 I'm talking about bridging the gap between flotation, therapy, and medicine. And just one thing to start with is the disclaimer. So everything here today is based on my medical experience, my background, my research. So obviously you'll still want to have your own medical consult for your clients and legal counsel, public relations, et cetera. And speaking of public relations, you might be wondering who this is, the lovely Anja. We look just like our pictures. We do look just like our pictures. That's a picture of me in my float spa, which I no longer own. But I was in Gilbert, Arizona, a true rest float spa, and had that up and running for five years. I've sold that in the past year. And Anja here was in charge of all of my public relations. She was absolutely fantastic. And thank goodness I knew her before opening a float spa, because I had no clue about anything public relations related or crisis communication or anything like that. So thanks for being here today to contribute to this talk, which is gonna dive right into your talk afterwards. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having both of us. And thank you for working out all the kinks with all the technology. So we get to be here in person with you guys, which is fantastic. Thanks for everyone joining us online as well. And we are gonna talk about bridging many gaps today. But we're gonna get Dr. Laura started because she wrote a fabulous article. And that's really the main reason why you are at this conference today. Yes, so I work for University of Lynchburg. I teach in the Doctor of Medical Science program. And when you're in academia, there are three major pillars. So you gotta teach, gotta do a good job at that, right? And you've gotta do service, which can be service to the department, service to the university, service to the community, etc. And the third pillar of education is research. So you've gotta publish. You've probably all heard the term publish or perish. Gotta get something published. So I'm scratching my head thinking, okay, I gotta publish something. What should I write about? And being an owner of a float spa for a number of years, I was like, what can I write about that involves something to know about float therapy? I know a little bit about that. So I started thinking about, okay, we hear about so many things regarding what float therapy is good for. But what's actually in the medical literature? And I had some concept and I read some things over the years. But I really didn't know a lot of the specifics. And I hadn't taken a deep dive into that. And so that became the basis of this paper, which fortunately has been published in the last few months in a peer reviewed medical journal. So that's really good progress for our industry to get ourselves out there more and more. We'll talk a little bit later about the other research that's happening. And the talk just before this was quite fascinating about the eating disorders as well. So I'm happy to hear that there's even more research happening. So let's talk medical. But before you get all medical here, before you dive in, can you tell us really a little bit more elaborate on the concept? So a lot of you know Laura is, teaches currently at Ledgeberg University. She's a former float spa owner. But aside from getting wanting to get published, like why did you choose this particular topic for this article? You know, I had heard so many things like people would talk about, okay, the Navy SEALs are using this for PTSD. They're using this for concussion recovery. It's good for stress and sleep and all these things. And I would hear from clients saying that yes, it helps with this and that. It doesn't help with this and that. So I wanted to kind of compare what I was hearing in the float spa with what was actually in the literature. So the other piece of this was I thought a lot about our waiver in the float spa because when I got that waiver, I just kind of took it at face value. But I never looked into why is this on the waiver and why is that not on the waiver, for example. So we're going to take a look into that as well. So, well, you know, it's interesting because so much of the stuff that's on the waiver you think would come from research. What research is being done right now that you know of? Well, the biggest thing to know about that is that we are not comparing apples to apples. So if you have 10 research studies out there, they are not the same. They're not the same demographics. They're looking at the same thing. They're not set up in the same way. So when we take a look at this, I just wanted to go over a couple of the types of differences so that this all comes into context and makes more sense. So sample size. So you might have a study that has 20 people in it and you might have a study that has, say, 200 or maybe even 2,000 people in it. So very different, obvious apples to oranges here. The length of the study, so it's a short study. Is it a long study? Number of floats, frequency of floats. Are they floating five times? Are they floating 20 times? Is it over a short period of time just in a week or a few weeks or is it over a series of months? Control groups are a little more difficult with studies. So if you have a study in what you think of as traditional medical study, everybody's taking a little white pill and some of them are sugar pills and some of them are actual medications. What's real, what's not? That's kind of an easy way to have a placebo. But people know if they're floating or not floating. So this one's a little different. So there are different ways that you can set this up but just know that the placebo is a consideration when you're setting up these studies. And the follow-up is a follow-up happening in a few weeks, a few months, a few years down the road. So all of these just to say that not apples to apples when you're looking at these different studies. So first things first, pain. Shocking news. Can we have a drum roll, please? Can't do it, let's do it. Floating helps with pain. So surprising, we already knew this. That's why we're here, right? But does the level of pain make a difference here? So what the literature is showing is in general the more pain the person has, the more the floatation therapy is going to help. Somebody who's not having a lot of pain isn't gonna notice as much of a difference. Again, no big surprise there but it is what's showing up in the studies that are out there. Have you ever had a case when the pain would actually intensify with floating? Yeah, so I'd say probably everybody here has experienced having a client come in and they say, oh my neck or my shoulder's been hurting and it started to get so much worse when I was in the pod. And of course our answer is gonna be just stay there, don't go anywhere because this is gonna get better if you can just work through that pain. But it did show up in some of the research studies and people would in their float early get out of the pod saying that their pain got worse. Well we all know that if they had just stayed a little longer that probably would have been much, much better. So no surprises there. So let's talk about depression and anxiety for a little bit. You've got some subgroups noted in there. What are the subgroups that you're talking about with this depression and anxiety here? So the subgroups involved in these studies are gonna be people who have PTSD, panic disorder, stress disorder, social anxiety disorder, and agoraphobia, agoraphobia meaning people often don't even wanna leave their house. It's very scary to get out and about there into the real world, interact with other people. So when we talk about depression and anxiety these are the subgroups that we're including into this. There was quite a bit of variability in the results for the depression and anxiety groups. So the literature was basically all over the place. But thumbs up, as you can see there, in general it was beneficial for folks who have depression and anxiety. So that's good news. We can confidently say based on the medical literature that yep, depression is helping folks with depression and anxiety. Yes there's some variability but in general it's helping. There was a really fun quote that I found in the medical research. It was my favorite one of all time and I read like every study that I could possibly find that's ever been done. Angiolidic by the way just means decreasing anxiety. So this is by Dr. Justin Feinstein. You've heard his name probably multiple times before and he'll be virtually speaking at this conference. But participants experienced a robust relaxation response during and after flotation rest that was decisively angiolidic in nature. That sounds so poetic to me. Maybe something that Van Gogh would draw something beautiful about. I just thought that was lovely and it was so great that I wanted to share it. All right, so let's tie this, let's tie all of this into COVID-19 for just a moment since we're talking about mental health. So a CDC report came out just this year, just in the last few months in fact. And the numbers that we see on the side over here are nearly double the rates that we would have expected to see before the pandemic. So we're talking 31% depression or anxiety. I'm actually surprised that one's not higher. I think almost everybody has had a little anxiety or something going on with this pandemic. But even more significantly, so 13% started or increased substance abuse, that's pretty scary. 26% stress-related symptoms, well that's another one I thought would have actually been quite higher. Who hasn't had some stress with everything going on? But 11% serious suicidal thoughts in the last 30 days, that's really scary to me. So anytime that we can help folks with these serious types of mental challenges, mental health challenges, then I'm all in. Let's do that. So let's talk about stress a little bit. So thumbs up, you can already see, surprise, surprise again, flow therapy is good for stress. The part that I really like is that the medical literature showed that flotation therapy lowers blood pressure and cortisol levels. So it's nice to see actual objective data showing what we already know, what we're already seeing in our pods. How much, by how much has blood pressure reduced in the average? So the average systolic is the top number, the blood pressure, so the average on that one was five, just over five millimeters of mercury and the bottom number, the diastolic, that one is actually a little harder to change, so surprisingly that number was a little bit higher, it was almost 13 millimeters of mercury. So I think we all just need to hang out in a float pod all day and not interact with the rest of the world and we're gonna have really great blood pressure. So I just have a question here. Why is there a big woolly mammoth on your slide? Do they float? Because I like woolly mammoths. Aren't they cute? They're so furry and fuzzy. And when I think of woolly mammoths, I think of the cavemen, cavewoman days. And so let's say that you're in the caveman, cavewoman days and you've got a big old woolly mammoth coming and chasing you. And so what are you gonna do? You're gonna run, obviously. So you're running, running, running and that's releasing all the stress hormones. So in today's day and age, the woolly mammoth, so we're gonna be sitting at our computer working, right? So the woolly mammoth is gonna be the email that comes in, the phone call, the whatever. And what do we do? We're gonna sit in front of our computer or make phone calls. So we have no way to release our stress hormones in the way that we did, way back then in the woolly mammoth days. And so float therapy is definitely a great way to decrease the stress hormones. So I think it's pretty fantastic that we have a way to relieve the woolly mammoth chasing us in this way. Remember, that'll be memorable. If you remember nothing else, you'd be like, yeah, there's this great slide that had a picture of a woolly mammoth on it. So sleep. This is another one, yep, thumbs up. We all know that float therapy is beneficial for sleep and the medical literature does support this. Again, there was a lot of variability and results, variability talking about the length of time to get to sleep, the length of time staying to sleep and the quality of sleep. But overall, yep, thumbs up. It helped all of those things. Did people take magnesium to get some sleep or to get sleep to improve it? So I take magnesium before I go to sleep. And obviously, we all know that magnesium is in the pods, magnesium sulfate. So it does make sense that people are gonna sleep better after they've floated in the pod because they're getting that rush of magnesium. So I'm a big fan of taking it on days that I'm not floating, just to help with better sleep. So that part is very logical that it would help with sleep. There isn't a great overlap between sleeping difficulty and anxiety. People who have trouble sleeping often tend to be more anxious. People who are more anxious can have trouble sleeping. No big surprises there, but there is a significant overlap. The challenge is that the medications out there for both sleep and anxiety have a number of side effects. So obviously these medicines are gonna make you sleepy, which is good when you're taking them for sleep. Not so much, perhaps, if you're taking them for anxiety and you have a full day's worth of work ahead. But other challenges, as far as medications, is that they can cause addiction, dizziness, impaired coordination. Might be kind of scary to get out there and operate heavy machinery or your car. So anytime we can decrease side effects for medications by not taking the medications and floating instead, thumbs up for me. Well, you got another animal. No, but seriously, is this not a woolly mammoth, but a seal? Yeah, what about the Navy Seals? I remember hearing some stuff. I apparently I like seals too. I'm into animal stay. Maybe I'll have a picture of my puppy next. I bet your kids took over the drawings on your presentation there. Well, this specifically is a Navy Seal because when I own the float spa, I would always talk to people about what I had heard in the float community that the Navy Seals were using float therapy for concussion recovery, for post-traumatic stress. And I really wanted to include that in my paper because if I can get that out there in the medical literature, then that can get even more people's attention, right? Because the article that I wrote wasn't just saying, here's what's in the medical literature. It was targeted towards healthcare providers. And so with the target audience of healthcare providers, then ultimately they can be the ones that will hopefully say, hey, have you heard about float therapy? Have you tried this? So my goal was to just get the word out there more and more to the medical community. But it wasn't in your article, the thing about Navy Seals. That's the problem. So I had always heard about it in the float spa, but when I went to look it up, I found some nice blogs from various float centers and just little things here and there that were online, but there wasn't actually any medical literature. There wasn't anything in a peer-reviewed journal or anything I could really hold onto that I could put in the paper. So unfortunately, PTSD to a large extent and post-concussion recovery did not make it into the paper for that reason because the literature just isn't out there yet in a really solid way from solid sources. So I'm hoping that maybe the Laureate Institute of Mental Health and folks like that who are out there doing the research currently, maybe they can take a deeper dive over time so that we can get it into the medical literature over time. More studies definitely need to be done on that. Yeah, and we'll talk about the studies as well. But first, you get to talk about magnesium. I guess this is kind of my thing if I ask the question, I'm just curious. Like what is it about magnesium and what research is there? Let's talk about it a little bit. What's it used for aside from sleep? So the first thing to know about magnesium is it's not all created equal. So there are different types of magnesium out there and there are different uses for it in the medical world. So one of the obvious uses if people have low magnesium levels in their blood, then we wanna give them magnesium, surprise, surprise. So hypomagnesemia, there's a fancy word that you might not wanna say 10 times faster. Also can be used in pregnancy. So if people have preeclampsia or even worse, eclampsia, magnesium is used in that situation. Cardiac rhythm problems, there's a really bad one. It's called torsades de puentes. You don't wanna have that one. But magnesium can help if you do. Hopefully it will help and the person will live because that's a really bad one. So hopefully that won't come up for any of us. How do we absorb, how do our bodies absorb magnesium? That's a great question. I do wanna just mention two more things real quick. Asthma is another time that magnesium is helpful because it's a bronchodilator and also constipation. So if you do use it for constipation or somebody asks you about this, given that there are lots of types of magnesium, you wanna go with magnesium citrate for that one. Or not go with that one if you don't wanna end up in the bathroom. Well, now that is a good point. So that's a great question about how does it absorb. Yeah, the truth is, well honest answer, I have no friggin' idea. Does anybody know? If you don't know, chances are nobody knows. Okay, so the reason I say I have no ideas is because the literature is like all over the board. So when I own the flow spot, I would always talk about transdermal absorption. So transdermal meaning through the skin. So that's just kind of what I accepted as how it got into us. And then perhaps that is very much true. But given the fact that the literature out there was just, there weren't a lot of good studies out there saying yes, this is actually how it's absorbed. Some of the studies said yes, some said no. Like it was, there was just no consistency. There was an interesting possibility out there, a theory that perhaps it's absorbed through the hair follicles. But the hair follicles make up less than 1% of the skin surface. Unless you're a willy mammoth. Unless sure, well then you'd have a heck of a lot of hair follicles if you're a willy mammoth. Good point. So who knows, maybe it is transdermal, but that's another one that just wasn't super clear from the literature. So say which of the more work needs to be done on that as well, maybe a chance for someone to win a Nobel Prize for how magnesium is absorbed. Oh, that's a good idea. Okay, so if anybody is interested in becoming the next Nobel Prize winner if you want to team up and we can try and figure this out and then we can really help the float industry. Just let me know afterwards and let's see what we can do. Great idea, I love it. Well, if we're talking about all the research, I think what's really important as this whole industry grows and why we're all here is how can these two branches, the medicine world, the floatation world really work together. Do you think that the traditional allopathic medicine is gonna be threatened by all the benefits that are offered by what seems like a very simple solution? Floating. I've thought about this because being in the float world and being in the medical world for so long, I ask myself, could people feel threatened by this? And then I look in any medical office and the waiting room is like, full, right? Scarily full and especially if you think of a psychiatry office right now, there can be months and months of waiting just to get a new patient appointment. So to me, there's enough business for everybody. There's enough people with stress, sleep, anxiety, whatever the challenge is, pain really for everybody. So any of the medical folks that could feel threatened by this, I think it'd be good to have them perhaps think about why they got into medicine in the first place, which for all of us, hopefully, is to help people to feel better. So I see us as an augmentation to the medical world and yeah, we can absolutely work together and help patients in the way that is most beneficial to them and most palatable if they do want to take medicines, if they don't want to take medicines, there's options for everybody out there. So is research being done right now? More, I mean, we saw the previous speaker, what do you know? Research is being done. Good. Would you like the good news first or last? Yeah, save the best for last kind of girl, so yeah. Okay, so this was interesting. When my study came out, just in the last few months, there was also an article that came out in JAMA, the Journal of American Medical Association. It was in the open network, so it's quite accessible to quite a few people and this was the question they asked. Do five sessions of float therapy alleviate chronic pain? So if you take a look at this question, Anya, do you see anything unusual or interesting about that question, just from the question alone? Well, I didn't win the Nobel Prize. I stayed at Holiday Inn Express once, but the word chronic and like five sessions are kind of really tripping me up. Seems like a trick question, in a way. I thought it was a trick question too. I was like, really? So all of us who are involved in the float industry would probably have the same thought when we read this question. Do five sessions of float therapy alleviate chronic pain? Well, yeah, it's gonna help pain most likely, but is it gonna help chronic pain? These five sessions were done four days apart. So we're talking 20 days and people who have had chronic pain for who knows how many years. So no, it didn't help chronic pain, but no surprise. Of course more sessions are gonna be needed. It sounds like a setup, yeah. Yeah, so I wish it had been a longer study to ask the question about chronic pain because it probably would have shown something great, but it wasn't, so they didn't consult us apparently. Oh well, next time. So the results obviously were that it helped people in the short term, but not so much in the long term. Ready for the good news now? I'm seriously ready for the good news. Okay, good. Okay, so you've heard the term Laurier Institute for Brain Research and Dr. Justin Feinstein spearheaded this. So the Laurier Institute of Brain Research has been awarded a three year grant for almost three quarters of a million dollars to study float therapy. This is from the NIH by the way, to study float therapy in regard to depression and anxiety. That's great news, but NIH has been like naturally intelligent humans or the National Institutes of Health. So we are getting the attention of the big names, yes. All right. So now that we know the research is out there and alive and well, let's get really practical and talk about day to day types of things in the float spa, waivers. Let's talk about those waivers. I think that's where our worlds kind of meet and combine a bit, so absolutely. So think for a moment about what's on your waiver and perhaps what should or should not be on your waiver. So everyone, right, if you have waivers, you would think that if you read something there, you should just go ask your doctor, right? Like should I float because it's good for me. Great idea. There's only one problem with that. What's the problem? We go and ask our doctor or nurse practitioner or PA or whoever it is, they probably never heard of float therapy. So I guess we're the ones who need to get educated for right now until they all read my article. I don't know. Start trapping of that article in doctor's office, it's great. So well, let's go through some of the things that you have on your waiver, right? So Laura, if I have a pacemaker, should I float? Good question. This was on my waiver. This is why I wanted to look it up. I just accepted it. I'm like, okay, pacemaker, no go on floating because it's so on my waiver. But when I started really looking into what was out there, what had been studied, pacemakers are fine. I actually ended up talking to a cardiologist and she said, well, that would be kind of like saying that a pacemaker would be problematic if you go to sleep at night because you might relax too much. So we're gonna relax in the pause. So pacemaker really just is not problematic. So we're good on the pacemaker. What is a pacemaker anyways? If you take a look at the picture up here, if you see the little thing right next to the heart that looks like a toilet seat cover, that's the pacemaker. It goes on the inside. So, it's not gonna corrode with the salt or something like that. No, no, nothing like that. Excellent. And pacemakers regulate heartbeat, especially if the rhythm is off or the rhythm is too slow. So that's when people use pacemakers, but no problem that I could find anywhere regarding float therapy. I love that slide. So it would seem pretty obvious, but if I have an open wound or recent surgery, should I float, doctor? Well, that's gonna hurt. So if we think about sanitation for the water in the pot, obviously that's gonna be problematic. And the person's probably not gonna come back if they're in serious pain because they have an open wound. So let's pass on the open wound or if anybody, I'm sure you've all floated. That salt has a way of finding its way to the smallest paper cut. So I can't imagine that somebody would wanna walk in with an open wound. Every nook and cranny. But if I have kidney disease, should I float? Now that one is legit to go see your doctor. It's actually specifically a nephrologist that patients should see. The reason for this is because kidneys regulate the magnesium balance. So if somebody has kidney problems, this really could be problematic. So even if they're going to their nephrologist has never heard of float therapy, if they can just take a brochure or just tell them yes, it's more than a thousand pounds of epsom salt or magnesium sulfate, then the nephrologist can let them know how to proceed or not, but this one is really legit. Wow, that's a mouthful. So I'm not gonna try to pronounce it. What is it? It's called orthostatic hypotension. So basically when you stand up too fast, maybe you felt dizzy in the past and this can happen easily in the pot. So a couple of ways to mitigate the likelihood of this happening is if you get up slowly, if you go from laying to sitting for a few minutes and then you get to a standing position, that can really help. Other ways or hydration just in general, staying hydrated decreases the likelihood of this orthostatic hypotension, the drop in blood pressure. Do you think that this really belongs on the waiver? Like is this one of those big high ticket items? I don't think it is. Because if you do these things, if you get out of the pod slowly, if you hydrate well, also the post float shower, if you take a neutral temperature shower as opposed to getting out of neutral temperature water and then going to hot, neutral temperature water will help that as well. So I don't believe this one actually needs to go on the waiver because these are good things for all of us to do. So we're good on that one. But these are nice to mention to clients in general. Seizures, so if I have a seizure doctor, should I float? Yeah, this one's gonna be a no go. I mean, because floating is a solo sport. So if you have a seizure disorder, let's go with no on that one. Even if you brought somebody in the room, the motion sensor lights might be going on and off. If your float room is set up, anything like mine was, and or if somebody was there and they're like diving in after you, if you have a seizure, then there's salt water everywhere and just bad setup in general. No float with seizures, no go on the seizures. Yeah. So let's tie all of this into your specialty. So we have the waiver in place, and it's great for medical warnings and this and that, but it doesn't protect you from meeting a communications plan. Is that correct? Yeah, so a lot of times we mistake a waiver for a crisis communication plan. And that's not the best strategy. We talked about it's great to understand from a legal perspective what you need to know and when people should not get into the float, but at the same time, that is not how you prepare to answer in case that spotlight really shines on you and you need to stand out there and defend your situation, your float spot and your brand's reputation. As this industry grows and expands, we really need to be prepared to be articulate about bad things when they do happen. And I'm not like the bearer of bad news, but as we saw like bad things can happen and it doesn't have to be complicated. So in my presentation, we're gonna talk about this scenario, my world of responding to the news in time of a crisis. I hope you stick around cause we'll go through do you need a crisis communication plan? How do you get one ready and how to best respond to a crisis? But first let's thank Dr. Laura Witte for her presentation and her research. Thank you so much Laura. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.