal because I'm not a fan of calling anything normal. That's age related, because I think age is a function of, you know, oxidative stress. Age is not a function of chronology. But the reality is, is that as people age, imagine the. The blood vessel as being like a sponge, okay. And that sponge, over time, if not kept hydrated, just continues to harden. And then you get that almost brittle feeling to that Sponge scrubbing a dish or something with a brittle sponge.

Yeah, you can't do it.

It's very hard. You can't do it. There's no flexibility to it. There's nothing to that. Now imagine if your entire cardiovascular system functioned like that dried out sponge as blood was trying to force through it, would it expand to allow things to happen? And the answer is no. Two things also happen there that I want to point out. That is that vasodilation that's taking place when pressure needs to be decreased and vasodilation is literally just the widening of the blood vessel is for the most part in the body caused either as a response to the body's natural understanding that it needs to do that because the body knows how to self regulate. But when blood pressure is increasing and hypertension is present, what ends up happening there is that the body has in most cases lost its ability to self regulate. So we either give a pill to regulate it artificially or we need to go teach the body how to self regulate again, which is my preference.

Yeah.

To that point though, vasodilation also, and specifically to your audience, vasodilation for most people is caused to the release of, of nitric oxide in the body. And nitric oxide is a molecule that's being created by the body and released. And nitric oxide is a natural vasodilator. But when nitric oxide levels are low in the body and nitric oxide is not produced at the same levels as you age, as it is when you're younger, for multiple reasons. But one of those things is, for instance, even estrogen is a vasodilator. So as women are going through menopause or perimenopause, you end up with a lesser amount of vasodilation taking place. So if the blood vessels are not widening to accommodate any increase in pressure, you're ending up with higher pressure because you're forcing the same amount of blood through a narrower opening.

Wow, I love your analogies and how you're explaining this. I, I've actually never heard anyone explain it this simply. So thank you for this. This is helping us because I think people expect us to have remembered this from science class in junior high, right. And, but it's, it wasn't as relevant as to when we're aging and feeling this. And what I want to point out to women listening to this is even you, women, me included, post menopause, that are taking hormone replacement, you're still not at that same level. Most of us on hormone replacement that we were when we were younger. So even doing small levels of hrt, which is something that I do to get me out of, like, hot flashes, we still need to look at protecting this even more so than just hormone replacement. Because I don't know if this is making sense to you, Mark, too, probably. But when we do, like, if you think of when you were pregnant, your estrogen is in the thousands, it goes up really high. And when we're younger and we're ovulating, it's very high. When we're doing estrogen replacement, most of us, we're still not getting to this optimal level that we were in our 30s or younger. So even if we're doing HRT, this is an important conversation of what else we need to be looking at. Because you still have that decline in your hormones, which is also still contributing to this. I just want to make sure I point that out, because I think some people shut down, they're like, well, I'm on hrt or I'm. I'm doing this, and they don't think there's other variables.

Yeah, very fair, very fair. And by the way, I'll add to that and say that estrogen is still only one contributing factor to this. So even if you were able to get your estrogen levels up to where they were, it still doesn't change the fact that you're still dealing with this arteriosclerosis and these other issues of nitric oxide reduction and so on, so forth. All of these factors are playing in. And I think those of us who, who live in this naturopathic world that are trying to find out, I think the goal of anybody who lives in that naturopathic world or that biohacking space, whatever the word du jour is that.

We'Re using for this, I say age optimizing. So I like, there you go.

Longevity, age optimizing all the things. The reality is, is that any of us who live in this space, there's a intellectual curiosity that exists to say, okay, get that this is what's happening, but why? But why? Yes, and usual what happens is that. But why turns into another but why? Right, like, yes, I understand that vasodilation is not taking place the way it should because nitric oxide levels are not where they are. But why? Okay, well, now that I fixed the nitric oxide levels, I'm still experiencing high blood pressure. But why?

Yes, and I. And I like that you brought that up too, because I think we also don't go deep enough sometimes. So what happens is we say like, think of the amount of supplements. Every supplement on the market was because of, like, what you just basically said, like, oh, low on nitric oxide, so let's supplement there. It's whatever we're saying we're low on, we think, oh, just take that supplement. But what you just said is, but why are we low? Like, what is root? And we get to the root, root, root. And that's the thing that we tend to overlook and skip.

Many times it's something as silly as, you know, I forget which, which social media influencer recently was just like, we've never been born with an Advil deficiency. Right.

That's right. Or even a peptide deficiency.

Right. Like, we were never born with that Advil deficiency. And yet a headache. So we go take Advil and it's like, well, sure, I understand. I have Advil too. And you know, sometimes for a headache I'll take it. But. But my natural response is to reach and grab magnesium. Because usually it's a magnesium deficiency that's causing the headache. Right. There's something else going on. And if I can fix that deficiency, I can remedy the symptom. And I think modern medicine, for all of its wonders, has also just made us so symptom adverse that we hate symptoms rather than reading symptoms. Like, symptoms are tea leaves.

Yes, you're right.

Symptoms are tea leaves. Like what, what is it that we can dig in and find out about ourselves because of what we're experiencing right now? And rather than trying to just eradicate the symptoms, let's learn what's going on in our body. Our body is giving us data.

Yes.

And we're trying to throw the data away.

Very true. So what I want to pivot and talk to you about right now is so there's a lot of different layers we could get into about what causes high blood pressure, how to reverse it or how to change it, how to. To stay healthy. But I want to dive specifically into exercise and spec type of exercise, isometric. And then why Zona makes sense here. But I want to back up a little bit. When people think of cardiovascular health, they think of heart health, they automatically go to cardio. So I want to talk about that first. Like your thoughts on where cardio fits into blood pressure and heart disease. And then I want to talk about different types of exercise, specifically isometric, and the studies around that.

I love it. And yeah, I agree with you. Cardio tends to be where people go, and cardio is a great indicator of cardiovascular fitness, but it's not because of the excess that People are able to put into cardio. It's about the recovery time.

Okay.

So. And that's something that a lot of people, I think, don't necessarily understand. It's like it's.

They all overlook it. My audience is all overlooking it. So let's talk about that for a minute. So what do you.

Perfect? Well, I'll give you an example and tell you, like, the fittest person is not the one who's able to run the fastest to the corner. The fittest person is the one who's able to stop breathing hard afterwards. That you may outrun me to the corner, but if I'm back breathing normally before you, I'm in better shape.

Makes. So it's recovery, you all, not how hard you've pushed yourself. How fast do you recover.

And cardio is a great indication of how you can recover from cardio. Cardio, in my opinion, and I think there's a lot of people who would back me up on this, perhaps you included, is that cardio is fantastic. But people who go excess in their cardio, you know they're going to go run 12 miles. Running 12 miles is fantastic for you, but the reality is you're going to get a better workout by doing sprints.

Yes. It also can cause oxidative stress more by doing too much cardio. So.

Which is the opposite of what we're trying to do.

Exactly.

So we're trying to stress the system out. And the only time that running 12 miles is beneficial is if your body actually requires 12 miles to get stressed out. My body stresses out a lot before 12 miles, so getting to 12 miles is not doing it for me. Because, you know, if I were to go. And when I go running, I actually do the interval runs. Like, I'll run for two minutes and walk for a minute, and run for two minutes and walk for a minute. It's like I deliberately run intervals and sprints because what ends up happening is I raise my heart rate, I lower my heart rate, I raise my heart rate, I lower my heart rate, and I begin to condition myself into a better recovery, or what we refer to as HRV even. Right. And that hrv, that heart rate variability, the speed at which and the performance at which I can get my heart rate up and back down and up and back down and up and back down is a much better indicator of my physical fitness than my ability to run fast or long.

So they've heard me. If they've been listening to my. If you've all been listening to my podcast while you've heard me talk about, like, we've talked about a Carol bike and stuff like that, where it does that. I'm a huge fan of that. I do. I don't want to get too off track, but I want to make sure I ask this because you just brought it up about hrv. So HRV is an interesting thing. I want to ask you just a little bit more about that because it's also confusing because a lot of us were tracking rings and things like that and it may not be as accurate. Yeah. Like my tracking ring says that my HRV is terrible, even though other measures say it's not. So just anything you have on HRV or if you can explain that, because people get, will get stuck on that one thing. And what's your ideal indicator of how you're recovering or do you have any guidance on that?

Sure. And what I'm going to tell you is two things. The one is the obvious basics of how fast can you just go back to breathing normal? You know, get yourself to the point that you feel exerted and then stop and get back to normal and start measuring how fast you get back to normal is what you're trying to do when it relates to your, to your aura, ring or whatever kind of tracking device you're using to measure hrv. My HIV is typically very low.

Mine too, which like, I thought I was dying at some point because I was, I was tripping me up. So that's why I wanted to average.

Is like a 12 to a 15 on a regular basis.

Like, okay, I feel better. Thank you.

Okay. And I'll tell you, I actually have even talked to a specialist about it because I was like, am I, am I dying? Like, right, like, what's going on? Why is I do everything? Why is my HRV so low? And one of the biggest permission points that I was given by a specialist on the topic, one point is he's like, look, let me clear this up for you. And he goes, people's HRV is different. And he goes, and what your biometrics are reading, you shouldn't be worried about what the HRV is. You should be worried about how consistent it is. Okay, so if your ARV is a 15, but it's a 15 all the time, don't worry about it, you're fine.

Yes. Okay. Mark, you just made us feel better because a lot of people, right?

I mean, if Your HRV is a 25 one minute and a six the next night, that's different. Like, that makes sense. What's going on but, but again, we're talking about variability. The concern with a, with an HRV score is when there is high variability in your hrv.

Thank you for saying this. Thank you. Because nothing.

It was very liberating for me.

Yes. Okay. Thank you. You just cleared. You just made a lot of people feel a lot better, which is important because if we're stressed, we have a heart problem too. So thank you for helping. So this is good.

Fair.

Okay. So first of all, what is isometric exercise that you could. Because some people don't know what that means. And I'm gonna, we're gonna go down that, that avenue. So what is isometric exercise? What does that mean?

Absolutely. Well, I'm actually going to start with a juxtaposition as to what isn't isometric exercise first. And the most people are familiar with, you know, we talked about cardio, but now we're going to talk about, for instance, weightlifting or, or body lifting. Most people are familiar with concentric movement, which is the up of a sit up.

Yeah.

And then they're familiar with eccentric movement. Right. That's the, the lay down of a sit up. Right. I'm going up, I'm going down, I'm going up, I'm going down. And what we're doing is we're seeing a contraction of a muscle group and then an expansion of the muscle group. It's that sit up, up and down. It's the, it's the preacher curl. Right. When my arm is fully extended, that's eccentric. When I lift the weight up to my chest, that's a concentric movement. I'm constricting, I'm extending. Isometric is, I'm not going to say the opposite of those things because concentric and eccentric are kind of opposites of each other. Isometric stands in its own little bucket. And literally isometric being the Greek term for equal measurement, what we're actually having there is it's not about expanding a muscle, it's not about contracting a muscle. It's about holding a muscle in an absolutely perfect measurement for a period of time. So it's the equivalent of a plank as opposed to a sit.

Yep. Or even I would imagine like you do a chin up, but you're holding it like in that if you were to hold it, which think about that you all how challenging that would be. Or even because you're holding your grocery bags like this and just not moving like that.

Correct. It's a wall sit. It's a plank. It's a, it's a, like you're saying it's a chin up, but when you get to the bar, you hold it for 30 seconds.

Yeah. Or you're doing a shoulder press and you're like, right there, you're just not moving.

Absolutely. A lot of times I'll do the exact same thing between sets of bicep curls. For instance, like, you're doing your bicep curl, but then once you finish your set, actually hold it at a 90 degree. Like, just hold the barbell at a 90 degree. You don't. You don't need to flex it. You don't need to do anything. That 90 degree hurts more than when you were actually.

Oh, yeah.

Curl.

Yep, it does.

And the truth of the matter is, is that isometrics is an incredible way for the body to learn to condition itself. Because the up, the down, the eccentric, the concentric, both of those movements are great. Obviously, you're going to build muscle from it, but you're building muscle from the recovery half of that. You're not building the muscle from the actual lifting of the weight, but the building back up, not the tearing down. But when you're doing isometric, something interesting is happening because your body is being forced into. To adapt to a stressful situation. Now, lifting things and putting things down is very normal, but holding something that's incredibly uncomfortable for a period of time is unnatural. And your body naturally moves itself to a position of comfort. So if I'm sitting in a chair too long, I fidget. If my leg is crossed, I've switched legs. It's very uncomfortable holding a baby.

Or like, you think about holding your grocery bags. Anything.

We're kind of holding the grocery bags. You remember when we were kids, and if we got in trouble, the teacher made us hold our fist on the blackboard and then hold our arm in the air.

I didn't have to do that. You had a mean teacher, but no.

I remember that one. And it's like, you were like, whatever, whatever. I'll sit here like this. And then, like, you sit there for a little while, then all of a sudden you're like, oh, my gosh, my arm's gonna fall off.

Yeah.

The reality is, is that type of movement, the body wants to condition itself into comfort. When you're holding something that's isometric. And I'm gonna go into a little bit of brain physiology here. And that is when you're holding an isometric position and it's uncomfortable, what ends up happening during that moment of discomfort is your body goes into the sympathetic nervous system system. Because from in a parasympathetic state, which is the comfort state. That's the relax and digest kind of movement. Right. Parasympathetic is where we're in our comfort. Sympathetic is that fight or flight? And what's going on is something is taking place and the body doesn't know what to do. Because when you're in, let's say, a plank, 30 seconds into a plank, everybody's like, why do people complain about this? This isn't very hard, right? 60 seconds in your plank, you're just like, okay, it's got to be two minutes already. You know, a minute and a half in, you're like, what form of, you know, medieval torture is this? You know, and in two minutes you just collapse on the ground. Right? Because a two minute plank is a long plank.

Yes.

And what's going on in the brain the entire time is that the brain is like, nobody is voluntarily doing this to me. There's no way that this is normal. Something must be happening because your body is instinctually, that lizard brain is clicking in and saying, something's going on here, and I need to correct this. So what's going on is your body's just like, okay, this isn't normal. We're in trouble. Clearly we're in trouble. There's a point of discomfort taking place here, here, and we need to correct this. Your body's first response is to flip into that sympathetic nervous system. And the first thing the sympathetic nervous system does is triggers nitric oxide production. Why? Well, because the sympathetic nervous system says, we need to create nitric oxide. Because nitric oxide will naturally widen the cardiovascular system, which will allow blood flow to move to all of the surrounding area. Once blood flow moves to those areas, those areas are more well equipped to deal with whatever danger is causing this discomfort, comfort. Whether that's pumping blood to muscles, whether that is, you know, dealing with nervous system issues, whatever. Nitric oxide floods, vasodilation takes place, blood moves forward more freely through the body. That's your body's first response to any kind of isometric exercise. Now, the interesting thing about isometrics, just to make a note to your audience, is I watch people at my gym do planks on a regular basis. And some of them can be hardly called a plank. Because just because your butt's in the air doesn't mean your plank, Right? Because I see people start as a plank and then it kind of turns into a bit of a pike, and then it sort of turns into a bit of a sideways thing, and then it Turns into my knees on the ground. Like there's a just cause you.

Or we start adding variations. I'm guilty of this knee to elbow. Like you're like dancing in your plank. You know, you're turning it into like a little routine.

It's really a nice ab workout, but it's not isometric unless it is literally measurement throughout. And at two minutes is the ideal time for that. Like, but it needs to be exactly ideal. And the issue is, is we're really not getting any biofeedback on whether or not we're holding it correctly. Because if someone, if a trainer stood over you the entire time you were doing your plank and like hit you with a zapper every time you moved.

Right.

That would be some biofeedback right there.

It makes sense. This might be off topic, but I just want to. I know somebody else might be thinking this since I am. When people do like, you know, the blood flow restriction training, is that supposed to be mimicking with isometric?

It actually is very similar. There is a similar result that happens with that like Katso bands and stuff like that. Like yeah, those types of things actually have a very similar response to them because you are growing a muscle group through blood. Blood flow restriction. It is a different exercise which we'll get into in a second because Kaatsu bands will actually cause blood flow restriction and actually causes the muscle to work harder at what it's doing and so on. But we'll get into the distinction of that in a little bit.

That sounds like it's more just for. Yeah, and that's more I would imagine just for when you're looking at building muscle that might be more of that where what we're talking about is different. Okay, so isometric. There are a lot of studies about this, this helping not just with strength but with lowering overall blood pressure. Because of what you're explaining is this, is this makes sense to me, but is this. Did I say that right?

I'm going to connect a few more dots here for you. And that is so what happens when you're in an isometric hold, if you will. And this, this happens over time. This is not a one time thing. Okay, so the nitric oxide release, the vasodilation and so on. That absolutely happens every single time you do this. So if you did a plank three times a day, you're going to get that reaction three times a day. Right. You're going to flood your system with some nitric oxide. The benefit of doing that type of isometric though is that you're going into that sympathetic nervous system and then immediately going back into a parasympathetic. Because once the discomfort ends, so does the response to it.

Yes.

So you're going sympathetic parasympathetic, then back to sympathetic.

Just like the sprint would do. Just like your sprint.

Just like a sprint would do. Exactly that. You're stressing out and then going back to normal. So that recovery is great. The difference is with that sprint and with that recovery there, we talked about HRV and how we're letting the cardiovascular system go back to normal. This is actually a nervous system issue, more than a cardiovascular issue issue. And that is, it's more of vagal conditioning than it is actually dealing with the cardiovascular system or the heart specifically.

Okay, this is wild. And I'm sorry, I'm probably like, just. I'm going all. You're seeing my ADHD come to life right now. But this is what's interesting. And because I want. I love your device, but it's taking me a little while to get used to it. And I'll tell you why I'm adhd, that's so my mind is constantly. It's like serotonin, dopamine, cortisol, it's like in this weird thing. So you just brought up this, this vagal conditioning. And this is interesting. I think, think people that are used to living in parasympathetic, this is even more important because it's very challenging for us to hold still and just be in that stillness of not moving. Are you following what I'm saying here? Like, so, like where somebody like my husband could just go hold something and be in complete calmness, getting himself there, somebody that's fidgety or constantly needs to work on this and is in a straight stress state. This is even more important to be working on isometric and being able to get your body to do that, this and to get biofeedback, that you're doing it correctly.

So it's what we refer to as an active meditation. That is, there are people, you know, like you're saying someone who has an ADHD, who's just a high level active person anyways, who is to. The idea of just sitting and doing your mantra for two minutes is enough to just raise your blood pressure at the thought of it.

Yes.

And for those people, it becomes an active meditation. And you'll find that a lot of people, you know, start playing games on their phone or they'll do other sorts of things and that is their way of calming down down. And the Calm down. Is because the brain needs something that requires some kind of focus. And the higher level of focus that's required, it actually takes all of that disparate attention and focuses it in one area. So it's what we refer to as an active meditation. And it's not the clear your mind. It's almost like a take your mind and take all of that energy in one place instead. And what we find is that people who are that, you know, ADHD personality type, they do actually use Zona. And it really becomes an active meditation for them. Because as much as I can do my Zona nowadays and sit and check my email at the same time, because I've just been doing it so long.

Yeah.

The reality is, is that for a lot of people, like, it is the only. It's the only time of day. You know, it's that 10 minutes a day where they actually can't do anything else.

Yes.

And it forces that slowdown.

Okay. This is brilliant.

And as it relates to vagal tone, the ability to move back and forth from sympathetic to parasympathetic response is. It is enormous when you consider all of the physiological things that happen when you're moving from one to the next. Next. You know, if your body spends too much time, and I think too much of our country spends their time in the sympathetic nervous system. Right. They're just always in this fight or flight. I'm late to pick up the kids. Dinner's not done. I didn't finish my work. You know, the phone is ringing. You know, we're just overstimulated. What it is. Did I just see. The average person is hit with 65,000 marketing messages per day.

Wow. Wow.

And just in everything from banner ads on your computer to your cell phone, to billboards boards, to TV to radio, like, you name it. Like, we're just inundated with things. And to be able to cut that out of the world for 10 minutes and have to focus on something else is huge.

That's brilliant. Yeah. This is so important. And, you know, I. Those of you don't know if you're living in that state. I can. I'll describe it as. It sometimes feels like you've had caffeine, but you haven't. Like, it's like this. You can literally feel like you're. You took something or you. It feels like you're in this. This hyper state of a. Like a stimulant state, but you haven't taken a stimulant to make you feel that way. That's that is literally, you're in that parasympathetic. You're in that place that you don't want to be.

100%. Yeah. And that. And it's a terrible place to feel like you are. I mean, the idea that you feel like you're stressed out and you can't even identify why. And you mentioned earlier in your conversation about cortisol levels, for instance. And it's like cortisol is a way that your body tries to fight that. And then cortisol leads to weight gain, cortisol leads to domino bloating. Multiple other stress factors are crushing other areas of your body. But that oxidative stress is happening while you are in that sympathetic nervous system. Cleanup takes place in the parasympathetic.

Yeah, so I said. I said the wrong thing. So let me correct myself a minute ago. I just said parasympathetic. But that's where you want to be. So the sympathetic was what I meant. When we feel that is what. That's the sympathetic. That's where you don't want to be.

Correct. Parasympathetic is, you know, what do they call it? The relax and digest kind of mode. But when you go into that sympathetic nervous system. And by the way, a lot of this happens, you know, And I'll. I'll say when we're dealing with people who are in that, you know, age range of you and me and people even, you know, older than us and whatnot. It's like when you're living in that sympathetic nervous system, so many things happen. Your digestion is slowing, which means it's obviously leading to more weight gain. You're dealing with, you know, that's where you're going to end up with issues with insulin resistance. That's where you deal with issues like sexual dysfunction. Because literally, when your sympathetic nervous system is triggered, your body's physiological response to that stress environment is to shut everything down. Because the only thing that matters right now is survival. Wow. And literally think of it as that caveman response to a lion just, you know, showed up out of the jungle. And again, not that I'm into the caveman metaphors, but the reality is, is that sympathetic nervous system response is literally like, the only thing that matters right now is survival. And if anybody in your audience has ever lived a life that felt like you just survived every day, it's that Maslow's hierarchy, right? Like, none of the things at the top of the pyramid matter, because I'm just trying to make it through life totally like, pain the pain bills is in and of itself the biggest thing I can deal with right now. But the body's ability and the mind's ability equally to be able to switch from that sympathetic to parasympathetic response. There are moments to be in sympathetic.

When you're like your grandkid or your kid falls in a pool. You've got to be in that to jump in. Like there is. You have an accident. Like there's times that we need that, but not all day long.

Absolutely. When I'm at the gym, I do hit training is my gym of choice. And it's like one of the things I love about hiit training is that that I, for two minutes, force my body to do things that are unnatural by either lifting heavy things or sprinting or pushing or pulling or doing whatever we do at hit gyms. And then you get a 30 seconds of nothing. Yeah, the 30 seconds of nothing is enough to go like, okay, we just stressed now parasympathetic. Oh, now I've got to go lift two minutes of sympathetic back to parasympathetic. And what people don't necessarily realize, especially in the gym community, because it's all about, you know, muscle and fitness, the reality is that is the, the brain response that your body's getting out of that hormonal shift that's taking place in that vagal conditioning that's taking place while I'm at the gym, just going into the gym stressed and going sympathetic. Parasympathetic. Sympathetic Parasympathetic. And bouncing back and forth from that nervous system response when by the time I leave the gym, I'm just in a good place.

Yes.

Because I've conditioned my body to know how to go back to normal.

Yes, but, but warning on that, for the people that are in that high stress, always running in the wrong state. When you, like, bring your cell phone into the gym or you're like, you're not giving your body that, like. So if you do a set and then you pick up your cell phone and you're. You freak out about an email, you're. You're constantly staying in that the wrong state. So I just want to point that out because I think a lot of people, they put in the motion, like, they're like, I'm doing this, but they have. They're not doing fully what you're saying, like, create the tension, relax. Create the tension, relax, relax.

100. And it's one of the beauties. Not to get too far off topic on that, but like, I go to A gym down here in the Miami area. And they call it partner interval training. And I don't think they even realize the genius of what they're doing to the extent that I look at it because just different eyes, it's that two minutes on half, you know, through 30 seconds off kind of mindset. Like my phone stays away from me while I'm working out. Like I don't need anything else to happen there. And quite frankly I'm not pretty enough to get pictures while I'm working. So the reality is, is like the phone stays away, but the fact that they have you work out with a partner at every station you're moving to throughout the workout, that type of camaraderie increases parasympathetic response because it's actual human relationship that's taking place. You're talking with somebody, you're, you're endorphin rushing because you're high fiving each other on a great job those last two minutes, you're, you're motivating each other through that. And that motivation itself leads to, to, you know, endorphin responses. I mean you're getting, you're getting oxytocin push, you're getting. These types of things are taking place in the relational standing, not just the workout standing. So it's push hard, then take a break, push hard, take a break. And it's leading to vagal tone. Outside of just building muscle and the relational aspect, I think they look at it from a camaraderie standpoint that it increases membership when people have friends at the gym.

Super smart.

But friends at the gym are actually creating a better parasympathetic response like it's brilliant.

Well, you single handedly just now got me to not have my phone in the gym ever again. Because now, now I'm hearing what you're now I just connected the dots on what I was missing in the gap. So I know I'm not alone on this. Other people are doing this too because I had not really thought through, I understood what you were saying logically. But I'm now thinking, yeah, you can work out as hard as you think you're working, but if you're constantly not letting yourself get into that recover state, you're not getting these full benefits there. So that's pretty wild. You're dropping lots of knowledge bombs, especially HRV and all this. Okay, so glad you think so. Yeah. So with the isometric exercise, the biggest issue I think that there is is that you don't have that biofeedback you don't know that you're actually doing it. Like you just said, like a trainer. Unless they're sitting there, you know, prodding you and saying, get back straight, like you're not actually doing it. So what you figured out, what Zona figured out was a way to give you that biofeedback, which forces you to be able to do this without. I've been having to go to the gym. Gym. Can you explain how that works?

Well, there's. There's a whole nother layer of physiology I want to get into here as well, that we didn't. And that is Zona is an isometric hand grip exercise device. And I know you've got one, and I don't know if your audience is watching. They can see the one that I'm holding up on the screen here.

Got it right here very much.

Looks like that Star Trek phaser, the barcode scanner. We get all of this kind of feedback. And what Zona does is it actually uses hand grip strength to do that. Now, it's not a grip strainer, so a lot of people like, oh, it makes your hand grip stronger. I'm like, well, eventually that will be a byproduct. But what it's really doing is having you, we calibrate at the start of each session to your maximum voluntary contraction. And then an algorithm in the device actually decides what the best contraction is for you. If you're at a percentage of maximum voluntary contraction, and then as you hold it for those two minutes, same as that plank as we discussed earlier, we kind of unpacked all this. Now I just need to connect the dots. 30 seconds in, you're like, no big deal. One minute in, you're like, I wonder how far I am. A minute and a half in, you're like, wow, is this over yet? You know, and then two minutes in, you're kind of shaking your hand a little bit. You're like, oh, okay, that was more uncomfortable than I thought it was. But then the device is going to make you take a one minute break. Why is it making you take a one minute break? Because it forced you into a sympathetic nervous system and now it needs you to decompress. Okay, then you're going to do it on your left hand and you're going to do it again. You're going to do it two times. One on the two or two on the right, two on the left for just about 10, 11 minutes worth of workout. It's not. Not the end of the world.

You can't cheat because it beeps at you.

Correct. But what it's going to do is it's going to give you the biofeedback, as you mentioned, that are actually telling you that you're squeezing it too hard. You're not squeez seen it enough. It's going to give you visual feedback and so on, because it's no different than the trainer sitting over you prodding when your plank isn't correct, since you.

Can'T fire it because it's in your. You've already bought it.

And it's also true. Also true. So you're going to continue to use the device in that way and it's going to keep you in an optimal range to make sure that your isometric exercise was positive. Now, it's giving you the nitric oxide release. That's obviously happening because you're getting that release because you're flipping into the sympathetic nervous system, as we did discussed. You're also getting the benefits of the isometric exercise because you're holding it in there for two minutes with biofeedback keeping you in the right range. What's interesting, and this is where I say that Zona is the ultimate biohack, is that there's a layer of physiology that's taking place beneath this. And we talked earlier about the flexibility of the cardiovascular system and how that flexibility of the cardiovascular system is a huge benefit, if you will, because that's what stops the blood from being constricted, is the widening of those blood vessels. We also drop draw parallel to the dried sponge. Remember we talked about how the, the blood vessels should be like a moist sponge that, that is flexible, but over time they end up drying and it's like a brittle sponge. The corner shot, or the combo shot to the corner pocket here for Zona, is that when your body ends up restricting a muscle group and using that isometric. So I'm holding my grip to a certain level and then I'm just having to hold it for a period of time. Not only are we getting the nitric out oxide response, but we're all familiar with how do we prevent cramping. Right, well, cramping. What do we tell people? Well, make sure that you're, you know, electrolytes. Right. Part of the reason behind that is because what ends up happening is that when a muscle is held at a static resistance for a period of time, it wants to cramp. It's going to want to cramp. Well, the only way that the body doesn't cramp is it actually releases sodium into the muscle and the sodium that's being released in the muscle stops that muscle from spasming. Well, at a cellular level, sodium levels must always be equal to potassium levels. Levels in any cell in the body. There's always a sodium, potassium balance. Well, if the cell forces sodium in order to let the muscle not constrict, in order to keep those levels equal, it obviously has to also release potassium into bloodstream. So both of them have to be released as sodium is released to stop the spasm. Potassium being released is kind of just a byproduct of sodium. It's just happening because the sodium is being released. Released. But when potassium moves into the bloodstream, potassium is the only thing that makes that brittle sponge soft again.

Wow. Okay, that makes sense.

Potassium is moving through. And that brittle sponge, of course, being the endothelial lining of the cardiovascular system. As potassium is moving through, potassium begins to soften that sponge all over again. Well, what's interesting is that when you were younger, you didn't have this problem because you had all of this stuff. You know, you weren't. Weren't born with a potassium deficiency. Right. Like, everything was there.

Right.

What. As you age, these things happen. Your cardiovascular system begins to harden a little bit. That arteriosclerosis, as we discussed, potassium actually softens the endothelium, and the endothelium ends up being able to flex again like it used to. We're retraining the body. The functional medicine is nothing but reminding the body what it already knows how to do. When we end up doing that, we do end up with a more flexible cardiovascular system. I always use the phrase that we're literally reversing time because we're taking the cardiovascular system back to where it used to be. Now, the interesting thing about the endothelium is that it also functions as what I call the thermostat of the cardiovascular system. And that is the endothelium is the regulatory instrument in the body that lets the brain know that blood pressure is high. When your endothelium begins to harden, your body literally loses its ability to know that it's experiencing high blood pressure. The body doesn't even know. Know it.

Wow.

So the body doesn't respond to it because it doesn't even realize it. It lost its ability to sense high blood pressure. I say it's kind of like the equivalent of a thermostat, if you're familiar with that. And that is the thermostat is what lets the furnace know that it's cold.

Yep.

Well, if your. Thermostat's broken.

The heat's never going to turn on.

And you're blaming the furnace, right? Well, it's not the furnace's fault. You got a thermostat problem. Your thermostat didn't know to tell the furnace to turn on, so the furnace never turned on. And now it's cold in the house. Same thing has happened with your cardiovascular system. Your blood pressures continue to increase and increase and increase over time. But the reason the blood pressures continue to increase is because your body didn't even know it was increasing.

Wow.

It literally lost its ability to self regulate. So while we're doing all of these things that actually help the cardiovascular system help it regulate so on. The most important thing that we're doing with this isometric exercise that is Zona, is we're actually helping your body get back to just doing what it knows how to got to do. I mean, the body was built for survival.

Yeah.

There's nothing like. And when we introduce something to it that literally just takes it back to what it knows how to do, we don't need. It makes sense supplements. We don't need to introduce medication. We don't need to introduce all of these things. We just let the body do what the body knows how to do. It knows how to self regulate if given the right environment.

So this makes so much sense. And what I love about it is it's just common sense. It's not. It's. And it's. It is that when I said earlier, like you can treat symptoms, but if we can understand what's creating, what's creating risk and go back behind, you've really addressed that. What I like specifically about this is when I first talked to Mark, I got the understanding of isometric. I never really understood how isometric was connected to heart until you explained that to me a few weeks ago when I talked to you. So that made a lot of sense to me. But what I then did, what a lot of you listening might try to do. I'm like, oh, I'll just go hold a plank perfect for two. For two minutes. Or I'll just go hold now sit for two minutes. And then I realized, wait, that's. I'm not actually doing that. Like I might have thought I was doing it, but I'm fidgeting or I'm moving around or I'm not. I'm not in that true isometric hold. So what's cool about this? Because I was. That person was like, well, I don't need a device. I'LL just. I'll just do it myself. But I'm telling you all, it's not as easy as you think. It's a lot harder than you think to do it yourself. So what's cool about this device is you can do it literally from anywhere. Like, I could do it while I'm talking to him right now. I could do it while I'm watching. Watching tv. I could do it while you're doing it while you're emailing. I don't think I could do that. But. But you can do it. Like, you just do it in your day. It's easy and it gives you exact feedback. So there's no. You don't have to go to a gym to do it. You don't have to. It just becomes part of your routine. And, like, really, any contraindications or anyone that can't do this?

There isn't. You mentioned clinicals and stuff like that earlier. And what's brilliant about it is that isometrics, and specifically Zona has been researched by everything from the Mayo Clinic, the Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Health Review, like, you name it. Like, we've got all the credentials behind what we've done here. And it's. It's amazing that it's not a bigger conversation, simply.

Well, especially because you blended allopathic. Like, this is not just alternative or fun. Like, you. You really. This is. Western medicine would agree with this, too. This is like, you've really bridged all the gaps. So. It is. It is. Why do you think it's not more talked about? Like, why do you think people aren't having this conversation? Enough about it?

I. I'm going to hate that question because I'm going to sound like a monster when I give my answer. Why do I think that it is. I'm going to politely say the same reason. I believe that the American Heart association about three years ago decided to change the definition of hypertension from 120 over 80 to 110 over 72. And that is, that change took place. And it wasn't because people were fine one day and then they weren't the next. It really makes me question why all of a sudden hundreds of thousands, thousands of people were diagnosed with high blood pressure one afternoon, and they weren't the day before.

Okay, so he can't say this, but I will. It's like it comes down to money, I think. Yeah, it could allegedly come down to money. So it's the same. I mean, I could say the same thing about cholesterol and medications. There, like, people are freaking out about numbers that we weren't concerned about years ago. So it's an interesting.

Absolutely. We'll let RFK say it all for us right now.

Yeah, I can't. Mark did not say it. We're going on the right. He didn't say it. I allegedly said it.

And the truth of the matter is, I'm not saying that everybody is cynical with it. We're in the midst right now. We have been for a little while going through FDA clinical trials because we believe in doing everything the right way. We're proud of the science we have. We're not trying to go in through the back door and tell people something that isn't accurate. Our science will uphold in front of anybody. So we've been in the midst of FDA clinical trials. The FDA has been amazing to work with and getting this through. And I believe under the. The current health secretary, that is even going to be better. Because I think a lot of conversations that a lot of people have talked about for a long time have, I will say, have not been a topic of conversation nearly as much as they should have been. And I'm so excited to see where we're going right now. Since COVID if I can say this, and that is there has been an awareness that seems to have permeated through people's minds, this idea that maybe the medical system doesn't have my best interest at heart, and maybe health insurance companies are not, not the people who make the best decisions as to what I need. That has actually been a permeating conversation throughout all of healthcare for the last, you know, now five years, if you can believe it's been that long. It has been a nonstop conversation for those last five years. And I think especially in the last month or so, we are noticing it becoming a topic of conversation even past that. And I'm excited to see what this leads to. I'm excited to see people realizing that their health, their blood pressure, their diabetes, or whatever it is, that dealing with it is your responsibility. Because if my doctor fails, if my insurance company fails, if my government fails, ultimately, I'm the one that's paying the price.

Exactly right.

So sitting around and waiting for someone else to make the decisions for me is never something that's going to happen in my world, and I strongly encourage it. For anybody who's listening to this, like, you know, get out, do what it is that, you know, that could be better. And even if you don't completely understand, there's a lot of things that you've done in your life before you completely understood them. And when it comes to things like natural health and wellness, I say, like, you know, eat a diet donut, nobody cares. But, you know, eat something that's healthy. And everybody turns into a scientist. And it's like, why, like, why. Why are we so suspicious of things that are good for us, but we are not totally critical of the things that are bad for us.

No, it's. It's wild. And I watched the programming happening in England on TV and just everything, you know, it was. It's just like to convince us otherwise. So it's just we have to be very aware. And, you know, I shared at the beginning of this that my dad died of 49 of heart disease. Now, he had very high blood pressure and he had high triglycerides. Those were his two things. Not just high cholesterol, he had high triglycerides. Like very high, like in the eight hundreds, but his blood pressure was high. And instead of his doctor talking to him about any of the stuff that we've talked about today, like isometric exercises or heck, even just going for a walk to distress, like, any of it, what they did was here's blood pressure medicine and he died. He literally died. So I'm not saying I'm not. I know Mark's not telling you either to go off medication or not. You got to ask, ask your doctor what's right for you. But what does it hurt? It's going to help to add in things like this. Like this is getting to the root. Root. So it's not going to make it worse. So why not? Why would you gamble with medication but not gamble with the preventative or gamble with the thing that's actually going to help at the root cause that's.

Well, I'm going to say this, this is a guided exercise. And if you're going to a doctor who's telling you not to exercise, you're going to the wrong doctor.

Yes, I agree. So this time device household now in our house, me and my husband, and then Mark's holding up. If you go to Zona Z O N a dot com. Zona dot com. Natalie Jill. Or if you just go to Zona dot com, you can use coupon. Natalie Jill. Just so you get savings and everything. But this is really, your whole family can use it. You don't need one for everybody. Like, you can, you could, you could share it, but it's really easy. Like you could do it while you're watching Netflix if you want. You could do it while you're doing it. You could do it at any time. It's just easy to, to do. It's the, the learning curve on it is just to be okay with the beep and it telling you that you're not doing it right because if you're a perfectionist you're going to get that that's what annoys you initially because you're like I'm gonna do this right. But you really do realize how still we're, how we're not still because it like how we want to fidget and you want to move right? It's, that was my biggest struggle with it. Well, this was super eye opening. You, you answered a lot of questions for me and you definitely closed the loop too with HRV concerns and phones in the gym. So thank you so much, much. Mark, this was awesome. Thank you so much.

Thanks. I appreciate it. I appreciate all your viewers.