Speaker 0 00:00:00 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 L L C and Optimal hrv. Check us
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Speaker 1 00:00:32 Welcome, everybody to the Heart Rate Variability podcast. I am Matt Bennett here with a fellow HRV Mental health, uh, nerd. Uh, I'm so excited for this conversation with Roan Dixon. Uh, rod, welcome to the podcast. Uh, I'm so excited to dive into your work and your journey, uh, with heart rate variability. Uh, but before I, I start to nerd out with you, uh, I, I'd love just kind of a brief introduction about, uh, uh, your work. Uh, I got your website up. Uh, I cannot wait to dive into it, uh, but just a little bit of a brief introduction so our audience knows who you are.
Speaker 2 00:01:12 Yeah. First of all, happy to be here and, and thanks for, for the opportunity, Matt. It's, uh, great to, great to meet you and, uh, would love to share more. Yeah, I mean, myself in a nutshell, I, uh, you know, was a neuroscientist for a while studying mindfulness and meditation and its effect on mental health. Got into H R V, started creating prototypes and wearables and devices, and then founded leaf, which is a wearable device company for mental health.
Speaker 1 00:01:39 Awesome. So, so what got you, you know, as you were going through this in neuroscience, which is where sort of, you know, my work with trauma in the mental health space is kind of where I, uh, started get really excited cuz I felt like, you know, when I say psychology, you know, I graduated with my master's in like 2000. We, we weren't talking much about the brain, much less like the autonomic nervous system. So I would love to like, hear your journey from kind the neuroscience, which I know heart rate variability, variabilities connected to that, to just what kind of, uh, got you really interested in H rv.
Speaker 2 00:02:19 Yeah. It's the same, a similar thing I think to the psychology field, uh, where neuroscientists, I think had a little bit of a, had blinders on to some degree. And, um, and you know, you focus on what you know, right? Yeah. And so people listening Yeah. You know, about the, about the human mind was in the brain, and, uh, that just turns out to not be the case. I mean, you know this now from your work with H RV and the autonomic nervous system, the body has distributed nervous system, and that has a huge impact on emotional Yes. Um, self-regulation, so many things that are important to psychological health and mental wellbeing and, and many other things. Um, I stumbled into it actually because, you know, I, the reason I became a neuroscientist in the first place, I, I, uh, you know, had struggled with anxiety and depression myself, found a book about meditation from my mom lying around the house, <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:03:10 And that made it a huge, huge impact on me. And so, you know, I had since the age of like 14 or 15, been trying to create a meditation machine. I assumed it could help me, you know, learn meditation better. I thought it could help other people. You know, I sort of felt like I was on a mission, you know? And so that's why I got into neuroscience, studied, you know, functional and structural networks in the brain that changed during, during meditation and during practice of repeated attentional training. And, and what I ended up finding as I started to wanna take stuff from the lab and into the real world was that you really need more than just knowledge to be able to effectively learn some of these techniques. You need kind of like tools. In some cases. You need, you need, um, processes, you need support, right?
Speaker 2 00:03:56 And so that was a big gap for me between knowing intellectually, oh, meditation's good for me, I should probably do it more to, well, how do I really do it well? Am I doing it right? How do I stay consistent? All of those things. And so I started trying to create devices around it that could help me. Just weird prototypes, uh, machines, gadgets. Uh, and, and so that's how I eventually, you know, I started with the brain looking at e eeg. Yeah. Um, the problem with that, you know, as you know, and your, some of your audience may know, is that brain signals measured from the skull are really, really weak. Yes. So, <laugh> Yeah. Yeah. If you're blinking, if you're, you know, talking, if you're moving around at all, you, you, you can't see what's happening in the brain, right? And so it's almost a useless tool to walk around. And that's, that's when I started looking at other bio signals, and that's when I saw H R V and I was like, oh my gosh, this is, this is really, really interesting. It's connected to the brain and you could measure it while you go about your daily life. Awesome.
Speaker 1 00:04:47 So I gotta ask you, because one of the things that I find, especially as folks in the, the, the trauma world that, that I, I spend a lot of my time in trauma-informed care, those sort of things. I think we always look, and I'm guilty of this as well, to simplify the complexity. And so whether it's like polyvagal theory, which heart rate variability is a huge, uh, piece of whether it's, you know, neuro functioning. I, you know, I, sometimes I think we lose the, the, we sometimes stray off course because we fall in love with our analogies. So I would love for, as, as somebody who will holds expertise in neuroscience and heart rate variability, I, I would love to pick your brain a little bit about the connection between the brain and the sympathetic parasympathetic nervous systems. Because I, I still, after reading hundreds of books about the brain trying to catch up with, uh, the autonomic nervous system, just, I guess not sexy. So there's not that many like, you know, parasympathetic books, uh, out there, uh, at this point. But, you know, we, we talk about the, the downregulation of the prefrontal cortex to the amygdala. How do you see this all as an integrated hole? Uh, when, when you take your expertise of what's in our, what's in our skulls and, and really look at it, uh, below the brainstem
Speaker 2 00:06:13 Yeah. There's a difference between the map and the territory. You know, that's,
Speaker 1 00:06:18 Oh, I love that. I love that. Boy, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:06:21 It, it's so true. Right? I, I think, you know, any model is gonna simplify things and yes. You know, I think the deeper you, and this is a, this is my personal opinion, I think other people might share this, but I think the deeper you try to double click and, and kind of go focus in on what's actually happening at an istic level. Yeah. Not only in the brain, but also the autonomic nervous system. The more you realize we just don't know <laugh>. And I think that's
Speaker 1 00:06:49 Says a neuroscientist, which makes me feel better. Uh, <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:06:55 You know, this is, this is the paradox of information, right? It's like we, we, well, we do know a lot. There's thousands of papers out there, right? So there's, uh, there's all kinds of, you know, work that's been done in including some interesting stuff that's been done in the last couple of years coming outta Stanford and other places where, you know, you're looking at functional brain networks and measuring autonomic nervous system activity and, and actually seeing interplays between the two, right? Yeah. Um, we know these two systems are deeply interconnected. We know our mind broadly is, is really composed of not only just what's happening in our, in our brain, but also the way that our body, our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems that's distributed nervous system in the, in the yes physicality of, of the, of the system itself is, you know, is driving part of that.
Speaker 2 00:07:37 And so, so I think these two things are interplaying the ways and the mechanisms by which it, it does that are still broadly unknown. You'll look at things like vagal stimulators, which people, you know, will typically kind of, you, you, you'll shock, uh, parts of the vagus nerve that are exposed that you can actually get access to, right? Um, we do know that the heart and the brain are very intimately interconnected through this, this long nerve, the vagus nerve, which is the longest nerve in human body. Yeah. All kinds of interesting stuff there. But if you look at even a cutting edge vagal stimulator, I don't know that people would tell you they really understand why the frequencies that they're using are having an effect either excitatory or inhibitory on those nerves. And what are the actual mechanisms? I think we're still guessing, we're still learning. So, so this is a kind of a little bit of take what you can that's useful and that you can actually apply and just know that we don't have the full understanding yet of why some of the stuff is working.
Speaker 1 00:08:36 Yeah. So, so when you talk to people like in the mental health space about stress be because that, I think it's, that, it's such a fascinating thing cuz again, focusing on mostly the brain for the first, because I, I, I studied it real like outside the academic environment, but just reading every book that I could, uh, and occasionally going to peer review journal articles, which just, uh, I, I, I struggle with that language a little bit more. So just reading all the great books that have been coming out really since the nineties, uh, on this, you know, almost like stress is one thing in the brain, and then one thing in the autonomic nervous system, yet they're, I I bet they're interrelated. So I just think it, like, it's a fascinating time where, like, I, I see a lot of people, if you cut off the head, they could talk about it from what's going on in the skull. Then you've got polyvagal folks, uh, in my world too. Some of which, uh, forget we have a brain, like you, you can't forget we have the brain. You don't have to explain everything, I guess, uh, uh, you know, below the net. So the, I I hope we're entering a time of integration, but I, I think everything gets so complex that I'm not sure when we're going to really hit a full understanding.
Speaker 2 00:09:57 I don't know the answer to that either, but I, I do know that there's a lot of smart researchers Yeah. Working on, you know, we're, we're lucky to be connected to some of them. I know some of them from my previous, you know, life as a, as a scientist. And it's exciting to, to learn how our mind works and how Yeah. You know, we become human beings and I think there's a lot of researchers out there, really smart people that are, that are interested in this too, and are now able to collect a lot of the data, right. Because yeah, half the problem is you're not looking, one of the first labs that I, that I worked in, um, right outta college, um, was Mike Che's lab at, at Stanford, and he is one of that awesome, yeah. One of the early people who, um, published research on what's called the resting state or the default mode of the human brain.
Speaker 2 00:10:42 It's this, it's this state of the human mind where you're not extrinsically focused on a task. Typically when you put someone in a brain scanner and you're paying thousands of dollars for it, yes. You're having math problems, you're having them read, you know, you're trying to figure out how the brain, you know, physically is, is, you know, creating these cognitions and all the stuff that we typically associate with humans and, and what's unique about humans. But it turns out that, you know, um, in between the tasks, there was this brain network that was arising when there was nothing being done to the, to the user in this default mode. Yeah. Only really was noticed when you looked at something that, you know, theoretically shouldn't have any interesting information in it at all. Yeah. <laugh>. And I think, I think that's kind of what's been happening with, with H R V and, and as, and it's now starting to change where people are recognizing there's something going on here. And, you know, that in and of itself is going to drive, I think, a lot of understanding over the next five, 10 years. And you already know a ton, um, not just mechanistically, but certainly of the effects of H RV and H R V biofeedback on, for example, different mental health conditions. Yes. And that'll continue to continue to be the case.
Speaker 1 00:11:52 Awesome. So we, we kind of left your story off of you, you found a book on meditation. Uh, it spoke to you in a way that, uh, i, I, I think some of this stuff has spoken to me is somebody's gotta be doing something about this. Uh, so I'd love to pick up on your journey there, uh, of looking for, like, I think the words you used was meditation machine, uh, sort of thing, uh, this cross of psychology technology. So I, I know you got some really cool stuff on your website. So love to talk a little bit more about, uh, that from, from that place of, of looking at, ooh, there could be a really benefit to a lot of people, uh, including yourself from, from having, you know, sort of merging technology and this evolving science and, and psychology. Just sort of how your story has evolved, uh, uh, since that spark, uh, led to some innovation.
Speaker 2 00:12:48 Yeah. So, you know, on our website today, uh, you know, if you, if you go to the Leaf website, it doesn't say the word meditation anywhere. Um, you know, we don't, we don't talk in those terms. We're looking at the mechanisms and we're creating clinical, clinical grade tools for people, you know, to actually utilize. And, um, but where it started was, you know, this idea of a meditation machine when I was 15. So <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:13:11 Just kinda like digging in to, to some of these books and, and noticing as I started to practice some of these techniques that it made me feel better, you know? Yeah. Um, and that's a, that's a huge deal, especially, you know, when you don't have other tools out there. And, and this is probably a similar situation to many people, and you, you'll know this from working in the mental health space, but most people that need help, you know, that might have anxiety or depression or P T S D or struggling with addiction, most people don't get help.
Speaker 1 00:13:39 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:13:40 Most people don't get help. Right? Right. And so that was my experience too. And, and so this became a real lifeline for me and, and really made a big impact. And, um, when I went to college, you know, my, my thesis there was around, um, using network science to try to understand when someone's meditating and you're measuring the electrical activity of their brain, yeah. Are these networks that are being formed, um, structurally different from, you know, uh, from the normal state of, of, you know, human cognition, what's actually going on? And I, and that just continued for, for years, but I, I think, you know, I'll just mention this briefly and then, and then, uh, kind of, you know, let it go. But I, um, I think there's a really lot of value in applying things to your life versus intellectually understanding them. And so, even though I was in the lab and I knew a lot, I probably read, you know, hundreds Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:14:33 Hundreds of books at that point about, you know, the mind and neuroscience and meditation and mindfulness and all kinds of, you know, books going way, way back in time. Two hundreds of years old books, sometimes thousands. Yeah. And all of that was great, but it's like, well, you know, if you're not, if you're not practicing this stuff right, it's not really gonna help you. It's, it's just sort of this like knowledge you have. Right. So, yeah, that was, to me, the big turning point. And I, I quit the lab at one point. I bought a one-way ticket to the Himalayan Mountains, and I went to go find these monks that I've been reading about.
Speaker 1 00:15:04 Wow. Awesome. Awesome.
Speaker 2 00:15:06 Yeah. And so I spent a year kind of like traveling around with a bunch of brainwave equipment and heartbeat sensors in my backpack, finding these monks, living with them, going from monastery to monastery. And, and that was a really incredible transformative experience. Um, it allowed me to collect data, which was very helpful for, you know, yes. Starting, starting leaf and, and, and, um, and it also really just exposed me to the practice of what it looks like to make these prac, you know, these attentional training procedures and processes, like very real and, and actually an impact in your life. And so that was very impactful, too.
Speaker 1 00:15:42 Amazing. So, I, you know, uh, yeah, I wish I could have went on you with that journey. I, I, I, that would've been, uh, that had to be amazing, uh, to, to be in the Himalayas while, while you're, uh, thinking deeply about meditation. Uh, so as you looked at this, uh, you know, plenty of research out there over the years, obviously, that different sort of meditations improve a range of functioning, uh, health, uh, you know, intelligence, emotional regulation, mental health, and, you know, really, really great tool. So looking at bringing in technology and obviously being associated at, you know, Stanford, uh, you know, had, had to be a really, probably ideal place to be to, to think about this. But where do you think from the, the traditional practices, how do you think technology, uh, you know, kind of maybe improves or gives more insight to, but, but building on technology, of studying some really ancient processes, uh, that have been around some for thousands of years, and then really applying, uh, and creating new technology. How do you think that supplements, uh, these traditional practices?
Speaker 2 00:16:57 One of my, you know, one of the people I consider a mentor as Dick Gtz, um, yes. Dr. Gts and
Speaker 1 00:17:03 Friend of the show <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:17:05 He's friend of the show. Okay, great, great, great. I mean, he's amazing and, uh, yes, yes. So helpful to me and, uh, over years. And, um, I, yeah, it's really helped guide me. And I think one of the things he always says, which, which I kinda am tickled by it and, and, and tell people is hrv, biofeedback is a brand new technology that's 3000 years old,
Speaker 1 00:17:31 <laugh>. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2 00:17:33 And I think there's a lot of truth to that, you know, and, and sometimes people will ask me, you know, do I need to, do I need to download an app? Do I need to use a device? Do I need to do any of this stuff to, to learn meditation? And my answer is always, no, you don't. Yeah. You know, these, these things are, these are aids, right? Yeah. What you're doing is you're trying to tune in and listen to what's happening in your body and what, you know, the, the value of the tool is that, you know, a teacher as well as a, as a device in this case, you know, which is what I'm working on. But just broadly, any help in this process allows you to kind of like grab a little thread Yeah. Of, oh, um, let me explore a little more.
Speaker 2 00:18:12 Let me kind of listen a little closer. And then I'm starting to feel my heartbeat, and then I'm starting to kind of notice my breathing, and then I'm, then I'm slowly over time, I'm learning this ability to say, one, let me have mindfulness of how my physiology affects my mental state. Yeah. That's a huge insight. And it takes time. It takes a lot of time in, in many cases to like really internalize that. And then two, how can I take that knowledge that my mind does affect my body and vice versa, and actually start to shift my mental state through self-regulation practices like mindfulness, like meditation, like biofeedback, right? And so I think the value of these tools, in particular with biofeedback, is that some of this stuff is harder to learn, you know, without, without an aid. And so it can speed up the process of learning, it can make it a little more effective maybe.
Speaker 2 00:18:56 And, um, and it can also, you know, for the way that we use it with, you know, in some cases clinical populations, it allows a patient and a doctor to sort of gauge progress as well, right? Yeah. Because you can very clearly measure, Hey, you know, if I tell you to go meditate for 10 minutes a day, did you do it? Did you not? Did you try? Was it good? Like, I don't know, you know, um, you, I tell you to do 10 minutes of biofeedback every day, I can measure your HRV increasing every single time, and I can see, know is it being effective or not? So,
Speaker 1 00:19:25 Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. We, we have a, a dashboard, clinician's dashboard for our app. And, uh, while we're proud of all the technology that goes behind it, the pretty much the best, uh, uh, result that clinicians are doing is it's an accountability tool. Like I can see whether or not you're practicing. So all, all this science that we're really excited to bring to clinicians, it's like, Nope. I can see whether or not they practice is the, uh, pretty much the number one piece of feedback, uh, uh, that we get, which I, I find is just absolutely hilarious. <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:20:00 It's so, it's so true. And there may be stuff in the future that that ends up being, you know, more helpful and, and, and over time, for example, diagnostics could, can probably be pulled out of H R V Yeah. You know, sophisticated processing and stuff like that. So there's, there's a lot of stuff there. But at the end of the day, if you talk to anybody in healthcare and certainly in, you know, behavior change, the, the hardest thing to do is to get anyone to do anything.
Speaker 1 00:20:24 Absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:20:26 So, yeah, <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:20:29 So I, you know, one of the things that, that, you know, I've sort of taken this inter interesting journey with optimal, uh, you know, when I started thinking about this, you know, uh, five, six years ago now, you know, I assume that when we hit, uh, you know, 2023, there would be a great $30 device that would be simple, because one of my, one of my focuses, our audience knows is, you know, I want this to be available to everybody. Like, I, I want to go homeless shelters, uh, child welfare, you know, that, that's where a lot of my passion really lies. Um, you know, so I just assumed that, hey, if I made this app, somebody would, you know, it'd be a a $30 Fitbit at some point. And here we are in 2023, uh, with, you know, I, I love the, uh, I call it HRV Twitter, where the, the Apple Watch is like a trigger for folks that will go nuts if you say you measure your H RV on an Apple watch.
Speaker 1 00:21:33 But you know, you, you got all this sort of pieces out here where, uh, you know, the device is still sort of an issue with this. Cause you need that level. So I would love to hear your, your journey of, uh, creating and bringing a device, uh, to the marketplace. Cause I imagine just because I, I still don't have that $30 reader, uh, we, we got one on the market for less than 50, which we're proud of. And hopefully that price point goes down price even over time. But what, what was your journey to get accurate, uh, readings, uh, and get a product to the market?
Speaker 2 00:22:11 Yeah. Gosh, such a, I
Speaker 1 00:22:13 Believe FDA approval, did I see on your website
Speaker 2 00:22:17 We have an f d a classi version of the device as well? Yes. Yeah. It's called <inaudible>. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1 00:22:22 Yeah, so congratulations on that, cuz I googled that and that didn't look like fun either. <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:22:27 <laugh>, you know, f I think F D A in general, you know, they, they're, they're trying to make sure that they're safe, effective tools out there. Yes. So yes, absolutely. It's a lot of, it's a lot of work, I think. But, uh, but also, you know, I kind of am glad that these processes exist as I was going through it for, you know, for the first time really, um, with a bunch of really smart advisors who have done it before. But yeah, I mean, the question of cost, I think is a huge, is a huge one, right. And I, I think we're just too early. Yeah. And that's, that's probably what's going on here, even though it feels dramatically different from five or 10 years ago when no one was talking about HIV <laugh>. Right. It's much more in the, in the zeitgeist now. But to me, you know, what, what I've always hoped to do ever since I was, you know, 15 is, gosh, these tools have helped me a ton.
Speaker 2 00:23:25 And I would love it if other people who are in a dark place or who need help are able to access this stuff when they need it. Yeah. And that means, you know, making it accessible. And one of the things we've done, you know, we haven't with our F D A device, and, you know, it's not, it's not cheap to make a medical device. I think as we start to scale it, those costs will come down. Yeah. And, um, you know, we're just not quite there yet, unfortunately. But one of the things we have been able to do, because it is an f d A device, is to be able to get it covered by a lot of people's insurance and Awesome. That can bring the cost down a lot. Yeah. You know, and so, yeah, I think we're gonna take all, all types of people and approaches to be working on this and finding ways it can be helpful and, and eventually, you know, these tools will hopefully, hopefully become much more available to people as also by the way, we prove the benefit out to people. You know, that's a part of it as well. Absolute.
Speaker 1 00:24:15 Absolutely. And, and bringing that to market, I, I wonder, you know, here, here you are, and what I love, and I think we kind of started the podcast out of this, is pretty quickly, like when we were talking about, you know, is the amygdala and sympathetic, they're connected, how are they connected? How do they work? You know, all these things is, I I think one of the exciting things is we push up against the, the wall of knowledge and the limits of our knowledge pretty quickly, even though I love the, uh, you know, you don't have to drink while you do it, but the game of, you know, Googling heart rate variability in anything and seeing if you get a jerk call <laugh>, I was joking. I, I was like, I wanted to know what's the perfect temperature to take a bath for your heart rate variability?
Speaker 1 00:24:58 Guess what? There's a meta study done on it already. So, on one hand, like there's been a dozen studies on bath temperature and hrv yet, you know, you still kind of push up against these, you know, walls, which to me is exciting. So, you know, I wonder as, as you kind of push those barriers to bring, you know, these accurate tools, uh, to the market, just kind of lessens insights, epiphanies that you've had along the way because I, I think from my perspective is, oh, we need a major heart rate variability. And then, you know, five or six years later it's like, oh, I see 20 different things. I I went on the app tomorrow and, you know, ensuring that those are accurate, those are based in science, all those things. So I, I'd love to just see like as, as you did that, you know, big lifting for the rest of us to, to, to bring, uh, your product to the market, just sort of what have you, what have you learned from that experience along the way?
Speaker 2 00:25:55 Thanks for the question. I, and also, it's very comforting to know that someone else plays that HRV game too,
Speaker 1 00:26:03 <laugh>. Well, trust me, after writing two books on it, it's really useful. Uh, yeah. It's like, oh, I had an idea. Yeah. There's, there's an article I can reference. So, uh, that's Yeah, <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:26:16 It's incredible actually that there's, there's such a wealth of knowledge that wasn't there, you know, a decade or two ago. Yes. Yeah. Um, yeah. Gosh, lessons learned. I mean, so many, I, you know, we had initially started with trying to build on the Apple watch, you know? Yeah. Um, and just it, you know, it's tougher with, with a sensor like that to get good quality data. And what I was really interested in more so than measuring H R V was doing biofeedback on it. Yes. And yes, I think that's a huge thing that I, I think is a learning that is, that people may not be familiar with yet, even those who know about H I V and even use it Yeah. In their daily life, you know? Yeah. So, so biofeedback is just incredible skills, almost superpower where you can learn conscious control over a previously unconscious body signal by Yes.
Speaker 2 00:27:04 Giving it back to yourself in real time with accuracy. Right. So yeah. Finger tip temperature, um, you know, there's a million different things that you can, you can learn conscious control over. Yeah. The thing with, you know, that, that I, I feel like we have, um, pushed forward a little bit at Leaf, and this is, you know, in part due because I just wanted this myself was well, okay, I really wanna be in tune with how I'm feeling all the time throughout the day. And I'm not necessarily stressed when I'm sitting in my meditation cushion in the morning doing like, you know, my Right. My practice. So how do I take it into the world when I'm getting screamed at in, you know, uh, in a, in a bank somewhere, or, you know, I'm waiting in a line in the grocery store and the, you know, the, it's taking forever.
Speaker 2 00:27:48 Like, how do you, how do you get into the world that is actually the points where you're, where you are feeling, you know, challenged and conflict and learn how to mediate those situations. And so I think, you know, that was sort of why we chose to use an E K G with, with leaf. It's like, okay, well if you're walking around all day, it's gonna be hard to measure an accurate signal. Yeah. RV if, if you're ambulatory, it's just a tough problem. You, so let's use an E K G. And then the second thing we tried to figure out was, well, how can you communicate to somebody in real time what their H R V is? That's what bio feedback's all about. It's like Right. Understanding what's going on inside of you in real time. Yeah. Quantitatively, well, how do you do that when we're talking about mental health, let's say, or anxiety where I'm like in a tough meeting and I can't just pull my phone out and say, Hey everybody, just stop.
Speaker 2 00:28:37 Yes. And look at my phone. I need to do a biofeedback exercise. Right. So, so for those reasons, we figured out like, well, if you have an E K G and you build these vibration haptic motors into it, cheap cheapo cell phone motors Yeah. And learn how to basically turn heart rate and heart rate variability into this pattern, you can actually teach people to interpret that pattern over time and learn how to control it just like they were looking at a number of hrv, you know, you know, or a visual signal of a heart rate or an auditory signal, which is how I done for, you know, half, for many decades. So those two insights allowed us to build this realtime system that can jump in when you need it, and then you can kind of train with it and you can move the thresholds up and down. And so those are just newer concepts that, I haven't seen it elsewhere, but have been really helpful to start, you know, making this more real for us.
Speaker 1 00:29:26 That's awesome. So, so when you, you know, because I, one of the, the questions I often get is, you know, focusing more on that, put on a device, take a reading, do a biofeedback, you know, piece of that is, you know, I think one of the questions that, that, you know, I kind of struggle as well, well, like 24 7 monitoring. What, what is sort of, if you're tracking Apple watch like that or whatever, like, have you learned anything? Because one of the things I've, I really struggled. You go for a run, uh, let's say you're, you're trained for a marathon, it's gonna wreck havoc a lot of times to your H R V. Yet, if you're not gonna hurt yourself and push yourself beyond limits could be a very healthy thing for you overall. I just, you know, as, as you look at the data that you start to collect, and I'm not exactly sure how you collect it, are you, what are maybe some insights you're getting from 24 7 or your, your clients are getting, customers are getting from 24 7 monitoring that, you know, might get missed a little bit when you're just like taking a morning reading or, or something along those lines.
Speaker 2 00:30:33 I think h RV is, especially when you're measuring it, you know, with a, with a real fine grain tool. Yeah. I think people will notice as you go about your day, that little micro stressors can have a big impact on hrv. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:30:49 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:30:49 And so I think that's something that people miss when they're only taking a single reading a day, which by the way is, is very helpful. Yeah. And, and there's a whole kind of like protocols built around, well, okay, let's take it a certain time of day. Maybe I wanna be in the same position in terms of my posture and, you know, there's a lot of stuff you can do there that's very helpful. Or when I'm sleeping, there's valuable data there too. Yeah. But the truth is, you know, especially when you're thinking about mental health, like a lot of that stuff's happening when you're awake. Right. You know, it's Right, right. The, um, and particularly if you're trying to self-regulate and use biofeedback. So we focus on the day and, you know, if you are measuring H R V at high quality, um, uh, with high accuracy, you can see those micro fluctuations and you can actually use those as triggers to practice at the moments you need it throughout the day. Um, that's great. That's been our approach.
Speaker 1 00:31:38 Very cool. So, you know, as, as you look, as you know, somebody who's strongly in the market, the, the, um, obviously whereas we talk, there's a mental health crisis going on in the country, if not the world right now, like heart rate variability, I hope is a tool that people will discover devices like yours, you know, to, to supplement. And we're starting to hit a scarcity of mental health resources because the demand is, is is really increasing. What do you see, because we're also in the technology world, uh, AI is staring us in the face. Um, a lot of other big developments with the deep learning models and all those sort of things as well. Like as you look into the future, both, both with your device and maybe as the, the field as a whole, if you were to think about the next 10, 15 years now that probably quadruple, if not 10 x times, people at least know about heart rate variability and that's only gonna increase over time. Where do you think all this, uh, if you look into the future, where are we going, uh, with these biometrics, uh, ai, all the other things that, uh, we're, we're, uh, getting access to now?
Speaker 2 00:32:58 You know, I, I'm an optimist and so I love, I love dreaming about a better world and how we can make that happen. So, you know, I try to look on the bright side of a lot of these technologies, cuz they can be very powerful tools. Yeah. Um, we have, for example, a clinic that we've launched in California now where we're actually working with psychiatrists and clinical psychologists and coaches along with the leaf, you know, getting people's insurance to cover this, some of this stuff. And we're expanding now to other states. And, and that I think is a model that could, could be replicated for a lot more people because the truth is there's not gonna be enough, even if we're just talking about mental health and H R V has effects Right. On physical health too. So there's, there's a variety of places that <inaudible>, let's just talk about mental health, right.
Speaker 2 00:33:44 Um, most expensive medical condition in the country at this point. You know, hundreds of billions of dollars every year, um, millions and tens of millions of people that can't get treatment. They're not gonna get treatment. Right. Um, the traditional way, there's just not enough therapists, there's not enough psychiatrists, there's not enough psychologists to ever meet the scale of the problem. And that is a tragedy because we're, we're, you know, we're losing our human potential. Yeah. When we don't, when we don't help people heal and get tools that they need at the moments that they need and just allow these problems to fester over time, you know, it's not, it's just we know where that road ends. Yes. You know, so, so the way that I see these tools helping, I think in the future is how can you, how can you leverage the strength of technology, which is that you need fewer people, you know?
Speaker 2 00:34:27 Yeah. So, okay. But we don't have enough therapists to reach everyone. Is it possible that some of these AI tools over time with a lot of training could actually become good enough to be helpful to people? Yeah, I think, you know, I think that's an open question, but my guess is yes, my guess is yes. You know, and when you talk about H R V biofeedback, is this a modality that can be applied and scaled to more people? You know, I, I think also the answer there is probably so, yeah. You know, there's good evidence now with meta-analyses that this is efficacious just as much as C B T or pharmaceuticals in some cases more so. So I think more what we have to do is really, uh, because healthcare in particular is such a top-down thing, we have to convince the people that are already, you know, making the, calling the shots that, look, you've got a problem here. This is a potential solution. Yeah. There's good data, you gotta try it. And just over time, you know, inevitably if it does work for people and it is helpful, then you know, you'll see that adoption. So, uh, that's my hope and my dream that, you know, eventually that 15 year old kid who's going through mental health struggles that I was, you know, however many years ago at this point, um, that they have options that are available to them that they can access right away. And that, that, you know, changed their life hopefully. Love
Speaker 1 00:35:39 It. Love it. So, so kind of a final question too, unless I come up with six more questions, which is what I typically do. But, but, but to kinda, uh, wrap us up here, one of the things I'm, I'm interested in, uh, from, from, you know, learning about, uh, your, your work is, you know, I I see heart rate variability and the potential, especially if we're tracking it on a daily basis, you know, you know, three minute readings versus 24 versus, you know, all, all kinds of different, whether you get a three minute, five minute reading at night while you sleep, whatever sort of the model you do, I really believe we're, we're creating what, well, I, I strongly believe that that H R V should be considered a vital side. Um, I, I get, now that I know about biometrics, this, that, and the other, I don't know really the benefit of listening to my heart for a few seconds.
Speaker 1 00:36:30 Uh, what are you really measuring my blood pressure? Are you majoring my blood pressure or how stressed out I am from the commute into the, the clinic today? You know, and, and so you, you know, where, where I really get excited about work like yours is, I, I think while this may scare some people, it excites me that things are tracking your body. Your biometrics 24 7 could give us a range of information on people's health that we haven't come close to having. So we could potentially improve diagnostic accuracy, uh, treatment adherence, uh, you know, if, if the track side effects before they manifest into really negative outcomes. So I, I wonder as, as you are sort of wor you're working and you got this technology in the market, you know, that that vital sign idea, have you, have you seen any interest from like the medical arena on the, the potential of, of your work?
Speaker 2 00:37:33 You know, I think early, early interests perhaps. Um, but yeah, so like for example, I think, um, there's been some large healthcare organizations that have had contests for, you know, new tools for anxiety and depression, things like that. And we've, we've won some of those and, but it's, those are just one-offs. You know, we're talking about the budget of these big companies. A little pride like that is, um, surrounding error, right? There's, they're nibbling I think at, at understanding, you know, could this be helpful or not? And, and part of that maybe is the approach that, that some larger companies have where they're, they're really very focused on decreasing costs and they maybe care a little bit less actually about health over time. Yeah. Um, like some insur. Um, yeah. So, so I think that's, that's one aspect of it. I think the other, the other aspect is like, it almo, it really touched me what you just said to be very frank with you, because in my mind, I think H R V is a diagnostic indicator for mental health and for a variety of other conditions as well, is so strong and, and could really Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:38:37 Save people a lot of heartache and a lot of, a lot of issues with their health down the line. Yeah. And so, you know, we, we've looked a little bit at using tools like AI to parse apart the signals that are embedded even within the HRV signal. There, there are things in there that, you know, people, um, I think over time will start to learn more and more about, and those tools can be given to patients, to users and empower them to make decisions. Right. One of the big things with mental health that drives me crazy is, um, you know, there's been this, this feeling for a long time in the past, and this is changing now, but that mental health is all in your head. And, you know, even the way that it's measured now with Right, you know, these assessments like gad, GAD sevens, and PHQ nines, those are, those are basically quizzes.
Speaker 2 00:39:21 Yeah. Those are like questionnaire. You're right. Um, you're asking people to self-report and that's such an inherently biased thing to do. Yeah. It's, it's tough. You know, it's, and, and particularly for somebody who, you know, doesn't maybe have, you know, the context to know, well, what should I be feeling? You know, how normal is this or not? There's a gap. And I think if you're able to create, and I'll just put a, you know, just to put a pin on it, I think if you are in the future able to create tools that act as diagnostics, for example, for mental health, I think that you'll end up saving lives over time. Because what you'll do is you'll provide an early warning system and you'll provide data that helps people say, look, this is not something that's just all in my head, quote unquote, yeah. This is a real medical problem and here's the data and I can see myself getting better and I can see myself getting worse. Yeah. And that in and of itself is, I think, you know, enough that it could actually shift people's health outcomes over time, make 'em live happier and healthier lives. And that's, that's what we're here for. That's what it's all about. So it's, it's really important.
Speaker 1 00:40:25 Anything I say after that is going to diminish the value of this podcast. So, uh, I loved it. Uh, so I would, uh, just, uh, we'll, we'll obviously put information, uh, links in the show notes, uh, but would just love to, if people are interested in your work, uh, a little bit about, uh, you know, where they, where they might find, uh, some, some of that information, like I said, we'll, we'll also put the, the, the more detailed ones in the show notes.
Speaker 2 00:40:51 Yeah. Uh, feel free to reach out to us. We're always happy to talk. Um, we're, uh, online at Get Leaf, G e t l i e f.com. And, um, yeah, would welcome any questions people have.
Speaker 1 00:41:03 Well, thank you so much. It was so great to meet you. I love this conversation. I just wanna keep the door open a as you, uh, uh, find out more and more, learn more and more, uh, with this, uh, I'd love to be a fellow traveler on this podcast, uh, with us. So, uh, I love the work you're doing. I love your focus. It's so, it's why I'm on this journey as well. So one of the, the fun parts about doing this podcast is meeting, uh, innovators like you that are trying to merge technology with a, a social mission, uh, that you have for people's mental health as well. So I just wanna thank you for all the amazing work, uh, that you're doing as well. It's an honor to be here. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you. Everybody can find show notes, everything
[email protected]. Uh, and, uh, we'll see y'all again next week. Thank you, my friend, for joining us. Take care. Appreciate it.
