[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. Each week we talk about heart rate variability and how it can be used to improve your overall health and wellness.
Please consider the information in this podcast for your informational use and not medical advice. Please see your medical provider to apply any of the strategies outlined in this episode. Heart Rate Variability Podcast is a production of Optimal LLC and Optimal HRV. Check us out at optimalhrv.com Please enjoy the show.
Welcome, friends to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. I am Matt Bennett here with a very special guest today, Dr. Tommy Reed.
Dr. Reed, welcome to the show. I've been doing some research on you and I'm so excited to talk about.
You've got a ton of experience.
So excited about your use of hrv, how HRV kind of got into your orbit and thinking. So I'm really excited for this conversation.
Just kind of start us out.
I would love to just to give an introduction of yourself to our audience.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Hey Matt, thanks a lot and shoot. Let's talk about me, I guess right now. So it's, it starts off with me, you know, knowing that I'm an athletic person. I want to be in this arena, especially when it comes to like, you know, my sport was football and I'm, I'm not that tall. I'm not six, five, so I'm like five nothing, right? So I knew that I, I can't pursue this past college, so I want to be in the area.
So the best thing to do is be provider. So I became that type of mindset that, you know, become a team doctor. And then you start thinking about, well, what kind of there's a medical side. And then, you know, come to find out there is a chiropractic side. So I like the prehab, the preventative stuff to really like allow your body to do its own ability, you know, without that medication or any type of like, you know, other type of like outside sources in the sense of, you know, invasive.
So the chiropractor was a choice. So then went found the best chiropractor and found that guy. And then lo and behold, it opened up to the channels of UCLA when you get to ucla. Now I'm working with all the teams there with that allows me to see the different type of like sport and the typical injuries. And then each, you know, sport has their own position with their injuries. So I saw that real fast and I knew, goes okay. I know that if you're playing like basketball and you're a, like a fast guard, you're going to have that type of injury Versus a center.
So once these kids graduated from college and they go in the pro world, you tag along, they call you in, can you do this, can do that. So now you start becoming like this level of professional players.
So then from Los Angeles, I moved to Tampa. And in Tampa I started working with tennis players and then the WWE and then eventually get to the Tampa Buccaneers, became their team doctor.
And then from there, throughout this whole process, it's all about these athletes, you know, performing. But then the secondary thing is the recovery. How do they recover fast from an injury, a workout, an event, and it's about getting back to ground zero so you can get 100% your next event.
So that was the secret. So when you start working with these top elite athletes, they have a team. You know, you got the team with the physio, their medical, they're nutritionist, they have a team. And you know, you're in that team and you're seeing this world of regenerative world of like either it's nutrition recovery and they mean cryo. The actual, you know, cryo. It was first before they have cold plunge and then you see the hyperbaric chamber. And eventually, you know, you start hearing about stem cell regenerative medicine. So I seen this evolve when I started back in 2006, seven go all the way there. You know where it's at now where it's, you know, stem cell injections.
So because of that, you go and hear about other things, what they want to do, they want to get optimized their workouts. Then you start thinking about, well, what else do they do? So then you start thinking about, well, they want some type of biofeedback mechanism. So HRV was introduced probably like eight, ten years ago about how you can register what your heart and your body and your autonomic nervous system is doing. And then they would try to understand how to optimize that information by either recovering correctly or really enhancing maybe a workout with the HRV to optimize your best workout. So because of that, I incorporate this wellness program that you wear wearable, I develop an app and then they. We use the HRV for a couple components. You know, really it's HRV and the on down the nervous system and understanding how you can command it. That's the hardest thing. This thing that's supposed to be automatic in our body. Well, there is a subconscious level where you can really grasp and hold it and control it, where you can increase that parasympathetic rule and decrease the sympathetic. And that's what this is all about HRV is to have that command. And you need some kind of metrics to show you visually how things are going about that little controlling mechanism. So I hope that clears up where I came from and where I'm going and moving on to the point of trying to just enhance the regenerative world.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Awesome. So I would love. Let me ask a twofold question here. One is, I'm assuming, through your athletic career and then supporting athletes and treating athletes, you've seen, like, I've seen a shift in focus from push yourself to throw up every day to a focus on recovery, where I know, you know, being a college basketball player in the mid-90s, recovery wasn't a word we used at all like that. That was not at all. So I would love to hear your experience kind of with that word. And for those that might not be familiar, familiar, bring in that work of regenerative medicine as well, because some of our listeners might understand that term, while others I know would be really fascinating to. To hear more about that.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Okay, so you're absolutely right. I remember, like, you know, I'm older than you, so back then it was basically no pain, no gain. And no, no pain meant everything. That means like dehydration. Oh, you're thirsty. No, you get. You got to learn how to push yourself through that. Right. So that means putting yourself in harm's way. Now, the worst thing about it is that, you know, as we develop into the knowledge of what our body does, we want to maximize and break down tissue and then rebuild it. So everybody sees that first part of the workout. They don't see the second part where the rebuilding, the regenerative, the healing, that's what is really important for athletes. So you're starting to see a lot of collegiate teams, especially Indiana, you know, that won the national championship. With football, if you look at their practice, their practice is really short, extremely fast, hard, but short. And then the recovery is as well as the push, right? So you want to have that kind of recovery time. And then the real worst, you know, the worst, probably the worst thing that you want to do is push yourself over that threshold, right? When you're going beyond that, then you're in the world of overtraining. Now you're not doing anything better than harming yourself. So with athletes, when you're maximizing, you do that one max rep, and then you don't recover from that, and then you go again and you start seeing your results decline. Well, it's not because of your mental state or your physical well, it is a little physical, but it's the recovery. You're not allowing that tissue to join back, get stronger, bigger, faster, and then do that max rep. So that's why the technology and this whole industrial world of fitness and really like working out is moving towards dudes that regenerative and you know that recovery. So regenerative is like a generic terminology. Regenerative could be, you know, like stem cell therapy, nutrition, food, equipment that can make you get regenerating fast. So it could be the hyperbaric chamber, the cold plunge, something that really engages your own body, your own system to turn on to do something to help heal and recover faster.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Awesome. So if we use, let me, let me just make sure, like if we use regenerative medicine supports recovery. Are we, am I in the ballpark connecting those two concepts?
[00:08:13] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. Regenerative medicine, you know, again, it's a, it's a broad terminology. So recovery. So it's, it's like I would say those things go hand in hand because you're trying to do that. Regenerative medicine is, you're trying to regenerate. So it could be as small as, like when you work out, you do bicep curls, you break that down. Well, you have to heal. So you regenerate. Regenerating new tissue to replace that bad tissue and make it bigger, stronger. So then you lift more. So that's that side and then injury, Think about injury. So you injure yourself. Got to heal that ligament. Same thing. You're going to go through this process of healing and then that's the regenerative. So it goes in, it's a wide spectrum. And then you look at what helps you go faster in that healing cycle. So you look at the equipment they have and those equipment and you know, therapies or even nutrition, anything, whatever speeds it up. That's the regenerative world.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: I love that. And obviously with the HRV helping to measure, a measure of recovery, I'm sure, you know, you're using that to complement these, you know, I just looked at your expertise on the different interventions that, that, you know, you've been an innovator on. And you know, looking at hrv, I'm assuming as a way to kind of measure is this working for the individual that, that you're helping?
[00:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah, HRV is the most unique tool to use. You can use that for a pre and a post. You can use it during the process and that could be either pre and post workout injury. I mean, you can use it for all, you know, pretty Much a whole spectrum of things because it gives you a really autonomic system test of what's going on as far as how is your body responding to things.
So I know your readers or your listeners know about the parasympathetic and sympathetic reaction, but just to refresh them, when you go through a sympathetic reaction, what your body's doing, it's, you know, bite flight. And what it needs to do, it needs to protect the visceral organs, the lungs, the heart. So all the blood from your legs and your arm, they shut from that area and they rush into your core of your body right. Now the thing with that is that you have basal constriction in your extremities, vasoconstriction. I mean, sympathetic is a good thing to have and go through. As long as it's a burst of it, you've got to learn how to shut it off.
So after you do that sympathetic, there's gotta be the alter ego, which is a parasympathetic, and that does the opposite. Right. Vasodilates open up those little capillaries and vessels, allow the blood vessels to go back down into the extremities, and then, you know, the venous and the lymphatic system opens up to get that metabolic waste out. So that's what you're trying to do.
So the big thing with that is that once you understand that principle and that concept, the worst thing you want to do is be in the sympathetic too long. Right. There's things called the rsd, right. I think it's called reflux sympathetic disorder. When you're constantly firing your sympathetic. Well, you know what's going to happen if you basically put like a, like a tourniquet in your arms or legs. Poor circulation, poor healing, poor function, poor ability to do your maximum. So you gotta learn how to turn it up. HRV gives you the ability to measure, see where you're at. And then if you can understand that concept and then use a tool like the hrv, like just a simple, like a, like a chest monitor or even a watch. As long as, here's the thing with the two like, sensors, when you wear a watch, it's not as accurate, of course, as a chest, you know, monitor. Right. So, you know, just be aware that when you're wearing a wrist, just try to stay still as much as possible. Yeah. And so that's basically, you know, as everybody knows, we're measuring the R and R interval, right? Like the heart rate. So. So that's the big thing with that. Once you understand that principle of a sympathetic parasympathetic and what you want to do is open up vessels to get that metabolic waste, get the oxygenated blood down to your extremities. Now you, you got to find a way what tool, what something that helps you enhance that. And HRV gives you the ability to see if you're correct in your pathway.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: I love that. I know the other arena of your focus, which I would love to bring in here early in our conversation as well, is mindset too and working with these athletes. You know, there's the physical side of things and I'm curious as a chiropractor with a whole bunch of expertise in a whole bunch of areas, you know, how do you approach your work with these type A, you know, if you're going to be a professional athlete, I learned to appreciate a long time ago you might be a college athlete, you kind of has a little obsession going on with your sport and how much time you dedicate your life to, to that sport working with these, you know, the next level with professional athletes, you know, I can appreciate the dedic there, which can be mentally straining as well. So I'm curious as you're working with people with all these restorative medicine recovery approaches, how does the mental side inform your work as well?
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Yeah, when it comes to that tier system, the peak is like the all pro, the elite of the elite and you trickle down the pro, then you trickle down to collegiate high school and then junior high and all that stuff.
You're, you're, you're quickly weeding now because there's always going to be that when you go to pro world, everybody has talent, they have the God gift ability to do things. Then you look at that one that has the mental side where they put that hard work plus their actual God given talent and then that becomes the all pro, the high level stuff.
So that level, when you're looking at that mindset, that mental, the acuity to what they have to do before them and then they open their minds to new devices, new modalities, new information. Right.
So that mindset is strong. You're talking about optimism, you're talking about the strength of anything that has to do with like just visualizing and really projecting what they need and what they're going to be. And then it's very, it's very interesting to be around these guys because they're focused, they know once they have the information.
So the way I look at myself as a provider at these type of like, you know, like these Caliber athletes is educating them, making sure they know what they have as far as an injury or some type of syndrome or, you know, whatever they have. Then you give them the education component about this, your anatomy, this is what it's supposed to do and then this is what it's doing now. And then the course of action, we're going to get it back to here, but we have to move this, we got to do that, we got to change that, we got to heal this. And once they understand those steps as we're going through, their healing is so much easier. Now you have a participating team player. You've got me as a provider and them as an athlete. And now you're as a team. Now we're working for the common goal. Once they get their mind there now they can push, they go, hey, can we do this process takes two weeks and a week and a half, one week, yeah. But we have these milestones. We have to catch these milestones and they know because. All right, let's go. So once you get that kind, that mindset, that team player and then we work together, things go so easy. I mean, they know and then, you know, nothing's worse than being an athlete and injured and off the field. That's a mental, that's a mental hurdle that they have to understand to get through quickly. So you want to get them to show, you know, show the little micro victories in the therapy and then they apply that into their progression into the future. So you're right, mental has a big game with it. And think about what it does here, sympathetic stress. I mean, you know what that does to our sympathetic. Right. So we have to understand that these are the components that are going to antagonize our recovery and our regeneration.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: And I find that fascinating.
And it's kind of the good and the bad about heart rate variability is it's such a universal metric in many ways is you might have gotten a bad night's sleep, you might have over trained or you might have gotten a fight with your partner. I mean, there's a lot of different sort of stressors that can impact an HRV score. And I think it challenges us as, as professionals working with people to kind of take that holistic approach of, yeah, you know, we can separate out the mind and the body, but it's really an integrated system kind of like you're speaking to. And if we, if we don't talk about both of those, we're probably, we're doing people a disservice in, in on many levels. And that's like I, I don't know. Michael Jordan fascinates me after the last dance because I don't know if that dude is mentally healthy. Like, I'm not sure.
I, I, you know, just like the, the intensity there is just like, my God. Do you ever take a red? Like yeah, you look at him the wrong way and he's going to score 60 on you just because you pissed him off in that way. And, and it's that, that balance I think with, with high performing athletes of you know, that intensity versus time to like relax, it just let it go a little bit too. Which is I think a hard balance for, for these high performers.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the really elite athletes know how to turn it on and turn it off. They have to learn. I think football is the easiest of the sport because you have to wear a lot of gear, a helmet. It makes you feel like you're in a, probably a space capsule or something and you can become that person and then once you get it off, you're back to your normal self. You know, fire off those parasympathetic and get relaxing, get recovering. Because nothing's worse than being in the sympathetic with an injury and you're not allowed to get that circulation because the sympathetic is firing off too hard. So you've got to learn how to, you know, undo that.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So I want to enter arena that, that I will admittedly know, I don't know as much about but I know you know your work in stem cell therapy and you know I would love because I think a lot of people hear that word and you know, I think it's got a, you know, a promising, you know, there's a lot of promise there but I think people might be hesitant because you know, what's approved, what's not approved in that arena at this point. And you know, I know when my aunt for Ms. Had to goes you had to go to Russia to get stem cell therapy.
And you know there's a lot of I think mixed information out there with this. Knowing your expertise in a realm of areas I'm just dying to ask you, let's dive into to your book. I know you have a product out there and I love just to learn some of the science with restore regenerative medicine.
And you know we talked about how HRV supports it. Love to hear your work around the stem cell therapy as well.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: Okay.
I'm gonna do as much as I can with less time because that's a huge subject right there. I mean you're talking about.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: But I mean, I got the expert on. So I'm excited to dive into this with you.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: All right, let's. Let's just talk about like, you know, regenerative medicine, stem cells. So stem cell. Let's look at the evolution. So way back when I started off at 2005, 6, it was really about, you know, an injection of this, like, sugar water called prolotherapy. Prolotherapy, you're. You put something in your body and the body doesn't recognize it. It makes this, like this, you know, it's like antibodies or like more scar tissue material because they think something happened there. So it started going that path and then it moved to prp. PRP is where they draw the blood out of your, your body and then they put in a centrifuge and re inject the growth factors back into your tissue. There's some merit to that, but it's still your own tissue, right?
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: So stem cell therapy is. It started coming from like bone marrow and you're inside your bone or your fat tissue again, centrifuge it. You're trying to get, you're trying to gather this thing called mesocoma stem cells, and then you re. Inject your damaged tissue area and then, you know, regenerate the tissue because it signals your existing tissue to turn on.
The, the misunderstanding is what is stem cell? What. Why is everybody talking about I got 10 million cells? They're live cells or live cells.
Well, here's the thing with live cells, live cells. Basically, it's a cell with a nucleus. Nucleus, chromosome DNA. And there's information on there. Well, the danger thing is that what is that information? What is it really sending? I mean, how does that cell, right, with that nucleus, that DNA can match to your existing, let's say, ligament, right?
It can't match up. There's no way it can match up. You're talking about millions of cold versus your own million. It's not gonna, it's not gonna match up. So then you have to take the next step. If it's not going to like, you know, have that live cell turn into your live cell, then you have to take the next step. Well, it's going to basically signal. And that's where you look at the more merit to. Right. You're looking at things like, you know, like our hormones, we. Our hormones signal from our brain to our organ and do something. But same with this. It's information that you're trying to get from this tissue. You know, this mesocoma stem cell to go into your existing tissue, you say, turn on, regenerate, heal faster. And it's about signaling. So once you understand the concept of that, then you go, okay, it's about signaling. Signaling is a smaller molecule than a live cell. So then the risk factor reduces down. There's no more possible tumor formation. There's no weird things gonna happen because there's no DNA component. It's just like these cytokines, proteins, little things that are just information.
So then you see how they deliver it. They deliver it through an injection. So if you have an injury for your knee, you gotta inject a knee because it has to go through the skin and basically send it information, then starts regenerating. Okay, well, the problem with athletes that you can't do stem cell therapy during the season because there's downtime when you inject. Let's say you have a, an ACL issue. Well, you're going to have to get a needle and get past your skin, get into the actual joint and then get into the acl. Well, you just created a secondary injury site. So you have a, you have a primary injury, secondary, and you have to recover from that. Now you're out for two weeks. When you're in the NFL world, missing a couple weeks, you're, you're taking money away from the table. You're, you know, because it's about performance there, right? So they're worried about that. So they rather go through pain management where they kind of numb the area. I'll deal with that pain later off season and then I can continue playing. Well, that's where the gap was at there. You can't do this regenerative medicine, stem cell therapy during a season, during play. So if you can find a different delivery system, and I thought about, it goes, hey, why don't we go ahead and do a topical transdermal that has the ability to pull through the skin to the damaged tissue. And that's where Regen was developed. Regen has that component that actually takes those information, gets it through the skin into the deep tissue to regenerate tissue. And the neat thing about that is that you have the same outcome as the injectable, except for there's no downtime, there's no risk factors. And now you're moving into the world of going into action and then also allow the play and heal and regenerate. So that's how this whole thing came about. And then the weird thing about that is that when I had to explain myself over and over again, I said, let me, let me Cut this short. I'm going to write a book about this so then people don't have to ask me these same questions. They read the book. It's all in the book. It talks about what this history of a stem cell, the present time and the future, where it's going to go in topical world.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Awesome. It's just such fascinating research because I think on the other hand, you know, in the HRV world we do use HRV as a metric. But one of the areas that I've just become absolutely fascinated is with, with pain management as well. I think, you know, in our audience will know from past episodes if you want to study something fascinating, pain is a great place to start. Because, you know, as, you know, as a chiropractor, like we kind of all have jacked up backs, but you could have kind of a, you know, an X ray of two people with a jacked up back. One might experience chronic pain for all their life. The other one's just walking around without any pain.
It's a very interesting thing. And then in the HRV biofeedback world, all this evidence that regulating the parasympathetic response being in that parasympathetic space through our breathing really can offset the experience of pain in a very, a positive way. And that's where I was really excited about your research of, you know, the, the stem cell therapy as well is just looking at this healing process and different kind of avenues in which to use the body's own healing mechanisms. And I think, you know, if you don't have to get a needle injected into your knee, I'm, I'm all for that as well.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Now don't forget, like pain is a precursor to the sympathetic world. So.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: So when you reduce it by regenerating tissue, decreasing inflammation, well, there goes your sympathetic. But the secret is that you just can't rely on that autonomic nervous system. And in response to the decreased pain, you have to couple with the mental side of it. Right. The breathing we all know about. Inhale is sympathetic, exhale is parasympathetic. So you always want that ratio to be more on the para or the exhale than the inhale.
And then with that you need to learn, just like how I work with the athlete as a team. Well, this is the same thing. You have to work as a team with your autonomic nervous system, your breathing, the regenerative, the stem cell and the recovery and everything that has to do with your own body. So it's like one of those, like Those, those cycles of the universe and it turns into your planet and it turns into an atom. It's just cycles and it goes down to the simple form of you. So just remember that part of the teamwork, all the components of you.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Yep. And I'm curious as you go into this work with professional athletes, you know, I know a lot of, you know, we're talking differently now about things like sleep over training.
I'm sure nutrition is on their mind as well.
And I wonder, as a chiropractor, I always love talking to chiropractors because there is a holistic approach. Whether you're working with me as somebody who just maybe, maybe fell wrong on a snowboard run the other day or somebody who's getting ready for, you know, the playoffs in the NFL, you know, thinking about how to maximize cognitive performance, physical performance.
And so I'm curious with these professional athletes, I'm assuming, but I want to check in like are they thinking more than maybe you and I did when we were our plane days about nutrition, sleep, Obviously exercise is part of their daily routine.
And I'm curious about their level of knowledge on heart rate variability coming into their work with you. Is it something you are often introducing to them or is there more and more kind of knowledge of this coming into their work with you specifically?
[00:27:29] Speaker B: So when I look at athletes, remember there's, when you get to that level, there's two types of those athletes. One that are like the, the talented ones that don't capitalize on hard work and they just go on basically just God given talent. And there's the one that have that mental, right the mental strength and the talent and they're the ones that you want to work with. They're open minded to everything but going back to hrv. And these athletes, here's the thing with HRV that it's kind of like a blessing and a curse at the same time. So you can use heart rate variability for, you know, from thinking that I'm going to optimize my workout, but I have to be prepared, my numbers need to be correct. Well, if you're in a time game and you've got, you got to get out on the field 1:00' clock and your HRV is not registering correctly, it can mentally really destroy you. So a lot of athletes don't utilize this type of HRV during like the day or the weekend of that game. They like to do the off season and know how to optimize their recovery. So that's one thing that, that I noticed on these Guys. And when it comes to educating people, I mean, you're starting to see a lot of programs out there. You've got a lot of, you know, the ring, these whoop. They got a lot of things out there that really just talk broadly about, hey, your sleep, your, your recovery. But they don't understand that really it goes down the basic principle, hrv. It's all about hrv. So you know, that is, I think generically they understand it, but in a specific sense they don't know what it is all about. They, they just know that I need to improve my sleep and then I gotta look at my numbers and I gotta do this, I gotta sleep more.
But it really comes down to, I always tell people that really have a, like a, you look at, you know, hypertension, hypertension, diabetes, stuff like that.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: You know, a lot of things are, you know, commanded by like, you know, you think about exercise for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It depends on what type of disease you have. Right. But the thing that I always try to teach these guys is that you've got to learn how to control your know, your, your breathing, learn how to understand it. And then we do like a pre and a post of the HRV in some capacity in our office.
So we have. You can determine risk factors based on hrv. It's very interesting how your, you're for instance, like if I did a serology, like a blood test on you and then all your markers are fine, but you're still in the risk for like cardiovascular disease because your autonomic nervous system will sense it first and it reacts differently. Yeah. So there's a thing called orthostatic. Right, Orthostatic movement. So for instance, when you lay down on the ground or on the bed and you get up real quick. Well, because of the change of positioning, you've got to quickly turn on your autonomic nervous system. Your sympathetic to take all the blood, shunt the blood from your legs and rush it to your head before you pass out. So some of you guys that have poor like, you know, blood flow and then you get up and you get lightheaded. Well, you've got something going on with that type of mechanism.
So when you start looking at that, well, guess what? That's a cardiovascular issue. Right. So your blood work may look normal, but if you don't look at your HRV or you know, that type of testing system, you're not going to notify that, hey, there's something going on, how it registers. So that's why HRV is Important to look at predetermining, where you're going down, and then you take that component and then you look at your family history. Now you're seeing, hey, I've got this HRV issue. I got a family history. I might be going down the pathway. There's a chance where you can split that fork in the road and go down to good cardiovascular health. But you've got to hit it quick, faster. So the faster you determine what you see out of the HRV and how to, like, you know, adjusted by your breathing, your exercise, and really mentally focus on the things that enhance the hrv, then you can alter the course of your family history. So, yeah, absolutely. Like, those things are important, you know, especially when it comes to these coupling attitudes with recovery.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. So I gotta ask you, too, with all this knowledge that you have and all these different areas of expertise, I think we could dive in to. To each and every one of them as a full episode.
I'm curious what. What your routine looks like, because I. I'm assuming, having learned quite a bit about you before we talked, that you're not the kind of person that just tells other people what to do, that. That you're also living this in your own life as well. And I'm curious, you know, how all this information and expertise you've developed over the years, your, Your, you know, your background as an athlete, now working with athletes, what does your kind of daily routine.
You know, you can throw some, maybe some stuff you do weekly as well. How do you realize this in your own life?
[00:32:18] Speaker B: Okay, I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm selfish because I have these conditions. I have these problems. I have, you know, cardiovascular disease in my family. I've got diabetes in my family. I got everything you can think of, plus I got low back pain, plus I play sports. I got all these things. I'm thinking, like, how can I take care of me? And it almost like trickles out, goes, okay, well, I know I commanded me. So then, hey, let me just go ahead and relay that to the. My patients.
So my routine, you know, I get up in the morning and I do meditation. You've got to set your mind right. So it's about meditation. Then after that is positive reinforcement. So I listen to a positive video.
Just feed yourself some positive information and energy in you. So then, you know, I've got my, you know, I'm a spiritual person, so, you know, I go through my Bible and all that. Then I go through my work and I, you know, before When I get in the office, either I go work out and I do compression or weighted stuff so I can compress my muscles.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: And then I have a device called a power plate. Whole body vibration. I do that for nine minutes. I need that nitric oxide dump. You know, I need to increase that basal dilation. So I open that up and then there goes my day. Then I do my normal, you know, therapy, chiropractic, doing podcasts, going through the stressors in life and learning how to shut my door and give me five minutes of breathing. Just. Just calm myself down and learn that. Hey, distract.
Look inside and just hold your breathing and just command that for a couple minutes and then go back again. You have to understand and recognize when you're really stressed out and how to. You know, you gotta. First of all, I think the hardest thing is identifying stress. You know, am I stressed out because of this, or am I just going through a normal process? But you've got to have that threshold and don't maximize that. And then you've got to have an escape route. Find somewhere and just shut it down. It only takes like a couple minutes. Once you get back, you'll. You'll feel it. I mean, it's the most interesting thing. Once you get that. That neutralization going, then you're okay. Then that's my routine. And then at nighttime, I try to do another workout. And then, you know, I do podcasts.
I have a run in there maybe three times a week. Not that far because I'm, you know, I'm at that age where it can start beating me up too much. So, you know, I do some runs and then walking, and I enjoy to be on the water. Anything on the water, you know.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that's.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: That's my routine. And if you guys are gonna find me out there, don't yell at me out there. Just let me do my routine.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Okay, I'm with you on that. And I would love to talk about you. You mentioned the plate.
I'm sort of nerding out myself on, you know, vibrations and piezo 2, pie 2 receptor plasma in different areas of the body. So I would love to hear just a little bit about, you know, what is the theory behind that? What's it look like in practice?
I just love to hear why that. That hits your routine, and I'm assuming things you do with other people as well. Let me open another big door in this guy.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Okay. All right, here's some funny guys. So the power plate, right? Whole body vibration.
I love the thing you're Talking about something that's fantastic for therapy, here's a, you know, so power plate is that vibration that you stand on it, you could do exercise and you can maximize your reps by doing these mic of contractions and you get a better workout, more, you know, more load through those bones and joints and muscles, all that stuff. But that's a good component I look at for the health reason. The health reason is that the biggest thing about it is nitric oxide. We all want that vasodilation in our vessels. Once you have a healthy epithelium, you know, the vessels that give us the oxygen for the arteries, deoxygenated blood for the venous, and then the lymphatic system. Once you get that thing moving correctly, well, you're going to avoid good things like, you know, arthrosclerosis, arteriosclerosis, plaquing, all that stuff. You got to get the vessels moving. So what they typically say is, you know, you go for a run, you do that, you get a nitric oxide movement, right? The problem is that once you get to an age like 50, running is difficult for a lot of people because of joint pain, back pain, but you still that need that nitric oxide. It doesn't matter how much like, like nitric food you eat and all that, you know, you, you still need that dump, right? You got to get those vessels to dilate. Well, power plate gives you the ability through shearing. So shearing represents, just like when you run or walk aggressively, your blood vessels going back and forth, shearing, it engages that nitric oxide. Nitric oxide, it's a fast molecule that opens up your vessels and then it just basically disappears. So power plate gives you the ability to do that healthy circulatory type of problem and it activates those biomolecules. So the neat thing about that is that it's a secret. It's a secret because at a certain age, you don't care about physique. You don't care. You just look for the health benefits. Power plate gives you that ability. So that's why I love it. I love this so much that I even wrote a book about it and I finally, it's finished and it's published, so it's going to be on Amazon here in a matter of like, I think a day or two.
[00:37:18] Speaker A: Awesome. Awesome. Well, in the show notes, if we can get a link to it, that's great. I mean, I've just been, you know, nitric oxide is a kind of a friend of the show. So to Speak, because we, we have talked a lot in the past about healthy breathing and, you know, knowing that if your mouth breathing, you're not getting that. Not nitric oxide. And then really, I love this idea of being able to exacerbate that effect. So you get the, the oxygen, carbon dioxide, that, that good ratio, you know, to maximize the cell health throughout the body. And that's. Yeah. So it's. It's a friend of the show. And this is. Is a real cool way to do bring that into your workout as well.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: Hey, Matt. So we, you know about breathing through your nose, right? So nasal passage. Right. All right, here's another one. You know about humming, too, between your humming.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, Maybe. Yes. Yeah.
[00:38:12] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. So you take. Three of you take a try out, right? You get the breathing, you know, you get the humming. Then you got the power plate. You're talking about nitric oxide dump.
Here's the biggest. The reason why I got involved with this is that, you know, I saw this at ucla, but then I had this whole body vibration in my office years ago. And it was to help recover athletes, you know, because after a workout, you want to get that dump of that metabolic waste out, right? But then I started moving into like, you know, like older patients. And try this out. I had this older patient in the 70s that was trying to work on his cardiovascular say, you know, there is something that's neat about this. Try this out. He was on that thing for probably like, you know, the typical, like 10 minutes. And he did it three times. And he finally came up to me on the fourth time, goes, hey, I want to tell you a secret, you know, I goes, well, he goes, I have ed. I haven't had an erection in years. This thing got me erected. I said. And then that's how I started thinking, oh, this is just not just a tool for like recovery. But now let's look at this in a different way. So then that's how understanding about really nitric oxide in a dump. And then that's where it expands out. So interesting about that whole episode of like, you know, vibration and learning about the tri planes and make sure you got that. And then the nitric oxide engagement. Yeah, I totally. I'm on board with all that stuff.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: Stuff, yeah. And I love the humming as well. I mean, I. I've been. And some of our audience have heard me talk about this with. With some of the new releases, with the biofeedback stuff we do at optimal hrv, like really measuring that low frequency during your practice. And my Hum has gone to a.
Like, just because I can see my HRV trend in, in the right direction where, you know, in that fine tuning. Whereas other people kind of get it more with a kind of thing. And just, just to nerd out with you a little bit more from a mental health perspective, I don't know if there's anything healthier for people that are interested in it than joining a choir. Like, I'm pretty well convinced that, you know, because you get some of the same benefits from singing and singing and synchronization with other people getting that social interaction.
It's on my list of top 10 for folks that, I mean, nobody wants me in their choir because my singing voice, I'm going to bring everybody else down. But I think for those that are interested, like that activation of the vagal break, that strengthening of it through humming lion's breath is what I think I'm doing and stumbled upon just through my own practice, really powerful, the nasal breathing. And that's why I have a massage chair that I'm not working out necessarily while I do it. But to get those vibrations in is something that I put into my routine as well. And I love it.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: There's a, there's an app out there that can measure the frequency of the hum. So I'll look for it, but I think I look for my phone. But the neat thing about that is that you think you're at that frequency. You know, you got the HRV can, you know. Yeah, let me tell you something about. We'll go back to that other one. So we have our HRV app. Right. So it gives you biofeedback to see how you're doing, like coherence. Right. Are you matching up? Are you really doing what you're supposed to do in your, your breathing and all that. But as far as an app, there's an app that actually measure your humming, make sure you're at that frequency. Once you get to that, you practice that for a while and then you know how to utilize that type of breathing. Humming.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's that, that the, the biofeedback. I love it because it allows you to adjust and figure out what, what is working, you know, really for you. Because again, some, some folks find it with the humming. I find it with whatever gross grunting noise that I'm making on the exhale. But then when I, I start to shift out of low frequency, just a real deep exhale could get me back in that. And usually my mind starts to wander when I'm starting To lose that as well. So just really cool. Our technology is just, you know, really giving us great insight to these really, you know, thousand plus year practices that exist in yoga or other traditional Tai chi and other things that we're just able to.
A decent cell phone and now like you said, a accurate reader and we could get more insight than, you know, the, the old yogis could have ever imagined getting.
[00:42:45] Speaker B: You know, going back to what you're asking, I think one of the things you're talking about athletes and how they prep up when you're at a certain level of that performance, the physical side is out the door. Now when you're in performance, it's all mental. Now you're at 95.
So if you don't have that perfect mental state, you know, you know, if it's, it's the heart, if it's the thought process, is it antagonizing you? You're going to have a poor performance. So you need everybody on board so, you know, if you can practice. That's what I feel that when you look at a biofeedback for HRV and you're stressed out and you understand how to bring yourself down, it becomes like a conditioning. So then you don't need that device anymore. You know the problem? I mean the possible procedure to take you into that position of being, that coherence, that perfect sense to each other.
[00:43:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And what I love about it is it, you know, is both helps me sleep at night. But if I, you know, my performance now is doing trainings and talks and keynotes, you know, it, you know, my, my, my example of athletic performance is more cognitive at this point and performative in that regard. But like it also can prep me for that as well. So I love, especially I'm, I'm, I'm thinking like football is such kind of a unique experience because I heard somebody talking about like the psychology of football yesterday on a podcast.
You can't really take too much time off. Like maybe if you're a receiver, you can just not run your route and you're not in danger. If you're on the line, you better be all out every time or there can be negative consequences. So, you know, being sympathetic while having some parasympathetic there as well. And that's where I, I just find athletics a great laboratory for this because yeah, a lot of like what a elite basketball player does is unconscious. But if you're, if you're in just fight or flight all the time, you might have a little trouble accessing those instinctive responses. And I think I really know because we've seen it with HRV biofeedback. It helps to set that balance for folks and the healthy breathing on top of it. So during a timeout or during a free throw or between plays in football, you can get a little bit of regulation to set you up to perform at your best the next play or afterwards. And I think this is where I love the science coming into these arenas.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, the neat thing about that science side of it and understanding about, you know, the metrics of HRV and the scores, then you see the performance and then you can see, did it work? Does it, does it make sense? Because you can have all the science data points, but when you perform and it doesn't perform good, okay, my theory was wrong or my interpretation was wrong. So it's about really tuning into what's shown on the data points and then what you perform.
[00:45:50] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. So I, as somebody who's been around, been an athlete, seen recovery come into play, you know, and on the cutting edge with what you're doing with stem cell therapy. And again, we only kind of touched on the different approaches that you bring into your work. I'm curious, I love to ask this of guests like yourselves.
As we advance five, 10 years into the future, we, we've got this right now revolution with AI going on.
Wearables are, you know, if an athlete kind of isn't tracking this, I think that's the exception more than the rule nowadays that you got a ring, you got a whoop, you got something like that going on. I'm curious, as you look into the future, as somebody who's pushing innovation, where do you think we're going to be five to ten years from now?
Let's let me ask that question both for the professional athletes you work with and maybe that 50 year old who says, you know, I've got this history of heart disease in my family. I don't want to end up like my grandfather and my father ended up, you know, I'd love to kind of get that from both perspectives as you look into the future.
[00:47:11] Speaker B: So we know right now that we have sort of a software system that gives us a warning about, you know, go for a walk, you're sitting too long or you're stressed out, heart rate increase or something. So you have sort of a hint of what's going on. So there's going to be a component of the sentry. It's going to be, you know, some type of wearable, is going to tell you to do that, do this. Then you're going to have to think about, all right, so what is that? It's got to be some kind of control mechanism of that parasympathetic. So there's going to device that activates that vagal nerve, right. That vague response you're going to have. There's going to be like a wearable like on here. That nerve is piercing right through there. There's going to be something that you can basically maybe have a patch there when it's going to sync together, right. So stressor comes up, boom. It's going to learn this little device in your neck or even around your ears, right. It's going to turn on and it's going to give a little tone. That tone is going to put you in relaxation real quick. So I can see that in the future. That's a simple one right there. It's probably right now as we speak, there's some guy in the lab right now digging away in the basement, just doing this thing.
[00:48:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:16] Speaker B: So that's. That's the future in that sense. Just to control yourself. And then the mental component, once you get injured or something happens to you, the mental side plays such a toll that you've got to get that positive.
So that really big crucial piece, you're not seeing a lot like source, you know, sports psychologists out there. You don't see that many out there. You just confus here and there. You're going to see the AI help you out with that. You're going to help these athletes do this stuff and then they're going to. And it's all about micro victories. It's about looking at the small. Don't look at the big picture. I'm gonna be in the Olympics. Don't look at the small thing. I'll pick up my pen the correct way and then work your way up to the goal. Right. So I see that in some type of AI capacity. And when you call up regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy, that by itself is an easy application form, which is a topical instead of going to your clinic or doctor. And that. And then the cost, it's gonna be just easily used at home to, you know, if you think you have like a tennis elbow, rub that cream on you. And it's gonna do as much as the injectables without that high cost risk factor. So we're gonna move that way. Pretty soon you don't have to go to the doctors. You'll have AI doing everything for you. And they Say, all right, do this, do this, do this. Now the thing with that is that we have the ability to do all these in our body. We have the innate intelligence. We just need the right information, the signals education material and then really do the homework. That's the hardest part. Who's going to do the homework? You know, it's us. So we have the people that like to procrastinate. And then of course, you know, it gets disappeared after that. Or there's going to be devices that give you these little warnings every day like, beep, do this, Beep, do this. And if you don't get annoyed, it may even help you do these things. But they have to go through that process because we all have to go through this thing. We all have to do some type of component of exercise training, repetitive motion and that becomes a habit and behavior and all that. So that's the hard thing that we're trying to eliminate that's going to be in the future where it's simple.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: I love that. And it's still. And you speak to this as well, like we know the impact of healthy breathing and pace breathing and all this, but you know, you've got to spend a little bit of your time to get that.
I don't think our technology is necessarily going to replace the benefits of taking a walk in nature anytime soon. Like you, you, you got, you got the ocean there. I got my mountains here in Colorado. Like you, you know, there's. There, there. It's an interesting time because especially with like, you know, the shots, the injections for weight loss and other things, is that things are getting easier. And yet I still think that there is that, that room for, you know, your investment in time and your health and wellness and, you know, that that mix of things that we can do, I hope just opens the door not just to professional athletes, but for, for everybody with this work. And it's just an exciting time to be in this field for sure.
[00:51:10] Speaker B: You know, it's so funny when you talk about like, you know, like those, those, those shots, you know, Ozempic and all that stuff. You know, that's a shortcut and it's, it does its job right. It neutralizes the, the hunger and all that stuff. But, you know, looking at this point and going backwards, it's that journey, the journey of that progression of going through that diet, that exercise and becoming this person you're in the future.
I always tell my friends that try to, you know, discuss their point of view to other people and we say they haven't Gone through what you've been through, they haven't gone through the process. That journey is what puts you in this character. So I try to tell me, you gotta, you know, you can't think that. Why are they thinking this way? Why? Because they don't know. They don't know this, this, this adversity you overcame to become this person and where you're at. So I see these people taking these shortcuts and then I. They get what they want, but they don't know that process, the process of going through it because that became, that becomes that, that behavior, that conditioning that, you know, if you come across something else that has that adversity, you can overcome that. So I see these people taking a shortcut and it's, it has its health benefits, but I always feel that there's going to be something else that's going to give them a hurdle, that they may all of a sudden like fall apart because they haven't gone through that, that, that, that circulation of pressure, you know.
[00:52:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I just appreciate the society we live in too, is not the healthiest in the world as well. So I think, you know, that counterbalance. And this is where I'm really excited that we're talking about sleep, right? Where growing up, it's like if you slept, you were lazy like that, that was, you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Sor.
And trying to reset our culture to a healthy one. We got a lot of work to do on that. And I feel like, you know, there's just, you know, different methods towards this journey. And I think, you know, your patients are so fortunate that they have, you know, multiple routes to work with somebody like yourself.
Whether it's to realize, you know, world class performance or if it's to get more mobility and live another 10, 15 years because I'm not going to die of a heart attack at age 55.
That there are professionals like you out there, that there are these multiple pathways to health. That's just exciting that there are all those alternatives to our mainstream health system that gives you one way with it. And it's, it's exciting to come across you and your work with this pushing the envelope here.
[00:53:49] Speaker B: Hey, man, thank you very much for all you listeners. If you're looking for someone like me, just think about, look at the doctor, look at his lifestyle and look how active he is. I mean, is he, is he, is he preaching right? Is he preaching everything he's talking about right? Is he doing what he's supposed to do? So I Always look at, you know, when I talk to other athletes that travel and they look for someone like me, I said, well, I mean, I, I'm. It's difficult for me to find someone on these other parts of the country, but what I do is I tell them, go in their office and see the facility, see how they move and look at their history. Are they an athlete in the past? Do they know the mindset of an athlete and how fast you want to get back on the field for your reasons? And are they matching up? Are they giving you the negative answers like, oh, your season is over because you have a little tendonitis? You know, is it going to say, hey, we're going to work on this thing, we're going to work together and fight that urgent to go negative?
So find someone that matches your mindset and then look at the facility, look what they've done, and see if it makes you feel comfortable that this guy knows what he's doing. Now, if you go into an office that says, like, you know, family, sports, auto accident, shoe fitting and a car mechanic, then you're at the wrong place because he's a jack of all trades. You don't want to go there.
[00:55:00] Speaker A: I love it. Well, this has been a joy of a conversation and I hope the first of many as well. So I'm really excited to come across your work and this has just been a great conversation. So, Dr. Ray, thank you so much for joining us today. We'll put a whole bunch of links, get those to your books in the show notes, and I hope to have you back on soon and continue our conversation.
[00:55:28] Speaker B: Matt, thank you very much, man. It was a fun talk here.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: And as always, you can find show notes, information and everything
[email protected] and we'll see everybody soon. Thanks for joining us.
