207. Dr. Jason Wersland: The Science of Recovery—Pain, HRV, Sleep & Your Nervous System

We spend so much time thinking about exercise, nutrition, and performance—but I believe recovery may be one of the most overlooked pieces of longevity. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Jason Wersland, chiropractor and founder of Therabody, whose own experience with debilitating pain after a motorcycle accident ultimately led him to invent the Theragun. But this conversation goes far beyond muscle soreness. Jason and I explore what recovery actually means, why it isn't just for athletes, and how the way we regulate our nervous system can influence pain, tension, sleep, performance, and how we feel every day. Whether you're training intensely, sitting at a desk for eight hours, standing all day at work, or simply dealing with chronic stress, your body still needs opportunities to recover. In this episode, you'll learn: • Why recovery should be part of your daily longevity routine—not just something you do after exercise • How the "pain gate theory" helps explain why different forms of stimulation can temporarily change how we perceive pain • Why sitting all day can contribute to hip, lower-back, neck, and shoulder tension • How percussive therapy can affect pain, muscle tension, range of motion, and blood flow • Why nervous system regulation matters for recovery and performance • How shifting into a parasympathetic state may help you wind down before sleep • Why HRV and heart rate can provide useful feedback about recovery • How small "recovery snacks" throughout the day can help you take better care of your body We also discuss massage, breathwork, movement, compression therapy, biofeedback, sleep, and practical ways to build short recovery "pit stops" into even the busiest schedule. One of my biggest takeaways from this conversation is that recovery is not a luxury reserved for professional athletes. Your body is responding to physical, mental, and emotional stress every day. If we want to perform well—and stay healthy for decades—we have to give it opportunities to recover, too. Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: drshah.com https://drshah.com Clinic: next-health.com https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: @darshanshahmd and @extend_podcast Learn more about Dr. Jason Wersland: Website: therabody.com https://therabody.com Instagram: @drjasonwersland Thank You to Our Sponsor: IM8: Try IM8 with a 30 day money back guarantee. Get 10% off your first order with code DRSHAH at checkout im8health.com/drshah https://im8health.com/drshah

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step

• 0:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span. Welcome to Extend. I'm your host, Dr. Darshan Shah. Today, we're diving deep into the world of recovery, nervous system regulation, and the fascinating intersection of necessity and innovation. My guest is Dr. Jason Werschler. He's a chiropractor and the visionary founder of Therabody, the revolutionary percussive therapy brand found in elite gyms, training facilities, and homes worldwide, including my own. Dr. Werschler shares his incredible personal journey of overcoming a severe motorcycle accident and a debilitating disc injury,

• 1:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  which drove him to tinker around with jigsaws in his garage and invent the very first percussive therapy device out of sheer necessity. We discuss the science behind pain gate theory, why recovery is not just for elite athletes, but for anyone experiencing physical stress, like standing around for hours on end, and how proper recovery serves as a foundational pillar for true longevity. This is an inspiring conversation that will change what you think about healing your body and the role of your nervous system in pain relief. Dr. Werschler, finally we made this happen.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  I know, right?

• 2:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, we've had your products at Next Health for a long time now.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Down at Next Health over here in West Hollywood, and I've always wondered who the genius was that came up with Therabody. And then through serendipity, we finally met on stage after having a few conversations on the phone and we shared the stage together. And you know, what I really appreciate about sharing the stage with you is the way you presented the entire concept of recovery and nervous system regulation in a way that people can really understand how, what this means for them and how they can affect it.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And why it's so important. So I was like, I gotta get him on my podcast. So here you are. We did it.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Thanks. I feel like that's, people overcomplicate some of those things. So when we were talking, I think it was just trying to make it simple for the audience, ironically. Yeah, it was a great, it was a good panel.

• 2:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And I think all of us, you, me, Gabby was there as well. Like, we all just came at it from different perspectives. And I think it was a really great conversation. I'm looking forward to bringing it to my audience here. So this is, this is good to have you. So, you know, I think what'd be great for the audience to know is a little bit about you, who you are.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You're the founder of Therabody, which if the audience doesn't know what Therabody is, it's an incredible percussive recovery device that many athletes use. It's in almost every high-performance gym out there. I train at Proactive sometimes, and they have it there, and a whole display.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it's part of their entire process. And, you know, but you have a story about why that product came to you. And I'd love for people just to know a little bit more about you and your story.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'm a chiropractor. I was, I moved to LA from Utah to go to school. And I was going to school, was supposed to take three and a half years in an accelerated program. I had two kids and I was doing everything I could to get through school. Took me a lot longer than I thought it should. And so like we were talking about earlier, I realized I need to start practicing so I can start making money. I found out you could do that in Los Angeles. So I got a set of practice up in 2006, but I was still finishing my clinical work at school. And I'm buzzing around LA in a 1987 Jeep Wagoneer, sitting in traffic, watching these motorcycles fly by me.

• 4:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking, I gotta get me a motorcycle.

• 4:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I feel like that all the time when I'm sitting in traffic, right? They just go right by you.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're like, they're gonna get there in 10 minutes. I'm still gonna be, you know? So I'm watching this and I rode motorcycles all my life growing up. So I didn't think anything of it. So I did, I went and bought a motorcycle. In October 17th of 2007, I was splitting traffic on my way up to school in Hollywood. And on the, between the 10 and the 110, a car came out of nowhere and I T-boned the side of a car going about 50 miles an hour.

• 4:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh my gosh.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  I woke up on the freeway. I kind of sat up and grabbed my helmet and my helmet was broken. And that's when I realized, okay, this was pretty bad. My head started to hurt. My arm was, was a cut. I ended up able to walk away. I didn't have to go to the hospital because I wasn't really broken. And I denied service because I felt like it was okay. But I actually had a nine-millimeter disc bulge in my neck that slowly came on after the accident. So by December of that year, I was in so much pain, I couldn't practice, I couldn't go to school. Like, I didn't want to talk to my kids. So I was, that nerve pain started to now cause, you know, atrophy, and I'm starting to experience a lot of this. And you know this, I couldn't get surgery. I had to wait for the inflammation to go down.

• 5:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  So I'm trying to deal with the pain.

• 5:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Meds and all these different things. And I'm like, getting treated. I'm sitting in my clinic, waiting for my business partner, my partner to treat me, the guy that I work, have a clinic with. And I'm thinking, I kind of know what I need, but I have to wait for him to treat me. And I didn't like that. That felt really like, okay, I don't, that's not, I don't want to be in that position. Like, I have to sit here, wait for this guy, and I kind of know what I need.

• 6:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  And in the room that I was waiting in, we had a vibrating table that we do traction on. So you put patients on, set them up, and then you click the vibration on it, relaxes the patient, the tissue, actually. So as I'm looking at the table, I'm like, huh, I have tension from nerve cramping. So I just flipped the switch on and put my arm on the table. And the vibration, the stimulus, the vibration in my body made the pain go away. So I'm like, oh my God, I loved the table. For 20, 30 seconds, the pain was tolerable, almost gone fully. But then it came back. And you know what accommodation is. I wasn't, I didn't understand it in that moment. But as I realized, oh wait, my body's getting used to this really quickly. But I can't take the table home, but it's kind of helping.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  So we found a tool in the office that worked, took it home, but it vibrated still, which meant that it wasn't working. It didn't last long. I wasn't able to make the pain stay away. My body accommodated to that super quickly. And for people that don't know what accommodation is, just what our body does.

• 7:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  I, you know, if you're listening, watching, and you have a watch on, or earbuds, or a necklace or something, you're not aware of that until I just said that. That's accommodations, just to make it easy.

• 7:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  So I realized that's what's happening. And then I thought, I need something that my body cannot accommodate to.

• 7:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  So as I was thinking about that, I thought, okay, the vibration does it, but I can't have, I can't have it vibrate and then come off and vibrate. So as I'm doing this, I thought, oh wait, what if I have something that just punches it at a certain frequency? And I, my family, we're industrial. We have a farm and I worked a lot around power tools. And I thought, I should go to my garage. So I went to my garage.

• 7:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Grabbed a drill.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Grabbed a jigsaw. And I brought it in and I started taking it apart. And I thought, can I really do this right now? So I made the first one, just to see if I could make it. And I used it on myself. So I took it off, made it, I took, started using it on my leg. I didn't want to, in my mind, I was thinking, I need to get it near the injury. You know, like I gotta treat the injury.

• 8:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  But as I was using it on my leg, away from the injury, I realized that the, that the pain gate theory was happening. So I was stimulating the tissue that gets to the brain faster, the soft tissue, the skin. And then the pain was in my shoulder. So I realized as I was messing around with this thing on my leg, I'm like, oh my gosh, my pain's gone. And I'm not even up in this area. So that just opened up so many moments where I'm like, wait, that does this? And it does this? And so I just kind of learned through using this gun from January of 2008 until July of 2008. Most of those months, I was in pain, trying to get through it, rehabbing. So I learned first tension relief.

• 8:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Sorry, pain relief. That was the best.

• 8:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  The pain gate theory was like, I mean, I could really pass out for a few minutes and not have pain.

• 9:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Which is so important when you're trying to heal.

• 9:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  So that process of healing, I realized, wow, I really have more control over this rather than going and seeing my guy once every other couple of days, you know? So now, pain relief, thank God. Now I'm getting tension. I'm feeling the tension of all the cramping from the nerves cramping.

• 9:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  So I start using it on the tissue where the tension is. And now I suddenly have range of motion in my shoulder that I shouldn't have. But I was sort of young and dumb. I didn't know that. I just like, oh my God, this is amazing.

• 9:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  And then the last thing is the increased blood flow. Like, my skin would start itching. And so I was experiencing this in real time, thinking how, this surely has to be in the world somewhere. Someone thought of this. I can't be the first person. But I go back to practice in July of 2008.

• 9:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  In October of that year, 2008, I never thought about bringing this thing to my practice. It was a Makita jigsaw.

• 9:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. So it's crazy. You took a jigsaw and turned it into this vibration device.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Seriously. Yeah. It was, necessity is the mother of invention.

• 10:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I say that all the time. Exactly.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  And there's no boundaries when it comes to that. You know, it wasn't like, well, it can't be this color. I didn't care what color it was. So I now this patient comes in, my secretary slides this new paperwork in front of me and I'm just going through it, trying to see who I'm looking at. And his, the intake form is his age, his insurance. This story is building and I really related with everything this guy was experiencing. His injury was head on bus collision and he had a six millimeter bulge on the same side, same segment, C5, C6. His imaging told me he's in trouble, but his insurance only had 12 visits. So you know how that is, I'm putting this together, I'm thinking, there's no way I'm gonna get this guy better. Like I, I don't have the tools. And then I thought, wait a minute, I have that thing.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  So I'm like, man, how do I, do I bring this here to him? So as I'm during the intake exam and stuff, I take his x-rays, I say, hey, come back tomorrow, bring your wife, we'll go over your x-rays and I think I have something that might help you. So I bring this Makita jigsaw, walk in the office, into Ralph's paper grocery bag, set it down. I thought for a second, like, how can I tell him what this is? And then I just said, listen, I'm gonna show you something, I just want you to sit there. Plugged it in, I turned it on, I started using it on his back. And I, the, 100% of the time, it feels good on your track.

• 11:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  So I knew that if I put it there, he would feel good and he did and he just melted. And he was like, and I said, I want you to use this. I'm gonna show you how to do it. I just went through what you're gonna go through. And I think we can get you better faster by keeping you out of pain when you're not here.

• 11:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  So just take it home, let's get your body so you're not at a sympathetic fight or flight state all the time. Let's get you in a parasympathetic state so it can heal you. And we got him better faster. And you know how it is, you get close to patients and

• 11:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  I had kind of expressed to him my sort of doubt about this thing.

• 11:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Like, what do I do with this? And I'm a chiropractor, I'm, I'm in these four walls, helping people and

• 12:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  And at the end of his care, I'd been gone and I came back to visit, to, I'd gone to see my family. I come back and he was in my waiting room. My secretary said, he's, he's back in your exam room. And you know, they usually don't wait in your exam room.

• 12:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  So as I'm walking back, I'm thinking, oh no, he's probably got his, what's going on? And I come around the corner, he's sitting there on my table and he's got this thing plugged in and he's just running around his legs. And he looks up and doc, you have to figure this out. Because it saved our lives and you gotta do something about this.

• 12:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  And that was a moment where I was like, I have to do something about this. So I started looking into it. What is it? What was it doing?

• 12:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  What, how did it work? How could I make it better? How could I really get a lot of input from a lot of people? So I just started asking around. I, I called Makita, sorry, I called Kawasaki. I ordered 250 jigsaws from Kawasaki.

• 12:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Took them apart, put them back together, sold them to other physical therapists and massage therapists, got a lot of feedback. And then in 2016, I'd made, by then, I'd made five different versions. Really learning what it was doing and know how to talk about it. I treated patients anyway, so I'm working with athletes and the 10,000 hour rule, I feel like I'd done that twice.

• 13:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  You know, I really learned how to do this thing. So by the time I met Ben, my business partner, we realized like, okay, we have something, but the best way to get it into the world is through athletes. Which was the last thing I wanted to do. I was thinking, it was physical therapists, massage therapists, chiropractors. It was the people that are literally working on the bodies to save the hands. I never thought about the scale of what it would be with athletes. And this is way before recovery was a thing, by the way. Like foam rolling was still weird.

• 13:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Right? So now suddenly I have this thing and I'm talking about recovery and it wasn't even a plan. Guys would show up, work out and they'd leave, all sweaty, get in their car and drive away. So there's a lot of evolution that's happened in the wellness space, around recovery. But we have over 30 studies on how Theragun can help the body recover, how it helps perform. And that's really what I spend most of my time doing now is learning from that experience, learning what recovery is, that it's really just taking care of your body. And, and then how that leads to this idea of what longevity is called now.

• 14:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  And I see it every day with the best athletes in the world and some of the people that aren't, that are just trying to get through their day, you know? So

• 14:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  It's a, a mission that I feel like I'll have for the rest of my life, I think.

• 14:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No, it's incredible story. And I think the more I learn about longevity, me personally and being in the field as a physician, the higher and higher recovery gets on the ladder of what we need to be doing on a daily basis. So you, you know, your, your timing was perfect because this device going from like the clinical setting to now in mass market hands, gives people another tool to achieve greater straits of recovery. And I think many athletes now, especially the most elite ones, really spend just as much time on their recovery as they do their training. And those are the ones that are the most successful.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 15:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  And the, the more tools you can provide for them, they're, they, they'll take it all.

• 15:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  They understand how important it is, yeah.

• 15:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And recovery is not just for athletes, recovery is for anyone that is going through any type of physical, emotional, mental, any type of stress. All of those can be recovered from with similar techniques, right?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think recovery is also wrongfully attached to exercise only, right?

• 15:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's my point exactly.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, like you think about, we, I was having a conversation on the way here about, there's a lot of doormen and security guys in LA. They stand for hours and hours. They're really big, they're carrying a lot of weight. And that needs recovery.

• 15:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  You can't, that's not scalable, those guys can't do that for 20 years.

• 15:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  So I, I think that too, I, it's interesting how people will say to me a lot of times, well, I don't really work out, so I don't think I really need that. Let me put a soapbox here, I'm gonna stand on top of it and preach for a minute.

• 16:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, well, you know, when I was doing surgery, 12 hours a day, standing in front of the patient sometimes.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  My body felt destroyed after that 12 hours from, similar to like a security guard, right?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's, and you do need the recovery and I think that, yeah, like you said, exercise is not the gateway to recovery, just anything where you feel physically traumatized could be a gateway to recovery.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, well said.

• 16:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So can I ask you, okay, so you developed this device mainly to treat an injury and pain, right? And so you mentioned something, the pain gate theory, right?

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The gate pain, can you talk about that a little bit more and what that is?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Cause I, I, I definitely want to spend a lot of time in recovery, but I also think it's really valuable to know about this for people that are in pain, because so many people are in pain.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  From back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, all sorts of things.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, we opened a Pandora's box, right?

• 17:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  We opened a Pandora's box, that for sure, but I think it's important because people are suffering.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's so many levels of pain, right?

• 17:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Like you think about the pain that I was in, nerve pain, you think about pregnancy pain, emotional pain, where we carry our tension, a lot of times, you're not aware of it. You know, you have those dormant trigger points, you're like, someone touches you and you don't realize how much pain your body's manifesting. So I, I wanna be careful that, and respectful of pain, because there's no joke. But there is this idea of pain gate theory and the pain gate theory is that pain travels to the brain in certain pathways. So I like to say, imagine you're on a freeway and the fast lane is one thing, the middle lane is another thing, we're all in different lanes. And, and pain travels to the brain, let's say on the middle lane at about 50 miles an hour, 50, 55 miles an hour.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  So you stub your toe or you, you know, something moderate, let's not say you cut your arm off, but like, pain.

• 17:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  It all travels around that same pathway. There are other pathways that are faster to the same place. And the skin is one of them. So the skin, when you touch the skin, you know how sensitive people are listening to? How sensitive is to skin, to, to the wind?

• 18:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  To the, to the, to the temperature change? The skins are first protection. And so it needs to be really fast to the brain. So this idea of being able to use that mechanism to offset the idea what the brain's focused on. So if the brain's focused on, I just smacked my shin on this drawer. Oh my gosh, that's traveling at a certain pain. And when you're younger, you'd rub it, right? You'd rub it really hard with your skin, because you're stimulating the skin, it's not making the pain go away, it's just sort of overriding that. So the pain gate theory is just, someone told me some, one day, so don't say this, but it's the only way I can say this, you're kind of tricking the brain.

• 18:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  You're experiencing one thing and then you're like, hey, look over here, look over here, with another stimulus that's in, comes in faster. It saved my life.

• 18:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Literally. And I think if people know that, a lot of times, you're treating this, you're super hyper focused on this pain, instead of looking at other ways to distract your body away from that. Cold is a great thing. They talk about cold plunges and what that does to the body and all the chemicals that release. There's so many other ways that I've been fascinated to find to treat pain. But the pain gate theory was the first thing that worked for me.

• 19:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And this is a really important concept because I think people don't realize this is being used all the time when you go to a doctor's office. For example, when I did surgery, some of the times when we would inject someone with local anesthesia, we, you know, we'd squeeze their finger or we'd, we'd vibrate their skin. And we, and a lot of people now, like if they're going to an aesthetics doctor to get Botox, there's a little vibratory device that you put on your head that vibrates, that distracts you from the pain. You know, there's also like the cold freezing spray that you can freeze someone's skin before injecting them. So this theory is used a lot in modern day anesthesia and medical procedures. And now

• 19:58Speaker 01

  It's cool to hear that.

• 19:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You can use that at home too, like with, with this device.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Definitely. So basically what you're doing is you're beating the pain signals to the brain by creating a different stimulus that goes faster to the brain. Your body's to deal with a different Stimulus first.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it. And so I think that's important for people to know because it can work even when that stimulus is applied distant to the pain too.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What you were saying.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, there's, you'd be surprised how much tension I can relieve by treating the bottom of your feet after a long day. Where you're trapped, you would think you're carrying in your traps.

• 20:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  So yeah, there's, I think for people to recognize, there are other ways to treat what you're experiencing physically in your body. Is it tension and understanding what tension is? You know, there are people that just get through the day, you know, you think of artists that are so focused. I was going to say this earlier because what you do is kind of art, but you have someone that's really focused on what they're doing.

• 20:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  They're not thinking about the angle of their neck or their low back or something, but that pays the price later on. So I think this idea of knowing how to solve that problem, like, oh, I don't want my back is killing me. Explore so that there are three things Theragun does and the mechanism to the body. It first of all decreases pain by the pain gate theory. The next thing is it acts on the Golgi tendon. So it activates the Golgi tendon, which kind of wakes it up and allows it to move through a larger range of motion. And that in simple terms is tension relief. You have tension on a muscle and you want to relieve the tension. Think how nice and good it feels to have vibration on those muscles.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  And then the last thing, not necessarily the last thing, but the third thing it does is it increases blood flow. So as a physician, a medical worker, a pain reliever, body worker, whatever that is. Those are three things you're trying to do all the time.

• 21:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  You want to increase blood flow, release the tension, decrease pain. So for me, once I started realizing it, I was using that thing everywhere I could.

• 21:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  And I, that's what ends up happening with a lot of people when they buy the product is pain is real a leader. In meaning, that's the one thing people can relate to. Oh, my mom has named that thing. Would this help with that?

• 22:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Pain is a real strong motivator, even in, in marketing, you know?

• 22:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and then you can also realize the other uses of it. Once you've used it for pain and you know it works, like you said, tension, I think a lot of people carry a lot of tension throughout the day with desk jobs as well. So just, just because you're not, you know, going to the gym or you're not an athlete, doesn't mean that you're not going to develop tension in your muscles. Sitting in one position for a long time, like you said, not moving, just computer work in general.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. You, you don't really know the position of your body or your neck as you're on a computer. And you end up with a ton of tension when you go home, right? And so this can be extremely beneficial for just almost every day.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  There's, there's a, there's a fascinating syndrome.

• 22:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  And you, you can tell me how.

• 23:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  That when I've had people come to me and they point to their back and they're trying to point to this area of their middle back where the rhomboids are. And they're telling me that something's wrong there. I think my ribs out, it hurts so bad. And I love teaching this to people. Our body has stretch responses, right? So if I'm stretching a muscle, it sends a signal that says, that's too much, that's not safe, something's happening there. And that stretch signal can also mislead you. A muscle might be stretched and the signal you're getting is it hurts. So you think you have to stretch it again.

• 23:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  So people are sitting at a desk all day long with their rhomboids stretched to the limit.

• 23:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  And they get up and start walking around and then they stretch it again because they think I need to stretch those muscles out. But what you really need to do is stretch the front muscles. Cause you're sitting in that position, your shoulders are together. Our laptops aren't big enough to be able to accommodate for shoulders, especially for bigger guys. So now you're rounding your shoulders.

• 24:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  So to know to treat your chest and front muscles with Theragun to release the tension. So that the back muscles can come together again. And then you got to strengthen the back muscles.

• 24:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  So I was with someone the other day and they're like, yeah, I do that all the time. I'm like, you're actually making it worse.

• 24:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  When you try and grab a wall or a door and you pull your shoulder apart and just to open the back up. It's actually making it worse if you're sitting at a desk. So little soapbox moment there for a second, but your point. Just because you don't work out and you stand in front of a desk all day, doesn't mean you don't need tension relief.

• 24:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, absolutely. And you just gave me a key factoid there. The place to apply the tension relief, you have Theragun is in your chest.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Chest muscles first, right?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Cause you can open that up.

• 24:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  The tension away from now your shoulder blades can come together. Sometimes if I just immediately jump on trying to get someone to pinch their shoulder blades. They can't because the front muscles are so activated that, that the protagonist, the antagonist on the back can't activate. Cause it's, it needs to release for the front ones. So it's just, I think what's most fascinating to me and really fun is that people, once they start treating their pain and they start realizing what it is, they start learning their bodies.

• 25:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And that, that's fascinating to see, especially nowadays, these young kids coming into athletes and how they know their bodies. It's, it's so crazy from just 10 years ago, you know?

• 25:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's amazing.

• 25:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hi, Dr. Shaw here. I want to take a minute to talk to you about cellular health. So in my clinics, I've actually seen 30 year old people with cells that look like they're pushing retirement. And I've also seen 60 year olds with cells that look like they're 40 years old. So what's the difference? It's really about how fast their telomeres are breaking down. Your cells you see are like phones and they have limited cell phone battery. Poor sleep, stress, processed foods, all of these things can drain that battery way faster than it should. So this is the reason why I partnered with IMA. IMA powers that cellular battery. It's not just another multivitamin, it's a comprehensive 92 ingredient formula. Designed specifically for cellular health and longevity.

• 26:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm talking 900 milligrams of vitamin C. That's like 20 oranges worth of DNA protection. The clinical dose of CoQ10 that you need to power your cellular engine. You also get zinc, selenium, vitamin E, alpha lipoic acid. All of these work synergistically for cellular repair and protecting your telomeres. So instead of taking a handful of pills every day and all these supplements, IMA actually gives you everything that you need. In one scientifically formulated system. And this isn't just a theory anymore. IMA had partnered with Oxford University, the International Space Station, San Francisco Research Institute. And they've done studies and they've gotten this NSF certified to truly power your health.

• 27:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Most people are aging twice as fast as they should, unfortunately. You don't have to be one of them. Try IMA. I actually have a discount secured for you if you go to drshah.com/ima. Or go to imathhealth.com/discount/drsah and you can get 20% off with my discount code drshah. You can also find the link below.

• 27:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, another place I see people have a lot of pain is obviously low back, right?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I think a lot of that is actually coming from hip problems. Right? And probably, probably almost 90% of it is from the hips and from staying in a seated position all day. For hours at a time without movement.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  How do you talk to your patients about that with the low back pain? What can they do?

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I have a rule. The length of time it took you to get to this point is probably the length of time it's going to take us to get out of that. How long you had your back pain? Three weeks. All right, get ready. It's a three week journey. We can't get rid of it tomorrow. I'm not a healer, Jesus, I can't make it like abracadabra go away. So first I'd like to set, like, let's set some idea, like, uh, expectations.

• 28:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Let's start there. Then the next thing is you're going to chew away at it little at a time. It's not all going to go away at once. And this is on you, by the way. Cause I'm not coming to your office to have you stand up every five minutes so I can treat your back. We got to, so I think what I, first thing is where is it and can we get ahead of it? And what you want to do is get ahead of it and you can get ahead of it quicker by adding movement, stretching and Theragun into that process. So first of all, you're scrunching your body. So your hip flexors are flexed. Your hamstrings are flexed, which means they're short.

• 28:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  And then you have to stand up. You've been sitting for three hours, sometimes can fly by and people don't know it. And then you stand up to walk to get to the bathroom or something. And now suddenly you have something in your back. That's the weakest point.

• 28:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Not where the problem is. So what I like to tell people is the smartest thing for us to do is just like brushing our teeth. We don't wait till Saturday to brush our teeth. We do it every single day, hopefully, many, many times a day supposedly. If you take recovery the same way.

• 29:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Our bodies are getting beat up. We're waking up, we're probably not getting hydrated, we're drinking caffeine, I could go down the list of things that we're doing to our bodies to beat our bodies up. If you would take pit stops, just start with two minutes in the morning and two minutes at night and treat your body. In the morning, you're taking the tension away from getting sleeping and being relaxed, you're waking up the nervous system. And at night, you're downrating, regulating the nervous system, putting heat by mechanotransduction on the muscles to be able to sleep better. Start there. Then honestly, if you just start there, your low back pain will probably be 50% better. Just by moving, being aware of it and taking care of your body twice a day. Now, what I have a little speech that I give about pit stops.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  If you ever watched any race car, races in Formula One, they have pit stops. And it's part of the strategy is when you have a pit stop and what you do at the pit stops. So that's the same thing with us. What are you doing in a day? And if your day requires a few moments, you need many little ones in the day instead of taking a big one at the end of the day. So with all of that, what I tell people is where are you with your back pain? Are you aware of what's causing the back pain? And if you are, let's stop that. And then we can start treating it. Movement and stretching is always going to be the best thing. Always. I'll go around our office with a ther- with two Theragons and I'll just treat people at their desk. And they're like, oh my God, I didn't know how bad I was.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  You don't, we don't realize, we're strong people, like we are really resilient humans.

• 30:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Humans are resilient.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  We don't realize how much tension we're carrying. And I think if we were aware of that, you'd start to tie the, the link between taking care of your body and longevity.

• 31:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. Absolutely. It's a big, it's a big piece of it. And you know, I think that's fantastic advice, by the way, I'm a big fan of actually building an exercise snacks into our day where you take some time to

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Love that.

• 31:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Just, you know, just go for a walk around the office at the minimum, but even just lifting some weights or doing some squats.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Air squats.

• 31:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so making maybe the Theragun part of that. Yeah, exactly. When you're using the Theragun for the hips.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Where do you place it? Where, what's the, you gave me some advice on how to use it correctly.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Can you talk about that a little bit?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think the most basic way to use it is you want to use it on soft tissue. So in your, in your hip area, there's soft tissue and there's also some bony areas. So obviously stay off the bones. But I, if you, if I give someone, it doesn't matter what age or what skill level, a mini, one of our minis, and I just have them start moving around, you'll find the spot. Here's the trick. When you find the spot, just let it rest there. It does the work for you. You don't have to add pressure. And a lot of times you get knuckleheads like me that are like, oh, there it is. I'm just gonna beat it up. Yeah, jam it in there and make it go away. And our body really likes to work with us.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Right? It likes to work with what you're doing. That's what, why massage therapists are so good is they're working with the body's mechanisms to get rid of all the things that our body has. So when you take a mini or whatever Theragun and you're slowly, what I tell them is start in your quadricep and slowly work up to where your hip flexor is and you'll find where the pain starts. And then you start treating that pain. The slower you move, the better it is and you don't have to add extra pressure. So that's the best way. The one thing that people miss all the time is you have to stretch or move after. You can't just sit and treat it. On an airplane, you're sitting for an airplane for however long.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  To treat that area, the best thing is if you can stand up in the aisle, work on that area for 10, 15 seconds and then stretch that hip flexor. Give it some range of motion, open it up, let the brain and the nervous system know like, we're not trying to guard anything. We want to loosen that, that tissue. So that's, and the hamstrings, you have to do the hamstrings.

• 33:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  You know, every single person that I talk to has tight hamstrings.

• 33:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. We all do. It's just, it's just a modern day work environment just creates that, I think. Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay, that, that was fantastic. And so, you know, you mentioned there's three ways that Theragun works. But I think a fourth way for me personally is I feel it's incredible at activating the parasympathetic nervous system.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you know, I get all these toys in the mail all the time from companies that have these vagal simulating devices and things.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the whole purpose of them is to activate the parasympathetic nervous system because we are in a sympathetic state pretty much from the moment we wake up till the moment we go to bed, right? And you know, talking about snacks, like the best thing to do at multiple times throughout the day is activate that parasympathetic nervous system. So I would say the fourth modality of the Theragun is parasympathetic activation. Cause you can literally feel it when you're using it. Like you just go into a really

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Perfect. That, that honestly is one of the secrets, I think, that people don't realize. I was with a guy the other day and he said, we were golfing and I was using it a lot. I knew that I hadn't golfed this year and I knew that if I played like I want to play, I'm going to be sore. So I had it with me. I just know that, right? So I'm just doing my thing and he's watching and I don't know him that well. We just met. So about halfway through the thing, he says, hey, I noticed you're using that a lot. What, I have one at my house, but the only time I've really used it is when I'm sore. I'm like, oh, what does that mean to you? Cause I wanted to find out what his reference was. My little back hurts and I'll put on my low back and so have you ever done your hamstrings? No, I just showed him this like hamstring thing and it blew his mind.

• 35:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  So I think people don't recognize how important it is that we take care of our bodies a little bit at a time. And these little snacks. So in the early days, I have to tell a funny story.

• 35:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  I was working on athletes and I knew that if I, if they used it too long, I knew that it would activate their parasympathetic nervous system, it would make them relaxed. So I would always tell athletes, don't use it too long before your competition or something. And I was actually treating a bunch of the Dodgers before practice and that's how I learned that. I was treating them too long. And they would get up and I, they'd like want to go and lay down. So I'm thinking, what am I doing? What's happening? I didn't really understand that. So there was, it was the, it was the Olympics in Korea. And, and those of you who are listening, and you might remember, it was really warm. And so it was, the snow conditions were really rough.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  It was hard, hard to find time to get good snow conditions to have consistent runs for all the competitors. And it was a big deal. It was all over the news and everything. So I was at the Park City Olympic Training Center, happened to be in Utah. And I went to see my friend that's, that runs the place and we were just sitting in her office and she's like, oh my gosh, I got an athlete called me the other day. Let me see if I can get all of them. So he gets him on the phone and she, we start talking. Tell him what had this, I have Dr. Jay in the office, tell us what happened. And he says, it was a nightmare. He said, I had the worst run I've had in a really long time and it was immediately after using your Theragun. Which is the total opposite of what I told him would happen. So I'm now stumped thinking, wait a second. And then it started, the math started going, wait, it was warm.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  When did you use it? Before? How long? Like 20 minutes. I'm like, oh, what? Okay. And I had to do a quick lesson. Let me show you something. Don't do that. But you were probably sleepy. Oh yeah, I wanted to take a nap. So he's like, on the ride up, I was like falling asleep in the, in the thing. So I realized that, that Theragun and the frequency and the motion that it has on your body turns on the parasympathetic nervous system. Those people who don't know, you can't have those things on at the same time and be healthy.

• 37:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  So it's got to be one or the other. And to your point, it's really important for us to be in a sympathetic state.

• 37:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  If you're walking across the street and someone honks at you and you don't have a sympathetic nervous system, you're probably going to get hit.

• 37:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Right? So we need it. And what we've found is that if you can activate your parasympathetic nervous system, you perform better in a sympathetic state, but it also increases your HRV. So if we can activate our parasympathetic in a voluntary state, through breath work, meditation, Theragun, these moments where you can turn on the parasympathetic, and I keep doing this because it is a down regulation. That's where you really start having an effect on your long-term health.

• 37:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Through cardiovascular things. So it's, it's become such a passionate thing for me because I, I tripped up on this idea of what it does through experiences and being in this space. And then we've taken on the responsibility to make sure we educate people on what it is. So yeah, this is, the, you got, the parasympathetic thing is, it's probably the, the thing that surprises people most, you know?

• 38:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Another great example of how to use this to your benefit is you want to get into a parasympathetic state before you go to sleep. And so the perfect time to do a Theragun session is before bed because I mean, you, you can see it in your sleep score. You're going to sleep so much better.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. My wife won't let me treat her unless it's bedtime. Cause she knows like, I'm going to want to go straight to bed. You know how it feels after a really good massage?

• 38:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  I don't want to get off the table. I want to lay there and sleep for a few minutes. It's the same thing. And the, it's, you know, really cool anecdote really is I started seeing the need for athletes and how important sleep was for them after a game. So if you think about this, win or lose, no matter what sport it is, at a professional level, you're so amped up and, and if you've lost or won and it's an intense game, you got several hours before your body can regulate to sleep, right? So you get done with the evening game, bus, train, whatever, back to the hotel or home, whatever. It's two o'clock in the morning and now they're, what do they do? They're replaying the game over and over and they're looking at this thing and what they did wrong or right and how they won.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  It, that's all sympathetic.

• 39:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  It's a sympathetic party and no one's going home.

• 39:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  And so what, what we started realizing is it was super powerful to provide these tools for these athletes to get into a sympathetic, parasympathetic state. And that's when we started saying, wait a minute, everyone needs that. We've got to bring that out to the world.

• 39:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  So it was, it's, it was a fascinating experience to be able to bring a solution to these guys. There really wasn't one. You know, sleeping pills and all that, they can't take that because they got practice the next day. And so do we. We have kids that wake up at three in the morning. That's all, it was really cool for me to grow through this brand and see the similarities in our life to high performers. It's really no different. We justify it a way easier.

• 40:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. Exactly. Performance. Is one of those terms that can be applied to anybody. And I think if you're a mom and you're staying at home, or if you're a really busy executive going to the office, or if you're an athlete, you're still performing, right?

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you're performing at a very high level and it involves the same amount of time being in a sympathetic state for all of those roles, right? And so there needs to be times during your day that you down regulate. I try to tell my patients at least three to four times a day.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Really? I love that.

• 40:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Try to find three to four moments in the day. Could be 10 minutes where you down regulate. Pick different techniques that fit the situation. Could be breath work. If you have a Theragun around, it could be a Theragun session, a meditation. And if you can build that in three to four times a day, that in our modern day environment is more than 99% of the people are doing out there.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 41:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so I think, I think it's, um, it's good to like, kind of have a benchmark for how much time you're spending down regulated.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  The connection to the HRV has always been so fascinating to me. And it gets more and more clear as you start seeing people make those habits and make those changes. And then suddenly their HRV is higher.

• 41:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  You know, if, I think if, if we ask ourselves in the morning and we're honest with ourselves, what is our score? You see your sleep score, whatever your re-energized score, whatever your wearable is telling you, but how do you really feel? Do you feel like a seven? Then you're not recovered. We were talking about this at that panel. Recovery is getting back to a hundred percent and feeling a hundred percent to go out and kill it again.

• 41:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  So I think that's, a lot of times we're, we're not honest with ourselves. We mind over matter, just like Apollo Ona did when you used ice skate, you know, like just get there, make it happen. And we mind over matter, but in life, that's not scalable. It's really not. We have to start slowing down and paying attention to where our mind is. Thoughts are in the mind, feelings are in the body, and a lot of times thoughts take over. And the feelings, we're not in touch with our feelings. Be able to find how we're feeling about something. Do you feel anxiety? Do you feel, you know, I think that we're getting disconnected from that with so much of our digital life, you know?

• 42:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, agreed. You know, one of the things that you said on stage when we were there is that you really look at kind of the master biomarker, if you will, of recovery as heart rate.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Can you talk about that a little bit?

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, I, I've just, for me, I feel like the heart doesn't lie. If I'm working with someone and we're trying to get into a parasympathetic state and their affect, the way they're looking to me, shows they might be, but I check their heart and they're pounding at 80 beats a minute. To me, that, that, they can't lie. So is, are there ways that we can sync that up with something? Are there ways that we can help navigate the heart rate? So for me, that's, you know, if you have high blood pressure, your heart's, you know, it's your heart. I've had that before and I've also done things to change that. So I'm not dealing with high blood pressure. And it's been mechanical things, like things that I've been able to do for myself.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  So I think that's a really important marker. And then I think we talked about how important blood was, just getting your oil checked.

• 43:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  So I, but I, for us, when we, some of the products we've made, for the smart goggles, for example, they'll sync up with your heart to try and bring your heart rate down. And I don't, I don't know that we spend enough time as a brand talking about nervous system regulation. But that's the ultimate effect of all of our products is nervous system regulation.

• 43:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I agree. Are your goggles that you're talking about, uh, do they provide like some sort of biofeedback on the heart rate? Is that what they're doing? No?

• 43:58Speaker 01

  So they have a PPG reader that sits against the cheek. So it, it will read your heart rate and pick up on your heart rate. So it'll mark on the app. It's a, it's a 15 minute protocol. So on either end, the minute and a half or two minutes, it's regulating, it's feeding you a heart rate that's lower than yours. So it's around 50 to 52 beats a minute. And it's, it'll, you'll feel the pulse in the goggles and your heart wants to sync up with that.

• 44:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  I've put this on athletes in the middle of a game. And if they focus on it, they're feeling that stimulus, it's stronger than what they're seeing. Cause first of all, we cover their eyes. So the goal with the goggles was to, to put someone in a parasympathetic state in 15 minutes. That was the goal. So how do we do that? First thing is we were found, the science shows that if you cover your eyes, your heart rate drops about 10 points over about two or three minutes. So, all right, let's first cover their eyes. That's easy. The next thing is, is there a stimulus that we can give them that also assists that process? Heat. Okay. Let's put a little bit of heat on there. That'll, that'll lower things. Then the next thing is a massage. Oh, okay.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  So we have a pneumatic pressure points on the third eye, above and below, and the pressure points in your eyebrow and in this rim of your eye here. And then the temples. So those three things are happening all at the same time. If I just stop there, it's amazing, right? But then what happens is you're, the, it's picking up your heart rate and it's feeding you a slower heart rate. So now you're feeling this, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And your heart tries to match that. So within three or four minutes, I tell people sometimes, get ready, cause you're going to want to sleep. They'll take it off and it's just super relaxing. So it is a nervous system regulation tool. It's not a sleep tool. You're not, it's not intended to wear while you're sleeping.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  It's intended to get you ready to sleep. And then it's also for those snacks, little pit stops throughout the day. Throw that on in your office, take a little power nap, 15 minutes and that thing will shut off automatically.

• 46:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Incredible. I love that. I gotta give this a try for sure. One of the things I do sometimes with some patients that are having trouble getting in that sympathetic state is just very simply, most people have some sort of wearable or an Apple watch that tells you what your heart rate is and it'll feed to like your phone. And I have them get the biofeedback from their phone, telling them what their heart rate is. And I tell them, lower your heart rate and their phone will tell you whether it's getting lowered or not. And that biofeedback gets people into a state of where they are putting themselves in the mindset or thinking relaxing thoughts or doing some breath work and they see the heart rate come down.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And, and part of like, I think, I think biofeedback to me is one of the, one of the major unlocked therapies that we have out there. Because we really don't know what's happening inside of our body at any one moment in time, right?

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 47:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Having something like that is could be really helpful. And I know there's a company called HeartMath that does this for HRV as well. They give you your HRV as biofeedback as well. Can be very powerful.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that. I never thought about that. Having someone actually watch a number and see if they could, whatever they're doing can have an effect on that. I love that.

• 47:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it, it is very powerful and it works really well.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Connect people.

• 47:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  There's another device that you have that I like to just talk about real quick too, is the compression device. Can you talk about the?

• 47:28Speaker 01

  The boots?

• 47:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. I, I mean, you know, people have seen these everywhere. They're in a lot of gyms. They are a lot of recovery facilities. What do they do?

• 47:39Speaker 01

  They basically move blood in your body by using pressure. So that's the easiest thing. And that, in scientific terms, is called pneumatic sequential compression. So it's pneumatic is air. It's using air to fill up the bag, the bladders. And it's moving in a sequence from your toes, through your feet, through your ankles, up your calves, up the front of your legs. Feels up all the way and it squeezes as much blood as it can. Imagine taking a sponge and squeezing all of the water out of the sponge. Now you have that sponge in your hand. It's all wrinkled up. And then you put that sponge in water and release that sponge and it just absorbs all the blood. That's what's happening.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  So you're squeezing the muscles, all that red tissue with, push all the, the venous blood up, which is the blood that's kind of been used. It's easiest way to say it. And then that vacuum, when it releases, after it's squeezed, that it pulls new blood down through the arteries. So it basically, when you wear that for 15 minutes, the boots, it's like walking two miles. Do you know the pump on the bottom of your feet when you walk? That when we stand, and even sometimes we just kind of move around our office, those aren't being activated. So the blood pools in our legs. I have so many metaphors for pooling, but imagine standing in your heart.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  This little heart up here has to pump all that blood from the bottom of your feet up against gravity to get to a point where it can actually replenish with oxygen. If you're standing all day and your heart rate's low, cause you're not really moving, that's only going to get heavier and heavier and heavier. So so many times I tell people, at worst, just lay on the floor and put your feet up a wall. Just let the gravity bring that, that, help your heart. At best, put the boots on, cause that's going to help move that blood flow. And to your point we were talking about earlier, this isn't just for exercising.

• 49:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  This is, they use these in the hospitals to help with people that can't walk. They put these on, cause it mimics the walking movement of the blood flow through their bodies. So again, I think learning what your body is, what, how you're using this avatar, what are you doing to this thing? And how can you make it last longer? That's the real trick, you know? And so I think the boots, when people see them, I ran into this lady, she's a runner, worked at Apple. And I went in to pick up a laptop and she looks my name up and she sees it's connected to Theragun and oh, hey, are you? And then she realized, oh, you're the founder. And, and, and she said, oh my God, I love my Theragun.

• 50:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  And she, I said, do you, have you had, do you have any other tools? She said, no, do you make other stuff? I said, oh my God, you, you don't have, how'd you get your Theragun? She said, my brother gave it to me for Christmas. I used his at Thanksgiving. He gave me one at Christmas, saved my life. I'm a runner, da, da, da. I said, if I told you right now, If I told you before you had your Theragun, how amazing Theragun was, would you have believed me? She said, no. And I said, if I tell you we have jet boots that are just as amazing as Theragun, would you believe me? She said, now I will believe you.

• 50:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  So I think people need to understand that it's treating yourself.

• 50:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  We need to do that. It's not a luxury anymore. It's a necessity.

• 50:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Especially the way we live. And we're trying to make that more accessible to people. That's really all it is.

• 50:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. And it becomes more accessible, I think, when you have these tools that are easy to use, that you make very comfortable and you have multiple modalities working at the same time, like in the Theragun. It's just makes, because you know, no one has unlimited time, right? And that's why we spend so much time in a sympathetic state, in one position. And we need to build in these breaks. The more efficient that you can be when you're in that break time, that self-care time, the more it adds up over time.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so funny as you're saying that. I'm thinking about some of the things that people don't recognize. We talk about the sound of our Theraguns. And can a mom have that on in a room with a baby sleeping? That's a real use case.

• 51:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Because when you're nursing, you're not thinking about the contorted position you're in. You just want this baby to go to sleep. And you set it down and you're just like, oh, my God.

• 51:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I know.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  So we really think about those things. They're silly to people, but we want it to be accessible everywhere, so that there's no excuses, that you're actually able to take care of yourself in a way. There's so many times in the early days, we'd have people that say, my dog, every time I turn that on, he comes running in. So that was an issue for us to be able to get it to where it was more accessible for people in spa areas and clinics like yours, not just in the gym.

• 52:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it was super quiet. I like the heating modalities on the new one, too.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, those have made a big difference.

• 52:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's a really great tool. And I wanted to have you on to talk about it because I use it personally every night and we have them in our clinics. And I just wanted people to understand the science of some of these tools and how incredibly useful they can be. And, you know, when I shared the stage with you, your story and how this product came to be and just your thoughts around recovery, big picture, it all just made for an awesome podcast episode. So really appreciate you joining me for this.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Thanks. Yeah, it was great to spend some time. Appreciate it.

• 52:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, no, this is fantastic. Is there anything else you want to let the audience know? Or at least I would love to have them know where to hear more from you.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm on Instagram, at Dr. Jason Wersland. Our website's therabody.com. If you dig in a little deeper, you'll find our science. If you're into that stuff, we have a lot of science on our products. We don't release products unless we have protocols and claims we can make. They're not just gimmicks. So whether it's skin, you know, our red light mask, this is something interesting you may not know. But when we were making that mask, I wanted to put a vibration touch points that stimulate the sutures.

• 53:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, yeah.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  So I learned through schooling that when you massage the sutures of the head, it actually stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. It allows that little space between, you know, to decrease inflammation. So now hockey players are wearing the mask.

• 53:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, wow.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Not just for the red light, but to actually decrease the inflammation in their head, which was the whole purpose. So you talked about multimodal products.

• 53:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  That's really what we're trying to do and make it easy for people. But thanks for having me on here. I really appreciate it.

• 53:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This is very cool. It's a long time coming. And I really appreciate you. Thank you. And congrats on everything you've built.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Thanks. Likewise. Thank you.

• 53:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and it's always important to seek their guidance.