393 | The Myths and Facts of Red Light Therapy for Pain and Longevity with Forrest Smith

[00:00:05] Welcome to the Optimal Body Podcast. I'm Dr. Jen. And I'm Dr. Dom. And we are doctors of physical therapy, bringing you the body tips and physical therapy pearls of wisdom to help you begin to understand your body, relieve your pains and restrictions, and answer your questions. Along with expert guests, our goal of the Optimal Body Podcast is really to help you discover what optimal means within your own body. Let's dive in. Before we dive into this fascinating episode, I really, really enjoyed this one.

[00:00:34] I have to tell you, he's going to mention that not only can we use and rely on these therapies, but we have to use movement as well. And this is why we appreciate brands like Vivo Barefoot Shoes as well, because it allows your foot to have to work for itself. There's no more structure. There's no more arch support. It's a barefoot shoe designed to help your own foot build strength.

[00:00:59] And there have been studies that have shown that you can increase your foot strength up to 60% within six months just by wearing the shoes alone. And this is huge and crucial because a lot of pain and issues that we start to experience in our body come from this lack of resilience, this lack of strength. So if you have not checked out Vivo Barefoot Shoes yet, this is your opportunity.

[00:01:22] Use code OPTIMAL20 at checkout on any shoes that are not already discounted for any Vivo Barefoot Shoes, whether it's for your kids, which is all we put Dante in, or whether it's for yourself or your spouse or someone else who you know needs some foot love. And we all do. Let's face it. We're putting our feet in so much throughout the day that we need something that helps to actually provide the strength and support for long-term use.

[00:01:50] Not just something that's going to support it, but something that we need more long-term. And that's where Vivo Barefoot Shoes comes into play and why we highly, highly recommend them and use them ourselves. So code OPTIMAL20 gets you that 20% discount. Get ready for a very enlightening and informative chat with Forrest Smith, who's the CEO and co-founder of Kinion.

[00:02:11] He embarked on a transformative journey by discovering the potential of red light therapy to alleviate chronic pain stemming from his personal experience with an MCL tear. His dynamic leadership has propelled Kinion's impressive growth marked by the acquisition of multiple patents in the realm of manufacturing and technology. Forrest is steadfast in his mission to empower individuals to take charge of their health and quality of life,

[00:02:37] symbolizing Kinion's commitment to redefining the light therapy landscape and reimagining the approach to chronic pain management. Prior to founding Kinion, Forrest lived in China, founding and managing multiple ventures from startup to acquisition. Aside from holding a founder position in multiple companies, Forrest was also a director of Asian operations for a Fortune 500 company.

[00:03:00] Forrest is always eager to discuss the benefits of red light therapy and its science-backed research and technology supported by over 6,000 studies. Forrest is also happy to talk about his personal injury that sparked his journey to make red light therapy more accessible. And Jen and I really love this chat because Forrest does focus on the research and he brings a lot of power to support the claims that Kinion makes and how red light therapy can truly be transformative.

[00:03:28] Forrest, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. We're really excited to have you on because we haven't specifically talked with anyone who's an expert in light therapy, who has co-founded a company that's mission is to get this out to as many people as possible and also continue to dive into and do the research to find out the most effective ways of using it. Thank you so much for having me here. I would talk about this all day long. It's really a passion project.

[00:03:54] And again, to your point, our mission as a team really isn't to necessarily grow the company as much as it is. Our specific mission is to increase the quality of life for the largest number of people we can in the most measurable way we can. And so, Jagen, thank you so much for a place to talk about it because I'm a zealot on this. Yeah. And hey, that's a similar mission to what we have going on just in a different way. So I'm excited to hear how you're doing that and how it could possibly benefit what we have going on as well.

[00:04:22] So what led you down the path of kind of discovering red light therapy? That's a great question. Actually, two main things. One is kind of environmental and contextual, which is I got to my mid-30s and I've been building startups kind of my entire adult life. I lived in China at the time. I was building factories doing innovative technology products. And I ended up having one of these companies acquired. And it was very gratifying from a professional standpoint.

[00:04:50] But what I noticed when I kind of looked down at myself physically and kind of also just mentally and emotionally at the end of that journey, I'd put on weight. I'd never carried that much weight in my life. I was stressed. I was more in a less positive kind of state of mind or affect with my family and friends. And it was really kind of a negative space for me, having been so focused on work.

[00:05:15] And so I wanted to pull back out and kind of take a meta view relative to what I could do to change that. And so I made a decision then to really both from a personal standpoint, but also from a professional standpoint, try to commit to things that I could do to both help myself out of this hole that I had built by kind of... I think of it as kind of boiling the frog. You don't notice that the frog's boiling until you're way down the line for these things. You just kind of get into your default mode.

[00:05:43] Taking a quick pause from the interview to talk about hydration and how important it is to stay hydrated, not just by drinking water, but by replacing those electrolytes that we're losing every single day without even noticing it. That's why Jen and I drink Element Electrolyte Mixes. They help replace the sodium, potassium, and magnesium that our body absolutely needs on a cellular level. These electrolytes help us with so many of our physiologic processes.

[00:06:09] They can help with things like headaches, brain fog, fatigue, bowel movements, sleep, and so much more. That's why we recommend everybody try out Element. It'll keep you coming back to your bottle of water throughout the day because they taste so great and they get us those essential electrolytes. Head down to the link in the show notes. It's just drinkelement.com backslash optimal. That's drinkelement spelled out like L-M-N-T dot com backslash optimal.

[00:06:36] And with every order, you get a free sample pack so you can try all their flavors and you'll know which one you want when you inevitably come back to get more. All right, let's get back to the interview. And I was searching for different technologies that could both help me. I had an old meniscus tear. I grappled when I was younger and tears and muscles in my back that flared up a lot. And it was keeping me from going to do more intense training. And I really wanted to find a way that was not pharmaceutical to deal with those.

[00:07:05] And actually, my mother introduced me to red light therapy, which she had been using for her face at the time. And I spent a lot of time in the medical literature. And so my first sense was, this is complete snake oil. There's no way this works. It's very counterintuitive. Like, how could that work? Shining lasers on your body is going to make physical adaptations. There's no way. And so I went and started digging into the literature and getting in some calls with researchers in the space.

[00:07:33] And the more I dug, the more I found that when the dosing was correct and optimal, the outcomes were amazing from this. And as you get older, one of the things, particularly with injuries that you see, is chronic inflammation can be one of the things that's really a limiting factor for training, for cardiovascular health and fitness. But also neurological tissue is powerfully negatively impacted by inflammation.

[00:08:02] And so as I dug into this, we found that the impacts on inflammation, particularly chronic inflammation, were super powerful, but that no one had really brought a device to market that was going to be at a price that people could afford in their home.

[00:08:17] So we took that on and we made the assumption around the product that if we reduce the friction points, so instead of only having a $30,000 device in a clinic that can actually give these results, if we can keep the same kind of dosing, but make it sub $500 and wearable and something that people can build habits around, that this could be a massive replacement for pharmaceutical solutions like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and opioids, both of which are really, really damaging.

[00:08:44] And I think that's, you know, in one case broadly known, and in one case it's less known. So that was hopefully, that's a very long elevator pitch as to why we got into this. But the main thing was not doing any harm and then providing real and meaningful alternatives to pharmaceuticals for pain and inflammation. I love where that story kind of twisted and turned from.

[00:09:08] It starts personal and can also be applied to the masses in a way that can really address some major pain points. Because like you said, I think it's becoming more and more well known that opioids and SADS, a lot of detrimental side effects, both in the near and far term. But like you said, there's still the other side of things where they're still being widely used at almost increasing rates continuing every single year. And so what's the other option?

[00:09:34] You know, what are the things that are going to start to chip away at that rising tide that is, you know, prescription and over-the-counter medications to address pain? I also like how you immediately addressed what a lot of people say when they hear red light therapy. They think snake oil, this is, you know, some sort of witch's spell that you just tell yourself in your mind that it's going to help. And so placebo effect.

[00:09:58] And that's what a lot of researchers will point towards like, oh, there's so much research out there that shows red light therapy or laser therapies are no more effective than placebo statistically. So I'm sure that might be what you saw initially when you started doing a surface level dive on the research. What was it that you started to see or some main points that you grabbed onto saying like, oh, wow, it's in the dosage. And that's what makes the difference.

[00:10:24] It was really some of the forest plots in these meta-analyses where you see, you know, you can go into and they have these lines in the middle where there's no movement from an outcome standpoint. And on the right side, you see a really positive outcome. And the further right it is, the better the outcome is. And then you see these negative outcomes and you can dive back in and then understand what are the differences between these. And so it's one of the things that we've our team identified early is the dosing models are are an opportunity.

[00:10:54] It was a gap in the medical literature and it was a gap in the product build that that we we saw early and said, if we can model this correctly and add and optimize the modeling, we can improve this. And so when you see those ones on the far right, you see they all share characteristics for the light, the frequencies, the the the wavelengths, the color of the light slash wavelength, the power levels. And then what type of tissue are you trying to deal with it?

[00:11:22] But I think one of the things that we've done, again, spending so much time in the literature and in the testing around this is we tested early with some of our devices that had that most of what people have used from a testing standpoint in this space is is very kind of engineering based metrics. So optical power density, irradiance. And what we found, though, when we tested that is that if you can you can have two devices that share those same metrics, but provide widely different outcomes.

[00:11:52] And for us, that said, these what we're measuring is the wrong metrics in the space. So we our team stripped it back down and said, how do we start from the end result, the adaptations that we're trying to trigger? And what we found is we there are known photo acceptors in the body. We know at what depth of tissue they exist and we know in what order of magnitude they exist. And so we said, this is going to take us ages. We got to go build mathematical models showing how these how this light distributes through tissue and then how do we trigger those optimally?

[00:12:20] And that was our first step into kind of taking a step off the beaten path and really starting from working from the outcomes that we're trying to provide backwards to how the engineering goes versus the other way around. And I think we see a lot of kind of panel like what we think of as first generation products like panels out there that are essentially a lot of LEDs strapped to a board. That's very, very difficult to provide meaningful outcomes. Longer term, your body responds in what's known as a biphasic dose curve.

[00:12:48] So the higher the power, the better the results up to a peak. And then the higher the power, it goes back down. And so what we see with the panels is that people are getting some level of benefit, but you don't know if you're at the peak or at the kind of the low side of those benefits because the dosing is just not something that you can model effectively. And it also doesn't penetrate into internal tissue.

[00:13:07] So you're left with kind of a 2D treatment because the LEDs disperse broadly at 120 degrees where lasers are collimated light and penetrate further into the tissue. And so long story short, or maybe long story long now, we've spent our tens of thousands of team hours in understanding how this light distributes through the most effectively to these photo acceptors in the body that we're triggering for adaptations.

[00:13:32] And then we use real world tests to say, we're not just in the kind of ivory tower doing mathematical models about this. I want to know, for example, things like serum nitric oxide. We, we reduce the affinity of nitric oxide for binding to hemoglobin. So we know how much hemoglobin is in your blood roughly. And we know from our models, what should be triggered from a nitric oxide release into the blood that gave us a very good feedback loop for saying, okay, our mathematical models are still showing.

[00:14:02] A gap in this, how do we close that gap? And so after tens of cycles of this updated, tested, updated, tested, we have really good data and we have, we have a world class and I think very unique dosing mechanism for how we've built our devices. And because of that, our users, you know, we, we see this on a daily basis that it's changing people's lives. They, they couldn't walk up. My wife couldn't walk up the stairs yesterday and, and she's back into kind of jogging this week.

[00:14:29] Um, at this, the, the impacts for people, particularly the older cohorts, uh, have been so powerful in it. And it's really why we, we wake up and come to work every day. There's so much more I want to dive in on this because understanding there's, there are so many different devices out there. There are so many different claims out there on what these devices are doing. And so understanding, so a lot of the devices that we see are the panels, right? Or just like a flat surface that you're putting near your face or near tissue.

[00:14:59] What are those doing? What kind of light therapy do we need to hit in order to create some more effective, or maybe someone is just looking, you know, a little bit more surface level, a little bit more of like, oh, how do I address my wrinkles most effectively versus how do I address maybe more internal tissue? So what is the difference that we're looking like at the, the types of light and the dosage for that? It's an excellent question.

[00:15:25] And, and, uh, hopefully, hopefully I don't end up too far down the rabbit hole, uh, on this. Cause we, we've spent so much time on it that I really will take it and run with it. So, uh, the, the surface, the superficial tissue is actually relatively well treated by these panels and by these other, uh, you see silicone masks and things like this. And you see an increase in, um, skin level, fast growing tissue kind of at the front of these are called fibroblasts. So you, you see an increase in fibroblast production. You see an increase in a type two collagen and a decrease because of that in wrinkles.

[00:15:55] Um, you also see, uh, which is, is really interesting. My, my kids love this function. Um, if you have a cut or a scrape, uh, the wound healing from these more superficial tissue treatments are incredible. Uh, it's, uh, they, they think of it kind of like their, their Wolverine treatment. They, they go and skin their knees and it grows back in two days. And it's crazy. The, the, uh, this is actually even more powerful when that tissue is, um, metabolically, uh, challenged.

[00:16:22] So, uh, people with, um, diabetes, uh, have a slower wound healing timescale and this actually for them, it closes the gap, uh, much faster. And so, uh, generally wound healing, but again, particularly with, with diabetic wound healing and neuropathy and things like this, the, the outcomes, one of the, one of the primary photo acceptors that we trigger is, uh, in this, in the, uh, phospholipid bilayer of the mitochondria. And so we, we increase mitochondrial function.

[00:16:48] Uh, and one of the things that that translates through to, um, directly that there's a number of things downstream from a signaling standpoint, but one of the things that happens directly is wound healing is just goes through the roof. So increasing the proliferation of these key fast growing tissues, um, is, is really helpful for your body. And that's, that's the same thing for internal. Uh, the problem with the led based solutions is that that light doesn't penetrate through to the internal tissue as effectively.

[00:17:15] And so if you're trying to, for example, our, our older users may have osteoarthritis in their knees, what you see with that, uh, increased inflammation, that chronic inflammation is that it degrades the soft tissue, like the cartilage in the knee. And, um, one of the things that we can do with our device, because we've, we've dialed this in specifically for being able to treat and dose internal, uh, tissue optimally is. You have a, you have a kind of homeostasis that you should have in your, in your knee to, in your knee cartilage tissue. Uh, so it's balanced.

[00:17:44] You have you, you, you, it produces at one rate and it degrades at the same rate, more or less. What happens when you have inflammation in that tissue is the degradation increases and the proliferation of those tissues decrease. And so you start thinning out and having, uh, less and less tissue over time. And, uh, the, the laser therapy actually increases the rate of proliferation and decreases by, by way of this, uh, mediated by way of this inflammation reduction.

[00:18:08] Um, we actually help that balance out and can increase back to where people are thickening their, uh, cartilage tissue. Uh, and that's, that's not a, um, an overnight change that the inflammation changes are very quick, but cartilage is, is just not a fast growing tissue. Um, and it's, that's a month scale process. But I think, you know, what we try to remind people of is either you're taking something like NSAIDs to reduce this pain and those actually cause increased degradation rates.

[00:18:37] Or you have a way to reduce the inflammation and grow this back slowly, but at least you're empowered to get back into a healthy joint over time where, you know, a lot of our older, uh, users have already just written off the fact that they, they're going to have this kind of mobility or ability to walk or run, uh, and get around in their life. Oh, I'm just old. This is, this is what I have to live with. And it's, it's not anymore. You, you actually have choices that you can make that rebuild this, uh, this foundational soft tissue in your joints.

[00:19:06] So a question I have, cause you know, we're starting on the inflammation conversation and a lot of people talk about inflammation, like, oh, inflammation's good. Yeah. Inflammation should be happening in our body. It does happen on a daily basis. It is part of the healing process. It is part of the food metabolization process. We, we have inflammation in our body. I think that that's something everyone needs to know.

[00:19:27] Now it's when we start to get this inflammation chronically in the same area that we start to see a lot of the things that you are talking about right now. The degradation of tissue, the, the hypersensitivity that starts to develop in certain nervous systems, the, the pain patterns that start to develop.

[00:19:44] Um, so I guess the question I want to ask is with the laser therapy that you've developed, the, the, is there one specific parameter of frequency wavelength power that you have come, come to that treats all different areas? Or is there different programs for different areas of the body that might be living at different depths?

[00:20:07] Like if somebody is going to be treating their hip and working through a lot of tissue versus working right on the knee joint where, you know, we don't have a lot of superficial tissue to work through. So we, we have developed some new products for different parts of the body because there are specific types of, um, tissue and depths of tissue that we want to be able to treat. But for our current product, uh, what, what we have is essentially a neuromuscular pain and inflammation, uh, device.

[00:20:33] And so, uh, this is, if you, you can treat your hip, um, the difference is treating your hips versus your hands, for example. Um, with hands, we have a lot of older, uh, users who, uh, and then this is something we had to flag very early. We, we actually, my, my partner and I really, it's our first direct consumer business. And so we've put our calendries out there for anyone who's using the device that doesn't get what they want out of it. Book in with us because that's our failure as, as leadership for the company and for what we're, what we're targeting to do as a company.

[00:21:02] So one of the things that we've seen with a lot of these calls early was people were using this for their hands tissue. And because there's less tissue for us to interact, uh, on the outcomes and the time to outcomes were much longer than things where you look at like hips and knees. And so, uh, we have to change dosing models for that. And we also have to change expectations. And in that case, we look at, I believe right now our, our average, uh, cause we, we keep data on the calls and the diagnostics that we do with our, our users.

[00:21:30] And hands typically take six to eight weeks where knees and hips, because you have so much more tissue with the knees, you can treat for 15 minutes a day. And then the length of time actually helps you modulate the, the level of dosing, uh, with hips, you can treat to 20 to 25 minutes because you have so much more tissue there that you're, uh, that you're interacting with. But the results for these larger joints and, and, uh, heavier tissue joints is much faster. And so you're looking at two to three weeks for those meaningful.

[00:21:56] Um, I think we have, uh, we use, um, a couple of pain scales, but, uh, on the, on roughly the zero to 10 scale where we're, uh, going from an average of six to seven down to an average of two to three over two to three weeks. And, uh, that's a, that's a meaningful change. That's that, uh, inflammation mediated pain. Uh, and then the other piece of that is that's longer term is taking that two to three down to zero happens over a month scale because you're actually repairing the tissue in those joints.

[00:22:25] And so there's, we, we try to set expectations. We don't want to be over promising and under delivering. Um, and particularly when we know that there's going to be a longer, uh, response time necessary for these adaptations. Um, you know, we, we do extend out people's trial periods. We've actually never, uh, kind of run out a trial period before we just extend them indefinitely. We don't want people ending up with a product that's not working for them. Uh, we, we want them solving this. We want to solve the problem. That's what we're here for. So, um, yeah, that's, that's our goal as a company.

[00:22:55] And again, if we're, if when we measure these, one of the reasons, again, it comes back to our mission that, that we do these, uh, follow-up calls and surveys is it's part of our mission to not just deliver results, but also to measure it. Um, because what gets measured gets done. And we, we, we find, uh, new opportunities because of that on, on almost a weekly basis for improving our own protocols that we've put together, uh, providing more comprehensive plans for people, uh, from a rehab standpoint to add movement back in with the treatment.

[00:23:23] And, and a number of other things that we've been able to kind of use to increase the outcomes for people. But again, that's, that's our, that's what we take as our job is to deliver these results. Uh, and so whatever we have to do to make that happen, uh, you know, we're, we're continually trying to improve. That's awesome. And are there studies that we can, you know, directly look at that say that show, oh, here's the tissue, you know, here's the cartilage that's in someone's knee. Here's how long they've been using this device. And now here's what we see.

[00:23:50] So there are studies that we can see this like complete change. Improvement in cartilage because that's something that I, I mean, I've damaged cartilage in both my knees and I've been waiting. I keep telling myself at 10 years down the road, there'll be something that can help me regenerate my cartilage in my knee. Absolutely. So we, we have studies both on laser therapy, but also things where we've paired it with, um, different types of treatment. One of them is PRP.

[00:24:15] And this comes back to the same thing where you see, we interact with, uh, you know, this tissue. And so if you, if you put that type of tissue or these types of molecules in the area, it just gives us more to interact with. And so we can increase the, uh, the treatment time, but you see amazing results for this, for, uh, soft tissue, both, uh, with, uh, PRP and with, uh, stem cells, with, um, um, mesenchymal stem cell injections. We actually increase the rate of both. Um, uh, there's a number of different ways that you generate mesenchymal stem cells.

[00:24:43] Uh, one is out of white adipose tissue and one is out of your bones. Uh, and, and we increase the proliferation out of both of those. We also, with this, with regards to soft tissue, um, those stem cells, uh, essentially self-select into becoming different types of tissue in the body. And they increase the rate of self-selection for chondroblasts in specific when you're treating the knee, which is the, the, uh, the, the fast growing front end tissue of like how you're, how. So these chondroblasts are the fast growing kind of weeks scale responses that you'll see.

[00:25:13] And then they generate this extracellular, uh, collagen matrix, uh, that kind of grows back out the, the kind of the more, um, I guess, substantial part of your, your cartilage. Um, and again, it's not overnight, but it's, uh, there are great studies on this and I'm happy to send you guys over some, um, the, the exciting pieces that it's not just something that's, that's kind of limited to what we're doing, but there's also pieces of it that we can support with these other, uh, treatment modalities. And, uh, one of the other ones that we've seen that works very well with this is, um, extracorporeal shockwave therapy.

[00:25:43] Uh, so, um, there's a number of different kind of, uh, treatment, um, uh, tools out there. One of the, one of the companies that we've worked with is called a soft wave and they do a great job treating, uh, knee pain with essentially, um, for lack of a better term, a flavor of ultrasound. But what they, what they do in the knee triggers a different signaling pathway than what we're triggering. And so they, it's, it's synergistic and additive and the results that we've seen with a number of the medical professionals we work with in this space has just been insanely good.

[00:26:12] So we're kind of beating a drum about that these days as well, because it's, it's, um, you know, that type of thing you can't really find for home use, but when it does trigger, um, and this goes back to your point about kind of acute inflammation. Um, those shockwave therapies will trigger acute inflammation in the area. We don't actually reduce that acute inflammation.

[00:26:33] Uh, we interact with, um, it's, it's a mitochondrial retrograde signaling that, that really, uh, works on a, a, um, a cellular level stress, uh, oxidative stress, uh, function to kind of mediate a lot of the effects. And so when you trigger these acute functions with the shockwave, and then you can actually improve the cellular regrowth, uh, with the lasers, uh, it's, it's this amazing synergistic, uh, kind of outcome.

[00:26:58] And, and we've seen a lot of the, um, repetitive stress injuries that, uh, so the, the U S Olympic weightlifting team are using the devices, uh, you know, CrossFitters, uh, Ironman, uh, like where all of these things are really repetitive stress injuries in, in a lot of the same places. And, um, when, when you can treat those synergistically with attracting more acute inflammation to the area and then improving the, the response to that from a regrowth standpoint with the tissue, it's, it's kind of night and day.

[00:27:26] You see people, those are things where you've seen people in under a month go from, uh, seven to eight out of pain down to one to two, uh, you know, where they're, where they're having to modulate or kind of modify their, their training programs. Um, they can go back to full training again. And it's, and it's really exciting. Wow. That's incredible. This might sound geeky and off the path a little bit, but are you familiar with Osmosis Jones? Yes. Yeah. I always, and this is where my, my weird mind goes.

[00:27:53] So people, it'll give them a look into what goes on in my head, but I always think of like Osmosis Jones and all the cells in the area, just like are run down and super bored and tired and dragging their feet. And then all of a sudden this beam comes down from the heavens that just supercharges their productivity. And that is what the, the red light therapy is. And they all just start working at 10 times the speed and efficiency that they've ever worked at before. It's crazy, but that's exactly what it is.

[00:28:22] And I think, uh, you know, just to kind of put a little color on that from the, the, um, the medical side that, uh, that enzyme in the, um, in the mitochondria that we trigger, uh, is called cytochrome C oxidase. And it is a bottleneck, uh, for energy production. And it's one of those things that you see triggering downstream oxidative stress, uh, when, particularly when you're not doing enough training. Um, and, uh, this, this allowing people to generate that much more energy is, it's a really, really powerful cellular level mechanism.

[00:28:51] And it's, it's, uh, it's where our, our path in the future is going. Um, it goes back to our measurement. Uh, we, we are working now on integrating sensors in, uh, that measure that cytochrome C oxidase and mitochondrial function. Because we believe that so many of the pathologies that we see in the human body, um, particularly neurologically, uh, depression, anxiety, um, a number of different types of dementia are metabolically based.

[00:29:16] Um, they've actually, I think we've, we've seen a number of people kind of referring to things like Alzheimer's as, uh, type three diabetes. Um, and we, we believe that's, that's still to be proven, uh, kind of, there's no smoking gun from the literature on this yet, but we do see that the, uh, the impacts. From a metabolic standpoint are very negative on the microvasculature in your brain and that we can actually help people recover that. And so that's our next step is how do we hold ourselves even more accountable?

[00:29:43] How do we help dosing people on a personalized basis? Let's measure where we're developing, um, near infrared, uh, functional near infrared spectroscopy, uh, to be able to measure and provide a closed loop system for this dosing on a personalized basis. And that's, that's going to be launching next year, but it's, it's so exciting. I, I, you know, it's, it's kind of, um, you know, again, it's, it's, we want to be on the hook for delivering. That's our, that's our goal is be on the hook for delivering measurable outcomes for people.

[00:30:08] And if you can measure this, you know, before, during treatment, short-term, middle-term, long-term, uh, the data that comes back out of this and, and the, you know, it's great to be able to see people, um, kind of improving in, in medical studies now, depression and, and, uh, anxiety, but they're, they're dosed almost by definition suboptimally because at the end of the day, we're all kind of an N of one.

[00:30:31] Like we'll have these sample sizes for the, the, uh, the tests and, but how we respond to it, uh, and the level of response and how thick my school is compared to yours. And then the level of damage to my microvasculature, my brain, everything is, is really on a personalized basis. And we believe that to, to provide the best outcomes long-term, we have to measure that. And we have to be on the hook for what we're actually doing to the physiology.

[00:30:54] That's really cool to think about having an immediate biofeedback that would optimize the dose you're specifically getting from the device. I mean, that's, that's a really cool thought. And just to dance around the rabbit hole of, you know, like you said, Alzheimer's and these neurodegenerative, these long-term neurodegenerative diseases, like how we've always said, oh, we don't know what causes them. Well, we do know what causes them by seeing the plaques that have built up, built up in the certain areas of the brain.

[00:31:22] And my physiologic mind has just always thought, well, like, how do we make sure our body's getting rid of those plaques as we create them throughout life? You know, it's a 60 year buildup. And so there's something happening somewhere that is not allowing us to get rid of that in the proper amounts. And so it's cool that that's kind of on the trajectory for where this technology is going. It's so exciting. And again, we see that the kind of brain is a really high leverage part of the human experience.

[00:31:50] And so, you know, our mission is to increase the quality of life for people. Well, we get them out of pain now. That's helpful. And that does get people back up into movement. And, you know, osteoarthritis is very, very highly correlated with depression. And it's because you lose the ability to move and that goes down over time. You get into the spiral where you have weaker hips. And it's actually kind of a mortality slope that people slide down into because you're older people falling.

[00:32:19] You know, there's a few things in your body that actually increase the rate of that. If your hips are weaker, it doesn't help. You have kind of your inner ear, which starts drying out as you get older. So your kind of sense of balance goes out the window. And your eyesight is the other thing that you use to balance effectively. And your eyesight starts decreasing. And so we can't help with all of those. But with the hip strength, walking is an amazing way to keep hip strength if you don't have the ability to do resistance training.

[00:32:48] And so, you know, that's a great way for people to kind of keep out of this. But with the brain, it's even more exciting. It's just one of those things where those plaques build up. One of the things that we've seen in the literature recently is the glymphatic system. Is the pairing of kind of your glial cells and that system in the brain. And then your lymphatic system for clearing out these proteins that you mentioned. This kind of waste material that increases when you're not sleeping enough. Or when you have, there's different types of stress that increase that as well.

[00:33:18] And being able to measure that and increase that. And then show how we're increasing it. You know, I couldn't be more excited about it. It's something where I think we're going to change a lot of people's lives. And really provide them a path back out of decreased cognitive function and depression and anxiety. And again, the fact that transcranial light therapy can do that's already been proven in a number of different studies. But what we believe is that it's not optimized.

[00:33:43] And that we'd like to be able to optimize it and carry something forward that really allows people to change their lives in the most meaningful way possible. And I love that you also bring in like the activity aspect of this. You know, that it's not alone. Because that's always my biggest fear. Especially with something like, oh, I'm just going to use light therapy. It's going to heal me. I'm going to get better. I'm going to get out of pain. Whatever. But then what's next? And you kind of mentioned this at the beginning as well. How you guys are having kind of this movement rehab along with what's going on with the light therapy.

[00:34:12] So can you talk a little bit more about movement? Because when I hear passive treatment, that's the number one thing that scares me. Is that people are just going to use this passively to get out of pain or to solve problems quickly. But then what happens after that? Can you talk, I guess, into the importance of longevity with the use of movement and using this? Yeah, 100%. And again, this kind of goes back to my own personal story of having found myself in this incredibly bad physiological state. And having to dig back out of that hole.

[00:34:40] Your physiology has a massive impact on your mental well-being as well. But what we see is that those kind of almost spiral down together. So if you're on it, the less you move, the less you're outside in the light. And the bigger impact it has from a metabolic state. And again, this also comes back to if you do have a decreased over time. And people don't notice this. It's that boiling frog thing. They have a pain in their knee.

[00:35:09] And they were walking two, two, three miles a day. And suddenly it's a mile and a half. And then because you're walking less, that knee and the tissue in the knee are degrading faster. And so now you're down to a mile. And before you know it, you're kind of stuck around the house or you're on a walker. And this is kind of a cyclical downhill thing that we see quite a lot. And it's impacted by two primary things from what we're seeing. One is inflammation. And the other is metabolic health.

[00:35:36] And they're kind of polar opposites. When you're decreasing your metabolic function, you're seeing more systemic inflammation throughout the body. And that's based not just on movement, but primarily on movement and diet.

[00:35:52] We see a number of people seeing with the standard American diet, their tight junctions in their gut opening up and trickling more of this inflammation into the body that over time degrades not just the joint tissue, but your neurological tissue. And then the increase in rate of cardiovascular events is through the roof based on this.

[00:36:16] So if you're moving less, you're seeing cardiovascular endothelial tissue stiffen. You're seeing this glymphatic system in your brain start stacking up more waste materials and clearing it through more slowly. And so you're exactly right. There's a comprehensive way to approach this. And if you're just expecting kind of put this on and that's it, that's not the message we're here to say. This is a tool for you to use as part of a more comprehensive approach.

[00:36:45] But if you're ignoring movement and diet, that's still 80% of the picture relative to these outcomes. I think you outlined it perfectly there that it's a positive and a negative feedback loop depending on which way you're going. You know, there is level one research for almost every system of the body benefiting from one type of exercise or another or one type of movement or another. And I always, you know, laugh.

[00:37:13] And there's a whole like section of people who are in the physical therapy or, you know, personal training space that say like, all you need to do is have people lift heavy. That's like kind of the joke. Is this like the people who are just like, just have them do heavy back squats or heavy deadlifts. Like everything will get better. To an extent, yes, there is a large chunk of the population that is in pain or has disability to the point where they can't do that.

[00:37:38] And so what other tools can we use to move them along to get onto the positive feedback loop that everyone wants to be on? And I think that a lot of people look at their pain and say, oh, I need to get out of pain. But 99.9% of people have the deeper reason, like the why. Yes. Because I can't go walk with my dog anymore. Because I can't go to my grandson's games anymore. Because I can't pick my kid up off the ground. Like there's always that deeply rooted purpose that you, I watched a few videos.

[00:38:08] I saw you get emotional about like the stories you get from people who are getting their lives back. And that's not what everyone realizes, you know, when they start using the device. They realize that once they're doing those things again and have found that renewed sense of purpose. That's exactly it. And again, I come in to work. We do, you know, it's a startup culture where seven days a week where we're overworking the stress with it and all this.

[00:38:33] But all I have to do, there's one channel in our Slack that we see our team cut and paste in these stories of everyone we're impacting with this. And it's just powerful. And that's exactly why we started this company. It's something that's hard to capture. But I think you've nailed it with the inflammation is we use an analogy for this, which is oftentimes your fire alarm is going off. The pain that you hear is kind of similar to your body's fire alarm saying, hey, there's something burning in the kitchen.

[00:39:01] And instead of going into the kitchen and turning the fire off or putting the fire out, people are just taking the batteries, want to take the batteries out of the fire alarm. And we can't ignore this pain. We need to understand what's driving it and go to the foundational pieces of how do we put this fire out? We have to put the fire out in the kitchen. Don't break the fire alarm. Let's listen to the fire alarm. That's your body telling you something important. Let's go back and solve this in a more meaningful way. Yes, I love that so much. Now, I want to take a little bit slight of a turn right before we wrap up.

[00:39:31] And I know this might not be as quick and simple as possible. But, you know, fertility, the fertility journey is a lot for so many people. And there is a lot of infertility that happens and a lot of help that people need, which costs a lot of money. So you mentioned something about how this can impact fertility. Can you talk about that a little bit? Absolutely.

[00:39:58] And I'm super excited about it because it's one of these pieces where we see the research dollars going into this are not what they should be. If you look at subjects like erectile dysfunction and male infertility, huge dollars going into it. For some reason, female infertility is something that's really less funded and less researched. But what triggered us for this was we keep a very tight communication with our community of users.

[00:40:24] We want to know how they're using this and if there's any way that we can improve that. One of the things that came back to us as kind of anecdotal stories and at the one or two kind of stories, you have to kind of just leave it marginal. We've had more than 20 of these come back was people treating endometriosis with the devices and having even more kind of powerful experiences than just the soft tissue. So people going from an eight out of 10 in pain to a zero within 30 minutes. And that's not everybody, but that's like that was the kind of general range that we were seeing with it.

[00:40:54] And so that kind of triggered us after we saw about 20 of these to say what's happening with this that's that's providing these amazing results. And our our team and I think many teams from a research and technology standpoint skews male. And it's not something we kind of research, you know, how is this going to improve muscle kind of repair and things like this? We just hadn't looked into kind of the the uterine and ovarian tissue.

[00:41:18] And what we found is there's no tissue that is as inflamed as uterine tissue in the human experience. And it's it's, you know, with the inflammation, the type of inflammation that is in that uterine tissue, we actually impact it very effectively. And we see that connection back through both that inflammation in the in the region changing. But there's brain chemistry changes for this as well, which was super exciting for us.

[00:41:45] So long story short, we started digging into this and we found that with perimenopause and menopause, there's amazing impacts from photobiomodulation on light therapy on the the ovaries. But with fertility, it doesn't even have to be directly on the uterine tissue. We've seen a number of studies out of a Japanese group that we're we're we're in contact with. We'll be kicking off some studies ourselves next year on treating the neck. And it's called proximal priority therapy.

[00:42:11] And they had in their latest study over 200 women that were clinically judged infertile and had been for, I think, five to six plus years. Out of this study, within eight months, 27 or 28 percent of these women were pregnant. And I think something like 22 percent of those came to healthy deliveries.

[00:42:38] And it's just something where the the when you when you look at inflammation and the impacts being able to treat systemically, it's it's just so powerful. So fertility is one of the things that we're actually developing a product for next year based specifically around this. There's there's a huge level of mitochondria and the density in ovarian and uterine tissue is much higher. And so that's one of the reasons why we're able to treat this tissue more effectively.

[00:43:08] Brain and brain and female fertility tissue is essentially the the the two highest levels of density of mitochondria in the body. And so we're you know, again, it wasn't really on our our path. But when our community comes back and says we're we're changing that like I was incapacitated and I went back in 30 minutes to being able to to kind of go back into my normal life or I was completely infertile.

[00:43:34] And now I have a path forward to to having to being pregnant, having children. It's it's really powerful things that are going to change people's life. And it's directly in line with our mission as well. Wow. I mean, that's incredible. And talk about purpose, talk about someone's purpose and feeling like they can't live out that purpose if they're having issues with fertility and being able to be a bridge to help somebody get to that point is is pretty incredible.

[00:43:58] And like you kind of said, with a lot of the physiology you outlined earlier with the mitochondria, like there are mitochondria in all the tissues in our body. And so if we can find a way or if you can find a way with the light to, you know, enhance the operations in that area to get your Osmosis Jones workers, you know, charged up, you know, change could happen. So super exciting.

[00:44:24] Last thing before we go, any other random area of health that is either in the research or that y'all at Kinion are working on right now that people wouldn't think of initially? Like, oh, I can treat this with red light therapy or laser therapy. Gut health. We've just launched a crowdfunding for a gut health product. And there's a number of different very direct measurements that come out of this for improved gut health.

[00:44:52] And it actually pairs with some specific prebiotics that we'll be launching as well with these. But it's super exciting because some of what we see, there's not direct kind of smoking guns, but we see as an improved outcome for things that are so powerful, like multiple sclerosis and asthma, that there haven't really been fundamental ways to treat in the past. And we don't have our smoking gun for what's mediating that right now. But what we do have is the link.

[00:45:19] We have the ABC of here's the dosage that we're treating at and then the XYZ for these outcomes that we're able to measure with people who have multiple sclerosis and asthma. But on top of that, just kind of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, increased serotonin, increased dopamine, the flexibility and kind of affect, like how you feel on a daily basis and the neuroplasticity of your brain are directly driven by gut health as well. And it's super exciting to see a lot of these outcomes.

[00:45:45] But yeah, we just kicked that off last week and so excited to bring that one to market because it really does impact the rest of your body really powerfully. It sits at the center of a number of axes of communication between your different organs. Wow. You guys are really doing some incredible work and have, you know, opened my mind to a lot of what's possible with this. Because like you said, if we can get people off of the drugs and onto something that's really going to help them long term to get back into movement,

[00:46:14] to get back into the activities that they really love and feel better within their body. I mean, that is incredible and just pairs so nice with what we do and what we teach as well here as physical therapists.

[00:46:30] So we just appreciate, you know, the level of digging that you're willing to do, the level of research and going in and helping people beyond just, you know, how many devices can we get out and how. But it's more about what are we doing to impact people? And I think that's an incredible journey that you're on. Thank you so much. And thank you guys for having the chat with me today. You've had some amazing questions and I love the Osmosis Jones analogy.

[00:46:59] I may plagiarize that if you don't mind. Hey, have at it. So funny. Where can people go to learn more either from you or learn more about the devices and what you have going on at Kineon? Absolutely. So we're on kineon.io. K-I-N-E-O-N dot I-O is our website. And we have a number of blogs that dive into kind of the technical aspects of this. We're also kineon underscore labs on Instagram.

[00:47:26] And we also have a very effective, and this has been kind of our link back into our community, Facebook community that I can send you guys a link for where we have a number of researchers who are in there. We have a number of users. We have our team and we try to answer questions as effectively and as transparently as possible and allow people to get more access in for different researchers in the space when they want to know what's the actual science behind this application or what can I expect out of these things?

[00:47:54] We want people to come in with eyes wide open because it's a, again, to my own personal experience coming into it, it seems counterintuitive. And so I can completely understand people coming in and saying, hey, I'm skeptical about this. Show me the data. We've tried to create a group to be able to do that. Amazing. Well, again, thank you so much for taking the time. I know we could have dove into so much more, but you guys have blog posts, you have information, and you have so much more that people can dive into. So thank you again.

[00:48:23] And of course, we'll have it all linked up. Thank you guys. I really appreciate it. And great to speak with you today. Really appreciate that. That was such an enlightening episode with Forrest. I hope you learned a ton as well. I have had a very closed mind with a lot of passive treatments, and this just helped to see how it can broaden what we already do and how it can help people beyond.

[00:48:43] So I hope you learned a ton and pass this episode along to other people because I think getting the research out and the understanding of how this can help and the impact it can make along the journey of people in pain can be such a huge thing. And we're actually going to use the device and test it out with my mother-in-law, who has been having a lot of knee issues. So stay tuned. We'll probably talk about, you know, has this been helping? What's made the impact? And how she's been using it along with movement. So stay tuned on that one. We'll be right back.