Laser Therapy Technology for Pain, Inflammation, Gut Health, Thyroid Optimization & Rapid Healing

Nick Urban [00:00:05]:

What if there was a way to recover faster from your workouts, to address pain, and to help modulate bodily systems back into balance? Hi. I’m Nick Urban, host of the Mindbody Peak Performance podcast. And today, we’re talking all things red and infrared light therapy, specifically in this Little form factor of a device I have here for those listening on audio. It’s a band that contains several little units. You click a button, and it emits a mix of red and near infrared using laser technology rather than the industry standard of LEDs? In this episode, you’ll learn why that’s important, The unique use cases you can do with this system, such as applying it to the gut to improve gut health, to potentially address headaches, to use it to improve cognition, to modulate the thyroid, and a whole lot more? We also cover the myths and misconceptions around red light therapy, near infrared light, and how this little device is able to deliver the equivalent targeted power of a full body system? I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical that it could until I talked with Our guest this week and looked into some of their internal research myself. So our guest this week is Forrest Smith. He’s the CEO of a company called Kineon, and Forrest has a 20 year history of building successful startups in the tech hardware space? He is an entrepreneurial optimist and passionate about health, wellness, and advancing technology to help others? Forrest speaks, reads, and writes fluent Chinese and has spent his adult life building amazing products and innovating supply chains? He grew up playing competitive sports in Atlanta and regularly participates in rugby matches, a personal favorite of mine, and Trane’s CrossFit, which ultimately led him to develop Kineon’s Move Plus? Since we recorded this podcast, I’ve actually been testing out and using the Kineon Move Plus pretty consistently? And my favorite trial that I’ve been doing is to apply it to 1 leg only and then go out and crush an intense workout, a really big one, and see how the soreness compares between the 2 legs? And It’s not double blind. It’s not a rigorous study, but it does make a small difference from my 4 or 5 different tests now.

Nick Urban [00:02:56]:

Although I don’t have any thyroid issues, I’ve been also using it on my thyroid in the mornings as I did previously and, again, on my gut just to see what I noticed? And I mentioned it in the episode, but I still don’t notice a huge effect from those. But it would be really interesting to do a bioassay and see how my enzyme levels change, my digestion improves, and how my endocrine system improves also? Have not done that, so I cannot comment. But that’d be a fascinating n of 1 experiment, should any of you want to dig in and try it yourself. If you do, let us know how it goes. The link to the product and the resources of everything we discuss will be at mindbodypeak.com slash the number 128? And if you’re watching this near the publishing date, They are currently running a 40% off pre Black Friday sale. So go ahead and click the link in the description below and check it out while it’s still on a great sale? Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, sit back, relax, and enjoy this conversation with Forrest Smith. Forrest, welcome to Mindbody Peak Performance.

Forrest Smith [00:04:10]:

Thank you. So excited to be here. I can’t can’t wait to dive in on this with you.

Nick Urban [00:04:13]:

Yes. And We were just talking offline. Congrats on the recent round of funding that you guys just raised.

Forrest Smith [00:04:19]:

Thank you very much. It’s an exciting time. It’s it’s a lot of work to get it done, But our community has really supported us well for it. And it’s it’s, one of the the basis of why we’ve taken so so much time and and really spent it with our our community is that we we’d also like them to see the benefits of what we’re doing, not just from a pain reduction, inflammation reduction, but also, we can we can now be a, A community owned company, which is, you know, really exciting for us as well.

Nick Urban [00:04:44]:

Yeah. And part of the reason we’ve covered red light therapy, and we’ve Talked about infrared light on the show several times, but I wanted to have you on today because you are you guys are doing something different, and there are a lot of different use cases and applications with your system that I’ve been using? And I actually happen to have an unboxed one right here in front of me as well. But we will dive into that In a moment, let’s warm up first with the unusual or non negotiable things you’ve done so far today for your health, your performance, and your bioharmony. Personally,

Forrest Smith [00:05:18]:

as a as an individual, meditation, I I do kind of A a more general meditation in the mornings. And I I do one that’s more focused on rest and, Recovery, in the in the afternoons and evenings. I do some kind of, exercise every morning, some kind of high intensity exercise. Right now, it’s, it’s burpees with my kids. We started off at 10 and then added 1 per day, and we’re at a 115 right now, which is It’s a great way to just kind of add a bit of of work in the mornings, but I I do that every morning before I have anything to eat or drink or coffee or anything like this. Just Get in, get the blood moving, and that’s that’s definitely nonnegotiable. I started wearing these blue blocker glasses that that Were given to me within the the last, 3 months, which is is really nice. It actually helps from a a melatonin suppression standpoint, and Getting better sleep because of those and and really committing in the right time to to be able to get get sleep.

Forrest Smith [00:06:21]:

So that’s I would say that’s my, that’s my core number of things. I on daily basis, I’m also using the laser therapy, and I I use it on, injuries, but I also use it, we we’ve got a a couple of things that we’ve seen from a literature standpoint that we’re building products to to bring to market around this. But our current device, the Move Plus, also works for, gut health. So I I use it on kinda soft tissue issues. I have an old torn meniscus that flares up and it’s actually flared up right now, so I’m using it 15 minutes a day on that. And then on my gut, to increase or to balance that FB ratio, which is is 2 different types of, 2 different classes of Bacteria that you have in your stomach, that that when the the ratio is balanced, you feel better. Increasing dopamine and I I just feel generally better when I’m, treating my stomach on a daily basis Delays with therapy. So I would say that’s that’s, a few of my my daily protocols that I I don’t miss for anything.

Nick Urban [00:07:14]:

Yeah. That’s a well optimized routine. Actually, I came across your product a while back, and I got some questions on it. Hadn’t tried it. Then you guys were gracious enough to send me one to test out, and I put through the paces, But, unfortunately, I didn’t have any injuries to test it on. And at first, I thought the only use was on injuries, maybe to recover a little bit faster. I was applying it to my gut also for hopefully improved gut health, and then also I decided to try applying it to my my neck for my thyroid to see if I notice anything, and maybe my experiments weren’t long enough. I did it, like, 5 days in a row and didn’t notice any, like, insane effects from it, and is it more of a cumulative effect from each of those?

Forrest Smith [00:07:52]:

It is. It’s it’s more of a cumulative effect. The the nice thing about it is and and one of the reasons why we feel it’s so Important to kinda get this education piece out to people is this is one of the few ways though that that, kind of gives you an opportunity to even though it’s It’s kind of marginal from a daily standpoint to improve the underlying tissue, whether it’s it’s Kind of from patho pathological issues, where there’s ongoing inflammation or pain like osteoarthritis. Or one of the things that we’ve seen recently, and our our dosing from our device actually covers very well, is Hashimoto. So you start seeing these, these thyroid based issues, you know, even up until about 3 or 4 years ago, we were seeing things like thyroid treatment, with lasers Be contraindicated. And the dosing had just not been tested. It’s one of the one of the exciting things about being in photobiomodulation or light therapy right now is Even though there’s 6, 7000 papers out there, a number of the different pathologies that you can treat with the device are still coming to light. And, so what we’ve seen over the past 2 years, and particularly with 2 papers this year that were larger human trials, is that people with Hashimoto’s, one of the things that that’s kind of been recommended for this in the past is a, a a series of supplements, that you can take that will have A substantial impact on it.

Forrest Smith [00:09:15]:

What they did for these trials was, they paired the supplements with A laser therapy device and, both of them had an impact. The laser therapy device was a positive impact and even more Substantially a positive impact than the supplements, but they were also stackable so that they’re they’re synergistic in how you can go about it. So, for for thyroid, Kind of, especially when there’s there’s an underlying pathology like Hashimoto’s. But for thyroid function in general, there’s a there’s definitely a positive impact. If you’re if you’re not seeing it in the very short term, you can stack it with, with supplements. And I can send you a link for that that paper, so that the supplements they’ve used with it. But, yeah, and and expect much faster and much more substantial results.

Nick Urban [00:10:01]:

Yeah. That’s a great idea. And have you heard of people stacking this with, say, like, an iodine or a t two or something like that just for, like, thyroid optimization who don’t necessarily have any underlying pathologies?

Forrest Smith [00:10:15]:

I hadn’t, but I I think that’s the next step. The the first step was to kind of clear it from a safety standpoint, are we safe? The second step is are we are we seeing good benefits, for people with a pathology. And I think the 3rd step is let’s start let’s start looking at how we can optimize this relative to, you know, the impact on people’s lives from a a To your point, there there’s a number of different things that the thyroid impacts, and and our hormonal systems are so complex, that dialing that in and getting some more data around it will be Super exciting. And and, again, that’s that’s one of the reasons why we love being in the space is because it’s just it keeps evolving, and we keep seeing these, powerful steps forward for, kind of dosing validations, underlying mechanisms that are that are, you know, what’s what’s mediating these effects, and then some optimization, Pathways that we can start getting towards for having an impact on people who are non pathological and and just wanna see, you know, an impact on their quality of life, which really goes back to our core mission as a company.

Nick Urban [00:11:08]:

The other way I was using it is on my, like, major muscle groups after a workout, like, say, 5 minutes, 10 minutes after workout, like, immediately after. And I have to say that I did notice that I wasn’t as sore the next day. It’s very hard to isolate the effects as to, like, whether it was the device or it was the workout or it was a post workout recovery, But nonetheless, I found that very intriguing.

Forrest Smith [00:11:28]:

It’s it’s amazing. And there’s some literature I can send you over on this as well. A couple of the things that we’ve seen Better objective measures for this for, kind of delayed it. So there there’s some kind of, relative measures like delayed onset muscle soreness, which, you know, this is this is something where you’re you’re having people kind of validate by their own kind of relative measures for it, but it’s harder to to say That’s what’s you know, it’s hard to use that as the foundational, piece for an argument to to use this from a recovery standpoint. What’s been more powerful for us is Seeing these muscle inflammatory markers, like c reactive proteins and, creatinine kinase that are Especially when you’re doing kind of high volume for me, it’s the high volume middleweight. Right? I go do you know, you got a 135 on the bar, 155 on the bar, and you’re doing 200 Front rack lunges in a day and and some kind of CrossFit workout. You know you’re gonna be sore, you know. But what we’ll see with those is, the reduction in these Muscle inflammatory markers isn’t marginal.

Forrest Smith [00:12:26]:

It’s, it’s 60 to 80%. And so, you know, we we often get the question of, know, if I’m training with this we we work with a lot of professional athletes, you know, the the US Olympic team, a number of guys who are doing repetitive motions with the the, The goal of either hypertrophy or strength gains, at a very high level. And so one of the things that was very important for them to understand and validate Is that in reducing these muscle inflammatory markers, am I also going to reduce my muscle adaptations? And you don’t. You you reduce kind of the bad stuff, But these muscle adaptations that you’re trying to trigger from a hypertrophy standpoint, you’re actually what you’re what you’re essentially doing is putting yourself on a faster route To those because you can go back to training faster because you’re not being limited by those muscle inflammatory markers. But inflammation is not what’s driving the High pressure fee or the strength gains. There are other mechanisms that have been and it’s a really deep rabbit hole for that one. But, so just kind of gloss over and say there’s other mechanisms for those. But, being able to to not have to have yourself limited in the intensity that you can do for your workouts tomorrow based on what you’ve done today or having that that Intensity, limitation reduced, you means you can just go through your strength curve gains faster.

Forrest Smith [00:13:42]:

And so it’s been it’s been really powerful for a number of the different athletes we’re working for to be able to to see that. They can reduce that onset muscle soreness. But even more importantly, they can there’s a number of different things that happen from a a muscle adaptation standpoint that, you can get you can get back into that Training faster and go through your curves a little bit a little bit sooner in the, yeah, increase of of and again, a lot of times on the you know, there’s there’s different goals for people where they’re training. Some folks are looking for strength gain still, and we’re looking for hypertrophy. It it from what we’ve seen, this actually benefits both, but actually can benefit the strength a little bit more than it does the hypertrophy?

Nick Urban [00:14:17]:

Interesting. Have you looked into the neuroendocrine impact of this? Like, does it impact either the stress hormones or the anabolic hormones?

Forrest Smith [00:14:24]:

So it it does. And the, the stress hormone is the main thing. So, the Anabolic hormones, I I’ve seen less literature about. But for stress hormones, one of the things that we do see is that the the reduce the reduction in oxidative stress at a cellular level, translates through to that endocrine system, and we we don’t have a mediating factor for that yet, at least from the literature that I’ve seen. But it’s again that’s one of the ones where As we start to see, and kind of validate what is happening, digging into the underpinning mechanisms for that is gonna be the next steps for it, and it’s it’s such an exciting space because of that.

Nick Urban [00:15:00]:

Yeah. Very nice. I’m looking forward to reading some of that research once it comes out. I know there’s already a lot of research out there on different things, and it seems all very specific to, like, particular wavelengths or, like, light irradiance or certain things like term parameters are not necessarily the way we’d replicate them at home per se, But I’m sure the research will come to elucidate some of these mechanisms behind how these are having great impacts on high level athletes and the general population as well.

Forrest Smith [00:15:24]:

To your point, a lot of the existing products on the market, what’s quoted with these from a dosing standpoint, and what’s measured with these and and, and we feel like is is a little bit suboptimal from a a, a dosing standpoint is, measurements like irradiance and total, Optical power density, are are talking about more about how what’s what light is coming out of the device, what light is landing at the skin level. What we try to do with our work is to back into which is both important to know, but, what we try to back into and that that’s given us a little bit better Dosing model, I think, and and makes us a little more effective from a an implementation standpoint. And an outcome standpoint is, as in most problems, we we wanted to work backwards from the the, The outcomes we’re trying to trigger. And so what triggers these these outcomes are different signaling molecules, from photo acceptors that you can impact. And We know essentially to to a quarter of magnitude, what depth, what type of, photo acceptors we’re gonna be Targeting at that depth, and then what size is the reservoir of those photo acceptors at the depth of tissue. And so our models are more based around how we’re delivering the correct, the optimal number of photons to these photo acceptors to trigger the signaling that we wanna trigger for the adaptations we’d like to see? And so that’s that’s really working more from the physiology standpoint than it is from the engineering standpoint. And then based on the physiology, you work back into the engineering. And I I think That’s one of the reasons why we’ve seen a lot more effective dosing relative to, whether it’s pain or inflammation or, know, a lot of the things that we’ve we’ve we’ve been targeting are, like we’re talking about earlier, a little bit relative as to their their metrics.

Forrest Smith [00:17:05]:

So when you’re measuring pain, for example, you’d think there’s a kind of pain scale that you could put a a, a device on your, on your knee if you’ve got a painful knee and say, this is a 6 out of 10? There’s really not. And and there’s some good work going on in this, for chronic pain in the brain? The WAVI guys, we’re we’re friendly with, they have an electronic, electric, brain diagnostic device, for using external stimuli and to be able to trigger subconscious Communication between different regions of the brain and then measure those. And those change if you have chronic pain. A number of ways that you can there’s a number of different efforts like this to be able to quantify pain. But essentially what we’ve had to do for pain, which is the gold standard for measurement, is use the visual assessment score, which is, how how bad does it hurt on a scale of 0 to 10? Which seems really kind of wishy washy. But what we what we’ve also tried to do as a, kind of, a space filler for that or a gap filler for that where our, you know, where our metrics are admittedly wishy washy even though they’re gold standard for the scientific community? We try to fill the gaps for these with things where there is a in at least a intermediate heuristic that we can go back and measure? And in the case of photobiomodulation, one of the ones that we found is Serum Nitric Oxide. So when we interact with hemoglobin, we reduce the affinity of hemoglobin for bind the the hemoglobin binding site For, binding with Nitric oxide? What that does is it dumps a bunch of Nitric oxide in your blood. It’s not the only thing that we interact with, but it’s something that we can measure and we can say, here, we see these spikes.

Forrest Smith [00:18:51]:

Okay. Was this spike higher or was this spike lower? If we than if we change, What what were you expecting from our mathematical model? And then how do we baseline our model around this, essentially? And so it’s given us a good way to go back in and and, like, I I believe, measure and hold ourselves a lot more accountable from a, from a dosing standpoint than any other devices that we’ve seen on the market?

Nick Urban [00:19:12]:

Yeah. Okay. Forrest, let’s back up, rewind a bit. We’re 15 minutes in, and people don’t even know what it is that your device is. So I have it for those watching the video. I have the System in the box right here, it’s consists of a bunch of different little modules and then a band, and you put those you wrap them around the body part, click a button, And then I believe there’s, like, an interval for about 5 minutes that it sends out the light, the red and the infrared. You can correct me whenever I’m Miss speaking here. And then at the end, you hear a little chime and that is one dose.

Forrest Smith [00:19:44]:

That’s right. That’s right. And and we’ve made it based on our community feedback, adjustable. So so from 5 to 10 to 15 minutes. 15 minutes is optimal, but we didn’t wanna set the entire time at 15 minutes because What we found with our early, test with this was the higher the the, the amount of time you’re asking for per day, the the less likely people are to maintain the therapy. And this is something that you should be, especially if you have the the kind of, point of inflammation, of chronic inflammation or pain that you should be using on a daily basis. And so better to do 5 minutes. So we’ve tried to throw it lower the threshold as much as we could, We better do 5 minutes every day than 15 minutes twice a week.

Forrest Smith [00:20:24]:

And, you know, we we’ve tried to talk to people about habit Stacking this, I I think this is, and this goes back to your question that that you started the the discussion with is, you know, when you when you So I have I have nonnegotiable things that I do every day. My meditation is one of them, and I try to use this, as part of those. My work is 1. My I’m more consistent about my work. So I now I now pair my device use with the work versus the the meditation. And, you know, a lot of times we’ll see folks who are like, you know, What’s what do you do every day? And they say, well, meditate. And you’re like, well, how many times have you meditated in the last week? Once or twice. You’re like, okay.

Forrest Smith [00:20:59]:

Well, you’re not that’s That’s an aspirational habit. Let’s let’s use kind of pragmatic habits versus aspirational habits to to, you know if you’re watching if you’re eating Cheetos or watching Netflix every day, That’s probably not the best habit, but if it’s consistent, let’s try to stack some benefit in there so that you can see some improvements in positivity coming back out of that time that you’re spending.

Nick Urban [00:21:18]:

Yeah. The way I was using it is I would put it around my waist or my my neck or whatever area. I would do about 3 different chimes. So I guess that’s a total of 15 minutes, and I wanted to keep going, but I believe that there’s a reason that you guys have that limit. How does that dosing work?

Forrest Smith [00:21:36]:

So dosing works on what they call an Arntz Schulz or biphasic dose curve, which is essentially as you increase the dose of kind of the the, the power, these wavelengths, and the and then the one variable that you have, under control is the time. You keep increasing that, then it the the outcomes keep increasing with it up to a certain point. And then after that point, they come back down. So, what you don’t see, though, is and and we get this question quite a lot as well, is you don’t really ever see it go back below 0. So you’re never gonna be worse off than you were originally using it in the 1st place? And the reason for that is we’re we’re using power levels that are Two things from a technical standpoint, non ablative. And so we when when you hear lasers, you think kind of, sharks with lasers and they’re they’re shooting people and and burning stuff. Those are ablative lasers. So when you’re when you’re able to burn tissue with it, it’s called ablative.

Forrest Smith [00:22:32]:

And we we’re not using ionizing, Radiation either. And so ionizing is essentially when you’re knocking, electrons out of their orbit. And and you think of ionizing radiation being something like UV or gamma radiation that is, knocking electrons Out of their orbit in your DNA comes to find out it’s not a very healthy thing for you. It’ll it’ll, it’ll that’ll show up a couple of years later in a in a really nasty way. So, we are neither ionizing nor, ablative. And so, again, you you never really go back below 0 from a dosing standpoint, from an outcome. So you’ll always Essentially have something coming back out of it. But for us, the the main thing is finding that sweet spot at the top of the curve, which is 15 minutes, as we’ve as we’ve dosed it for this device.

Nick Urban [00:23:19]:

Okay. Yeah. There’s a researcher, I think he’s a red light researcher named doctor Michael Hamblin, I wanna say, and he believes, like, For consumer red light therapy systems, you can’t actually do harm no matter how much you’re exposed because they’re not the different parameters you were just mentioning, they don’t apply in the same way to consumer red light? Like, yeah, you might not get as great benefits as if you cut off your session a little bit shorter, but you’re not gonna be doing net harm from just blasting yourself For an hour with a red light or infrared panel?

Forrest Smith [00:23:47]:

That’s exactly right. And and, yes, Michael Helland has been kind of the godfather of the of the space. He’s he’s been researching this for ages ages. Really, you know, great researchers is is I I is in a couple of different thousand different kind of citations and things like this. I mean, really, like, awesome stuff. And he’s exactly right about that. One of the things that we have seen people testing, in the red light space? And and it’s not something that we do, but, what we use is is technically now known as either photobiomodulation or low level laser therapy? One of the things that other, groups have tested and done and and found some application for is, high intensity laser therapy or HILT. And HILT has been used for things that are more like, if you have a pain point, mechanical or not? This you you treat the, intervening or kind of the neurological tissue, the nerve cells between that Pain in your spine, and it reduces the the level of transmission of that pain signal.

Forrest Smith [00:24:48]:

And so that’s less of a healing. We’re we’re what we’re looking at is, you know, With low level laser therapy, wound healing, reduced oxidative stress, increase, production of energy at from a cellular level, and then a number of hormonal and and, kind of blood level kind of meta, impact as well? With, high high intensity laser therapy, really what you’re looking at is more just the pain reduction of of that signal not being as as effective in in passing through.

Nick Urban [00:25:15]:

Important clarification, what is the difference between an LED based, like, light therapy panel and then also a laser?

Forrest Smith [00:25:23]:

Alright. Great question. So LEDs, they’re they’re both, solid state emitters, LEDs and lasers. And both of them, as we’re using the lasers right now, they aren’t necessarily. But as far as we’re using them for manufacturing devices, both are diode based, technology. The LEDs, when they emit, they they emit in so their their Chips or dye that are manufactured, when they emit, they emit in 360 degrees when you when the dye emit. Usually, what you’ll find for the components that are used for a product, The dye are packaged into a PLCC cup, which is essentially a small electronic, surface mountable, component that you can put into these systems? That surface mount component has a little cup that brings up 360 degrees back to A 120 degrees in most cases. And with that said though, it still continues out.

Forrest Smith [00:26:18]:

So the, they’re they’re more difficult to target internal tissue with? With lasers, lasers generate light with these These same kind of, diode based technology that are that’s used for, LEDs, but there’s a chamber, essentially with 2 mirrors, that more or less guarantees that the the light bounces until it hits a the correct 90 degree angle to go out of this This chamber, if you think about it as a kind of a chamber of of, like a circus chamber of mirrors, it has to hit the right the right angle to penetrate and go out. And so This means that everything coming out of the laser is coming out in a collimated way and it doesn’t spread, and it makes it much more it makes it much easier to to target and to reach internal tissue? And so we use LEDs for our for the the wavelength. We use a deep red wavelength with our devices, that that really should treat more of the surface tissue? And we we actually control the We we use a secondary object to control this 120 degree angle back down to 30 degrees. So even with the LEDs, we wanted to see a little bit a little bit more penetration, a little bit more, kind of 4 thrust out of those from a a controlling the the spread? But we use these at the the surface level tissue for, generating wound healing, increasing, the proliferation of, Different types of, support tissues for, your cartilage, for your skin. One of these is collagen 2. And so the red, the red light in, impacts and increases the the proliferation for collagen 2. That makes healthier scars? There’s there’s a number of different things that you can do at the surface level. For the internal tissue, like in your joints or in your gut or in your brain, the Infrared, near infrared actually penetrates more effect effectively, into the body.

Forrest Smith [00:28:14]:

And so we use the combination of that near infrared as a laser to make sure that we’re penetrating as effectively as we can to that internal tissue, being able to reduce the the, the inflammation, balance that oxidative stress, signaling cycle, increase energy production in your cells, and just generally have a, an overall, A positive impact on the internal tissue. So, the the LEDs are not to say that they’re not useful at all. It’s just a little bit more limited to the surface tissue from a targeting standpoint. And so we’ve made the we actually tested, LEDs LED only systems because it was much easier? When you’re using lasers, the systems are more sophisticated, the engineering is more sophisticated, there’s much higher regulatory path, there’s much longer, kind of, launch timeline, and it’s much more expensive to get the product to market. But, we’ve we’ve chosen to include the lasers in our devices because It was very clear from our testing, with our initial beta users, that the the results were that much better. And so if if it’s gonna cost us a little bit longer and take us a little bit longer to get to market. It’s still worth it to put the lasers in and to to clear the FDA as we have.

Nick Urban [00:29:25]:

Yeah. And the way I’m I’m understanding this is that with an LED, it’s more of like a a light bulb kind of effect where it’s Dispersing a light over a really large area versus a laser. It’s like a pinpointing and targeting a very specific area. So if you have a, like, whole body panel and you’re sitting in front of it? It’s kinda like sitting really close to a light bulb, but you’re still gonna absorb a lot of that those photons because you’re close to the the source. Or if you wanna actually target a specific body part, say, like, your, I don’t know, your your your thyroid or your muscles or something, you wanna have, like, and a laser instead of an LED because that’s gonna be able to like be much more precise than an LED would? Doctor.

Forrest Smith [00:30:04]:

Yeah, that’s exactly right. I Love the light bulb versus laser because it’s it’s exactly how it is. If you’re you’re thinking about the light bulb emitting in all directions, you know, if you if you measure the power that’s going through that light bulb, it’s It’s hard to understand exactly how you’re going to be on that dose curve, where that’s going to hit you. And there’s gonna if there’s a bunch of, say, 300 of them on a panel that is really hard to kind of dose it in specifically for those, but, it’s also almost impossible to have that penetrate through to the internal tissue. Again, that’s that’s where we kind of differentiate in our approach relative to a lot of parts of the market.

Nick Urban [00:30:36]:

And I think that’s also, like, that Explains one of my objections. I often hear that, like, in order to, like, deliver, like, a therapeutic, like, amount of light, you need a certain power. Like, You can’t have a handheld battery operated device because it would die in 10 seconds of use. But then again, if you think about, like, a 1 watt light bulb, you’re gonna barely see anything versus a 1 watt laser that can is enough to, like, pop a balloon, for example, and has a lot more power because it’s so concentrated?

Forrest Smith [00:31:01]:

That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. It’s it’s more concentrated. And then, again, we we also found that, you know, the the opposite was true as well. So, there are some class 4, class 3 laser devices on the market. We were originally planning to go through class 2 with ours. And these are these are the classes for these, just from a framework standpoint, for context are safety classes. So they’re not really having to do anything with Dosing or efficacy, but just how powerful is it, and can that fry somebody? And so when you look at the class 3 and class 4, Do we have to have some additional education or or kind of some clinician running these to be able to use it? But what we’ve seen is that that people take That class 3 and class 4 and think that this is something where it’s a better dose or it’s a more powerful dose because of the the, the different classes.

Forrest Smith [00:31:49]:

And part of our educational process is, You know, we when we first looked at devices, we were going we were planning on a class 2, but we tested splitting, I believe it was, And this is to not quote me exactly, but in this rough order of magnitude of a 152 100 milliwatts, 1 laser per Per admission area, so 2 per module. And we tested those versus splitting that into 5 on each. So 10:10 per module versus 2, and keeping the same level of optical power out of it. And the optical power when we split it was The the effects on the physiology were much better when we split these into multiple, lasers versus, just having the one stronger one. And so Again, we we kind of we hear it from both sides of, like, oh, you’re not a class 3, class 4 device. And it’s like, yeah. The hot spotting and the damage that does at the kind of surface level, versus kind of having this you know, it it costs more to add the additional parts in, but let’s do it again. We’re we’re our mission as a company is to increase the quality of life The largest number of people we can in the most substantial and measurable way we can.

Forrest Smith [00:32:54]:

And so all of our measurements that we go into this from a a device standpoint, from a, from a testing and and validation standpoint are really based around the physiology versus kind of the the, the engineering? Does that make sense?

Nick Urban [00:33:08]:

Yeah. I mean, if I had tennis elbow, I can only imagine wrapping a device around my elbow with each laser penetrating a little shallower than the one On one side, it goes really deep. I can imagine having all those going around the entire, like, circumference of it would have a better effect.

Forrest Smith [00:33:25]:

Yes. Yeah. And it was very clear. It wasn’t it wasn’t even close when we did the test on that. It was it was much more effective this way. And we’ve we’ve, kind of Hypothesized with our so we we build these mathematical models for how light distributes through tissue. And then at these different depths, we’re trying to, again, trigger these, photo acceptor reservoirs? And when we see these things, it gives a good baseline, for for being able to update and anchor our model around reality versus kind of the the theoretical mathematical piece of it?

Nick Urban [00:33:56]:

Well, Forrest, let’s dig into the use cases now. Obviously, some there’s some big ones we’ve talked barely at all about so far, such as, like, post surgery, maybe even presurgery. I’m not sure. And then also, like, injury rehab, can you expand upon these a bit on how someone would use the Kineon Move Plus device for those circumstances, including what they would expect, and then also like the dosing, like would I wanna do, say the 3 pulses, the 15 minutes once per day, 5 times per day, how does that look?

Forrest Smith [00:34:24]:

So you can actually do it optimally twice a day, morning and evening. The the molecules that you’re impacting, stay impacted for for a reasonable amount of time. And so doing it 5 times a day is really not gonna move the needle much more than it does, for for twice a day. But that 15 minute, window is is a really good one. And we’ve seen unbelievable results from a a, a post surgery standpoint. We we’ve actually we were planning on kind of in line with our mission of of trying to get the device In as many people’s hands as we can as an alternative to pharmaceuticals. We we we were planning on doing it direct to consumer the entire time. One of the things that we’ve found as a as a business has opened up for us, otherwise, it took us a little while to recognize it, was there’s a number of Medical practitioners who have reached out and in that typical arc of how they reach out is, Hey, I bought a device.

Forrest Smith [00:35:14]:

I tried it on myself. It worked. So I bought 5 more, and we’re trying it in my clinic. And now my my patients wanna buy 1 and take it home. How do we work together to make that happen? And one of the spaces that we’ve seen the most results for that is in, orthopedic surgeons. So when people are having these post surgery processes, you know, they they have, a ton of inflammation. And and just to kind of dive in on inflammation relative to this, we say inflammation, What we typically mean is chronic inflammation is what we’re treating, because one of the things that you do see is that we we don’t really reduce the acute inflammation, and that’s not a bad thing. You know, the acute inflammation is actually bringing molecules to the area, that that are doing, beneficial things from a a recovery and and healing standpoint.

Forrest Smith [00:36:02]:

What we don’t like to see is those tick over into and usually what drives that is oxidative Stress, which is something that we deal with very directly. So we reduce that oxidative stress level or balance the oxidative stress level and that reduce the on ongoing or chronic, inflammation? But being able to reduce that chronic inflammation in many cases for these patients gets them through that healing process in in especially For these for their surgeons, almost unbelievable unbelievably fast timeframes. And so that’s one of the things we get back from a lot of the surgeons is, hey, you know, This is this is insane. How does this actually work? Because it’s gotta be doing something else. And and there what we usually get back from patients is I I know it’s working because it it hurts less than it did before, but I don’t wanna give you guys credit for it. This just seems like so otherworldly to shine light on it, and it’s getting better. Why is that? How how could that possibly work? But, you know, as long as they’re they’re using it, we’re heavy.

Nick Urban [00:36:55]:

Yeah. And would these work the same in terms of, like, the efficacy for a really small, like, arthroscopic surgery versus, like, a hip replacement or knee replacement?

Forrest Smith [00:37:05]:

The The scale of which you’re impacting those is gonna is gonna be lower, but the the mechanisms are very similar. And, yes, it it does help with both of those. We we have noticed that the larger kind of the the knee replacement level, as an example, have been really it’s easier for people to notice the difference Because that that, pain and inflammation is is not overwhelming, but it’s very high. And so when they when they see that reducing over a week of use, It’s it’s kind of a light bulb goes on for for, terrible puns, but, they they they kind of get it. They’re like, this is this is working. So, whereas if you have those ones which is, kind of keyhole versions, you’re gonna increase the collagen rates, you’re gonna increase the the healing rates, and you’re gonna increase the the Quality of the scar tissue in the space as well. We see this, a lot also with, like, cesarean, cesarean section. So when you have someone who For a c section, with a with a pregnancy, with a with a delivery, this can reduce and there’s there’s some great micro microscopy work on this that people have done over the past 2 to 3 years.

Forrest Smith [00:38:07]:

You reduce the width and then the appearance of the scars longer term and the the scars become more pliable. What you see is that this the increase in collagen 2 and how the collagen 2 arranges into this extracellular matrix of the scar, instead of being, like, Super matted and messy. It’s more kind of in line and it’s, it’s more similar to kind of non scar tissue. And so, yeah, we’ve really kind of seen Big impact of people kind of post surgery from these, although we don’t really, you know, the the we don’t really market towards that. What we’ve been kind of just trying to get out there for now is, You know, there’s what we’ve been marketing towards primarily from a a use case is get away from non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs and opiates. If you’re using those for chronic pain and chronic inflammation, it doesn’t end well. The the, the opiates, I I think people are more aware about now. But with NSAIDs, The increase in cardiovascular disease risk is is 30 to 50% across the board where you’re where you’re 6 or 60.

Forrest Smith [00:39:05]:

And a lot of our Kind of chronic users of, NSAIDs are older. Like, we we it’s it’s the gold standard. Their doctors told them to take this. They’re unaware of the the impact it’s gonna have on their cardiovascular endothelium. So your the stiffening of your Blood vessels is really, really not good and it can really put you at a much higher risk, particularly in that age bracket, but also the increase of risk for liver damage and for The endothelium of your stomach as well, of your of your gut lining is is just it’s again, with gold standards, when people are hearing these these Treatments that are gold standard from a from a physician, I I think part of the education process is failing them at this point is they’re not hearing that this is a very, very short solution for your your pain inflammation problem. You’re essentially taking the batteries out of the fire alarm. The fire is still burning in the kitchen, and so you really need to deal with the fire more than the fire alarm. And that’s that’s what we’ve kind of tried to bring around with the Photo bi modulations devices is an opportunity and a device to be able to have an alternative to the pharmaceutical removal of the battery from the fire alarm option that’s out there right now.

Nick Urban [00:40:16]:

Yeah. I really like that. The only one that I’ll use on great occasion if I really need to is aspirin. From the research I’ve done, it looks to have the least amount of, like, cytotoxicity and downstream consequences? And does a doctor rate Pete, and he talks a lot about aspirin specifically and how it doesn’t follow the trend of the other NSAIDs, but I try and avoid them as much as possible, this seems like it’s a powerful tool in the toolbox of, like, alternatives to use.

Forrest Smith [00:40:39]:

Agreed. I I, you know, it’s amazing that it hasn’t been really kind of more broadly adopted or more broadly Push from a a, from a, you know, from an education standpoint because I I I do like the fact that that, Repeat, for example, is out there talking about this because we we see a lot of folks To just have no idea that that this is a negative thing? And I I think you’ve you’ve made a very good decision to kind of limit it to aspirin. And and if you’re gonna limit, limit it to the 80/20 where you’re getting, you know, 80% of the the, the outcome and have 20% of the the risk profile for it? But I I, you know, one of the things that’s that’s also less, less known, and and there’s great studies about this over the last 5 years as well, is that laser therapy also is better at treating that chronic pain. So you you know, from a pain scale standpoint, there’s some great studies about this, and we we try to get them out there as much as we can from an education standpoint, But it’s just not broadly adopted. It’s not broadly known, and it’s gonna take some time for, I I think, that inertia, that’s in the system, to to work its way through to adopt New solutions because it’s it’s, you know, half of what we’re doing is is, talking with, you know, world class physiologist for, you know, if you need professional sports teams, the special forces teams have embedded physiologists with them that we work with, that People who who really get the science of it, it it, you know, it hasn’t been presented presented to them in a in a functional way. And so when you do, They take it on and can kind of help, you know, spread that word, but it’s it’s, it’s just wild. I mean, it’s it’s almost, unbelievable that that, you know, these type of gold standard, pharmaceutical treatments are are So baking the system that it’s hard for people to kind of get their heads back out and and look even or consider even a an alternative to it.

Nick Urban [00:42:24]:

Yeah. And for Context, when I use aspirin, like, last time was for maybe 3 plus years ago, so it’s very rare, only in like the emergency type situation. In a lot of these alternative treatments, they have, like, side benefits instead of side effects in most cases. So it’s like if you do find the right things and you use them smartly and you know what you’re doing, You can not only tape over the, the check engine light, you can actually, like, repair some of the damage that is underlying the check engine light.

Forrest Smith [00:42:49]:

A 100%. I I think that’s that’s really kind of what the the message we’re trying to to carry out to to people is you you have and and not just photobiomodulation. I mean but I I think one of the things that out of out of photobiomodulation that would probably marry back to, something that you would agree with on this is, a lot of these things are and have come about from a study standpoint to be better understood as, metabolically based. And so, You know, exercise, as an example, is is more effective, than a lot of, existing pharmaceutical treatments for a number of different pathologies. And and you see that from a brain, from a neurological pathology standpoint. But it’s it’s, It’s less known. And I I think, you know, we with the fact that we’re kind of addressing mitochondrial function, At least the the oxidative phosphorylation section of, mitochondrial function, which is the most used and, kind of energy generation source for your body? It’s not really kind of a question as to the impacts that it’s having. It’s working through a number of different, mediating factors.

Forrest Smith [00:43:58]:

But one of the things that that’s really kind of an anchor point for this mediation of the Of the outcomes is, is this improvement of the metabolic, function in your body. And we see that across, you know, no matter what cells we’re trying to treat in the body, that metabolic function is such an anchor point for, the function in general that You you see a number of different knock on effects like you said, whether it’s it’s, you know, increased brain derived neurotrophic factor in your brain, Whether it’s kind of balancing your your, FP ratio in your gut, increased dopamine in the gut. There there’s a number of different studies right now that Or, linking so so over the past 10 years, there’s been a lot of research into the gut brain axis and and the impacts of that on Different systems in the body. What we’re seeing now is that that’s fleshing out to kind of a gut brain gut plus brain plus fill in the blank. And and, you see, you know, with liver? What what different enzymes or profiles are changed? You know, how your hormones are changed? How how your Thyroid’s, impacting these things, how your your kidneys are. There’s just so much that’s anchored between that gut brain plus That it’s, when you can improve these metabolic function of the cells, it it it almost becomes difficult to to kind of start talking to people about the What you can treat? Because it seems like you’re you’re like, oh, it it treats everything. You’re like so it’s treating this one core function of this Metabolic dysfunction, but across a number of different type of cells. So, yeah, it’s it’s hard to find the narratives occasionally to build it in a in a credible way.

Forrest Smith [00:45:34]:

But, I think to your point, that’s that that marries back to what we’ve seen from a a, you know, the the we’ve seen the opposite from a pharmaceutical standpoint. So, Yeah. A lot of a lot of talking points there, but, it’s a it’s an interesting space to see grow out and and become applicable for more more use cases.

Nick Urban [00:45:53]:

I’m not sure if it’s true because I haven’t gone through medical school, but I’ve heard that there’s training in which if a patient presents with 5 or more symptoms or 5 or more, like, symptoms that disappear? It’s chalked up usually to placebo. So it seems like it’s Hard for a therapy to, like, actually withstand that these days and be taken seriously? It’s like, well, no, no. I can’t do all these things. Therefore, it must not do any of them.

Forrest Smith [00:46:17]:

Doctor. That’s right. And we’re trying to, you know, we’ve we’ve avoided, as an example, pushing, the devices out for treatment of long COVID? But with that said, we’re we’re running a trial right now with our our friendly company, Aerofit. And these guys make a a device where you can add resistance to your, inspiratory or expiratory breathing, And it helps you increase the amount of oxygen you can hold your lungs and the pressure with which you can push it out and and breathe it in, which has a lot of good downstream cardiopulmonary effects. And they use this in some studies to be able to treat COVID. We actually treat, the ongoing, inflammation, that that COVID long COVID can have in the body? And there’s some really cool ways to measure this. One of them that we found, is that if you occlude a limb, so it’s essentially this reactive hyperemia. So you occlude a limb and then, watch the measure the the muscle oxygen going down to 0, and then you release that and you watch how fast that Tissue can reperfuse is an extremely good, measurement that’s that correlates extremely highly towards your cardiopulmonary health.

Forrest Smith [00:47:31]:

And so, what you see is when people have had COVID, the long COVID we’ve tried this with a couple of athletes. The long COVID impacts not just the the lung and and heart tissue, but also how fast you can reperfuse your muscle tissue? And so we’re using this as a metric or a a, a heuristic at least, for Demonstrating how much we can impact by way of reducing the the, the inflammation, this effective delivery of blood and oxygen into these tissue. And it’s amazing. You can you can really get people out of a extremely impaired state in about 6 weeks, which otherwise they they stay in almost like, indefinitely?

Nick Urban [00:48:12]:

Oh, that’s very cool. So this is better for, as you mentioned, chronic conditions. And, I guess, Surgeries where you start crossing the line from being an acute to a chronic because the recovery of that is chronic. The actual surgery is acute, but then the period after that. What about like something like a headache? That seems like it’s more acute and this probably wouldn’t work as well against a headache, for example.

Forrest Smith [00:48:33]:

So you you can use for headaches, but, headaches is is a multivariate cause. So there are certain types of stress headaches that that this will help with, increasing Nitric oxide, increasing blood flow to the tissue that are are, kind of, overly stressed and causing these these stress headaches. There are some types of headaches that we don’t impact. And, I think there’s There’s, like, 8 or 10 that we’ve tested versus. The the most common ones, we actually help with. But, it’s it’s a lot of those are, overstrained Tissue. And and so your your brain, you can’t really sense your brain. So it’s not not the brain there, but it’s the tissue around your head, where you have kind of Stress and, tightening, from a a, a muscular and myofascial standpoint and being able to release additional nitric oxide Helps to release and relieve some of that pressure that that builds up with.

Forrest Smith [00:49:24]:

So, we can’t we can’t say it across the board, but I do have a list of green checks and red x’s is versus the the actual causes of these headaches.

Nick Urban [00:49:32]:

Yeah. Headaches are one of those things that seem simple, but they’re actually quite complex.

Forrest Smith [00:49:36]:

Yes. Yes.

Nick Urban [00:49:38]:

And then for the athletes using this, the athletes that get injured in some way, say it’s a sprained ankle, it’s a torn something, How does this help them like rehab and recover from that injury faster?

Forrest Smith [00:49:50]:

So sprained ankles and things like this are great. So we Treat, so not I I have to quantify that. They’re not great. It sucks to get those. And I have this I have this terrible thing that I do now. So I’m gonna be like, Oh, I sprained my ankle. I’m like, yes. But that yes is just that, like, I it’s something that I know we can help with.

Forrest Smith [00:50:06]:

And so, not not shearing it, no no shot in for it, not shearing people’s pain or or, or discomfort? But that that tissue edema around the the sprained ankle that you’ll see, what you’ll see with sprained ankles is that that, you you get a lot of swelling and, a lot of inflammation in the area? And that that especially with heavier sprains, high ankle sprains, and things like this, the it won’t clear out. It’ll it’ll stay there, systemically for for weeks, if not months. And, one of the things that that, we do to help with that is, we treat the edemus. We we get more blood flow to the area. By by dropping, kind of dumping more Nitric oxide into the the blood flow like I was mentioning earlier, it it, Nitric oxide is a is a dilator, of these blood vessels. It helps deliver more Healthy blood into the area where a lot of times what you’ll find is those acute, inflammatory markers will come in, would do the work they need to do, and you’ll see Some improvement on the actual underlying, dramatically damaged tissue, but you need to clear those out and and, and allow additional, non chronic inflammation to come into the area? And that’s that’s essentially what we do is is, reduce the the chronic, introduce more Acute, inflammatory markers and help the tissue to heal a lot faster. And and it’s been, meaningful and substantial. Again, With the the physios and chiropractors that we work with, they they use this to treat soft tissue quite a lot.

Forrest Smith [00:51:35]:

One other note on the soft tissue is It it also increases the the, the soft tissue proliferation rates. And, it actually helps with the the health Kind of the healthiness of that soft tissue over time, those tend to be more month scale versus day to week scale changes, because What you’re doing is you’re you’re impacting you’re making, so with with, soft tissue in specific, you’re looking at at increase in the rate of proliferation for chondroblasts, and these are fast growing cells that kind of live at the edge of your, growth path for new cartilage or ligaments? When you increase the rate of proliferation for those, you can embed more of them in the kind of Open edge of that that soft tissue, but they also have a function where they they create what’s called it it’s kind of this mesh that I mentioned earlier relative to scar tissue, called extracellular matrix, which is essentially this this, this collagen web that they that they admit and help to kind of continue growing? And when you have more of them, they grow faster and they grow healthier. But, the And generating those those chondroblast faster is is something you can do very quickly. Generating the extracellular matrix and replacing that Soft tissue of your ligaments or cartilage happens more slowly because it’s it’s just slow growing tissue, but the the impact of having an increased level of Generation for it, has a has a really good impact on functionality for particularly with, older older users that we have. They’re, there’s a balance of how fast, cartilage, for example, in your knees dies off, and how fast it’s regrown. And if you have, inflammation, you have chronic inflammation in the joint, the dying off happens faster, but the regrowing doesn’t happen as fast? And so you get this imbalance to where you’re wearing away the cartilage over time by having that inflammation in the joint. When you remove that inflammation, you’re now and and you also increase the rate of proliferation for these chondroblasts. You’re you’re putting it back in balance to where you can actually regrow Cartilage in these tissues, so, in these joints.

Forrest Smith [00:53:47]:

Yeah. It’s it’s super exciting to see it. And there’s some great work on this. It’s been been done over the past 3 to 5 years.

Nick Urban [00:53:52]:

That’s really promising. You can actually regrow cartilage as long as you fix the underlying imbalance of inflammation.

Forrest Smith [00:53:57]:

That’s exactly it. And and, again, you’re you’re kind of working on both sides of that of that problem. So You have a, a negative side which is this inflammation is wearing down my cartilage and you have this positive side of how fast does my do my chondroblast proliferate and you’re you’re Positively impacting both sides of the equation. So it’s a really nice thing to see. And, again, this is on month scale, so you’re you’re not seeing that in the 1st month. But over a 6 month period, you you have and I I think most of the studies on this are from 3 to 9 months, and the microscopy is very clear. It’s, That you see much thicker and and healthier tissue, based on on the ongoing use. And so it’s one of the reasons we try to get even when people aren’t, in pain? Continue to use the device, continue to treat your your joints because, you know, you you wanna have the strongest, most supple and and healthiest, soft tissue you can in your joints?

Nick Urban [00:54:49]:

It would probably stack very nicely with taking, like, a nice type 2 collagen, Like peptide product and other, like, joint support stuff as well.

Forrest Smith [00:54:57]:

That’s exactly right. That, so glucosamine and chondroitin and, type 2 collagen all have a positive impact on that

Nick Urban [00:55:04]:

Oh, and then to use this to for these protocols, it it would be the same where you just put the device, the MOVE plus on, say the knee, and then you would do the 3 chimes twice a day?

Forrest Smith [00:55:16]:

That’s right. That’s right. And that’s that’s the optimal, but really whatever you can do. Even if you can If you’ve got a a 5 minutes of of whatever you’re doing, your Snickers break in the afternoon, put it on for 5 minutes. Anything is better than nothing. And and it really has a Substantial impact, particularly, again, for the the pain inflammation on on kind of a week to week scale, on that soft tissue improvement, on the gut improvement, On the thyroid function, those are gonna be weeks to month scales, but it it’s it’s still doing something positive for you and it’s gonna help you have more, more healthy tissue, longer term? Mhmm.

Nick Urban [00:55:50]:

And to go back to the thyroid example, if I had, like, hypo or hyperthyroid, meaning it’s my thyroid’s overactive or underactive, would this modulate it and bring it back into balance, or is it gonna always stimulate my thyroid, for example? Because if I had an overactive thyroid, I wouldn’t necessarily want to stimulate it further.

Forrest Smith [00:56:08]:

That’s a great question. I haven’t even seen papers on the Hyper, I’ve only seen on hypo, so I need to dig into that. But I’ll I’ll dig it up and send it over to you. But I my my gut would be that there’s there’s also some level of modulation back to center Based on the the signaling, the signaling molecules that we that we trigger that kind of mediate these These changes, between the the mitochondria and the the nuclei are with oxidative stress as an example. If your oxidative Dress is super low or super high, it’s not great for you. And we see that the the photobiomodulation can help to bring it to center versus just Kind of reduce it. So, my gut would be that this is, this would be similar, but I need to dig into it and find the, find the actual answer.

Nick Urban [00:56:52]:

So I have, like, a really small cut that’s left over, and I’ve been doing all kinds of things for it. I’ve been putting I’ve been inhaling Brown’s gas, applying some topical molecular hydrogen. I’ve been using some C60, some copper peptide, a bunch of different things to like help it heal faster. Would I just apply the red light on there for 2 to 6 times per day, and that would also help? Because one of the great use cases it seems to be is is wound healing, accelerating wound healing, and then also helping the scar tissue act more like normal tissue?

Forrest Smith [00:57:22]:

That’s exactly right. It’s, it’s my so my kids love it. Like, they’re they’re 2, 47. So they’re they’re falling down and and cutting up and getting all kinds of different cuts, you know, Skin, knees, whatever, you name it on a daily basis. And the first thing they come back in for, and they feel like Wolverine. They’re like, ah, I’m putting it back on here and it’s gonna be gone in a couple of days. My wife actually just did a a on box jumps, just just scraped across the the shins and and lost a bunch of skin there. And the same thing, you just see it close-up, like like not overnight, but very fast? It is.

Forrest Smith [00:57:55]:

It’s noticeably different.

Nick Urban [00:57:57]:

Is there any risk to applying it to the head or the face? Because I have a scar under my eye that I like to try treating with it and see if that makes any difference? But if it’s gonna be penetrate too deeply, maybe it’s not the best idea?

Forrest Smith [00:58:08]:

No. No. It’s it’s great for the head. One of the things I actually use it for is is, If I don’t sleep enough, which is often these days just because we’ve been so busy from work standpoint, the one of the things that happens with your brain is that it it will, increase and and stack up the amount of waste in your brain, because your your lymphatic system can’t process that all? And so, this can increase the rate of of that processing out of your lymphatic system for when you’re short sleep. So I I treat, kind of prefrontal cortex And then, above the eyes and then and then below the eyes for sinuses? As those are those are kind of, from the literature I’ve seen, these are the the most effective points to be able to increase from that Waste removal standpoint.

Nick Urban [00:58:50]:

Yeah. And they like you said, the glymphatic system is most active during the night, but it’s cool to hear you can give it a little extra nudge during the daytime by applying light? It’s like it’s like photo puncture almost.

Forrest Smith [00:58:59]:

Yes. That’s exactly right. Like, it’s it’s and and again, this is just getting getting these areas of your body where You might be out of balance, kind of back in balance, not necessarily just pushing it this way or pushing it that way. But there’s a lot of these systems that that the signaling, in them is is Such a powerful most of the molecules that you have, in your body are are multiuse. And so, you know, one of the things is they’re kind of used, you know, whether it’s to an energy platform or or a substrate, or whatever else it’s being used for as the primary use? It’s used as Signaling molecule as a secondary use. And so these impacts that we’re starting to tease out over, testing the devices with, a number of different tissue types and with organs has been amazing? It’s just it’s just wild to see how how tightly bound these different system processes are with other parts the body?

Nick Urban [00:59:50]:

What are there any myths or misconceptions you see people come across when they’re researching the Move Plus or, like, this whole line of, like, new science?

Forrest Smith [01:00:00]:

Is it gonna zap me? I get a lot, and and, it’s not gonna zap you. It’s it’s, you know, it’s not like, some of the electrical stimulation type devices, in the market. Are there things that we can do, kind of in conjunction or synergistically with this? Absolutely. You know, one of the ones that people have done from a a, a testing standpoint for the brain is, blue. The the, methylene blue. So so, this, and I can send you over a nice picture that they’ve just had a couple Studies on this recently where, but essentially with the ox the oxidative phosphorylation chain that we’ve mentioned earlier, relative to how your mitochondria produce energy? There are 4 kind of processes in that in that phased energy production process? We essentially, work on the 4th, the 3rd slash 4th, and, the methylene blue can can can actually increase 1 through 3? So you get more feedstock for, for this and and can turn more energy out of your your mitochondria and just increase mitochondrial health with that? A couple other things we’ve seen that stack very well with that we’re gonna Experiments with, that don’t really sound connected, at the beginning, but, platelet rich plasma. So when you have a cartilage damage or or, you know, particularly in joints, and particularly with repetitive stress injuries? PRP, even for people who PRP has not worked for, who it’s been who have been non responders, There were 2 great studies. And so we we started testing with some of our athletes as well.

Forrest Smith [01:01:41]:

How does this PRP plus laser apply? And and what can what, you know, Does it long story short, it works extremely well even for people who have been nonresponsive for PRP. And the reasons that we’re assuming for this is that the The, the platelets and the the hemoglobin that you’re introducing back into that area are exactly what we interact with from a a, a dosing standpoint. So it just increases how much dose can apply to it. So you could probably, if you’re doing PRP, increase your your 15 minute dose to a 30 minute dose, as well. One of the things that that we’ve had from our our users, about that as well, though, is PRP is kind of expensive. Is there a way that we could do something similar that that would work, and aggregate more platelets and more hemoglobin area? And so we’re doing testing and have seen very good results, although not at the scale of the PRP, with Blood flow restriction cuffs. So if you have, BFR that you can do kind of upstream from this, put that on, let let let it pull some of those, platelets and hemoglobin in the area, and then treat it for 15 minutes with the device while you have the the BFR cuff on? And that that seems to be working quite well. Well, I think we’re gonna be trying out a a new, test with this with a, with a company we’ve just met who makes Really cool VFR cuffs where it’s just put it on one tap and it actually in in, increases the the pressure, until you’re at the the correct pressure from a a, blood flow restriction standpoint?

Nick Urban [01:03:06]:

Yeah. That’s a great a great tool. Actually, I’ve done that exact test with Your tool and a company called KAATSU, they’re the original BFR, the best. I’ve tried a bunch of them, and That’s an incredible combo. And I’ve also I use methylene blue, like, twice per week on average, and so I haven’t combined that specifically, but if I’m gonna get a lot of sunlight, I will use that, especially if it’s during, like, high UV hours, and I definitely feel a bit more energized as opposed to using either by themselves. So those are some cool little stacks people can try if they pick up one of these, or they can try them without even without one of these systems, just getting some methylene blue and some light. Make sure you’re checking with your doctor before trying methylene blue, of course. And, yeah, I mean, KAATSU is also a really cool modality for overall fitness, for rehab, for Even strengthen hypertrophy when done properly.

Nick Urban [01:03:55]:

So well, Forrest, this has been a blast. We’ve been going for over an hour so far. So if people wanna connect with you to try One of the Kineon devices, say, a MOVE plus or whatever you have coming in the near future, how do they find you on the Internet?

Forrest Smith [01:04:10]:

So we are at kine0n.i0. And you can reach me specifically at forrest@kine0n dot I o? And that’s 2 r’s for Forrest. So forrest@kineon.io. And, yeah, we’re we’re here. We we love to kind of work With our community and and, and our users, and it’s been so so amazing to have that positive feedback loop of people’s actual experiences With this as we as we build a company and and increase the the product offering.

Nick Urban [01:04:39]:

Yeah. You know someone’s committed to the community when they drop their email and a podcast too.

Forrest Smith [01:04:44]:

Yeah. Yeah. We’re we’re here. You know, if you’re if you’re not getting what you need out of it, you know, we’re not here to sell devices. We’re here to to make the impacts that we can with this technology available to people. So If you’re not seeing those outcomes, you know, we we need to hear about it. So, yeah, definitely definitely, a 100% all in committed to our community.

Nick Urban [01:05:02]:

And I think your team set up a code too. I believe it’s urban that’ll save them on their order if they wanna grab, Move Plus.

Forrest Smith [01:05:08]:

Absolutely. Yes. And and, yeah, if you can Getting with it we try to reduce the risk as much as we can because it does sound crazy that light impacts your body. So we completely understand people having that that viewpoint, But you have a 30 day risk free trial for it. You know, get in and use your urban code and, you know, try it out. If if you don’t get that result that you’re looking for, send it back Or call me because you damn well should be getting it.

Nick Urban [01:05:33]:

Well, I’m glad I haven’t had any, like, really acute reasons to use this, no major injuries, so Fingers crossed there, but now I have extra motivation to try longer term on my gut, my thyroid, my prefrontal cortex to get some extra firepower out of the brain, and a whole bunch of other use cases we discussed today?

Forrest Smith [01:05:52]:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you have any problems, well, just give me a call.

Nick Urban [01:05:55]:

Thank you. Well, Forrest, I got 1 more question for you before we start to wind this one down, and that is if there is a worldwide burning of the books and all knowledge on earth is lost, but you get to save the works of 3 teachers? Who would you choose and why?

Forrest Smith [01:06:11]:

Wow. That’s an extremely good question. The, one of the guys I I really like from a conceptual standpoint is, Douglas Hofstadter, who wrote a book called Girdle, Escher, Bach, which was a a really, really, I I read at a formative age. I I had a really big impact on in how I think about, Kind of logic in in AI and, you know, what, it’s it’s essentially about recursive, Self measuring systems, which is is essentially how life generates. So I I would say, Douglas Hofstadter, and I have to and I have to kind of give A little time to think about the, the other 2, but that’s, that’s an amazing question.

Nick Urban [01:06:55]:

Doctor. Okay. We’ll go on to the final question then, and that is, What is one thing that the Kenyan tribe does not know about you?

Forrest Smith [01:07:04]:

I I think I I speak, read, and write fluent Chinese, and ran my my first 2 businesses, in Chinese, which I I think is, maybe not widely known. But I I, yeah. That’s that’s a I think that’s a fun a fun fact.

Nick Urban [01:07:18]:

That’s quite the fun fact. How would you like to close our episode together today?

Forrest Smith [01:07:25]:

Actually, I I would just like to close out a little gratitude, a, for yourself for having me on today, and and really appreciate the time and and, Focus and attention that that you’ve given this, topic and and subjects and that you can bring people’s eyes and ears to it, in a way that’s that’s Meaningful for them and can help them get out of pain and inflammation, but also just for the the, the ability to to kinda do this work. I’m I’m just Super happy to to be in a seat, where I am trying to create something that I I feel like is going to positively impact so many people. And, again, I I really appreciate your, engagement around this, and and the ability to come on with you today and discuss it further?

Nick Urban [01:08:01]:

And thank you for bringing another bioharmonious Treatment option to the forefront for everyone who has potential nagging injuries or more acute injuries and giving us another tool in the toolbox.

Forrest Smith [01:08:15]:

Absolutely. Absolutely. We’ll be here doing this for the next 10 years, hopefully, if they don’t stop us in the meantime.

Nick Urban [01:08:20]:

Perfect. Well, Forrest, this has been a blast.

Forrest Smith [01:08:22]:

Likewise. Likewise. Really enjoyed it. Thank you, Nick.

Nick Urban [01:08:25]:

I’m Nick Urban here with Forrest Smith of Kinion, signing out from mindbodypeak.com. Have a great week, and be an outlier. I hope that this has been helpful for you. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and hit the thumbs up. I love knowing who’s in the one committed to reaching their full potential? Comment 1% below so that I know who you are. For all the resources and links, Meet me on my website at mindbodypeak.com. I appreciate you and look forward to connecting with you.