Dr. Daniel Cohen is a Neurologist and serial entrepreneur. He co-founded SOLTEC Health to study the healing effect of magnetic waveforms on sleep and neurodegenerative conditions. SOLTEC Health (https://soltechealth.com/) has developed a safe, non-invasive, drug-free platform technology that can greatly expand the already growing field of neuromodulation. With this new disruptive technology, it is now possible to influence a region of the central nervous system, the brainstem, which includes the autonomic nervous system. The technology addresses the #1 health complaint in the U.S. – POOR SLEEP! Previously, Dr. Cohen co-founded and managed CNS, Inc. until it was acquired by GlaxoSmithKline in 2006 for $566M. CNS, a developer and marketer of hi-tech medical products (brainwave monitors and sleep disorders diagnostic equipment) was best known for its consumer products, the Breathe Right® nasal strip and the FiberChoice™ chewable fiber supplement. Dr. Cohen holds numerous patents related to EEG and sleep analysis algorithms and devices and additional utility patents related to synchronized sound, vibration and electromagnetic fields. Dr. Cohen received his MD from Temple Medical School with high distinction. His training is in Neurology at the University of Minnesota and is a Diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
Dr. Daniel Cohen is a Neurologist and serial entrepreneur. He co-founded SOLTEC Health to study the healing effect of magnetic waveforms on sleep and neurodegenerative conditions.
SOLTEC Health (https://soltechealth.com/) has developed a safe, non-invasive, drug-free platform technology that can greatly expand the already growing field of neuromodulation. With this new disruptive technology, it is now possible to influence a region of the central nervous system, the brainstem, which includes the autonomic nervous system. The technology addresses the #1 health complaint in the U.S. – POOR SLEEP!
Previously, Dr. Cohen co-founded and managed CNS, Inc. until it was acquired by GlaxoSmithKline in 2006 for $566M. CNS, a developer and marketer of hi-tech medical products (brainwave monitors and sleep disorders diagnostic equipment) was best known for its consumer products, the Breathe Right® nasal strip and the FiberChoice™ chewable fiber supplement.
Dr. Cohen holds numerous patents related to EEG and sleep analysis algorithms and devices and additional utility patents related to synchronized sound, vibration and electromagnetic fields. Dr. Cohen received his MD from Temple Medical School with high distinction. His training is in Neurology at the University of Minnesota and is a Diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
SHOWNOTES:
😴 Why did Dr. Dan Cohen transition from neurology to medical technology?
😴 How does chronic stress contribute to medical issues, and how can it be managed?
😴 What links the autonomic nervous system, stress, and sleep?
😴 How does entrainment work in SOLTEC’S technology?
😴 How does deep sleep loss accelerate aging and chronic disease?
😴 Can restoring deep sleep improve overall health?
😴 What role does neuroplasticity play in sleep improvement?
😴 Why is deep sleep essential, and how can we enhance it?
😴 How does real-time sleep stage enhancement work with wearable tech?
😴 What’s the relationship between stress, trauma, and sleep disorders?
😴 How can SolTec’s technology improve both sleep and stress management?
😴 What we can learn from Dr. Cohen’’s sleep nightly routine
💤 If stress and restless nights have been getting in the way of deep sleep, you might want to check out SOLTEC Health. They’ve developed a non-invasive technology designed to support relaxation and better sleep naturally.
Curious to try it? They offer a 60-day money-back guarantee so you can see if it works for you.
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😴 And so much more!
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The information contained in this podcast, our website, newsletter, and the resources available for download are not intended to be medical or health advice and shall not be understood or construed as such. The information contained on these platforms is not a substitute for medical or health advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation.
Welcome to the sleep as a skill podcast. My name is Mollie Eastman. I am the founder of sleep as a skill, a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change as an ex sleep sufferer turned sleep course creator, I am on a mission to transform the way the world. sleep.
Each week I'll be interviewing world class experts ranging from researchers, doctors, innovators and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Ultimately, I believe that living a circadian aligned lifestyle is going to be one of the biggest trends in wellness.
And I'm committed to keeping you up to date on all the things that you can do today to transform your circadian health. And by extension, allowing you to sleep and live better than ever before.
Welcome to sleep as a skilled podcast. Are you tired of restless nights, waking up groggy and feeling like. stress is running your life. If so, you're not alone. Poor sleep is the number one health complaint in the U S and it's directly linked to chronic stress, aging, and neurodegeneration. But what if there was a science backed way to restore deep sleep naturally?
So in today's episode, we're joined by Dr. Daniel Cohen, a neurologist, inventor, and serial entrepreneur whose groundbreaking work is reshaping how we think about sleep and stress management. For decades, Dr. Cohen has been at the forefront of sleep technology innovation. From co founding CNS Inc., the company behind Breathe Right Nasal Strips, to now pioneering Soltech Health, he has dedicated his career to helping people unlock better sleep.
His latest work focuses on the healing power of magnetic waveforms, a revolutionary, non invasive, and drug free approach to improving sleep quality and resetting the nervous system. Stress and sleep are deeply connected. Chronic stress keeps your body on high alert, making deep sleep difficult. But what if you could naturally retrain your brain for better rest?
Dr. Cohen and his team at SoulTech Health have developed groundbreaking technology that stimulates the brainstem, promoting deep, restorative sleep without medication. Struggling with insomnia, frequent wake ups, or exhaustion despite enough sleep, Dr. Cohen shares a science backed approach to deep, restorative rest, no quick fixes or sleep aids needed.
And SoulTech has hooked us up with a special offer for our listeners. You can go and visit SOLTEC health@soltechhealth.com, and it's spelled S-O-L-T-E-C-H-E-A-L-T h.com. So SOLTEC health.com and use the discount cone Mollie sleep, and that's spelled M-O-L-L-I-E sleep, S-L-E-E-P. And you can see all this in the show notes.
If you wanna just click right through on that. Definitely check this out. I have been testing this myself, and I've also seen many clients who've been testing it even longer than me. And we've seen some really impressive changes for a number of them. So it's an exciting area to explore and they do have a generous return policy.
So really not much to lose. Now we're going to jump right into the podcast, but first a few words from our sponsors. If you're listening to this podcast, you're likely looking to improve your sleep. And one of the first questions people ask me about sleep is what supplement they can take. One supplement I've consistently taken for ages is magnesium, specifically Bioptimizer's Magnesium Breakthrough.
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You are not just investing in a blackout shade, you're investing in your health, wellbeing, and quality of life. So again, go to U Blockout, spelled the letter U Blockout, and use code sleep as a skill for a discount. And welcome to the sleep is a skill podcast our guest today dan cohen Thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
Oh, very nice to be here Mollie
Absolutely. Okay. This is an episode in which I am was very eager to press record because before we hit record You were sharing some gems with me that I I'm fascinated by and I need to learn more about and I want everyone to hear. So we're going to get into some great conversations.
But before we do that, maybe you can just share a little bit about yourself and how you found yourself such an expert in this area.
Well, it actually started when I was an adolescent and I was interested in brain versus mind.
And so I decided to become a neurologist, I became a neurologist and board certified, but I didn't go into practice because, you know, back then it was hard to really help people.
You can make a lot of diagnoses, but you couldn't help a lot of people. So I decided to make medical equipment instead. So I started a business and in that business. Um, we made high tech equipment. So we made the first automated brain wave monitor to use during high risk surgeries. And then we took the same hardware and we moved it into sleep labs.
So back then there were only 300 sleep labs around the world. And so we develop equipment that would really help them in terms of doing the staging and the scoring of the sleep record. Cause back then everything was. You know, paper was like a big machine that recorded, you know, brainwaves, eye movements, chin muscle activity, heart rate, leg movements, you know, breathing.
So there was a lot of data and they would literally collect half a mile of paper. During a night's recording and a technician the next day would have to go page by page every 30 seconds and score that record for any kind of abnormalities. And so it was a 4 to 6 hour job. And so when we went in there, it was like, well, you know what, we can automate this for you.
We can automate the sleep staging, the respiratory, all that work. And, uh, over the next couple of years, we did, uh, after 10 years, uh, we left that field. There were 3000 sleep labs around the world. Most of them were using our equipment. So we pioneered that field of sleep automation, and it was it was a big help because now all these other people could be diagnosed efficiently because at the end, you know, we even ended up with a portable device that they would set you up in the sleep lab and measure all those things.
And you would take it home. It was like a hip worn Holter monitor, you know, and, and they would sleep in their own bed. And then they'd bring it back in the morning and, uh, the technician would plug it into a computer. And one minute later you had a report instead of four to six hours.
Oh my gosh. Wow. What a difference.
Okay.
So I got into that, but when I went to medical school, one of the things that fascinated me was stress. Most people don't think about stress. They think, well, you know, I feel this way. I've always felt this way or I felt like this so long. I don't know what it's like to not have stress.
Yes.
So, you know, so I was interested in chronic stress because what they taught me in medical school was 75 to 90 percent of all medical problems are either caused by or made worse by chronic stress.
So I would ask my professors, Oh, why aren't we treating stress as a primary pathology? Right. And they had good answers. They said, look, you know, the, the, the location in the brain that decides whether or not you should be in fight or flight mode or rest and digest mode is buried at the bottom of the brain, the bottom of the skull, you know, in the what's called the brainstem.
This is a primitive structure that evolved, you know, 5 to 600 million years ago. All right. And that's where this thing resides and it's called the brain of the autonomic nervous system that controls all your organs automatically and all those functions and that determines. It's like a seesaw. Where are you on the seesaw?
Are you stressed? Or are you relaxed? All right. And so. They said, we can't get at that area with like electrodes or treat it directly, we'd kill the patient because, you know, you never be precise and it's a very complicated area with 80 different nuclei all interrelated, you know, even now, we can't even image that specificity.
So, you know, it's impossible to treat it that way. And pharmacologically. It's hard to treat because that's such an old part of the brain that as the rest of the brain evolved, it borrowed a lot of the neuroreceptors and neurotransmitters, and so they're spread out through the rest of the cerebrum and the cortex and The problem with that is if you gave a drug to treat it, you'd be treating the whole brain.
It's like you'd have all these side effects. So they said the only techniques that we have at our disposal are behavioral techniques, like meditation, you know, deep breathing exercises, this and that. Nothing wrong with those. They're all great things. The problem is People have to work so hard at getting to the point where it's efficacious that they give up.
Yes.
So therefore there's no good treatment for it. And, and so I wanted to develop equipment that would do that. And when we did. Well, you know, it was the same area of the nervous system that regulates sleep. So I said, well, we might as well use this technology for both sleep and stress reduction because it's two or so interrelated anyway.
Brilliant. Brilliant. What was the timeline on all this that you decided to kind of embark in that, um, world of bridging those conversations?
Well, in the first business, we, we started that work in 1982 and, uh, ultimately, uh, we sold that business in 2006, uh, to GlaxoSmithKline, um, but what the, that business wasn't known for the high tech equipment.
Okay.
That business was known for the Breathe Right nasal strip.
Wow. Okay. That's part of the origin. Jeez. Right.
So even though we were a high tech medical equipment company and we were a public company, this guy walked in with his curad band aid with a piece of plastic glued on top of it. And I said, I said, that's brilliant.
And he looked at me like, Oh, my family doesn't tell me that.
Wow. You saw that crazy. Wow. What a talent scout. Yeah, that's amazing.
So I licensed it from them and my board of directors was really annoyed with me. They said, what are you thinking? We're a public company. We're high tech medical and you license a nose bandaid.
What a visionary,
but that made the company very, very successful. And so the ability to influence
the brain to properly breathe through the nose. Exactly.
It was a huge benefit for sleep. Sure. So, but then I had started another company in the late 90s to tackle the stress issue. And then, over time, that sort of married one another.
Okay. And, you know, but we had to make some discoveries in order to implement some equipment that would be safe and non invasive that could target just this part of the nervous system that controls stress and sleep.
Wow. Okay. So now that you decided to embark on this journey to really get at the source of how can we influence this, and it's historically been a challenge for, for people to do this.
How are you doing this? And what does this look like? And, you know, really walk us through this innovation.
Well, what we had to do is we had to use a neurologic technique that was only theoretical at the time,
and
it's called entrainment. Okay, so think about holding two tuning forks
that
are tuned to the same frequency.
And if you start one vibrating and you bring it close to the other one without touching the other one, the other one starts to vibrate because it's resonant with that. It'll operate at that same frequency and the air molecules vibrating at that level are enough to cause the other one to vibrate simply because it's already tuned to that frequency.
Okay. So when you think about the brain, the language of the brain is frequency. All right, different parts of the nervous system operate at different frequencies. So we had to make something that could entrain the specific part of the brain that we wanted to activate to basically enhance its function.
And
so it was finding out what are the right frequencies to use for that part of the brain and then creating a technology that would do it. And so we found the best way to do it was to use magnets, not electromagnetism.
Yes,
that can't work at these frequencies very well, right? So we had to use real magnets and then we would spin them at the frequency we wanted.
But we found that we had to use two of them to give people the proper dose. And when I talk about dose, I'm not talking about like how strong the magnetic field is. I'm talking about. hitting them at the right frequency because everybody works at a slightly different frequency band, but you want to be able to sweep through it.
And so we had a sweep from up to down and from, you know, down to up. So to maximize the time spent at that person's frequency.
Wow. Okay. So utilizing magnets to make a difference with stress during sleep. Fascinating. So as far as you know, before we hit record, I was able to walk through you through some of the numbers that we discovered because we have been testing my husband's use of the soul tech recently because he's dealing with mild sleep apnea.
We've gotten it down quite a bit and we've gotten to some of these numbers and I just thought it was so, so interesting. So maybe we can. go into that potentially unless you want to further kind of explain, but fascinating the hierarchy of some of these numbers and where he fell versus someone with PTSD and the idea that we can maybe improve upon where we're falling on this scale.
So if you could walk us through the scale that we've discussed.
Sure. When you think about the autonomic nervous system, again, this is the part of the nervous system that you're not aware
of.
Okay? You don't do anything consciously at that level. Alright? This is a level that, you know, you find in fish and frogs and reptiles as well as humans.
And what it does is it automatically controls organ functions. Okay, and the two primary divisions are called sympathetic and parasympathetic sympathetic standing for fight or flight. Okay, and parasympathetic, rest and digest. So they're very different, and picture them like a seesaw. So when you're very stressed, the rest and digest function goes down.
Okay, and vice versa. When you're really relaxed, the fight or flight goes down. And so that's what you want to live in that state of greater relaxation. So you don't have chronic stress.
Yes.
Okay. So we had to focus on the rest and digest part and know the frequencies that are operative at. You know, that level of being of relaxation, for instance, or no stress.
Okay. And, and with our studies and other medical studies that had been done before we even started this, there was a defined range that went from 0. 15 to 0. 4 Hertz. But what we learned was that, you know, for stress and sleep. It was narrowed to just 0. 15 to, let's say, you know, for deep, deep sleep, 0. 15 to like 0.
25.
Okay.
Okay, REM, your dream sleep's a little higher. Sure. So, but we were really concerned first with supporting deep sleep. Okay. Because, um, people don't lose, um, dream sleep with age. But the big problem with sleep, I mean, the biggest problem causing sleep issues other than like sleep apnea, okay, we don't, we don't treat that, okay, but, but the biggest problem with sleep as you age is you lose deep sleep.
And, and therefore over, you know, from the time you're five to the time you're, you know, 80, you've gone from like nine and a half hours of sleep down to five hours of sleep because you need that deep sleep to keep you asleep and to give you restorative sleep. Okay, absolutely vital. Deep sleep is the most important stage of sleep because it, it confers cell repair, cell regeneration, even DNA repair.
Hmm. It. It rebalances the immune system, it, it works to balance the endocrine system. So it's involved with all of these pivotal functions. It even clears bad proteins from the brain. Right. But, and so if you lose that, guess what? You're going to start developing illnesses.
That's
what happened. And the data on this is You know, incontrovertible.
I mean, this has been studied with long periods over long periods of time decades where people were in these long term studies measuring sleep and then determining the level of chronic illness. The insurance companies have reported on this over hundreds of millions of people. Okay. You know, and the chart is it's unequivocal as deep sleep drops.
Chronic illnesses go up. It's just that simple. So, our goal in sleep was Can we restore deep sleep? Because if you can restore deep sleep, you're really going to do a lot to improve sleep, but also improve health. Okay, that was, that was our main goal when it came to sleep. And when you think about it, we know there's a phenomenon called neuroplasticity.
Okay, so the brain really is dynamic and really can change. Back when I became a neurologist, you know, that wasn't known.
That's so wild. It must be fascinating for you. The art. Yeah. Right.
And it's like, no, if you start a new, you know, something new, if you learn something new and you work at it every day, a month later, your brain will be different.
That's right. Yeah. And so, so we looked at that and said, you know, The part of the brain actually initiates deep sleep, or delta sleep, it's also called, because you have delta brainwaves. So, that part of the brain is what I described in the brainstem as part of the autonomic nervous system, that's the initiator.
We might measure brainwaves that show sleep at the cortex, but that's not where it starts, okay? It starts in the brainstem, and if the brainstem says, move into delta sleep, it's five minutes before the delta waves. Start. Okay, so everything begins at this brainstem level. Well, what's interesting about that is when you get older and you lose brain cells, you're not really losing brain cells at this level.
You're losing brainstem up here and in the cerebrum. And so we thought that, hey, if we stimulate this level, you know, in the brainstem, and it sends its northbound, you know, fibers to the other parts of the brain that have to coordinate these delta brainwaves. I won't go through the circuitry because it's pretty complicated.
Then maybe they'll grow back. And then we can actually restore deep sleep and sure enough, that's what happened. I mean, we, we were, we were amazed because nobody had ever been able to restore Delta sleep. And I mean, when I started using the technology, you know, like I'm older. So, you know, when I started, I was in my, I was about 69, all right.
And, and I had very little Delta sleep left.
You know, I
was getting about 15 minutes a night, which is typical for a 69 year old.
Yeah.
Right. So I said, boy, if this can come back, that would be great. Well, on average now, I get an hour and a half.
What?
And so.
And the, wait, no, the, because you had shared that you're at around like the 0.
25 or so range, right? Well, that's
just, that's just where I operate. That's just where you operate. Okay. That little spectrum. I see. And that's, that's more related to stress than anything else.
I
see. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Conversation. Your point. Your point is important because everybody's a little different in terms of where they operate.
And so during sleep we have to make sure we serve you.
Mm. It's not
the general population. Right. Okay. So we have to go through an auto calibration process to figure out where do you sit, what is the frequency that you operate? I mean, you know, your husband operates in the middle of that 0.15 to 0.25 range.
Sure. Right. I operate at the. Top end, somebody with severe stress or PTSD will operate at the very low end.
So we have
to make sure when, when we tell the generator what frequency to put out that it puts out frequencies that match or are a little above that person's frequency. So what we do, the way in which we calibrate this thing is we also supply a wearable.
Yes,
and that wearable measures your sleep in real time, but we also measure in not just the not just like other wearables. They just look at, um, the standard deviation of beat to beat, you know, intervals, you know, heartbeat to heartbeat intervals. And that's a pretty crude measurement. It doesn't give us the frequency information we need.
We have to do a frequency analysis in real time to know where you're at. And when we see in your sleep, when we see your sleep or that, that frequency analysis start to go down, you're literally moving into Delta sleep. So the wearable sends a very quick signal in milliseconds to the generator. And it says, Hey, you know, he's moving into deep sleep, use these frequencies.
So then the generators changes and just uses those frequencies to move you into deep sleep. And then when the wearable senses that you're in deep sleep, then it sends it another message to say, all right, he's there. Let's deepen that. And so it sends a set of frequencies that work a little higher up in the brain, you know, to coordinate that generation of Delta waves.
So, so, yeah, so we, it's, we call it real time sleep stage enhancement, and then we continue to monitor your sleep every, you know, every 12 sessions, we may make an adjustment to your resonant frequency, your center point frequency, so that we basically optimize your deep sleep.
I mean, and how many people are always saying, how do I improve my deep sleep?
What can I do now that people are tracking? Quick tangent, I don't know if you have any callouts about the accuracy or the ability to track deep sleep with any of these other wearables, or would you say just to kind of stick with, with Soltech's numbers there?
Well, you know, you can certainly use other wearables.
There will be a little difference in accuracy because They're only looking at when you only look at the standard deviation of beat to beat intervals, you're also getting the influence of cortical activity. So if you're stressed, it's not going to be as low. And as a result, you're, you're ending up measuring every, because everybody has some level of stress, you're, you're, you're measuring brainstem activity and cortical activity.
And that, that won't give you as an accurate measurement. Okay. So we like to know. Exactly what the brainstem is doing, because that tells us what we have to do with the generator.
Got it. Wow.
So there is a difference there. Otherwise, if you're just using another tracker, you can get an estimate of your deep sleep.
You can get an idea. Okay, and you can compare from night to night, because it'll give you a reasonably reliable, you know, estimate as to what's happening.
Okay, so if anyone's listening and they are stressed, they know they're stressed right now and they're not sleeping well, or maybe they do have some trauma, PTSD, a layer, you know, number of things at play, is there hope?
to be able to then improve upon where they're falling on these scales, the ability to improve this deep sleep with the support of something like soul tech and beyond. I wonder if we can talk about like, are you destined to be stuck at this level or, you know, the ability to impact that?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And the answer is really pretty complex, but let me start out by saying we don't know for sure.
Okay.
That's the short answer, but I'll tell you now what we think. Okay. First of all, if you sleep better, you're going to be less stressed.
Yes,
so it works both ways. If you're more stressed, you're going to have worse sleep.
But if you have bad sleep, you're going to have worse stress.
Yes,
you'll be predisposed to it. Okay, so so if you think about it, if we improve your sleep, you're going to have less stress. And so you have a positive cycle happening.
Yes.
All right. You would think that if you're operating at a level with less stress, that You're going to be able to move that center point frequency up
and
in working with some PTSD patients, what we've seen is that during the daytime when they're really stressed, they have to operate at lower frequencies than at night.
And so it seems to make sense that, okay, that's probably working. And so you'd probably migrate it up over time. And I think that's what we're going to find out. Nobody's ever done this before. Okay. I mean, this project has been really interesting, but it's also been annoying because you can't go to a textbook for the answers.
Right. Right.
I mean, all of the, all of the advancements we've made have been due to discoveries we've had to make. Right. So that's why we've been working on this project since the late nineties. Incredible.
Wow. Okay, so there's still a lot of unknowns, but in your work with people that have had some of those sleep troubles, you know, because certainly we do see a number of people that are tuning in that are dealing with some form of insomnia now, maybe we don't love that label because it's just something they're dealing with at the moment.
certainly a period of time where they have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, and they might be feeling very stressed as a result. So it's not like they don't want to sleep or they're just like having really bad sleep hygiene or something like they're trying, and yet they're getting themselves more and more amped up as a result.
So in your estimation, It feels as if this would be something that even of the maybe small amounts of sleep that they're getting, we can improve the quality of that. And then that could support that positive loop that you were speaking to where it can help support slowly but surely lowering some of that stress and then getting them on the right track potentially.
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely the case. But let me point one thing out. Please. You know, We live in a society that expects immediate results.
Yes. Okay.
Okay, you know, Oh, I'm just going to take a pill and I'll be better in an hour.
All right. You know? Yes.
Okay. This doesn't work that way.
Okay.
Okay. Because like I said before, for an older person, well, and not even that old, you start losing Delta sleep when you're in your mid twenties.
Yeah.
By the time you're in your mid to late forties, you've already lost 60 to 70%.
Okay.
So even when you talk about a person that's, let's say 45, okay, they can turn this on and immediately the next day say, Oh, I slept much better and that was great. Okay. Cause we have to restore those cells. And depending on how badly your brain has deteriorated, whether it be due to age, like you said, trauma, even emotional trauma, you know, those things all play a role.
So, so when you think about it. It depends on how badly damaged your brain is already as to how long it's going to take. What we've seen with, uh, people in their twenties and thirties that are, that really live a healthy lifestyle and that, that, you know, let's say athletes, you know, or people that are very physically fit and, you know, emotionally well balanced this and that, um, you could say, well, they don't need it, but they've actually started to lose that Delta sleep.
We have, we have a lot of fitness enthusiasts that use this for preventive reasons, but even with them. You see improvement because they have lost some of those cells,
but
their improvement because they have so many of those cells is very rapid. I mean, they'll see some changes in literally, you know, a couple weeks.
Really? Yeah, that's because they have so much of the architecture present already. It's, it's like, you've already got a house, and if you only have to add a coat of paint to make it look better, that's not hard. But if the exterior is all deteriorated, you gotta replace all the wood and this and that, you know, it takes a lot of work.
Yeah. Right.
So, so when you're dealing with, with somebody like me, for instance, who had lost most of their, uh, deep sleep, I think to get it back to, to be a 30 year old was probably a six month process.
But the fact that it's hope and that they, you had to sell those results, it's like incredible.
Right.
Right. And you get better during that time, you know, and so, you know, you, you, you, first of all, your light sleep starts to get deeper
and
then it gets to the point where it actually turns into deep sleep. Okay, it's a gradient. I mean, we shouldn't sleep was badly described in the early days and nobody's changed it.
Yes,
I used to argue with the sleep society about can we change this from light sleep deep sleep instead of calling it that let's talk about non REM sleep quality. I said, we got computers now we can do this kind of thing. Yes. In general, doctors aren't good at math, and so they just, they couldn't grasp the concepts, and you know, I couldn't convince them that we should change the way we look at sleep.
But we
look at non REM quality to say, okay, their light sleep is getting deeper, that's good. That means in time, it'll turn into deep sleep, if you want to use that threshold kind of criteria. And then once you're in deep sleep, you start to get to a deeper level of deep sleep. The Sleep Society used to break that up into two levels.
Now they don't anymore. They just say deep sleep. Right. Yeah. And so we see that constantly getting deeper, you know, with use.
This is so interesting. So then we have a new reframe, potentially, if I'm hearing you correctly. It's like the light sleep, which I think so many people just think of a throwaway or who needs it?
Maybe not who needs it, but they want to prioritize the deep and the realm that this is an opportunity to kind of upcycle that light sleep to become and transition to deep sleep, if that's accurate.
That's extremely accurate. And this is why it makes so much sense to do that, because half of your sleep time is in light sleep.
And sleep is so broad. It's everything from drowsiness to Delta sleep. Sure. So I could be sleeping 50 percent of my sleep time, like just a little bit below drowsiness, and that's really not good. Or I could be almost at deep sleep, which is pretty good.
Right. See what I mean? Totally. So for my people that are dealing with that chronic stress, insomnia, you know, they're not getting enough sleep and of the sleep that they're getting, it's more splintered and light and all those things.
This is an opportunity for them over the long term, not like an immediate fix, but over the long term to potentially be able to transition what they're getting to a much higher quality and then. Presumably that could help support the balance of their autonomic nervous system over time to then maybe be able to augment.
I mean, I know I'm making a lot of assumptions, but.
No, you're correct in what you say. But in addition, we have lots of people that use our technology during the day. Yes. Because
at
night, you don't know what it's doing to your stress level.
Yes. But you
certainly will know during the day.
Interesting.
We have a lot of people that are stressed at work, so they literally put it under their desk.
Whaaat?
Yeah.
Smart.
Well, I mean, I mean, we, think about it this way, I mean, our, our task after we, we experimented with so many different ways to induce relaxation,
and
every time, even when we figured out something that really worked. I mean, we, we ended up with a technology that worked incredibly well, and you had to use it for one hour, three times a week.
Okay?
And
it had a, it had a, you know, a prolonged effect, so that that's all you had to do, and you would be in a much reduced state of stress, you know, all week long. All right? We thought, hey, that's good enough. Right. That should work. And it should really help with all these stress related illnesses. I mean, that's 75 to 90 percent of medicine.
Yes.
And so we, we worked with a holistic community here in the Twin Cities and we got these systems out that did this and we tracked patients over a couple of years. And what we saw is three hours a week was too much effort. Too
much of an ask. Yeah. Right.
And so we said, okay, so we need to make something where somebody could use it while they're doing other things.
So they're not dedicating any time specifically to the therapy. It's like, yeah, right. So it's like, literally, it's like, well, let me teach you how to multi do to do multitasking meditation.
Yeah, exactly.
Right. No sense whatsoever. Yeah, that became our spec in terms of the product. That's what we had to do.
And so when we were finally able to do it. And so finally. You know, you could use this when you're watching TV and it'll relax you. I mean, we put it, we even put it in a function. It's called relax to sleep. It's one of the settings.
Really?
So you could, you could do this. You could set it for like half an hour or an hour and you can sit in bed and read.
And then, all of a sudden, at some point, you know, you can't hold your eyes open and say, Okay, I guess it's time to go to sleep. You don't have to do anything to change the settings. Just put your book down, lay down, and you go to sleep. And because it does it to you, even when you're doing something else.
So, we have people doing it at work, and doing their emails and their regular work. You can't hear it, but you can feel it. And you can feel what it's doing to you.
Is that something you do, too, throughout the course of the day, like have it on while you're working, or?
I don't, because I don't need it.
Yeah.
But
my sleep routine, which I think we'll get to later. We
will get to, yes. Yeah,
you know, is a little different, so I incorporate it into what I do in the morning.
Oh, great. Okay. Amazing. How about any call outs? We do have some people that are, you know, kind of biohackers, what have you, and they're using things like magnets under their bed.
So like the magnetico or other things of that nature. Any call outs of could that be disruptive to the use of soul tech? Any thoughts there? No,
no. I mean, those are static. They're not creating a frequency.
Yeah, just plain. They don't
do what this does. And when we create a frequency, all it does is. It just changes that magnetic field to be the frequency.
That's all. That's all. Even with metal under your bed, any of that is all irrelevant.
Okay, great. How about for people that have concerns? Certainly when we're talking about sleep, often people are dealing with anxiety and health anxiety and overthinking everything. So we'll hear people talk about and, you know, for anyone listening, not me to, you know, kind of put judgment.
I've been there myself, but curious, you know, people have fears around things like EMFs or things, you know, harming them in some way, shape or form. Any call outs there?
Well, that's why we don't use EMFs. There's a big difference between magnetism and electromagnetism. Yes. Not the same phenomenon.
Yes.
In science, I won't put you on the spot here.
But, you know, I normally, you know, ask people, what is the force carrier? For of electromagnetic waves and they go, oh yeah, exactly. This
so complicated. I know. Right now my um, husband's reading the Invisible Rainbow. I dunno if you've heard that book by any chance. Yeah. Going down the rabbit hole on electricity and electromagnetic fields and it's just blah, you know, it's Right.
Very complicated.
Well, the force carrier for electromagnetism is the photon.
Yeah. Because
electromagnetism includes the, the light spectrum as well.
Yeah.
Okay. So it's called the photon. and electromagnetism is, well, you know, you, it's this combination of, you know, an electric current and a magnetic field.
Hmm. So you
would think that that magnetic field. Is just like, you know, the magnetic field around a refrigerator magnet, right? Right,
right.
Not. It's not. I mean, they should have never labeled it that way.
Yeah. It's a labeling problem. Again, like, um, the sleep community and, you know, light sleep and deep sleep, all these things.
We need a marketing change.
Exactly. And it turns out, what's the force carrier in a magnet, in an earth magnet? Is it the photon? No. Science has never been able to measure it, and so what they named it is the virtual photon.
Oh my gosh. Got it.
So, we're dealing with two different forces here.
Yeah.
Okay. And the, the, So you might have heard of pulsed electromagnetic frequencies.
Yes. P E M F.
Mm hmm. You have a mat right over here. Right.
The problem with that is to get down to the frequencies we're talking about, brainwave frequencies and lower. Sure. You, you can't get there directly. So they can't create a frequency of. You know, two hertz cycles per second, you know, what they have to do is they use a fast frequency and then they amplitude modulate it.
So it's like this and then it comes down low and then it gets big again. And the problem is the fast frequencies are still there. And that doesn't work well with the nervous system because the nervous system operates. You move sodium and potassium through these, what's called the, the sodium potassium.
You know, gate and and that gate is a molecule that's positively and negatively charged. And so you end up with this jitter effect. And so you don't get what you want to get, you don't get the right frequency. And so that's why we had to use magnets. It would have been a lot cheaper to use electromagnetism, but that doesn't work.
It
works. Ah, wow. So we had
to use real magnets.
Okay, so that can put at ease anyone's, you know, kind of health concerns around EMFs issues, like they don't even have to worry about that with this product.
No, I mean, we have biohacker users that sleep in Faraday cages. Yeah.
Yes.
And, you know, and they, they use this because, again, no EMFs.
So it can go in a Faraday cage? Oh,
yeah, sure.
Oh, that's so good to know, because actually we're moving to another. Place and we may or may not experiment with the Faraday cage. So that's great. Okay If you've tuned into the show or followed any of our content here at sleep is a skill You may have heard that everyone that we work with wears the or ring and as a result We have amassed a very large database of or ring users and get to see what really moves the needle for people when it comes to their sleep measurably.
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Okay, so back to this conversation about this being able to influence our stress. So you're saying for people to be thinking about this is something that they can both passively use in the evening while they're sleeping and maybe a little bit active, but not. during the day. So meaning they would just kind of incorporate it, but it can be in the background while they're doing emails, while they're watching TV, that sort of thing.
So it's an opportunity to really maximize the ability to impact your autonomic nervous system. And with the idea that this is kind of a commitment that over time, it's not like tomorrow, but in time, and it depends on your unique biology, but you'll find yourself improving upon the balance of that nervous system.
Well, that's right, but, but here's an important distinction. Yeah, please. What happens at night, you're not aware of. Exactly. Yeah. What happens during the day, you're aware of. And this is, this is a pivotal point that people just don't understand. People think their stress baseline is what they're experiencing today.
And therefore, therefore they label it as normal. This is the way I am normally. Meanwhile, they could be carrying a ton of stress. So, it may be normal for them, but it's not normal and healthy. Okay? And so, that's a big problem. Yeah. There's very few people who know what no stress feels like.
Oh, absolutely.
So, if that was your baseline, right, you would know, Hey, I'm stressed, even when I have a little stress. Okay, so, so it's a really big issue and the only way to solve it is to be aware of your stress level and be aware of how you feel when you're doing different things, you have to be awake when you do that.
You don't have to pay attention to it full time, but you have to sort of do a check in. And the best way to do that is what we played with, you know, before this podcast, when I had you feel different parts of your body.
Yes, thank you.
Because it's that feeling aspect that's so key. And so, and this technology induces that feeling.
And you have to just allow it to grow and grow and grow. And then you can reproduce that over time. Although when you still use the technology, it enhances it further.
Jeez. Okay. This really puts the controls back into the person that is feeling so overwhelmed, so chronically stressed. Maybe dealing with health issues, maybe dealing with some trauma, et cetera, et cetera.
This is a way for them to take that on by day and by night.
Well, I mean, I mean, I use it all the time. Everybody's going to get triggered.
Yeah.
Okay. Right. It's, it's what do you do when you're triggered?
Yes.
Okay. And if you could immediately relax yourself, then you could deal with being triggered rationally and calmly.
And so it's, and the other thing that's so important to understand is. Everybody develops egoic beliefs and attitudes. Everybody, I don't care who you are, you've been traumatized in one way or another to a level, some level. Some
level. I'm
not talking about, PTSD is the most severe, alright? But, but, you know, look.
Parents insult children in the slightest ways. Kids carry that around. Everybody develops coping strategies or defense mechanisms. Yep. And they're easy to trigger. And then people typically respond stereotypically.
Mmm.
Yeah. And they fall into two categories, typically suppressors and projectors.
No,
that's not, I don't have that problem.
You have it. That's a, that's a projector. Suppressor is they just kind of take it and they kind of shrink away, you know, it's, it's suppress everything. All right. And so if you can learn to be more relaxed, you can see your coping strategy in action. Wow. And then you can say, Oh, I've just been triggered.
And then you can say, why? Mm hmm. What do I believe that is causing me to be triggered?
Right,
you could start to unwind it. I mean, think about it. You know, I would talk to psychologists and say, you know, you should be using this with your clients so that they can get to the point where they can start dealing with the underlying issues because you're never going to get really better unless you unwind these coping strategies so that you don't get triggered.
So it's a way to understand oneself by being more relaxed. That's what's so vital here. Recognize when you're triggered and unwind the process.
Wow. Okay. So I can unequivocally say that out of the many years working with people that are coming our way around sleep, one of the top issues or questions or concerns that people have is around wake ups throughout the course of the night.
And they feel like they're so frustrated. They're waking up at. two, three, four in the morning. And then I would say underneath that the difficulty falling asleep. But most commonly I'm hearing people say, just tell me what to do with waking up. I'm over it, you know, they're frustrated. And now this has become their trigger.
It's like, then they look at the clock or whatever. And so would given everything you've shared, this could be such a beautiful kind of support for working through that. trigger night after night and learning to accept when they are awake, but also then over time, hopefully minimize some of that.
When you're older, it's actually considered normal to wake up five times during the night.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, most people do it. Yeah. And the question that people have that are stressed is getting back to sleep.
Yes. Another important distinction. It's not necessarily the wake ups. It's how long am I now stuck awake? You know, Two in the morning. Am I up now for the day? Yeah,
exactly. I mean, that happens to me, you know, I, I, even though I've got good Delta sleep again, I'll still wake up.
I mean, when you get older, I gotta go to the bathroom.
Yeah,
that's a, so the question is, all right, now I got to go back to sleep and sleep. Usually I can fall back to sleep pretty well, because now I have deep sleep and that helps you get down and feel so relaxed that when I get back in the bed, I just fall asleep.
But later, you know, in the morning, when I still want to sleep longer, or I think I should sleep longer, I'll wake up and I'll do just what these people do. I'll start to think, what do I have to do today? What's bothering me? Blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden, I'm looking at the clock, I say, oh crap, I might as well just get up.
Yes. All
right. I don't do that anymore. This is why, because what, what I can do, because I've learned how to relax so well using this technology, I just say, all right, fine, I'm going to do a meditation session in bed. I don't turn, I don't change anything about the settings or anything.
Okay.
Okay. It's running.
My normal sleep, you know, which gives me the same kind of frequencies, by the way.
Yeah.
Okay. Because remember the same kind of frequencies we use for most people for deep sleep are the same that you would use for deep relaxation. Mmm. So I'm awake. The technology knows I'm awake and it says, I'm going to try to put you into deeper sleep.
And I also, they also add back to sleep frequencies, which are some cortical frequencies to help you go down, you know, quicker.
All right.
So what I do is I wake up and I go, all right, I'm not falling right back to sleep, but I think I, I haven't slept enough. So I think I really should. So I just say, all right, I'm just going to feel my body and I'm going to feel that subtle vibration throughout everything.
And I'm going to let it deepen, deepen, deepen. Then what happens is I either do either end up doing like an hour meditation session. And since I haven't fallen back to sleep, I say, I don't think I need to, Yeah. But. If I really need to, it'll put me back to sleep.
Oh my god, that would be a blessing for so many people that are really struggling.
Exactly. But, again, not an overnight thing.
You have
to learn what it feels like to be this way. But once you get it, you're there. That's the beauty of it.
That is amazing. For so many people that are dealing with insomnia, they might be trying to practice some form of CBTI, where the call out will be, if you are waking up throughout the course of the night, get out of bed, go somewhere else, read a book, that sort of thing.
There's, it can't reach if you leave the bed, you have to be nearby there, right? What does that look like? Yeah,
yeah, I mean, you know, look, my wife, I saw last night, she woke up in the middle of the night. And she started to read. She stayed in bed and she's got a Kindle. Okay.
Yeah.
She started to read. But because she's got the system on, it put her back to sleep.
So there could be the argument that this could be support. And there, there have been more, we've seen different experts that will soften on the rigidity of that recommendation. Because there are some people that are like, you got to get out of bed immediately. You don't want to link up the bed with stress.
But then there's other people that say, well, if you're not. Feeling frustrated or stressed, you know, there's an opportunity to be at peace and relax in the bed and then, right? So.
Well, if, if you learn how to relax, you can do it even when you're stressed.
Yeah. I mean,
you know, I got a call this morning that I, I really didn't like.
Ugh.
Okay. And,
and right
away I felt, oh, crap. Yeah. And I could feel the stress building. I said, no. And I just stopped and I elicited what I've learned from using this technology in terms of the feeling that you were experiencing, you know, before the podcast.
Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, could there be a more important skill to build than that?
I don't know. No.
No, because it eradicates chronic stress. And again, chronic stress leads to chronic illnesses. Yes.
Yes. Wow. Oh my gosh. Oh, I'm going to have to refrain from asking more questions. I know I want to be respectful of your time. Before we ask questions around how you're managing your own sleep, is there anything that we left out or any thoughts on this big, huge topic?
Well, I think the important thing, we didn't cover dream sleep. Oh, yes. The nice thing about dream sleep is you don't lose that with age.
Beautiful.
But.
But.
Here's the but.
Yeah, big asterisk.
If you don't sleep long enough, since most of your dream sleep comes in the last half of the night, you'll deprive yourself of that dream sleep.
And that's important for emotional health in addition to other things. Sure. That's like our personal therapist. You
don't have to
go, I mean, you don't have to interpret your dreams, this or that. But that's where your subconscious is kind of working out problems. Yeah. That's where certain insights come to mind.
Sure. Right? That's where I get, you know, I go to bed, before I go to bed, if I'm working on a problem that I can't solve, I use my brain to say, what, what is, what are the right questions to be asking?
You
know, what am I really trying to learn here? And when I do that, I typically wake up in the morning with the answer.
Amazing, using that brain, that supercomputer to your advantage. And
that's typically a function of dream sleep.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Wow, okay, so any other call outs on the dream topic there? Or anything that we left out?
No, I think we got it. I mean, I think, you know, the other thing you touched on was, as we age, that sleep fragmentation occurs.
Yes.
And what happens is, you know, you end up with a loss of sleep cycles, but that even starts much earlier.
Yeah.
And there's normally You know, if you sleep, let's say, seven and a half hours, you have perfectly average sleep cycles of 90 minutes. You're going to have five sleep cycles. Yeah, very rare. But yeah, but, you know, let's just say that that's what we're looking at here.
And usually what you see is you see. Light sleep, then deep sleep. And then you come up a little light sleep, and then you move into dream sleep. And then you repeat the whole cycle.
And the
only difference from one cycle to the other is that in the beginning of the night, you have a lot more deep sleep.
So your, your deep sleep part is longer, and your dream sleep is shorter. Later in the night, you may not have any deep sleep, because you've already had enough. And your, your dream sleep is longer. All right. And. What happens is, if you can sleep like that, boy, that, I mean, that's the sleep of a child.
Yes.
That's what their sleep should look like and generally does look like, all right? Now, what's important to understand when you're analyzing sleep is those beautiful cycles fade fast.
Okay. Yeah.
Okay? And they fade in relationship to the loss of deep sleep. Wow. And so, as you generate more of that deep sleep, the, that cycling returns.
I mean, You know, my chief financial officer in our company, uh, you know, he's about my age, and he had lost most of his deep sleep too. And he has these beautiful long sleep cycles. And because he has regained all his deep sleep, he looks like he sleeps like a 10 year old. He's got these beautiful sleep cycles.
I just love looking at them.
Geez, that's incredible. And I do appreciate your call out too about like, This is something that you want to take on for the long haul because we do see so many people that they are in this cycle of like, fix me and they go and they use something for a couple days and then, oh, you know, I don't see it on my ring.
So bye, but this is really important to have that framing for when we dive into this with how to set those expectations and what to be aware of, but also just the hopefully peace of mind to know that this is working on your body. So fundamentally over the long term,
right? And one of the things we tell.
new customers is, hey, you know what? You really need to try this for a number of stress sessions to reduce your stress. Yes. So that you could actually feel what it's doing to you. And, and so that's a key.
Yeah. Okay. Wow. Oh, and real quick, you mentioned for kids, could kids use this if they are dealing with any, you know, autism or certain difficulties with their sleep, or is it hard to say?
Well, The only thing I can say is for legal purposes, we recommend it for use when you're 18 and over.
Okay, got it. I had a real quick call out. I don't know if you've seen kind of the buzz that sleep age might be something that we can test for in the future using AI, kind of similar to how, you know, we can test for chronological versus biological age nowadays.
The thinking is we'll be able to test for sleep age with AI usage. So. Looking at things like what you spoke to, so as we get older, a tendency for more sleep fragmentation, maybe sleep quantity, quality, etc. And if that does come into vogue, it makes me think, you know, maybe if someone's 32 and they're sleeping like a 59 year old, that there could be some, this could be a more direct option of how to start making that sleep more youthful.
Yeah, I mean, AI has got moves. So popular as a phrase, and I tell you, as somebody who can program a computer, you don't need AI to determine sleep age.
You don't, right? You could probably just take a little quick look,
take a look at the sleep histogram and the amount of delta you have in the level of fragmentation and make an assessment.
pretty quickly.
Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Okay. So such an exciting conversation. We've had a lot of people on the podcast talk about a lot of different things with sleep, but we don't have a lot of people that fall into and technologies that fall into the sleep enhancement bucket. You know, this is really an exciting time.
So thank you for sharing this with the work you do. And so, because you're so knowledgeable around sleep. I'm very excited to learn how you're managing your own sleep. So our first question is, what does your nightly sleep routine look like right now?
What I try to do is make sure I leave enough time to sleep.
Yes.
Opportunity. Crucial.
Okay. And people, you know, that aren't measuring their sleep, for instance. Don't realize that, you know, they think that if they go to bed at 11 p. m. and they wake up at 7 a. m. Yeah, I slept for eight hours.
Yes. Well
doesn't work that way General people are awake about an hour during that period.
Yeah
way. It's seven hours,
right?
So so number one understand that and and I'm not saying everybody needs eight hours of sleep. I mean, that's not true
Yes.
I mean, some people do very, very well with five hours and some people need 10 hours. Yes. So it's all over the map in terms of what a person needs, but everybody knows how much sleep they need.
Yeah.
And so, you know, try to set aside enough time to sleep. So I try to go to, and I like to go to bed early principally because I was always that way since I was a kid. I mean, when I was five years old, my mother used to call me, suck a thumb, pull an ear. I would sit on the stairs that led upstairs, sucking my thumb and pulling my ear because all I wanted to do was go to bed.
Oh, man,
she wouldn't let me go to bed because it was too early and she didn't want me to wake up too early.
That is very unusual. I love that.
Right. And so, so, you know, know your own pattern. Yeah.
Yeah.
Right. And so, so that's key. And then figure out, you know, when am I going to go to sleep and how am I going to make up for it?
But if you're used to sleeping, you know, if your tendency is to sleep, go to bed early, then if you go to bed three hours later than that, there's a good chance. You're not going to get as much deep sleep because your body wants to have that deep sleep when it wants you to be
asleep. Yeah.
Okay. So, so setting not only enough time, but keeping your.
You know, go to sleep time and your wake time about the same. That's the best sleep hygiene tip because your body is regulated on a circadian rhythm that's unique to you and you, you know, if you don't follow it, you're not going to have the best results.
Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Okay, anything else that we missed in your sleep evening routine, or does that cover it largely?
Well, the, you know, I mean, I try to do something that's quiet, you know, without too much light, you know, before I go to bed.
Okay. And that
helps me. But if I'm really tired, I'm going to fall asleep anyway, because that's, that's my nature. You know, I generally don't have a problem falling asleep. Um, but I also tend not to do things that are going to really, like, wake me up.
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Then it is harder to fall asleep, or when I do fall asleep, I'll miss that first cycle of deep sleep.
Got it. Okay. Yeah. Makes sense. And then our next question would be, what might we see in your morning sleep routine? So how you start your day could impact your sleep. Is the argument there?
Yeah. I mean, what I do is I tend to be early to bed, early to rise. And so I was never a long sleeper. Even when I was a child, I go to sleep early, but I wake up really early. That was just the way I was. And then medical training really kills your sleep when you have 36 hour shifts.
You know, eight
years of that will really have an effect.
So what I do when I wake up is I make a judgment call. I said, you know, do I think I need to sleep anymore? Can I fall asleep? Can I fall right back to sleep? And if I can't, You know, I get back in bed, I lay down and I say, all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a meditation session. I don't do any, the system is still on, but I, I can move into a very, very deep state of meditation.
And what that does for me is. It dramatically reduces any stress I encounter during the day.
Hmm.
So that, that, that, right, it's, it's preventive, but it's also extremely restful. And then if it turns out that I was wrong, and I really did need more sleep. Yes. At the end of that, I'll feel tired and I will go back.
I will continue to sleep.
Is there a particular type of meditation that you do?
I don't really follow a particular routine. I don't sit in a lotus position. I don't do any of that. I don't think that's necessary at all. Um, I work to embody what I consider to be my spiritual self. So, so, you know, so. You know, I'm, I make up my own mantra and I'll use that to really deepen my state.
It's really to, to stop thinking about other things.
Yeah. It doesn't even, you can say hamburger over and over again. It doesn't really seem to matter. Right.
Right. And then the other thing I do, although I think intention does matter. Yes. Yes. Hamburger. You may find yourself eating a hamburger for lunch.
The ability for us to prime ourselves. Okay. Maybe we'll get a piece or something that, you know, a little bit.
But, but what, what, um, uh, what I do in addition to, you know, having some form of mantra, which I don't, I don't sit there and repeat it like the whole time I'm meditating, but I, I'll say it if I catch myself thinking,
okay.
All right, I'll say that mantra, but I'll also direct my attention to. My, how my body feels,
that
little bit of tingling that you experienced, okay, that ends up deepening so much more. It becomes very, very powerful. Because I've been running those frequencies throughout the night and now all of a sudden I'm moving, you know, when I get back in the bed, I don't feel them, but when I allow myself to feel them, they come with much greater intensity.
So
I have my best meditation sessions doing it that way.
And then
I, I wake up. You know, totally clear and incredibly relaxed, and that's when I do my best work, and that's why I like to go to bed early, so I'll wake up typically four or five in the morning, and those next four hours, I can get as much work done as I would in a normal eight hour work session.
I mean,
I'm so productive and I'm so receptive
at
that point. So everything just flows. So it's really everything sort of coming from the higher mind at that point. And I just start typing and doing what I need to do. And it's effortless.
And this has been so. experience has felt so different since, because you said you started at 69, right?
With that, what was like 15 minutes of deep sleep or what have you on average. So do you feel just like a totally different experience in your productivity and how you wake up nowadays with like an hour and a half or what have you that you're averaging? Oh yeah. It's wild.
I don't need any caffeine. I don't need to take a nap.
I mean, back then I was only sleeping three to four hours a night. What? No way! Well, I wouldn't, didn't have any, any delta sleep. Yeah. And delta sleep ends up prolonging sleep, and so I wake up and I, I just couldn't fall back to sleep.
Oh my gosh. So, and then, so how much has this then augmented? And I hear you too, because out of all those years, you know, in the residency and what have you, that shortening that did, so did you find that then that's augmented the total sleep duration for you now?
Oh yeah. Yeah. I probably sleep on average somewhere around six hours, but that's what I was used to sleeping.
Yeah, that's insane. What a difference for where you're at to where you are now. Yeah, yeah.
Although what we find with some of our customers is they actually sleep less.
Yes. Because
they're getting greater rest, restorative sleep.
So then, you know, they were lying in bed a lot longer doing late sleep and drowsiness and that goes away. They're getting better Delta sleep and so they're actually shortening their sleep time.
So do you think for idiopathic hypersomnia that this could be something to explore for them as well? It's like a question of why are we sleeping so long that potentially, you know, I mean, that's a big statement.
I don't,
I don't know. I mean, we haven't tested that, so I really can't tell you. Um, you would like to think so, but there's a number of reasons why people with hypersomnia sleep that way. I mean, you know, some of it is, for instance, depression.
And so if
you don't solve the depression, you know, I don't know that, you know, it's going to work.
Right. But so for, since we do see for insomnia so commonly, anxiety and depression of some type showing up as to the why for those wake ups, this could go back to what we were kind of postulating that it's There's a possibility that using something like this could, over time, support some of that symptomology.
I mean, I know these are big statements, but
Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt. But, again, it also gets back to, you're now in a better position to seek therapy and have the therapy be effective, because you're going to be willing to deal with the underlying issues.
Yeah, interesting. Wow. I mean, there's so many implications.
Okay, so, did we cover your morning sleep routine, largely? Yeah. Got it. So then what might we see on your nightstand or in your environment, or maybe in your case, under your bed or beyond?
Well, obviously the magnetic generator that we use is under the bed. I mean, the only thing I have on my nightstand is a book that I'll read, you know, if I want to read, you know, sometimes that's a good way for me to sort of shut down.
Yes. You know,
so it's, it's, it's not a lot of light. You know, read a book, you know, and, and it's, I don't do it, I probably do it a couple times a week.
Yeah, no, I mean, if there's a theme that we've seen over these, you know, I think we have as far as recorded podcasts, it's got to be like 250, we still got to drip more of them out and what have you.
And there's definitely seems to be a theme of the people that see most at ease and at peace with their sleep. Minimalism seems to be there where, you know, whereas some people that are still struggling, they've got like 27 gadgets and supplements and all the things like in their space to try to coerce or force sleep to come, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. We don't need that. Beautiful. Okay, and the last question would be, so far to date, what would you say has made the biggest change to your sleep management? Or maybe said another way, biggest aha moment in managing your sleep?
Well, my, my sleep hygiene was always pretty good. Okay. So that was, you know, I was pretty good about, you know, except, you know, the problem was when I started to sleep so little.
Yeah,
that was, that was a problem. But I, I couldn't do anything about that
because
I had lost adult to sleep. So all of that was. You know, okay. I mean, I wasn't doing anything that was deleterious, and I had no problem falling asleep, even when I slept three hours, because I was sleep deprived. Sure,
yeah, you're out.
It was
just like, I can't continue to sleep anymore, I'm wide awake.
Yeah.
And it wasn't because of stress. Sure,
it was just the genetics of your sleep.
Right. I mean, you know, that was a problem back then, you know, I got to the point where I was drinking three to four cups of coffee a day just to stay awake during the day and didn't didn't have a problem falling asleep.
So, you know, I don't, you know, I don't do that now.
Um,
because it would disturb me
in
terms of falling asleep. So I think sleep hygiene was fine. Um, I mean, you know, I don't want to feel, you know, self promoting, but it's really our technology has been the big thing because it's allowed me to restore my deep sleep.
That's amazing. I mean, we have so many clients that over 55 and beyond where they just start to see these changes in their sleep and you know, they might be doing all the things and it can be so frustrating from a physiological biological level that they just can't seem to influence this. And then the idea that this could be something that could make that difference could be really empowering.
Amazing.
As much as I like the improved sleep. Yeah. As a physician, I will adamantly tell you that using this for stress reduction is In my opinion, more important than using it for sleep, even though you can do both.
Is there a recommended protocol, or does it change depending on stress load for people, of how much they should be using by day as well, or just feel it out for yourself?
I think people have to judge for themselves. Well, first of all, you can do it while you're doing other things.
Yeah.
Which is nice. So you don't have to dedicate time to it. Although, even when you do other things, periodically just say, What kind of, what am I feeling? You know, and I go back to that tingling sensation as, as, um, you know, cause people have to learn that and it's progressive.
I mean, as people, you know, if they feel it in their feet and then it goes up to their legs, usually by the time it hits the knees, they start feeling it in their hands. And then the last thing is their torso, you know, and feeling it there. But when you can get that full body.
Yeah, you know,
and we're human beings are very, very good at reproducing feeling states.
Yeah,
learning how to feel and and at the same time that equates to your feeling nature.
All right. So,
so let me give a warning to men that never want to cry in front of anybody.
Yes,
don't use this
amazing. Okay, this will get you in touch with your feelings. That might be a problem for the masculine, right?
Right. As you feel your, your physicality more.
Yeah.
We'll also start feeling your emotions more. So, so women are much better at doing this our society and their women's feelings. Nature in general are much better.
So
women will appreciate this, you know, very, very quickly compared to men, uh, particularly men that are kind of left brain that are always thinking and not, you know, not on the receptive feeling end of things.
But this, this ends up changing people. That's, it's a very, very dramatic, uh, change. So it will, it will change one's personality.
Amazing. Wow. Okay, so then for people listening that are saying, I need to, you know, learn more about this, check this out, get this for myself, and follow your work and beyond, what are the best ways for them to do that?
Yeah, a lot of the information is on our website.
Okay.
You know, it's, uh, you know, SOLTEC Health. It's S O L T E C. And then H E A L T H dot com.
Why'd you name it SoulTech too? Is it like the, the soul or?
Well, there were a number of reasons. That's one. The other was SoulSOL as like the only one.
Oh, okay. Got it.
Okay. Yeah. So
it was, it was kind of both of those. And actually my wife is very intuitive. And we were driving to Philadelphia from Minneapolis. And I said, you know, actually the name of the company is really Round River Research Corp. When we started this company, we started it. And we knew we had to do this research, and I knew that to solve it was going to be nearly impossible, or maybe not at all.
So
we thought the path of this company was going to be like navigating a round river. We're going to have to go around and around and around until we made enough discoveries to figure it out. But we're doing business as Soltech Health, so we're driving to Philadelphia, and I said to my wife, I said, Hey, you know what?
I need a name. That we could use is better than round river research.
Yeah.
And so she immediately says soul tech health.
Okay. So that to me, I love that. What a good partnership. Amazing. Wow. Okay. Okay. So people should go to soul tech health and then check out more. And are there any call outs on like risks if they say they want to test it out and they return policy, any, anything there?
Yeah, there's a, uh, money back guarantee, return it within 60 days.
Oh my gosh. See, this is, so, given everything you just shared, it feels like there's really, it's like a no brainer to then give this a test and, but to, at the same time, to know that whatever is going on after 60 days, you could anticipate that more is to come down the road, I'd imagine, right?
If you were to continue. Yeah,
I mean, there's more to come. The, um, I mean, we do. We do regular software updates
and just meaning like what you said to about say if they've been dealing with tons of stress and, you know, they're only getting a couple minutes of deep sleep, then it might take them a few multiple months to then feel the full effects.
Right.
And this is why it's important to do some daytime sessions so that they can really experience what it's doing. And, you know, their belief level goes up when you actually feel it.
Okay. It's like,
okay, yeah, that really is doing it because, you know, you don't notice that when you're asleep.
Correct.
Exactly. Totally. Hey, so for people listening, you know, given everything we discussed, given what we know about how much this can make a difference with your sleep, given that you can test this out for 60 days, like it feels as if I'm saying all this, I might sound like I'm like. a partner in the company or something.
I'm not. I'm just saying, given what we know about the difference that this could make for your health and well being, not to mention the daytime implications of lowering stress and the cumulative effects and compounding effects, it just feels like something that we should really look at as a potential investment for our health and well being.
Well, I think so. And again, you know, not only for sleep, but as a physician, I'll tell you, I mean, the numbers are clear. 75 to 90 percent of all people, you know, I mean, of all diseases are due to chronic stress. And I mean, The difference is enormous. And just the whole happiness factor.
Yeah,
it's kind of fun.
I mean, it's a game changer in terms of what it does to you.
Uh, wow, that's so interesting. Yeah. I mean, the reason I started this company was because I went through my own period of sleep issues years ago with insomnia, and it nearly just wrecked me. And on, it was particularly, charged because very close family member I saw go through something similar, but they went down the route of pharmaceuticals to address it.
And just a plethora of pharmaceuticals totally changed their life. Benzos high dose, you know, by the time they tried to get off at 20 years later, they went nearly died seizures, psychosis, all kinds of a mess. And so seeing that that is a route that unfortunately many people do take when they're struggling with their sleep.
I mean, maybe not to that degree, but Some way, shape, or form looking for something external from a medical from a pill perspective, and then getting themselves into trouble with the symptomology down the road of some of the effects to see that there's other things that are out there that could really be supportive and make this difference, not just to the immediacy of your sleep, but then to your well being and mental health and beyond as a whole is like very exciting.
And it really plays to part of the reason that I want to get this information out. So I so appreciate you. Doing the work you're doing and taking the time to share about this.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much. And we'll be certain to for anyone listening, we'll have all this in the show notes.
So just check out the information in the show notes to pursue taking a look at this for yourself. You've been listening to the sleep as a skill podcast, the top podcast for people who want to take They're sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday I send out the sleep obsessions newsletter, which aims to be one of the most obsessive newsletters on the planet.
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