 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump, with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Ho! That's Adam's favorite way to open the intro. Ho! Who did that? What was that? Who said that before? Huh, who was that? You think of R.C.L.? Was that Hacksaw Jim Duggan? Ho! Remember the Hacksaw Jim Duggan, the wrestler? Ho, ho, ho, R.C.L. hall. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, Huh. It's a bit like that. Yeah. Great. It's always great having Tom Billia in the studio. He brought with them Dr. Jason McEwen, who is working directly with Dr.V.S. Rameshandran. For those of you who don't know, one of the most brilliant minds alive today, He is... In neuroscience, right. ...the brilliant individual period. The inventor of the mirror box, which is a cure for many issues including Phantom Limbs syndrome. Anyway, we have them in the studio because me and Adam visited Tom earlier this week. We went to LA and attended, it was like a live, it was like a Facebook live event, right? Well, they launched their, they did their Indiegogo, right? So Modius, the company, which Jason McCown is from, he is partnered with Dr. Ramashan that you're talking about. They launched a company called Modius on Indiegogo the day that you and I were there. I think 50,000 was their goal. They hit 800 grand? Yeah, they were at 500 that day. So the first day they had half a million. And then today, or when we did this episode with Tom, it was 800 or something. So I'm sure they're well over a million now. So this is a product that we are extremely skeptical. We're always extremely skeptical of products. It sounds way too good to be true. But this is a product that stimulates the vestibular nerve. And through stimulating the vestibular nerve, it tells the hypothalamus to make your body leaner, okay? And I mean, don't worry. I grilled them in this episode. I asked a lot of fucking questions. I brought up a lot of potential issues that I may have with this product. But what I liked about these two was they weren't selling it. What they were doing is they were talking about the research and the purpose of this Indiegogo is to study it further. So this is different. It's not like, Hey, we're just trying to sell this product. It's get this product and then enroll. They have this way you can enroll and give them feedback so that they can learn more about how it works. It's called, it's called Modious Life. So once you, once you sign up, so first of all, 100% money back guarantee. So if you buy the thing, you don't two months, right? 60 days, right? Yeah. If you don't like it, you don't want it, whatever. You can return it 100% money back guarantee. It, I think they run like 400 or something. And then on top of that, you can get $100 right off the top. If you just input your information and stats, because that's what they're looking for. They really want the data. They really want the information, how everybody has responded to this and the feedback from the, the users, because even though it's been well studied as far as the science and the literature that supports how this tool works. Well, they base it off the valgus nerve research, right? The biggest nerve, yeah. There's, there's, there's a lot of questions with this particular device. I bring up a lot of them. We all ask a lot of good questions. And some of them that they don't have answers to, because they're going to wait and have people try it and give them feedback. But, you know, doctor, excuse me, Dr. McAllen is quite confident that this is going to have a positive effect on fat loss in people. So it's really fascinating, really, really fascinating stuff. So all these science nerds are going to love this. Yeah, major techniques like, yes, you know, like this kind of stuff excites me, even if it's like, you know, I'm definitely hyper skeptical of this for sure. We're all going to test it. So he's sending us all our own modious, and we're all going to test it out and let people know what we think. And we'll be totally honest. We're, by the way, no connection with modious ourselves. The mind pump is not connected in any way. This is purely our relationship with Tom and we know, and that was kind of like so, so people understand we're very transparent on the show. They were booked to come see us when I found out that Tom was bringing modious with us and he wanted to talk on the show. I actually told Brianna not to book them until we could get down there. Justin couldn't come with us because he had a big meeting for Axon. Sal and I flew down to LA specifically just to hear Ramashan, the other doctor, the other two doctors and Tom speak about this product and launch it before we would even consider bringing them on the show and discussing this topic even further because we were like, there's no way I smell bullshit. We're coming on here to, we're going to find out more before I allow someone like that to come on the show and talk about something that we're not a fan of. So we went down there and knowing Tom, Tom is very, very careful about his reputation. Yeah. He knows he's building his entire brand. He's not trying to burn his entire empire he's creating. Or tie himself to something that could be a total gimmick or end up hurting people or anything like that. So, you know, he actually challenged Sal and I when we came down there to, you know, bring it, bring as much and as hard questions as you could. Yeah. As hard as you can with these guys because I want you to be skeptical about it. We're, we're trying to. We all appreciate that. But the science is fascinating. I did a lot of digging. I did a lot of reading and research on this and it is a very fascinating function of the hypothalamus and how the vestibular nerve or the vagus nerve can activate it and cause it to do some interesting things. So really fascinating episodes. So without any further ado, oh, by the way, you can find Modius. It's M-O-D-I-U-S at ModiusHealth.com and the Indiegogo. Just go to www.indiegogo.com and search Modius and you'll find it and be able to be a part of that campaign. So without any further ado, here's one of our favorite guests, Tom Billu and Dr. Jason McCohen. You know, we, this last trip where we came down and saw you, we did a Sal and I hopped on a couple of podcasts. And that was the first time we'd done it at three, three or four and all of, nobody had headphones, right? We had no headphones. Yeah, all the podcasts were on. Everybody did them without headphones. I have a hard time with that. I like to be able to tell. He likes to hear himself talk. I don't know if it's that. Man, I totally get it. And we like did a whole thing at Impact Theory as to whether we should have the headphones on or not, because it creates a really intimate vibe in a way that when you don't have them, you don't get the same vibe. But the viewer is usually saying, oh, man, if you guys would take the headphones off, that'd be better for us. Interesting that you guys had to go back and forth on that because I feel like I'd have a hard time as getting rid of that because it does. This has become part of our, it's like putting on your uniform when you're ready for your game. It's game time. I get it. As soon as we put these on. So how did the, how did the event go? Let's talk a little bit about the event that we attended and watched and how did that. Yeah, bring me up to speed as I really wanted to be there. Yeah, Justin wasn't even there. So he's not even a hundred percent. Which, by the way, was hurtful. Can we be honest? Yeah, right? Oh, that's his fault. Can we say who you were meeting with or no? We still, can we not say that? He had a big company. Yeah, a big company. Their icon is fruit, you know, and they, they had it. All right, Adam. All right. What, dude? I could say that. Can I say that? So, so he, yeah, he was, he was rightfully excused from that one. Fair enough, fair enough. I get it. But you know what, you know, I would be there. But he is our, he is our tech nerd. So it was a bummer to not have him because he would probably would appreciate it even the most. He would, absolutely he would. So that was kind of a bummer. But before we get into that, I actually wanted to finish this conversation that we were having before the mic said, I did not know the stat you just threw out is extremely fascinating to me because we see we just recently saw the big acquisition with Whole Foods by Amazon. And you said that over 80 or 90 percent of those aren't successful. Yeah, yeah. So I wish that I could give you the citation of where I actually read that. But yeah, I read that. And I'm not sure what metric they use, but over 90 percent of acquisitions don't work. Wow. And man, that just, they keep trying. They keep trying, which is startling to me because the people that end up doing these acquisitions, you can't imagine the amount of due diligence that they do, the level of data that they look into is just absolutely crazy. And yet the one piece of information that might be most useful to them is that. And we were talking to Impact Theory about doing an acquisition and I was just like, guys, mathematically, it just doesn't work. And I think a huge reason for that is culture. And so if you look at what is almost certainly gonna happen with Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods, I think they're on a cultural collision course of catastrophic proportions. Because Amazon is known for their grinders. And I remember one time reading an article about Jeff Bezos and somebody asked him a question or somebody wanted some of his time. And he said, dude, I'm trying to optimize my tooth brushing routine to get more out of my day. Okay? So when you've got people that that culturally, that's what they're all about. And the notion that you hear me talk a lot about, you gotta work hard, you gotta work smart, you gotta work long hours, that came from Amazon. Because they were really the first company to step up and say, we're just gonna say it. You're gonna work long hours, period. I don't care how hard and how smart you're working. You're also gonna work long hours because that is the only way to take this over. And by the way, your audience will respond to this. Look up Jeff Bezos. It was like 97 in 2017. And in 97, it shows a picture of him. He was like the ultimate geek's geek. This guy's emaciated. He just looks like that typical nerd. It's crazy how iconic and sort of cliche he looks. And then it says under it, the Dweeby version, it says I sell books. And then on the other side, it's 2017 Jeff Bezos. He's yoked now. I don't know if you guys know that. Dude is ripped. He's put on at least like 35 pounds. Oh shit. Crazy veins in the arms, the whole nine, thick neck. And it says, you know, 2017, I sell whatever the fuck I want. And I was like, wow, it's an insane transformation. Really, really insane. So anyway, you bring Whole Foods together, which I would assume culturally is like they are on the outside world, which is very open, very inviting, like that sort of warm atmosphere. I want to make sure that families first, right? And I am admittedly speculating, I don't know this, but that's just like my gut instinct. And now you collide them with Amazon and factor in, my gut instinct is, this is just my gut. I'm not necessarily the right man to be answering this question, but I'll prognosticate for fun. That's right. My gut instinct is that what they need is the real estate. And it isn't the actual business. Who was the founder of Whole Foods? I forgot his name. Well, now you're, now... You know why I'm looking at that? Have you seen the Amazon Go stores yet? So... I have, the prototypes are unbelievable. It's shoplifting. So, exactly. So I think if your theory is correct, oh shit, look how jacked he is. You weren't kidding around. Dude, look at that. Look at that. There's a bad ass on the right side. 2017. Look at his posture even. It's amazing what $10 billion will do to you. It's not a weight off the stack. Look at that. It's just like immediately, it's not better. Right? That is crazy. Yeah, that is crazy. So the founder of Whole Foods, John McKay, wrote a book called Conscious Capitalism. Actually, it's an excellent book. And he's actually a very pro capitalism, pro true free market supporter. I've actually seen him do a couple of debates. So it may be a little different than we think in terms of Whole Foods. I think they're very pro business smart, you know, what they're approaching. It might be, I don't know, but like you said, that's statistic though. Well, so let's separate pro business from the Amazon mentality. Okay, so I've worked, I've done partnerships with people that had left Amazon to go work at other retailers. And to a person, the reason they left is they grind you into the dirt. Like it's one of those, and Apple was notorious for this, at least in the Steve Jobs era, where it's like, you knew, like whoever your boss was, if they had a favorite TV show, that was gonna be your only downtime during the week, was when they would set their phone down long enough to watch whatever, the Sopranos, Game of Thrones, like whatever their like fetish TV show was. And they were actually talking in the context of they hated the binge watch because now they couldn't count on an hour a week. Like when you can't count on an hour a week for your boss not to be sending you an email, expecting an update, something like that's intense, man. So when you get the collision of cultures, and it's not always that way. And I'm certainly not saying the Whole Foods is lazy. I'm just saying it is a totally different way of the expectations on your culture. So for instance, like if you're at Impact Theory and you tell me you're going on vacation, like before you go, I ask you what your preference is. So when I'm on vacation, I want to be kept in the know because I love my business. I have constructed it specifically to be the thing that I would do even if I weren't getting paid, okay? So I want to stay engaged, I want to stay involved. However, that's not the case for everybody. So I say, you tell me your preference. If your whole thing is like, I just want downtime, I don't want to be bothered. Like I want to respect that because I'm interested in long-term relationships. I don't want people burning out and leaving early. So like you tell me, do you want me to not bother you at all? And I have some people that are like, definitely. Like don't send me a single like email tweet, nothing. Like I'm looking for that space. So now if you've got somebody that like, that is anathema to what their culture is. And the other culture has just been a little protective of either family time or downtime, vacation time, whatever their protective things are. And you collide it with the other company, like. That's interesting. It's crazy. Yeah, I know, it's interesting. And we've seen this, we saw this with, we were a part of 24 Hour Fitness, which at the time, the fastest growing fitness chain ever to reach a billion dollars. It sold for 2.0 something billion dollars to Fortsman and Little. And they sold to basically an investment firm. And in comes like new CEO, underneath the new CEO comes, okay, all the people that he's connected to, he happened to, at that time, it was Carl Levert who ran Home Depot. He was a big proponent to the self-checkouts at Home Depot and he ran Circuit City. And so he brings in his VPs, his DMs from Circuit City, Home Depot. And let me tell you, it was a- Total class of culture. It was a major class of culture. And it's, in my opinion, the reason why 24 Hour Fitness has been struggling ever since is, you have guys like us that came up since we were young teenagers all the way through the business and grew up into upper management. And what it took to get to that level in a business like that, it was totally different than what these guys had experience from in Circuit City and these other places, total different cultures. And that was a major challenge having people that were coming into this position as VPs, now telling all these people in the DM and regional and lower levels, how you should be operating your facilities and we're like, motherfucker, you've never even been in a facility before. How are you gonna tell me how to run it? Because just because you know business, like this is a unique business and the ones you ran were unique. Like how do you not? And so that was a major clash right there. So that's fascinating. Very interesting. Very, very interesting. So again, so tell us about, we came down your house. There was a big event. You did a Facebook Live kind of introducing this product to your audience. How did it do? What is it? Give us a little intro before we get into that topic. I know Justin wasn't there. So, but he was very interested. Yeah, so we have to then talk about the gentleman here sitting to my right, Dr. Jason McEwen. So this, getting involved with Modious Health, which is the company that we were doing the thing for the event for, is one of my like fantasy things when I started Impact Theory was, you know, you do a podcast like this, you have a show, you're bringing on people, hopefully that inspire you, intrigue you, something you wanna learn more about them, you invite them into your ecosystem and for the right ones you connect and it goes on to be something more than that. And so I'm absolutely obsessed with neuroscience, the brain, all that good stuff. And so I had V.S. Ramachandran who is arguably the most well-respected name in neuroscience, like period ever of all time. Like when you see and hear of the people that he's mentioned in the same breath as Neil's boar is the one that always comes to my mind, it's just like, he's gonna be remembered, okay? So when like it all shakes down and people look back on neuroscience a hundred years from now, if we haven't gone through a techno apocalypse, they're gonna remember V.S. Ramachandran, right? So he really set the stage for what I'll call modern neuroscience and is still alive and still very active and just doing absolutely incredible things. So he comes on the show, I'm totally fanboying out on him but one of the things that I wanted to do in that show was really take my audience into deep neuroscience. And quite honestly, I wanted to do it with V.S. next to me so that people would see like my neuroscience games legit. And if it's not like, Rama's gonna call me out and be like, who the fuck is this kid? So I thought it would be an awesome opportunity. And about halfway through the episode, you can see him sort of go, wow, you actually understand neuroscience, like this isn't, you're not playing neuroscience. So at the end of the episode, camera stopped rolling and he says, look, I have this guy that used to be one of my students and he's trying to launch this business and I really think you guys would hit it off. I think there could be something special here. So reach out to him and see where it goes. And so I reached out to Jason and he courted me probably for about six months and I contractually, I just wouldn't agree. And the reason I wouldn't agree is why this interview is gonna be fun. You don't wanna move in, right? More it was like, when you're in this world now and you really get the influencer space, you have to accept that you have one sort of Damocles hanging over your head and that's the long run. And the long run is gonna come around to reveal who you are. And I knew like, look, there's a lot of money to be made in weight loss, just 100%, I'll tell you right now. And if you do it the wrong way, the long run will reveal you as a scumbag. And if you do it the right way, then in the long run, it will be revealed that you cared about other people's actual wellbeing long before the industry turned, right? And so that's how I made my reputation at Quest. It was like, we're only gonna do what's metabolically real. It's not gonna be the fast buck. And ironically, because that was so obsessively our focus, not to turn the fast buck, but always do what is right, the company exploded. So when they approached me, I said, look, I've gotta be honest with you. I don't know. So this is a device to bring everybody up to speed. I'm gonna give him the heebie-jeebies by explaining it hill. Jason will go into like the science in a minute. But the baseline of what it does is it's a medical device that stimulates the vestibular nerve, which happens to be very conveniently located right behind your ear. So it's non-invasive. So you put this little thing on, it kind of looks like a futuristic set of headphones. And it just gives a little electrical impulse to the vestibular nerve, which their theory goes basically gives your body the impulse that it's very, very active. And as such, if it's very, very active, it tells the hypothalamus to reset the set point on your body fat storage. So a body at rest can store a lot of fat, which is great because if you hit a famine, you're gonna be fine. But a body that's hyperactive, think of a cheetah or a lion, like you just can't do it because you've gotta move the body around so aggressively so often that you have to stay lean. And in the physique culture, you guys understand that, right? When you're too heavy, just slows you down. So that's the hypothesis. There's a ton of science that hopefully you guys will heckle him hard and get to today in this. And I wanted to, behind the scenes, like not heckle them, but it's like being reputation protective, which is what I'm all about. I needed to know like, how much is known? Is this really real? And will you ever, ever ask me to say something I don't believe in? Because if you will, like if I'm contractually obligating myself to like sweep something under the rug or like falsely position it in a certain way, like, fuck that. I am totally uninterested because whatever money I can make in the short term doing that in the long run, I'll burn my reputation to the ground. So it took him about six months going back and forth on the contracts to put things in that made me very comfortable that they would bring me on a podcast like this today. And then I could say exactly what I know to be true and that they, what they want is the truth. Well, I'll tell you right now, we were very hesitant to, if it wasn't for you being connected to Modius, this is something that we probably would have just briefly looked at and just kind of moved along and just been like, yeah, whatever about it. But because I know that that your reputation matters so much and that I know that you wouldn't put yourself out there and something that could potentially fuck it, especially when you're in the middle of building what you're building right now is really what made me interested enough to listen. Like, okay, this, because when you first hear about it, anybody that's in our business will go like, oh, get the fuck out of here. This is too good to be true. This is too crazy. This is, there's gotta be some major side effects to this. Like, I don't know, like that type of thinking. So we were very hesitant to even participate and listen, but that's just not our style. Like, listen, of course, if Tom is out there promoting something like this, I know that he would not put something out there that could potentially burn him in six months or a year. Definitely interesting, a lot of questions when we watched the presentation, it brought up a lot of questions. So I do have a lot of questions on it, but before we get into that, if you can kind of give a brief rundown about how this was invented and exactly from your take, how it works. Yeah, maybe just a little bit of my background. So, I mean, you'll probably tell from my accent that I'm not actually from... You're from San Francisco. Yeah. Yeah, so I worked as a doctor for a good while in the UK and Ireland, but I'm really, really interested in, I suppose, fitness, technology. And I think it was just a stroke of good luck that I never was working in neurosurgery at the time. In Edinburgh, the guy I was working with was connected to drama. And I suppose we started just working on this idea, looking at type of neuro-stimulation, non-invasive neuro-stimulation. So I'm sure you guys have all heard of, like, you know, neuro-implants. You can actually get, like, implants put into your chest and they feed wires up to your brain. You can get deep brain implants. But obviously, horrendously invasive, you know, massive surgery, massive risk. So what we were looking at doing was, you know, what can you do that's minimal risk? Doesn't need the surgery, wouldn't be as expensive. And the guy I was working with here actually just done a thesis on vestibular stimulation. And there was just little kind of suggestions at that stage of, you know, could you actually modify metabolism? And when you say suggestions, you mean in the data? Yeah, yeah. So I suppose as part of his thesis, you know, he was looking back at years and years of research that had literally just been filed away, never to be fined again until he actually sort of pulled it right off the shelf and started reading it. And I'd say there were suggestions at that stage that actually this is maybe more than we think it is. There's the potential to optimize or to modify metabolism. So that was about five years ago. We set up the team then with Rama. The three of us have just been working nonstop right up until now and we're delighted to say we're at the stage for bringing out the problem. The one study that was fascinating to me was the one that you had referenced that NASA had done on the mice in the centrifuge. Could you maybe explain that a little bit and talk about what happened with that? Yeah, so chronologically, as I say, it doesn't make much sense because some things happened way back ages ago that people just did not realize what was going on and there's two really big sort of examples. Is that because they were looking for different things? That's why they were just research that was there but that wasn't even the purpose of the research. That's like a side effect. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So it was documented that all these mice got super lean, like I mean, like 5% body fat, even though their appetite was the same as it was before. So crazy if someone didn't dive deeper, when they said that. Well, keep in mind though, this is a long time before obesity becomes a pandemic, right? So it's like, oh, that's curious, but you're not- Good point, because you said 1560s, right? Somewhere around there? Yeah, the first period was 1967. Yeah, okay, that's a good point. So this was a study where they took mice, they put them in the massive centrifuge to simulate extra gravity and they left them in there. Like they kept them in there and they fed them, gave them water, but they kept them in there all the time just to see how astronauts, because we're trying to see how astronauts will live in space under these types of conditions. And one of the side effects was they got leaner. Yeah, that's exactly right. So the purpose, I suppose, was to look at things like the curcadian rhythm, so like your sleeping patterns, all your internal hormones really, how does that relate to gravity? Because if you went into some other sort of orbit or whatever and that all changed, you know, what actually happens to your body? And this is at a stage when no one had even really been in space, you know, the length of time at all. So the easiest way to replicate these studies is to make a big, massive centrifuge. I mean, maybe twice the size of this room and all the cages are in the centrifuge and they've got their little, you know, hamster wheels and they've got their water bottles and everything. So they don't know anything is different. So it would be the equivalent of us sitting now doing this podcast, but this entire room is like spinning around and round. And not that fast either. It's not like we'd all be thrown to the outside. We would just do what we're doing, but the gravity would be like twice what it is now. And as you say, what happened was over the period of, you know, even sort of weeks, but some of the studies were right through like over a year in this interviews that in every scenario, chickens, mice, whatever animals they had, they got super lean, okay? And even when their appetite went back to normal, so appetite would fall off at the start, but even when they started eating the same amount of food, did the same amount of activity, so nothing else changed bar the gravity. The mice were super lean. Now, did they rule out that maybe you're burning more calories because of the double gravity? Was that something that was ruled out? Because I know when they go up into space and they're under less gravity, body loses muscle, bone mass, it's a big problem. Is it because of the gravity or what makes you speculate that it's the vestibular nerve? Yeah, so I think I'd say that is why this had been filed away for so long without an application or a practical application. That was the assumption and it kind of makes sense because you automatically think that that if you're, so say I had to walk from here to the bathroom, I had to walk twice as hard, so I'm burning twice the calories. So the assumption was actually, yeah, it's just the gravity and everyone kind of signed off on that and it was just left like that. But like even just exploring that a little more, whenever you're walking to the bathroom, if it's twice the gravity that way, it's actually half the gravity this way. So technically you might not actually be burning because it'd be easier to go the other way. Oh, because the centrifuge pushes you, I see. Yeah, so there are some sort of questions around that theory already, but the biggest jump was that they repeated these experiments in 2002 and they actually used the genetic variant of mice that had no inner ear. So absolutely normal mice other than the fact they could not sense the gravity. So the part of their brain that picks up the sensation of that spinning just didn't exist, okay? So if it were due to the gravity or due to being spun around, these mice would still, should have still shown the sort of change in body fat, but actually they had no change at all. So that was the first time that it was ever really conclusively shown that it is vestibular stimulation causing the change, the metabolic change, not specifically the gravity. So moving ahead, I know we have implants that affect similar regions of the brain because you were talking about when I had met you earlier how the vestibular nerve connects directly to the hippocampus, I see, or the hypothalamus, excuse me. There are vagus nerve implants that do something very similar, if I'm not mistaken, what are those used for and what do we see when people get those types of implants? So if you look at maybe the, I'm just thinking who will be listening to this, like I'd be pretty educated, including guys that are listening to this, okay? So if I said, they've probably heard of the hypothalamus, you know, it's probably being in controls diet and appetite and body fat and, I mean, it's like a control center, okay, for lots of things. Now if I said to you now, like I could put an implant into your hypothalamus and I could turn it up or down and your body fat would go up or down, okay? You probably wouldn't struggle too much like that makes sense, do you agree? You know, like that could, like, I mean, this has been done and it's been done on animals, okay? So you can literally change body fat just by stimulating the hypothalamus. But the further you go away, I think the more difficult it is to believe. So instead of directly stimulating the hypothalamus, which is, you know, a very deep structure and it needs surgery to get in there, the next best thing is stimulating a nerve that runs into the hypothalamus. So for years, the target nerve has been the vegas nerve, which again, I'm sure, you know, you're included in audience are well aware of what the vegas nerve is, you know, it goes right down from the brainstem into the body. There's the whole parasympathetic, sympathetic side of things. So it's massive control nerve, if you will, down into the body. And in 2015, the FDA approved an obesity treatment which stimulates the vegas nerve. So it goes into your chest, it hooks into the nerve and it goes up your neck to your brainstem and into your hypothalamus. And that is without a doubt, I mean, there's absolutely no scientific question to this, that is a weight loss neuro stimulator and it works. And how successful is that too? I mean, Well, it's only approved for like very, very obese people. So, you know, over the period of a year to two years, you know, they're losing, I suppose it's a significant amount of body fat, but you know, for their size, if that makes sense. And then it's really the long-term effect. So over the years, you know, you do see it going down, which is... So your device doesn't work through the vegas nerves, it works through the vestibular nerve and it's placed on top of the skin. So it's not an implant. And what does it do exactly? How does it stimulate it and what is it? Yeah, so the, as I said at the start, our workers really looking at, can we do something similar, but in a non-invasive way? So obviously it's less risky, there's no surgery. The device itself will be much cheaper. Like I think that implants like $30,000 or something, you know, it's crazy. So we are looking, or we were looking for, another way into the hypothalamus because there are different neural tracks that you could stimulate. And then as I say, it was potentially was a stroke of good luck that the guy Paul that I was working with, his thesis was on vestibular nerve stimulation. And the vestibular nerve happens to be at the very back of your head. It connects to the vestibular system or what we would call your sense of balance or your inner ear. And just the path that it takes is just right behind your ear in that hard bone part. And because it's so close to the surface of the skin, you can actually stimulate it indirectly. You can stick a little pad on the skin on both sides, little electronic pulse and it activates the nerve. And interestingly, because it's an entire sensory nerve, so it is your sense of sort of movement and balance, you can feel when it's activated, like it's not some sort of, you put this headset on, you don't know what's happening. You literally feel it working. You know, you turn it up and you will feel yourself starting to move because it's activating your vestibular nerve. Do some people feel any kind of motion sickness or imbalance as a result? Imbalance, yes, but you don't get a sense of motion sickness. So I was convinced when he gave me this thing that it was gonna give me motion sickness. So I was like, you're messing with my vestibular system? I'm gonna fall over. Like, have you guys ever heard of wobblers? There are people that, from taking a certain type of antibiotic, it kills the cilia in their ears, which then they can't fucking stand up. Oh man. Read this heartbreaking tale of this which gets into a whole another thing with what David Eagleman is doing and other devices that are unbelievable. But, so that freaked me out, right? So I was like, oh God, I'm gonna put this on. I'm gonna get, yeah, right? And I don't know about you, but so A, I don't get motion sickness very easily, but when I get it, and this is the weird thing, I don't get it from being on a boat, but I get it. Have you ever been to Venice, Italy? Okay, their bus stops are on the water. I get it from that. That really subtle like movement. Oh, that is so horrible in a way that when the boat's moving, it doesn't bother me. So I was like, if it gives me one of those weird, like where you feel seasick in your head from, I was like, Jason, I'm gonna punch you if that happens. He's like, no, no, no. They were so hilariously specific. And then you lose weight. Right? And not care anymore because life sucks. But they kept saying it's like having a glass of red wine. Always red wine. I never understood that, but they're like, it's like a glass of red wine. So I'm like, all right, I'm gonna put this thing on. But so far, nobody's had any major side effects like that from it. What studies have you done with it so far? Well, just to jump into that, the settings of the device is quite funny. So initially we had it where we had picked a kind of level that we thought would activate the nerve for everyone and the device kind of worked out, you know, the impedance across back of your head and then it applied a set current. But actually some people are just like super sensitive, you know, so like what might work for you might not work for you, but it might be like way too much for you. Okay, so you could turn that down a bit. Yeah, so I remember trying one of the auto devices like on myself, it's just like immediately I was like, yeah, this is never gonna work as I was like writhing around. So yeah, so now what we do is there are 10 settings. So as you turn it on, it's at zero and then you just increase and at some point you'll reach a threshold. And at that point you feel this sort of swaying and the floaty feeling and you know what's working. And if you wanna turn it up, you can, but we would just say keep it at a comfortable level. So studies wise, what have you done so far with this particular device or with this type of stimulation? Yeah, so I suppose what we've done really would be provisional studies in the lab. So again, a bit of background about me, I was invited out to study this at UC San Diego. So it's the Center for Brain and Cognition. So really all we do is kind of like theoretical neuroscience really to some degree. So we're around. Fun. Yeah. Sounds like a lot of fun. We're around. What if we try this out, see what happens. Yeah, pretty much. How often does shit go wrong? Oh fuck, that was not a good idea. So yeah, the initial studies we did were over-ightly, but 18 people and we did sort of long and short term, okay? And the purpose of these studies were to really qualify what we had seen in the animal work. So as I say, as we started kind of pulling all this out, there's just this massive body of animal work that's been done. We can maybe dive into it a bit later. So all we want to do is see actually, are we doing the same thing? You know, can we cause this change or shift the metabolism or influence metabolism by using a headset? So we had done sort of short term and long term, short term is over just one R actually and we're collecting like saliva hormones. So like leptin and insulin. And you can see quite significant changes just within one R. We also looked at the basal metabolic rate, but specifically how much fat you burn at rest and you can actually see an increase. So then if you turn the device on, you can actually see the sort of at rest, the sort of carb to fat ratio actually shifts in favor of burning more fat. And then long term, what we looked at was three sessions a week over 16 weeks in people who were overweight or mildly obese. Okay. And yes, you can see, we did like full body dexa scans and you can actually see there's a drop in the body fat. And we've now we've done really, we're almost splitting. So there is a full year long clinical trial we're doing. It is horrendously invasive. You know, we're actually gonna add in like tissue sampling. We look at the mitochondria and the fat. We're doing full body scans. We're doing like blood tests for all the hormones. That is for what we hope will be an obesity treatment eventually in the same sort of class as gastric bands. But with our kind of negotiations with the FDA just over the last year, we put a proposal for those guys said, look, we know this device is really, really safe. We know it's low risk. If we say that this is a weight loss or weight management device as opposed to that sort of big treatment for obesity, will you let us sell this to consumers? And I say they come back and said, yes. So for us now, what we wanna do is I suppose quantify those initial results in the lab because there's a lot of stuff I suppose we don't really know. So, you know, we're saying one or a day, like every day or every other day, but we're not sure is it better maybe in the morning? Is it better at night? Now, if you're being completely transparent, what are some of the concerns that come in your mind right now? Cause you have to ask yourself like, okay, as much as you guys have studied this and all the research supporting it, you know, we haven't had this actually tool be warned by somebody for a year's worth of time or two years time. Are there things in your head that make you go like, well, I'm curious to how this is going to play out? Yeah, I think the big thing for the entire team is it is absolute scientific fact that vestibular stimulation influences metabolism. I mean, this is not a new thing, as I say, it's been around for 50 years. We've just made something practical out of it. So we know that it can help, okay? The range that to be completely transparent, the range is gonna be from zero through to significant, okay? So some people will probably try this and be it because of their lifestyle or their medications or their, you know, the thousand reasons why people struggle to lose weight. Some people will not get a positive result. Other people will get really significant result, okay? And we don't know how to quantify that now because we don't have enough people out there using it. So that is the big drive for us. And that's why we're on, you know, doing the Indiegogo, it's we're trying to get like 1,000 to 2,000 people using this for, you know, 12 weeks plus. If they feel it hasn't helped them, we're more than happy to give them money back. So for me, the biggest risk, as I say, is that, you know, it just doesn't fit in the sort of weight loss journey of some people, but we're mitigating it. But I think the real question that you're asking is, are you gonna get brain cancer? Are you going to lose your sense of balance? Are you gonna fundamentally alter your personality, which are real questions? Or change, or fundamentally change your metabolism. Because I think of anything that can manipulate or bypass or however we wanna word this, your metabolism and affect it. Our bodies are adaptation machines. It's amazing that it doesn't matter what we're talking about with the body. You tend to, you throw something at it long enough and it will change the chemistry. You know, there's been some fascinating studies done on some modern hunter-gatherer societies and what they found, what they went in with this speculation that these hunter-gatherers burn way more calories than the average American. And that's why they're so lean. But they also realized that they didn't eat much. Hunter-gatherers don't have access to lots of high calorie food. So they couldn't rectify that. So they went and studied some of these tribes and they actually found that these modern hunter-gatherers didn't burn that many more calories than we did. Their metabolism had actually adapted to the high level of activity. And as trainers who've worked in the fitness industry as long as we have, that makes perfect sense. I've seen, I tell you, there's words for them. They're called cardio bunnies. We've seen them so many times. People who come to the gym will do one, two hours of cardio every single day, take classes, work out. And they'll lose an initial 15 pounds and then plateau very, very strongly. And for a long time, we would say, oh, it's because they must be eating terribly. But as you start to work closer and closer with these people, they're just as fanatical with their diets as they are with their workouts. And what ends up happening is their metabolism, it's called metabolic adaptation. And their bodies actually slowed down their metabolism to where I've had clients who were 130 pound females consuming 1,000 calories a day, doing one to two hours of exercise every single day. And if anything over 1,000 calories, they'd gain weight. And their metabolism just became what we call damage. We would, the terminology we would say is they have a damaged metabolism. And so when you're talking about stimulating the hypothalamus, I know that there's a very strong feedback loop with the pituitary and with the adrenals. And they call it the HPA access. And when you affect one, the other two tend to balance out to try and keep some type of homeostasis. For example, if I were to take exogenous hormones, my body would see those hormones and then would stop producing those hormones. Or if I had, my pituitary for whatever reason was producing more of one thing than the others would produce less. And this has to do with catecholamine production with everything. And so one of my concerns or questions, which I'm sure you probably have similar questions as well. And that's why you're doing this. You want people to look at it long-term is, is my metabolism gonna adapt? Is my body gonna sense this? And at first I get a reaction, but then other things start to adapt to make up for this difference. And then when I take off the device, now am I in a position that's worse off than before? Is there a way to sort of train with this, right? Is this sort of start at like the best dosage of this sort of frequency and then ramp up or pull back or periodize it, something like that? Yeah, have you guys looked at this and to see? Yeah, and we were literally talking outside of this. So that that adaption is driven by the hypothalamus, okay? So even, I'm sure you're seeing it a lot, you're sort of fit or finished clients. But that actually also happens in just people who are like really overweight as well. So whenever their hypothalamus has adapted to something that it's comfortable with, it is very hard to get it to shift particularly down the way. So that's why a lot of people will diet, they sort of plateau at some point and then either they give up and it just bounces back or if they persist, it is a long slog, but eventually they can get the weight off, but then they're still fighting against that bouncing back, okay? So that mechanism is all still driven by the hypothalamus, okay? And it is that plateau, if you will, we call it a set point. So we could talk about like a kind of thermostat for how much body fat your brain wants you to have. It is that that we are trying to actually tackle. So that is the fundamental problem that we are trying to deal with here. So here's my question with the set point because this is a theory that's discussed quite a bit and it's used a lot in the fitness industry to sell supplements, your set point, change your set point with the supplement, whatever. Here's my question with the set point. We haven't evolved much in the last 60 years, right? 60 years, is it safe to say that humans haven't changed that much in terms of evolution? And yet the average body weight of Americans or the average body weight of people who live in Western civilized societies has gone up considerably. What have we done to change that set point? Or is it just our lifestyle? Is it really a set point or is it the fact that we just eat crappy food and we don't carry as much muscle as we used to? Yeah, that's a great question. I think this is getting into really the deep sort of neuroscience, so... I love it. I love it. Jack into the matrix. Yeah, so I'm sure you're aware of what negative feedback loops are, yeah. So I mean, let's say your weight is constant. So roughly speaking, it's just an arbitrary level. But actually if you look at that, it's actually sort of up and down a little, okay? So like your weight sort of varies and probably the best point of this is whenever you're maybe in your late teens when you're probably quite lean and athletic and then after that it starts to sort of dip a little. And that dip, little dip, is probably just a thing with age, okay? So as we all get older, little bit more body fat, that is pretty normal, okay? The upper and lower limits for that have been tested basically by evolution over and over and over again, okay? So as your weight gets too low, the negative feedback loop cuts in and it goes up and then whenever it gets too high, it sort of cuts in again, it'll go down and that's how you get that sort of nice constant. And the band for that, the upper and lower limits are set by your hypothalamus, okay? So that's what we would call, roughly speaking, your set point, okay? Now you have to ask which limit has been tested throughout the millennia of evolution. So are you more likely to have starved to death or have overeaten yourself to death in the past, okay? So that lower limit due to the fact that our bodies have adapted to periods where there's no food, that lower limit is perfect, okay? The mechanism to stop you losing body fat is so honed and so refined, it literally could not get any better, okay? The upper limit for that, so the limit that tells you that you're too overweight, that is never in the history of human evolution that's been tested before, okay? There has never been a prolonged period that we've been so affluent that we would eat ourselves to death. Until now? Until now, yeah? So what's happening is now with the sort of influx of sedentary lifestyle, so decreased calorie output, but massive calorie input and also massive sort of, you know, sugar, well, high-calorie, high-sugar diets, okay? And I speak specifically about sugar because actually it can cause inflammation in the hypothalamus neurons as well, as just the high-calorie, specifically sugar, can cause hypothalamus inflammation. So because of that, that sort of nice kind of, you know, changing your weight, the sort of regular sort of fluctuation, it actually is doing this, but it's actually pushing up and once you go up, and if you go back down again, that lower mechanism kicks in, so it's much easier to go up. So what's happening is internally our bodies are sort of leapfrogging up and up and up every time, and every time you take a leap up, the boundary of the lower limit moves up with you, so whenever you try to lose weight, that really perfect stop, stop you lose weight mechanism cuts in. So what you're saying basically is that band, that potential of where your weight can be maximum and minimum has shifted because of our lifestyle, but that band still exists. And what you're saying is through hypothalamus stimulation, we can take that band and move it down. Okay, I see, interesting. Or certainly it makes it easier to do that. So the problem is whenever people diet, say that minimum limit, whenever they start reaching that limit, all the mechanisms cut in, so people tend to plateau along that, and either eventually they will get down, and we all know it's a bit of a struggle, or they give up, and they'll bounce right back up again. But what we're trying to do is make that plateau easier by sending the signal type of hypothalamus, saying, you know, stop freaking out about the weight loss and actually just let it happen. So question, what are the things or the hypothalamus responsible for besides, you know, besides what we're talking about with metabolism? Nearly every sort of control thing in the body at some point probably is related to hypothalamus. I mean, like sort of your, you know, your circadian rhythms, your temperature, you know, there's the projections out to everywhere. Have we observed changes in anything, in other things aside from weight from stimulating the hypothalamus? Have you seen people's sleep patterns then get changed or body temperature or anything else? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and even just in our, some degree, anecdotal kind of studies, we've seen a massive positive effect on sleep. Dude, okay, so you and I have never spoken about sleep. Okay. It's just fascinating, right? Is that true or false? Yeah, yeah, it's true. So never talked about it, but they originally gave me a device that was like one of their early prototypes, and I found it to be quite weak and it like kept cutting out and stuff. So finally I was pestering him so much. He gave me a new version of the device, which I started using at the beginning of last week and it was way stronger. And I was like, all right, now we're doing something. And the very first thing I noticed, which I hadn't had a chance to talk to you, I'm sleeping more. Now for me, that pisses me off. I don't want to sleep more. My whole thing is dude, five to six hours, call it a day, I'm done. I don't use an alarm because I want to be cognitively optimized. I don't want to be tired. But now all of a sudden I'm sleeping like seven, seven and a half hours. And I'm like, the fuck is going on? And the only thing that I've changed in my life is that. And I didn't know that there was actually a tendril coming out of the hypothalamus going and connecting to circadian rhythms, which is very telling. Now, theoretically, would we, and this is of course pure speculation, but this is your expertise. So I want to ask you this. Could we expect atrophy or hypertrophy or growth of the hypothalamus because it's being stimulated more? Like what happens in studies when people's hypothalamus is being stimulated a lot? Older stimulated, right? Yeah, like maybe people who, like trapeze artists or people who do have to do a lots of things with balance. Do we see the hypothalamus being larger? No, really, because if, for example, we put an implant in- If we put an implant directly into the hypothalamus and you just cranked it up and you just stimulated that day and night, then actually, yeah, you probably would see all of that. But because we are doing it indirectly, we're actually still doing what is normal for the human body. We're not pushing it beyond what the vestibular system could otherwise deliver. So that is actually a normal reaction. So no, we wouldn't expect. And that's why we don't expect to see any sort of down-regulation or anything like that. Interesting. Now, do we see any change in muscle mass? Because the body, one of the ways that the body regulates its metabolism to become more efficient is to reduce muscle mass. You see this in endurance athletes. Now, there's a misconception that burning lots of calories, doing lots of cardio burns muscle, but this is actually false. The body doesn't like to burn muscle. But what does happen is your body attempts to become more efficient and it makes you smaller. So when you're doing lots of endurance activity, your body doesn't need lots of big bulky muscle. Yeah, I would speculate this tool would not be advantageous for somebody who's trying to bulk up and build muscle. Yeah, what are you seeing from? So the animal studies really would be the comment and actually you do see an increase in lean muscle mass. You see it, you actually see an increase from it. That's fascinating. Now, the question is... Now, aren't you calling bullshit more and more by the second? Right. Like, and we haven't even gotten into depression and anxiety, which it supposedly helps. So it not only helps you lose fat, it helps you sleep better, it helps you gain lean muscle. This is why I was screaming. I was like, there's no way. Does it give you better boners? I mean, that's right. Exactly, I was like, there's nothing that does all this. Well, I know through vagus nerve stimulation, you see it's actually prescribed in some cases for intractable cases of depression, extreme depression, because of that. So I know some of those potential effects can happen as well. Are you seeing those in the animal studies, I guess, or when people testing them? I don't think any specifics looked at from a mental health point of view. You probably have to be very careful with that, I would assume. Just even discussing those things. Yeah, I should actually just say, so our device is only indicated for weight loss and weight management. The other stuff, I suppose that we talked about here has been carried out, and it's the same type of stimulation, but just to be double clear or totally clear, our device, weight loss, weight management. Yeah, FDA approved for that. So with the muscle mass, here would be what I would think is if you took the average sedentary person and had them do lots of walking and jogging, although those aren't considered like muscle building activities, compared to what they were doing before, they would probably build some muscle. Yeah, that's a good point. So I'd wanna see what the animals were doing before versus now if you're trying to pump iron and build muscle, then maybe the opposite would be true because of the fact that your brain is picking up the fact that you're so active, it's trying to make you more efficient, so you may notice losses in muscle. But I know, Tom, you work out, you have a gym in your house, we saw it. Have you noticed any changes in performance? Honestly, any strength changes up or down or anything like that? None. So it's the same, everything's also the same? Yeah, so this is the one thing I wanna make clear, I don't give a shit what the FDA is telling me to make clear, the truth is we don't know, right? I don't know, like half the stuff you're asking, like the whole reason that we wanted to do the Indiegogo account was we don't have the funds to do the like just standard research, which would be just egregiously expensive. Oh, billion dollars. Right, so your other alternative is to get people to willingly participate to use it, so Modius is offering all kinds of discounts and stuff to people that report their data, because that's actually what we need, right? We need the data. Which I love that about when we were watching it launch. I mean that was the part that we liked the most. We thought that was really cool and that's again, you guys being so forward and honest about like, hey man, there's certain things that we just don't know because we haven't tested and that's part of the deal is we're trying to gather that data and information, so I thought that was really cool too. 100%, and I don't know if you, so one thing that was really important to me and there was no universe in which I would've gotten involved if they didn't offer a full money-back guarantee for any reason no questions asked, right? Like, you don't like the color, you didn't like the box that came in, it made you too lean, you're too hot now, like whatever, like for any reason whatsoever. If they were willing to offer a money-back guarantee, now we're at least in a good spot where A, I know they believe it, they may be wrong, but they believe it and B, there's no financial, you've got some time loss, but there's no financial repercussions to your purchase. That was super, super important to me. Now, longitudinal studies where we watch this and look, if you do this every day for the next 10 years, could it fuck something up? Absolutely, and we won't know until we've done it for 10 years. There's just unfortunately no way to short-circuit that process. So it's like, people have to go into it with their eyes wide open. Now, if you're an early adopter of stuff like I am, so like for me, look, I get it, my eyes are wide open, I know it could be a problem, but I use it five days a week, and I had them give me a version, which I'm probably not supposed to say this when I'm gonna say it anyway. Pretend I'm whispering in your ear right now. I have a version that doesn't automatically shut off. So what we can sell has to automatically shut off. It has to, FDA mandated, I think, you can't overuse it. It won't let you. The technology shuts down. No, it doesn't for me, so I can use it as long as I fucking want. So there are times where I'll push the upper boundary because it isn't unpleasant and I really wanna know. And because there's, for me, there's been other than now I'm sleeping more and I actually don't like that, and I'm not being cheeky, I really don't like that. There's been no micro negatives, so. And how long have you been using it, Tom? I used it for two weeks with the old device. I got so pissed off that I stopped using it because it kept shutting off and it felt really weak. And then I've been using it for a week now with the upgraded device. So I've got three weeks total. Okay, so just about three. Because you do look, I didn't mention to you, you looked a little different physically, but that's your training then because you haven't been using it long enough. Look, I would love to be like, yeah, I slapped that bad boy on just all the changes in the world. But honestly, I think part of this is gonna be, it takes a lot longer than you want to see results. So you're not gonna put it on. It's not like fat loss where let's say that you've been eating a terrible diet for a long time and you cut out carbs and you lose all the water weight and you feel like you just like, oh my God, I'm crushing it. There's none of that with this device. So you're gonna have to be diligent. Let's talk about that. We haven't even, it's funny, we've been trying this long and we haven't even, because I'm also, if I'm a listener right now, I'm going like, okay, so all this stuff is true. What is it? 1% of 1% increase on body fat percentage I could drop? Like what are the numbers telling us? Like you threw out numbers like reducing six to 8% or something like that, body fat? Like that's fucking insane. What are the stats? What could people expect to see? What percentage of body fat reduction and how long a time, and I know some of this you're still figuring out, but what are the norms? Yeah, well in those provisional studies, that was over 16 weeks, but it was only three hours a week. So you could use it seven hours a week and also we asked those guys not to change their diet or exercise. And the average fat reduction there was 8%, and that was arranged between two and 16. That's a lot for 16. That's a big... Somebody, if you don't know... That's a half percent a week. Yeah, that's the gold standard. So we tell people that like, when you're trying to reduce body fat, a half a percent to 1% per week is a good, healthy range we say. So you're talking on the upper end, that's solid numbers for not changing your diet or anything else just by strapping this on. Yeah, it's interesting because I would say this is one of the few cases where lab results will not be as good as real life results, which is actually the opposite for most of medicine because in a lab scenario, say you broke your leg and there was a new tablet and we were testing it and you come in and I give you the tablet and you took it at the same time every day and you didn't do anything wrong, you're gonna get extra result in the lab, but in real life, you never get as good a result because actually people don't take the tablets and they don't do what they're told and there's all sorts of things, okay? In this scenario, actually we think people will get better results because you can actually actively try and lose weight on top of this, whereas if it's fixing a broken leg, you can't sort of will par your leg. So now it's funny you go that direction because I'm gonna bring up the major concern that I had and I remember I dropped the book to you that I've been reading called Irresistible and one of the thing that kind of stung me a little bit when I was reading the book was they kind of poo-pooed on wearable devices for weight loss and I actually am a huge fan of Fitbit and apps like Fat Secret and My Fitness Pal because I'm just a numbers guy. I think helping people become more aware of their habits every day is helping them get closer to their weight loss or muscle building goals. So I'm a big, big fan, but they really said they were kind of raising flags of it being almost addictive in a bad way, made some very like sharp comparisons to heroin and drugs like that. Yeah, it was pretty crazy. Never shot up my Fitbit. Right, right. So I thought it was pretty wild, but it did make me kind of like pull back and kind of think about some of the maybe behavioral and psychology things like that could go on with someone like this like maybe, and I know with clients always looking for the quick result or a pill or whatever and not put the work in, could it potentially make people be less active because now they justify, oh, I'm getting my exercising because I threw my one hour on. Like I would wonder like, if could it cause the opposite effect? Yeah, I think the big driver for us is that as a company, we're trying to really encourage that people do not do that, you know. So what we would see is, we've actually got a community, it's called Modious Life, and you know, and if you buy the headset, you know, you're automatically made into part of that and it's really to encourage people to not do that. We don't want to be seen as this quick fix. One, because I don't actually think you'll get results that you're happy with, but two, we're more about just life and lifestyle and health and fitness. So this is a stepping stone into a better lifestyle. It is not a fix that all of a sudden squeezes you into the dress that you're going through, the wedding or whatever. Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons why we even had you guys on the show talking about this is because you're very objective about it and you're putting it out there for people to test it, which I truly, truly appreciate, at which more people were that transparent and I'm really excited to see, you know, what ends up happening with this, but even more on this topic, when you have it on, you're saying you feel a little bit off, like you drank a couple, you know, like a glass of wine or whatever, so you should be seated when you're doing this. So people are devoting an hour to wearing this, doing this, which means that could be an hour that they could be exercising. And the reason why I'm bringing that up is an alarming percentage, people don't realize this, but there's a pretty large percentage of people who have, who die or become very ill chronically from diseases like diabetes or heart disease, who never were obese, they were never obese in the first place, they were actually normal weight. Do we see health benefits alongside with this or is it just fat loss? Yeah, so again, this is sort of the borderline of what I can and can't say, but if you look at the other evidence done on, you know, vestibular stimulation, there is a massive correlation, a positive correlation between, yeah, diabetes certainly for one, but also things like thyroid, cortisol, even just stress. I'm pretty sure there are elements in there that I, a trach, trach just like. Trach, trach, trach, trach. And I'll say this in class right now. I'll say this in another way. So when I first started talking to Jason about this and he broke down why they think it works, and that's that there's, your body kind of like an iPhone has a sensor in it for movement. And that's actually how it's tracking whether you're active or not, right? So my iPhone isn't actually taking steps. I can hold it in my hand, I could have it on my leg, and it's gonna count the steps the same way because what is tracking is motion. Now, if that's true, and that's essentially what the vestibular nerve is doing is helping you simply track motion, then I started asking, okay, well, I get how fat loss then would be tied to tracking motion. And I also know the second law of the first law of thermodynamics and all that's not lost on me. But when you start thinking, okay, if that's part of the mechanism that's at play here, what are other things that are just like blanket prescriptions when somebody is, what else, sorry, what else is activity a blanket prescription for when somebody has? And depression and anxiety were the first two things that came to my mind. Like, if you're depressed and anxious, like, and you came to me and said, what should I do? The first thing I will tell you is go be active every day. Which makes sense about even the sleep too. The depression, sleep, all those things. Yeah, normally somebody who's not active. I did a little bit of research on vagus nerve stimulation after we had left because you had talked about how it was similar in the sense that they both will activate the hypothalamus. And I know that vagus nerve stimulation has been around for a while. And they do show, I mean, changes in GABA production and the positive and changes in catacolamine production in the positive, including norepinephrine, which are both connected to feelings of calmness or feeling up and having more energy. So, which could be why, because they really don't know why vagus nerve stimulation helps with depression. And I'm speaking specifically with that because I think that is approved for those types of uses. So, very interesting stuff, but always my question is, how does the body try to balance itself out with this type of stimulation? You know, what's your body gonna change or does it change anything? And you're saying that the hypothalamus is the, that's the master control. That's the thing that would cause things to change is what you were saying. Yeah, that's it. If you imagine it's a bit like a seesaw, well, the pivot in the middle is the hypothalamus. You know, we're shifting the pivot. So, things are gonna balance. Well, the other things I would want to look for are, are we going to see any long-term changes in other things that the vestibular nerve control like balance, you know, are we gonna see any increases of, you know, random, you know, vertigo or migraine or, you know, horrible things like Meneer's disease, which I doubt, but, you know, you want to put that out there. Have you guys done tests on like increased or decreased proprioception within the, can you do that? We've actually just done a pilot run of, we've put a sort of movement sensor on a person. So we're gonna actually probably try and put that into our trials, see if it actually increases like fidgeting and movement and activity. Yeah, that'd be interesting. Yeah, it'd be very interesting. I know what the vagus nerve stimulators, they do see in most cases an increase in potential symptoms of sleep apnea because the vagus nerve does control, you know, aspects of breathing. So I'd be very interested to see if we see any other kind of side effects, but I will say this, if it does turn out to do what you guys think it might do, this would literally be the most game-changing invention ever in the world of weight loss. Like nothing has come out that has moved the needle at all, aside from eating right and exercising, like nothing, there's been nothing out there, no drug, no anything that's done anything at all to get, you know, to help people in that particular case. So this would be like the holy grail. I mean, you'd be sitting on, you know, a trillion dollar product if that was the case. And that was exactly how I felt. And I think what's compelling now though is to talk about why that's never going to come to fruition, okay? Because this is when what I want people to understand is never trust a guy that says, trust me. And when somebody seems like they're trying to talk you out of something, then okay, maybe you can at least take them seriously. And so Jason and I, like a month or so ago, recorded what we now lovingly call as the world's worst infomercial. And that was on purpose, right? I wanted people to understand that there's things that we don't know that while we're optimistic, we're cautiously optimistic that we need more data. But here's, it is not a quick fix. So like I said, I've worn the device for three weeks and it's still in that range of, am I noticing something? Like when you guys saw me and you were like, hey, like we noticed you're getting, you said bigger, I'll say leaner for sure, because that's been my focus, but you tend to look a little bigger when you're getting leaner, especially because it lets me wear tighter t-shirts. So, you know, I'm doing some things right, but I also, like Modious Life is their whole pitch, you should be doing a lot of things, right? So at the end of the day, this thing at its best is a brick in the wall, I promise. So if you're clinically depressed, maybe, maybe, we don't know, maybe this is also a brick in that wall. Maybe it's a brick in the wall of anxiety. Who knows? So understanding that none of these things are gonna be some sort of quick overnight fix that you want it to be, is anybody here read, off to be the wizard? All right, it's a great book. It's like another take on the Matrix by this guy named Seth Meyer, and it's about this computer programmer who one day comes across this random file on the internet and he realizes that by typing in his weight, he can actually change his physical weight. So imagine, because this is what people want, right? And this is what I wanna make people, make sure people hear we're not saying, this is not like a value for body fat percentage and you go in and adjust it down to 4%. Not how it's gonna work. There almost certainly will be some sort of balancing mechanism that the hypothalamus may have something like a version of, hey, when this goes too fast, slow it down. So that even if you're just changing it too rapidly, it will force itself to decelerate the change at which it makes. So if you guys know much about digital trading and how that works, there's actually mechanisms built into the algorithms to make sure that if something ever deviates from its initial value, more than 60% cease trading. So that the algorithms know, like anything that's too big of a variable could just be going to a scary place and so we need to stop. Jason and I were talking about the horrifyingly misnomered negative feedback loop, which I'm offended it's called that because that doesn't make sense and it gives people the wrong idea. It's a seesaw, right? Which he's brought up a couple of times. So in theory, fat loss or the set point, however you wanna look at it, is it exists in a negative feedback loop and labor was the example he gave me of a positive feedback loop in a positive feedback loop. You get this signal and then the other signal bumps up, which then triggers the first signal to bump up even higher and even higher and they go and go and go until the baby shoots out, right? Okay, that's a positive feedback loop, which he says leads to catastrophe in his words, but again, it's a fucking scientific term that just confuses people because a baby being born is not a catastrophe. Well, I guess it's depending on who you are, but it's the completion of that thing, right? So, and a negative feedback loop is the seesaw. So you have, how would you call it? An agonist and an antagonist, right? So you've got the two things. One, it goes up and then that forces the other down, right? And they're never both up at the same time and they're never both down at the same time. The perfect example I thought was between the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system, which for somebody who put off learning to meditate for so, so long because I did not understand that it was one or the other, right? So you can't sit there and trigger the parasympathetic nervous system without decelerating the sympathetic nervous system. So that's why triggering really controlled breast, whatever, kick you out of that, right? So once you understand all of those mechanisms, you're asking the right questions, like where's the balance point? Like what's gonna happen? Is there something, and I call it an algorithm because I think like the book off to be the wizard where it's like you want it to just be a field that you enter and it just suddenly updates, but of course the body just does not work like that. But all of it, like the bodies you call this, you call, I think Adam said, we're adaptation machines. Like we are the ultimate adaptation machine. So if we know that's true, the hypothesis, and I wanna be clear that it's still, at least for me, Jason's a little more hardcore than I am, it's a hypothesis, right? Our hypothesis is that we've found a way to trigger one of those adaptive mechanisms, which is to alter the set point. But now where I think this gets weird and then I'll take a breath so that other people can jump in, where I think this starts to get weird is when you start talking about inflammation of the hypothalamus and all that like, when we say damage, right, you're damaging your metabolism, you probably are, and I bet some of that damage comes in the form of inflammation in the hypothalamus. And so what, like looking, this is where it really starts to freak me out when you think about epigenetic, multi-generational effects of shit, right? So like when I think about how easy, gentlemen, how easy it is for me to put on fat, it is fucking hysterical, it makes me wanna punch my own mother in the mouth. It's like, because the way she ate during gestation is offensive, right? It's crazy, that whole notion of like, I'm eating for two and I can have candy bars and whatever the hell I want. And like that shit has passed on, right? There are echoes of that in our genes, the way that they express epigenetically, which is absolutely crazy. So when we look at this, like what feels like, and I pushed him on it, he didn't quite agree, but it looks like when you look at the amount of fat that people are putting on from generation to generation and how rapidly it's escalating, that it's hit like a positive feedback loop, where it's like the fatter you get, the more the impulse to store fat, the fatter you get, so the more impulse you have to store fat. And I was like, that's what it looks like anecdotally and he's assured me it's not quite what's going on under the hood, he has a fancier answer. But like that's what fucking scares me, right? So when I think about the problem we're trying to address of moving that set point back, no one's arguing that it isn't a manipulatable variable, right? We're just arguing how easy is it to move A and B, what's the counter response, right? And so all of that is gonna play out. I think the thing that gives me comfort is that it's not like going in and editing a variable and getting this huge response, because when you get a huge response, then I think drugs, right? And exogenous drugs that are coming in, then your body rallies some big response. So I guess I'm saying the good and the bad of vestibular stimulation is you're not gonna get a drug-like effect, which means the antagonist of that is not gonna be some big drug-like effect. So you're not gonna see an acute response because the effect isn't acute. Correct. That's what you're saying. Yeah, I'd be very interested to see, because I'm speculating here completely but I'd love to see if it changes your body fat to a more thermogenic- I hope Jason brought me one. I hope you brought me one. Did you bring me one? Try it, yeah. Oh, I love you. You can try it. Look at this cheap bastard. These are the guys you give. Tom's over here trying to teach him, right? No, but I would speculate that it may change your fat from the less thermogenic variety to the brown thermogenic variety that would actually. That's an interesting thing over here. Yeah. Do you believe in beige fat? Yeah, because there's brown, white, and beige. Yeah. Look at this whole thing. I'm actually pretty intrigued by it. Yeah, well no, they've done studies, a show, that you can change your white fat to brown fat to make it more thermogenic. That's why we're doing the adipose testing in the clinical trial. To actually take tissue samples. Yeah, so every three months, you know, you would look and see if there's any sort of change towards brown. Well, I tell you what, man, I appreciate you guys coming on the show and talking about this, and I really appreciate your attitudes toward this and how you're putting it out there for people to test and giving them a money-back guarantee, because in this day and age, you don't see that too often. But this is, I mean, that's just fantastic. I really, really appreciate you guys doing that. And I look forward to trying it. Hopefully one of us can try it. Yeah, we'll get one for all three. Oh, good. Don't leave me out, man. No, we can definitely get one. I do have ones today that you can try right now. Oh, excellent. I'll do that. We'll put it on for you. I have a very sensitive, like I get car sick really, really easy. So, if I puke. It'll be good because it doesn't trigger motion sickness. You just feel like you're floating is the perfect word in my opinion. But it never clicks over into, ugh. It's not uncomfortable. Can you read why you do it? I can, yeah. I literally just work. So when you were saying like, man, like you're giving up an hour, it's like, I put it on, I walk around the house, I do work, I talk to people, there's no cognitive impairment. It's not distracting. Like, I literally forget I have it on. Oh, you'll even walk around and stuff. Okay, I didn't know that. Oh, okay. Well, that's interesting. God, I'm so fascinated by this thing right now. And it makes me think too, like actually coupling it with good dieting and eating and what that looks like and other types of things that we could couple it with too. Even if it's short term, I'm gonna say this right now. Even if it works and then your body like balances itself out and it stops working. So you get like this four week effect or whatever. Like, I mean, geez, that still doesn't mean, I mean, people still wanna use it because hey, in four weeks I'm gonna get married or I'm a bodybuilder, I'm gonna compete. In four weeks I get to hit my show or whatever. I mean, I could see there being benefit there. Yeah, very, very interesting. Where can people find it? How can people get their hands on it? Yeah, are you still running the Indigo or is it shut down? Is it going still? No, so I mean, I think we had set the target on Tuesday so we went up and within four hours we'd hit the target. So. Yeah, I'm gonna boast a little bit. His numbers are crazy. So they set it at 50K. Within four hours they hit 50K. Then within 24 hours you guys are at 500. Which is when we were at your house. That's the bill you bought right there. Yeah, I wish I could take credit for these guys. You smashed it. And it's now at 800,000. Oh, they tell. Absolutely. Congrats, man. And so how do people get their hands on it? Where do they go? So you go to Modious Health, either Facebook or webpage and you can then link through or if you search for Indiegogo Modious, it'll take you straight through. And that's Modious Spelled, M-O-D-I. US, yeah. US. And I like that you guys are offering these people that are willing to send in their information and actually track it. You're giving discounts. There's the money back guarantee. There's all kinds of cool. Yeah, I mean I think the overriding thing is the money back guarantee. Like we're absolutely confident people will love this. And if they don't, there's no fine tees and seas. It's not like we're gonna haggle you to not get your money back. If you don't like it, just send it back. Excellent. And then I think you said too, they get like a, do they get a discount if they actually do some of the, give you their... Yeah, so the control of the device is on the app. And if we get people to sort of fill in their weight and let us see when they're using it, in the morning or night or 30 minutes here and there or whatever, if people share that with us and sort of write up a little bit about their experience then they can get up to $100 back. That's cool. Beautiful. Nice. Appreciate you guys coming on the show. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Check this out. Go to YouTube. We post a new video every single day on our channel Mind Pump TV. You can also find us on Instagram at Mind Pump Media. My page is Mind Pump Sal. Justin's Mind Pump Justin. And Adam is Mind Pump Adam. So I was listening to The Art of Charm. The other day, which was one of my favorite podcasts. Compelling guests, Jordan is a great interviewer. I actually like to listen to actually learn from how to interview guests better. But anyway, he had Brian Brushwood. I don't know if you guys listened to him. Oh, no, I heard this one. So my grandpa, I don't know if I've ever told you guys this before, my grandfather spent half of his life in prison. He was a con artist. So this interview totally resonated with me. Yes. So this episode, so we have Jordan actually in the studio with us now. But this episode was crazy because Brian Brushwood, I guess he's like a magician. He has a scam school and he talks about how we're tricked and how our brains are wired a particular way and why we can be scammed or conned so easily using different techniques. It was really fascinating. Jordan, what was I like talking to him? This guy's cool. I love Brian. He's a really nice guy, super accessible. He's a magician and an illusionist, but he's more psychological than just like cool sleight of hand or anything like that. So he's kind of part mythbusters, part magic, you know, part illusion, whatever. But all the con stuff is just fascinating for me. He talks about why being interesting as a person, it's not a gift, it's a practice. And we get into some detailed stuff on that. And he talks about fixed action patterns. These are like persuasion triggers that help us get others to do what we want them to do. Of course for good and not evil. But we also do talk about cons and things like that. How to control conversations by asking the right questions. The best way to convince other people to help us, you know, by making it their idea. And why, even though we're all sharp, we're all thinking on another level or so we'd like to think, we're all capable of being duped. And we talk about how we can sort of train ourselves to see where we might be getting duped, where there's holes in our thinking and that other people might take advantage of. So this episode was really interesting for me. And it's been a long time in the making, episode 628. I suggest everybody take a look at that episode. You gotta find Art of Charm on your, you can do it on iTunes or whatever platform you're listening to now, just search the Art of Charm. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.