Ultimate 60-Second Strategy to Cut Stress, Anxiety, Enhance Recovery & Improve Performance (Vagus Nerve Electric Stimulation)

Nick Urban [00:00:07]:
Are you a high performer, obsessed with growth, and looking for an edge? Welcome to MINDBODY Peak Performance. Together, we’ll discover underground secrets to unlocking the full potential of your mind, body, and spirit. We’ll learn from some of the world’s leading minds, from ancient wisdom to cutting edge tools and everything in between. This is your host, Nick Urban. Enjoy the episode. What if there is a technology that induces relaxation and calmness superior to Benzodiazepines like Xanax and Valium, but without the complications? And what if that technology had other use cases as well from boosting your heart rate variability, your HRV, to improving cognition and performance, to helping relieve migraines, to boosting athletic recovery and improving sleep, helping digestion and emotional regulation, and a whole lot more. That’s what we’re covering today with our guest, doctor Nick Hool. Nick is a former competitive golfer who shifted his focus to studying stress responses in high performance individuals after developing debilitating performance anxiety.

Nick Urban [00:01:30]:
He earned a PhD in biomedical engineering at ASU, where he explored neuromodulation technologies and discovered the benefits of vagus nerve stimulation for calming the nervous system. He took that research and turned it into a line of portable, high strength vagus nerve stimulating devices designed for use by busy professionals seeking effective stress relief. It’s now used by first responders, executives, athletes, doctors, biohackers, and other high stress professionals nationwide. If you wanna learn more, I have a device, and I wrote a written review of it, which you can find in the show notes, or you can Google outlier, o u t l I y r, vereliefoutlier.com. Outlier, o u t l I y r, hoo list, h o o l e s t, review. Or you can go on to their website, which is hoolist.com, and use the code outlier 10 to save 10%. If you don’t remember that, you can find the links to this and everything we discuss in the show notes, which will be at mindbodypeak.com/thenumber180. Alright.

Nick Urban [00:02:51]:
Let’s bring in doctor Nicholas Houle. Doctor Nick Houle, welcome to the podcast.

Nick Cool [00:02:58]:
What’s up, Nick? How are you doing, man? Thanks for having me.

Nick Urban [00:03:01]:
Doing pretty well. Today, we’re gonna discuss a some of your work, some of your research, and a technology you’ve been pioneering. And I’ve discussed this technology in the show previously, but for anyone unfamiliar with vagus nerve, would you please, like, explain brief briefly what it is and why you decided to study it?

Nick Cool [00:03:25]:
Yeah. Definitely. I learned about the vagus nerve when I was studying biomedical engineering in my PhD program. And at a high level, the vagus nerve is this nerve in your body that connects your brain to the rest of your body, and it specifically is responsible for helping your nervous system calm down when you go into one of those fight or flight states. It’s called the sympathetic nervous system response. So anytime you get hit with a stress response, the sympathetic nervous system fires up, and it it acts as if you need to, you know, run for your life or fight for your life and all things in your body are firing on all cylinders. Generally, it’s a good thing. Right? It’s a good response, keeps us alive.

Nick Cool [00:04:09]:
But in everyday life, it’s very difficult to live a a healthy life to get things done when you’re stuck in that state and you need to focus or sleep or just be chill. And so what the vagus nerve’s job is it it’s to literally bring you out of that state. It’s just a really cool system in your body, and we’ve learned how to biohack it to kinda give you a a better drug free way to calm your nerves.

Nick Urban [00:04:35]:
What are the different ways that vagus nerve calming technologies and modalities and therapies? There’s some natural ones, and there’s some man made tools to help with that. What are the different ways that they’re used?

Nick Cool [00:04:48]:
There’s a lot of different ways you can stimulate or activate the vagus nerve. They’re all gonna have slightly different effects, though. So, you know, when I first learned about the vagus nerve, I learned about electrical stimulation. So that’s using electricity to directly activate the vagus nerve. This is generally known as the fastest way to activate the vagus nerve, which will give you the fastest calming effects, but it’s also the strongest. So not everybody can tolerate electrical stim. But if you can, it’s going to give you the most potent relaxation effects. And that’s what I needed when I was growing up with performance anxiety.

Nick Cool [00:05:27]:
I wanted the strong stuff because I dealt with really severe stress and anxiety. But on the other side, you know, you have more holistic ways of activating your vagus nerve, which would be like slow breathing practices. When you prolong your exhale for at least 5 to 6 seconds or longer, you’re activating the lower branches of the vagus nerve, which also calms the body. It’s not gonna be as potent or noticeable, but it can be helpful if you do it for at least, you know, 10 to 20 minutes at a time. You’ll start to feel more calm throughout your body. And, again, great techniques. They’re free. Anyone can do it.

Nick Cool [00:06:03]:
It just takes a little bit of effort and time and focus. When I was looking for solutions to calm my own stress and anxiety, I needed stuff that worked fast because I would be out there. I was a competitive golfer growing up. And when I’m on the golf course and I get hit with a stress response, I don’t have time to go step aside and be like, hey, guys. Give me 20 minutes. I’m gonna go do some breath work and meditation to calm my nerves. No. You you have, like, 1 minute to try to figure it out.

Nick Cool [00:06:30]:
And that’s what took me to electrical stimulation because it’s so much faster, and really effective. And, we’re basically taking that technology, redesigning it to make it fit with people that are living this on the go fast paced lifestyle. So, again, lot of different ways to stimulate the vagus nerve. We’re just really focused on, I guess you’d call it the strongest form of vagal nerve stimulation.

Nick Urban [00:06:55]:
Is there any risk or downside of if the body is in this like, stuck in the sympathetic state, the fight or flight state, where you’re feeling that, whatever it is in your body to, like, manually force it out of that state by stimulating the vagus nerve?

Nick Cool [00:07:12]:
So are you asking, like, if if your body goes into that stress response, is it healthy to force it out of it? Right? Is that’s kind of the main idea of the question.

Nick Urban [00:07:23]:
Yeah. I’m curious. Like, biologically, like, if you look at it through an evolutionary lens, humans didn’t have access to this form of, like, high powered technology that could just flip your state within seconds to minutes. Is it safe, and is it gonna be causing other upstream or downstream consequences?

Nick Cool [00:07:39]:
So it is safe in general. When you look at all the research that’s been published on auricular vagal nerve stimulation, which is stimulating it in the ear area, and then cervicals on the front side of the neck, Very, very small percentage of people get negative side effects from it. It’s like last time, it looks like 0.3% of people actually experience negative side effects. So it has a very high safety profile. In terms of do you want to pull yourself out of a stress response? Generally speaking, like, you’ll know if the stress response you’re experiencing is bad. If suddenly some person rushes at you and wants to fight you, your body’s gonna go into fight or flight. That’s a good thing. You’re not gonna think like, ah, I just wanna chill right now.

Nick Cool [00:08:25]:
But once the event is over, for the next several hours, you’re probably fired up, and it’s super uncomfortable. That’s when you do want to bring yourself out of it because, you know, when you’re stuck in that state for a long period of time, you can’t think straight. Your muscles are jittery. It’s just a miserable feeling, and it’s not good for you. It’s not healthy to be prolonged in that fight or flight state. So, yes, we do want to pull yourself out of it as soon as you can. And, generally, there’s there’s very, very low rate of side effects when you use this technology.

Nick Urban [00:08:59]:
Okay. And can you clarify more about the different types of technologies? There’s the auricular, and there’s the cervical. And so what’s the difference? Why would you choose one versus the other?

Nick Cool [00:09:09]:
Totally. So when I first started this mission to come up with a better drug free way to calm someone down fast, I learned about the vagus nerve, and this was in 2018. Reading all the research papers, trying to understand what are the protocols, what are the techniques. And I learned there’s 2 types of, branches of the vagus nerve that you can target non invasively. You have the auricular branch of the vagus nerve in the ear area and the cervical, which is on the front side of the neck. Now I looked at both of these because I’m trying to figure out which branch is better, if any is better. The first thing to understand is for the cervical branch of the vagus nerve on the neck, it’s anywhere from one to 3 centimeters below the surface of the skin. It’s deep in there behind some muscle tissue.

Nick Cool [00:09:58]:
It’s kinda behind the carotid artery. And so what that means is if you’re gonna electrically stimulate it, you need a large amount of power. There’s one company out there at the time that did all the clinical research on cervical vagus nerve stimulation, and the number that they’re using, the the power output to stimulate the nerve was up to 55 milliamps of current. A lot of people probably won’t really know what that number means. But to put it in context, like, most nerve stimulators are around 2 milliamps of current. So if you’ve ever done, like, a tens unit, usually, you’re you’re way below 10 milliamps. So if you’re doing 55 milliamps, that is cranking the thing. You’re gonna get muscle contraction in your neck.

Nick Cool [00:10:40]:
You’re gonna get some facial twitching, and that’s totally normal, totally safe. But for me, that experience was not the experience I needed. Like, when I’m out there, I need something that’s gonna be comfortable and easy to use. I don’t wanna have my face contorting and people looking at me being like, dude, what are what’s going on right now? So that application was out. It was like it’s just the user experience is not there. Looked at auricular vagus nerve, and this one was interesting because, you can use these, like, earbud electrodes, we call them. They they look like music earbuds. And you can put them in your ear canal or you can clip them to the sides of your ear or the ear lobe, and it’s very discreet.

Nick Cool [00:11:22]:
And what’s cool about the auricular vagus nerve, it’s right underneath the skin, so it’s not very deep. You don’t need nearly that much power to hit it. And so I tried those, and I was like, okay. This user experience is perfect. However, the challenge with auricular is you’re targeting a very small branch of the vagus nerve. And so because it’s such a small branch, you have to have longer, like, amounts of time of stimulation to get the desired output. So, typically, you’re gonna need to stimulate for 10 to 20 minutes at a time. And, again, for me, it was like, that’s too long.

Nick Cool [00:11:57]:
Like, I need something that works fast. So both branches were interesting. They had the benefits I was looking for, but neither one of them really nailed the user experience that I needed. So what we did is we created our own device that targets the auricular vagus nerve and all the auricular nerves in the ear, and we’re targeting it right underneath the earlobe. So the auricular branch travels towards the brain stem, but when it does, it kinda drops a little bit right under the ear and then goes to the brain stem. So we’re targeting it in with a region called the tympanomastoid fissure, fun word to say. It’s that soft spot right behind your jawbone under the ear. And so we have this cool little device.

Nick Cool [00:12:43]:
It’s a handheld unit, very small, discreet, put it in your pocket. You take the cap off. It’s automatically going. There’s no wires. There’s no apps, there’s no messy gel you have to put on or clean up when you’re done, and you just put it right there in the spot and it lights up all the nerves at once. And so what we found was in this location, we’re hitting more branches of the nerve at the same time, and we can deliver more amounts of power. So when you’re stimulating inside the ear, if you deliver generally more than 2 milliamps of current, it gets very uncomfortable. It’s got, like, a shocking effect because the ear is very sensitive.

Nick Cool [00:13:20]:
But right under the neck, it’s not as sensitive, and so you can crank it up a little higher. So we’re we’re using around 8 milliamps on average. And because we’re dealing delivering more power to more branches of of the nerve, we’re getting faster effects that last longer, and it feels a little more potent. So this was what I prototyped when I was in my PhD. And when I first tried it, I was like, that is the spot, like, right there. It’s super comfortable, very easy to use. I’m feeling that shift within about 15 seconds of use. And then when I use it for, you know, a few minutes at a time, I let go, and I feel this, like, wave of calm come over my face.

Nick Cool [00:14:02]:
My shoulders are relaxed. They’re a little heavier. And I’m like, we found it. This is the modality that I needed when I was a competitive athlete out there. And so today, you know, we are just designing products that target the nerve in that location. The goal is to make them as easy and convenient as possible, and we’re trying to eliminate the amount of time it takes to get the effects. And with ours, you know, literally, you’ll feel that shift in about 60 seconds of use. So long story, but that’s kinda how we arrived at this design model, and it’s pretty cool to use.

Nick Urban [00:14:37]:
Yeah. It’s pretty cool to use. I like that you have a magnetic cap. And for those not watching the video version of this, Nick was showing, demonstrating, stimulating his vagus nerve, his auricular vagus nerve right under his ear. And I also noticed when doing my own research that there are different ways of using vagus nerve stimulators, different places to apply them. The most famous is probably the the ear, the ear canal, the ear lobe, and then also for the irregular vagus nerve stimulators, like the I forget what you called it exactly, but right underneath the ear, that tibia.

Nick Cool [00:15:11]:
Tympanomastoid fissure.

Nick Urban [00:15:13]:
Tympanomastoid fissure. And then there’s also the, I think, forehead and the top of the wrists. Is there any research on the effects there?

Nick Cool [00:15:23]:
Absolutely. So this is also a really cool product because by design, it can be used as a multipurpose nerve stimulator. Most of the vagal nerve stimulators out there, you can’t put it anywhere else on the body. If you’re using an ear clip, well, you can’t clip it anywhere else. It just clips on the ear. If you’re if you’re wearing a neck wearable, it just sits there. You can’t target anything else. This is handheld, and I can apply it anywhere on my body and target any nerve.

Nick Cool [00:15:51]:
The the other issue I had growing up was I got a lot of headaches. I got multiple headaches a week. I wouldn’t say they were, like, cluster headaches where it was severe pain, but it was just mild headaches all the time. It was really annoying. What I found when I was doing my research is there are devices called trigeminal nerve stimulators, which is in the forehead. And when you stimulate the trigeminal nerve, that’s shown to reduce headache pain. And when you do it on a daily basis, it also prevents, future migraines from occurring. Now it doesn’t wipe them out completely.

Nick Cool [00:16:24]:
It’s you’re not gonna be free from migraine forever, but it can reduce the frequency of getting them, and it definitely reduces the severity of it in the middle. And so what you can do with this product is we have a certain mode that we’ve programmed into it. You can put it on the trigeminal mode, and you just apply it right in the middle of the forehead and just move it around a bit. And when you hit the trigeminal nerve, you feel this, like, buzz go up the top of your skull. It’s a strange feeling, but it feels so good when you have a headache. In the middle of that pain, it just blocks the pain, and you just don’t feel the headache pain while you’re doing it. So it it’s not like our core application. It’s more of, like, a bonus protocol for this product.

Nick Cool [00:17:05]:
So we’ll teach people how to do it. But, yeah, I mean, just kinda move it around in this area. You hit the nerve and just hold it there for a couple of minutes or really as long as you want anytime you’re having a headache, and it just feels really good. Lot of research that supports that use. There’s FDA cleared devices for sale that are, they’re more like patch electrodes. You stick it on your forehead, and it stays there for 15, 20 minutes. This one is a little different. You just hold it in place.

Nick Cool [00:17:33]:
It’s not gonna stay there, but, slightly different design, but gets the job done. And then there’s also other research that trigeminal nerve stimulation induces drowsiness, so it can help you fall asleep a little quicker. And so what I love about this is you can combine nerve stimulation protocols. You can do a few minutes on auricular to calm your nervous system, and then immediately, you can do a few minutes on trigeminal to induce drowsiness. So you do that for 5, 10 minutes while you’re laying in bed right before bed, and you’ll fall asleep. It’s really awesome. It’s a pretty fun, little multipurpose tool.

Nick Urban [00:18:09]:
Yeah. And if you’re not laying in bed yet, you could also be watching TV or sitting on the couch or something and being and apply it at the same time.

Nick Cool [00:18:17]:
Exactly. It’s so easy to use. There’s no setup time. You know, there’s no apps, wires, gels.

Nick Urban [00:18:23]:
And it doesn’t take 15, 20, 30 minutes like a good meditation session would.

Nick Cool [00:18:27]:
It’s pretty cool. I mean, you feel that shift within about 60 seconds. But the cool thing is you can also use it for as long as you want. Traditionally, you know, auricular nerve stimulators are used for 10, 20 minutes at a time. You can totally just sit on this thing for 20 minutes if you want.

Nick Urban [00:18:44]:
Yeah. And the sensation itself is interesting. It’s fairly unique. It kinda reminds me, like, a not the best analogy, but, like, when you tap your funny bone on something, that, like, tingling kinda like that Yeah. But, like, not uncomfortable per se when it when I apply it right below.

Nick Cool [00:18:58]:
It’s a feeling most people have never felt before, and it it’s a little hard to describe. But in one of our clinical studies, we just asked people, what do you use to describe that feeling? The top three words were buzzing, vibration, and tingly sensations. So like you said, it’s like kinda like when you hit your funny bone, your arm tingles, but it’s not that uncomfortable. It’s actually very pleasant. A lot of people say it feels like an ear massage from the inside out, which is, again, a strange feeling, but it’s very strong. Like, that’s the idea behind this is you wanna really crank the thing and get your ear really buzzing. It’s not moving. It’s not mechanical vibrations.

Nick Cool [00:19:38]:
This is not a massage gun. It’s using electrical energy to stimulate the nerve, which gives you a sensation like your ear is buzzing. And when you crank the thing, it’ll feel like your ear is, like, trying to jump off your head. It’s pretty crazy. But once you remove it, there’s this, like, oof, this calming wave that just travels across your face and down your shoulders, and it’s just like, man.

Nick Urban [00:20:03]:
Yeah. And what I wanna underscore there, you said, is that unlike a lot of things in health and wellness and supplementation, more is actually better. And so when I was doing it, I was, like, trying to find the right spot on my neck, and I’m like, I don’t know if I got this correct. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to feel this intense. And I got used to it pretty quickly, but it it feels like you can play around with it a bit and figure out the right spot on your neck specifically.

Nick Cool [00:20:30]:
When most people try this, they’ve never tried a vagal nerve stimulator before, and so they don’t know what to expect. And one of the, I wouldn’t say challenges, but things we have to make them aware of is this is supposed to be strong. And so when people try it and they crank it up, they’re not used to that feeling, and they kinda freak out for a second. They’re like, woah. What just happened to my head? And we have to, you know, explain to them, look. Get used to it. For the first 15 seconds, it might be, like, a little overwhelming. But, eventually, you’ll get used to it, and you’ll feel that calming effect in your and you’ll wanna keep it there for a while.

Nick Cool [00:21:07]:
It’s just really nice. And, yeah, like you said, you know, the cool thing about this is you have to hit the nerve in the right spot. And if you don’t apply it right on the right spot the first time, you just move it around until you hit it. With other wearables, if you don’t put it on right, there’s a lot of adjusting involved that can be annoying. But with your hand, you just move it around. And the cool thing about this is it’s meant to work really fast. Like, we thought about, let’s make a wearable. Let’s make something that goes around your neck, and you just have to wear it.

Nick Cool [00:21:41]:
But if you think about it, to apply a wearable is gonna take me at least 60 seconds to open it up from the case. I’m gonna have to apply it around my neck, and then I’m possibly gonna have to connect wires to it. If it’s wireless, probably have to connect to an app. So you’re looking at a a, like, maybe 3 minutes of setup time. But if it only takes 60 seconds to get the effect, it takes me longer to set it up than it does to get the benefits. And so we like the handheld because it takes me 2 seconds to take it off and apply it. To us, handheld makes more sense when you’re looking for faster results. So faster setup time, faster results.

Nick Urban [00:22:19]:
Yeah. And I’ve noticed when I put it in the wrong spot in my neck, I don’t feel any stimulation at all until I just start moving around, and then all of a sudden, it feels obvious that, okay, this is where it’s supposed to be. And then, like, after you find that general area, it’s, like, small tweaks here and there to make it more comfortable.

Nick Cool [00:22:32]:
Yeah. Exactly. If you’re not on the nerve, you’re not gonna feel anything in your ear. You’ll feel the stimulation on the spot where the gel tips are. And a lot of people this is something we’ve had to, you know, work on in our support materials. A lot of people think, oh, it must be working because I feel the stimulation. But they don’t actually feel it in their ear. They feel it on the spot, and they’re thinking, alright.

Nick Cool [00:22:55]:
It must be working. I don’t feel any different. And it’s like, well, of course, you don’t feel any different. You weren’t hitting the nerve. You were just shocking your neck. I did. In the beginning, yes, you have to play around with it and really find that spot where your ear is buzzing. And then once you find it, you just hold it there.

Nick Urban [00:23:11]:
Yeah. Nick, let’s take a step back. What are the different use cases for this? Like, I’m imagining it can help for people that struggle with these types of things chronically, like stress and overwhelm and fear of the future, all these types of things. And then also I see a really high use case, good use case for people who are already performing pretty well, and they might their performance might suffer a bit because of nerves before an event, a sport, a race, a high stakes meeting, a sales deal. I can see it being universally beneficial just to, like, take the edge off of those situations in a more natural way with fewer side effects. No substances that affect pathways that you don’t wanna affect.

Nick Cool [00:23:54]:
There’s a ton of applications for vagus nerve stimulation. I am not primarily in business to create the best vagus nerve stimulator to solve all the problems vagus nerve stimulation could help with. My main goal is I wanna help high performing professionals perform better under pressure so they can accomplish their goals and live a better life. Right? That was my problem was I had these big dreams, but stress and anxiety just wrecked my ability to perform. And vagus nerve stimulation can really help with people who deal with stress and anxiety. And so the first application that I’m most passionate about is helping people when they have to go perform something under pressure where there’s, you know, there’s a lot of things on the line. Maybe it’s presenting in front of a 100 people, a 1000 people. Maybe it’s a small boardroom presentation.

Nick Cool [00:24:44]:
Maybe you’re an athlete, a musician. And when you feel those nerves, generally, those are good. You you want to be nervous because you know it’s important. But there is a line where once it gets a little bit too much, then it it wrecks your performance. And so for those people where you’re just way too, you know, sympathetically dominant, We’re bringing you back down to that perfect balance of nerves and calm so you can focus and perform. And that’s what this device does. So you would use it anywhere from, you know, 1 minute to 5 minutes depending on how severe your condition is right before the event. So if I’m about to walk into a boardroom, I’m gonna do this for a few minutes right before.

Nick Cool [00:25:26]:
And it’s great because there’s no setup time. No one’s looking at me weird because I’m wearing a wonky device. It looks like I’m talking on the phone. Right? When I’m just sitting here like this, people think I’m on a phone call. You know? There’s nothing that is weird looking about this, and it works really fast. And that’s probably the the first application. It’ll just kinda take the edge off when you are trying to perform in a high pressure situation. The second one would be stress recovery.

Nick Cool [00:25:51]:
So if you just experienced something that triggered a stress response so just generally think like a first responder. Right? Like, you’re responding to a critical incident and, you know, you’re having to clean up a mess that triggers some traumatic experience or something. After that’s done, you might get into your car, and it’s just you, and you’re dealing with what you just saw. And your body goes into that fight or flight state. And what are you gonna do to recover from that? Like, you can try breath work. You can try meditation. But when you just saw something that triggered that stress response, unless you are trained in yogic breath work and meditation for years, like, that’s not gonna do a thing for you to help you calm down. And so that’s a that’s probably the second best use case for this is right after a stressful event.

Nick Cool [00:26:38]:
It’s really good at bringing you back down to baseline so you can just chill and focus.

Nick Urban [00:26:44]:
On that note, I’m curious. Post stress, if something, like, say, a really intense exercise session or a competition where, like, you really beat your body up by putting it through a lot, your cortisol, your norepinephrine, your epinephrine, they’re all sky high. Would this actually accelerate, like, athletic, like, muscle recovery too?

Nick Cool [00:27:02]:
Yeah. It would. Because when you think about it, take wind sprints, for example. When I just sprint as fast as I can and then stop, what’s happening is I’m going into fight or flight for a second. And then when I stop, I’m going into rest and digest. And there’s a lot of research out there where endurance runners and sprinters have the highest vagal tones, and that’s measured through HRV, which means their vagus nerve is really strong. And what that means is their body’s really good at recovering. And so, typically, people that are more fit are gonna have stronger vagus nerves.

Nick Cool [00:27:40]:
It’s not because working out per se strengthens the vagus nerve. It’s after you work out really hard, generally speaking, your body has to go into recovery state. And so the vagus nerve is fired up to help your body recover. And so when you add this into a post workout, you’re enhancing your body’s ability to recover. And so that’s another thing. We have a lot of professional athletes that are using it in the locker rooms, post games, post workouts, and they just generally respond and say, I just feel really good after a workout. It just makes me feel better. We haven’t done any, like, clinical data to measure any any, like, physical recovery specifically.

Nick Cool [00:28:19]:
But when you just think about the underlying mechanism of how recovery works, this is going to accelerate the body’s natural recovery process. So great application as well for, you know, post workout recovery.

Nick Urban [00:28:32]:
Mhmm. Okay. So so far we have stress recovery of performance first. What is the next use case after that?

Nick Cool [00:28:40]:
Yeah. The the next one would be sleep. Sleep is a a really popular one. A lot of our users say that, you know, they use it specifically for sleep. So it’s not insomnia. This is not for people that have a deep neurological sleep disorder. What it is is stress related sleep. So if stress is keeping you awake, this is gonna help you fall back asleep.

Nick Cool [00:29:03]:
You think about anyone in the modern world that is living a high stress lifestyle. You’re always on the go. Generally speaking, people are always on. There’s always something to do. And so when it’s time to go to bed, you don’t just fall asleep. Like, you’re trying to shut your mind off. You’re thinking of a million things. The worst thing is people are on their phones all the way up until they go to bed.

Nick Cool [00:29:25]:
It’s like, come that’s the worst thing you can do. But, you know, this is a great way to just accelerate the body’s calming process, clear your mind of whatever you’re thinking about. That’s the other cool thing. When you’re blasting your vagus nerve and your ear’s buzzing like crazy, it’s really hard to think about anything else because it’s just your mind goes right there. And when you think about it, that’s mindfulness. Well, maybe meditation. Mindfulness, I believe, is like, let your mind go blank. Meditation is think of something and focus on it.

Nick Cool [00:29:56]:
This is meditation. It gives you something to focus on, takes your brain off of the other million things you’re thinking of, and it’s calming the nervous system. So really great tool to help you fall asleep as well.

Nick Urban [00:30:07]:
Yeah. And, also, it seems like a lot of issues related to falling asleep are going to have a stress component, whether it’s overthinking, it’s, like, mental chatter, it’s, like, automatic negative thoughts, belief systems, triggers by social media and other areas. So it seems like this would help those types of things also.

Nick Cool [00:30:27]:
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, especially if you are one of those people that can’t put your phone down. You know? If you’re not gonna give up that habit of looking at your phone every night, you might as well use this to trigger that relaxation and help you fall asleep. So

Nick Urban [00:30:40]:
And also this type of technology, if you’re unable to do that, so you don’t have the motivation, this can help, like, put you in a state where your motivation builds and you’re able to start doing these habits because you’re feeling more centered, more relaxed, more regulated.

Nick Cool [00:30:55]:
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, man, there’s so much cool research. There’s a a study that came out when I was getting my PhD. The conclusion was auricular vagus nerve stimulation increases neuroplasticity. So what that means is your brain’s ability to grow new neural connections. So if you’re learning a new task, vagus nerve stimulation can accelerate your brain’s ability to retain new information. So learning new a new language, learning a new physical skill.

Nick Cool [00:31:24]:
I guess, really, anything you wanna learn using vagus nerve stimulation, like, right before a practice session is gonna help your brain retain whatever you’re practicing better. And, you know, there’s another, cool thing that we found in our research was using the device for 10 minutes right before a golf hitting task and a golf putting task. We were also able to double the golfer’s subjective quality of feel of each shot. And in the placebo group, there was no change. And so quality of feel, generally speaking, that that doesn’t sound like anything. But if you’re an elite performer, feel is everything. Feel is the most important thing to get dialed in. That’s that’s another word for saying you’re in a flow state.

Nick Cool [00:32:12]:
When your feel is is dialed in and you’re not thinking mechanically, you’re just going with the flow. Your feel is is locked in. That is how you unlock peak performance. And so the combination of enhancing neuroplasticity, you’re you’re priming your brain to do the perfect motion, and you’re boosting your quality of feel before the the performance. I mean, this is a performance enhancer. I don’t know if it’s a performance enhancer as much as it is like a performance main maintainer, maybe. Like, it helps you perform the way you’re capable of without that stress and anxiety inhibiting you. Oh, it’s so cool.

Nick Cool [00:32:54]:
I wish I was still competing in golf right now because I make more putts when I use this. Like, when I do it for 30 seconds right before a putt, couple things happen. 1, I’m standing over it. My shoulders are heavy. And for a motion like putting that requires very fine motor control, having, you know, less muscle tension makes the motion a lot easier, and it increases your feel. And I’m not sure if you play golf, but feel is everything in putting. Like, you have to feel your way into the putt. And it’s just so cool.

Nick Cool [00:33:26]:
Like, it it it really does make it easier to kinda lock into that flow state right after using it.

Nick Urban [00:33:31]:
Did we finish our list of of uses? Are there any others?

Nick Cool [00:33:35]:
There are certain individuals who are chronically ill, and they have nervous systems that are essentially stuck in that fight or flight state. They’re always on sympathetic overdrive. So maybe, you know, you have some vertigo or you got a concussion and it knocked your nervous system out of balance, pots, dysautonomia, gut health issues, digestion issues. You know, the vagus nerve is implicated in all of these things. And in the early days, we had a lot of those doctors buying our products, recommending them to patients. And, you know, it’s being used for a lot of different areas, and people are finding great benefits there. One one really cool application that is kinda just fun and and gives you a very noticeable effect. But when you use it right after eating a meal, you notice, like, a little bit more of that calming effect than when you use it just on its own.

Nick Cool [00:34:26]:
And I think that’s because when you eat something, it triggers rest and digest. And then when you stimulate the vagus nerve right after eating something, it even more so stimulates rest and digest, and there’s this, like you wanna just sit back and not move after you do that for a few minutes, which is kind of a fun application. I don’t wanna say that our product is gonna cure your gut health issues. It could help, and a lot of people find benefit from using it for that, but it’s not really our main application. You know, we’re really just focused on coming up with the best protocols to help high performing people perform better and recover better from stress.

Nick Urban [00:35:04]:
I hadn’t thought of that. But one of the big issues with eating on the move, say, while you’re driving, is that you’re gonna be in a much more sympathetic state because you have to have heightened awareness, your tunnel vision on the cars in front of you and the traffic and everything. And I could see using this before a meal to also put you into that state so you’re better able to digest, assimilate, and retain the nutrients of the food that you’re consuming also.

Nick Cool [00:35:30]:
And that’s a good point. I I’ve never really thought of that. Like, eating while driving, probably not the best time to eat if you’re promoting good digestion. Right? Like, being in that alert state, your body’s not gonna digest as well. Like, wait to eat until you’re in a calm, relaxed place. But, absolutely, use it right before for a few minutes to prompt that digestive tract. Eat and then use it right after.

Nick Urban [00:35:55]:
Obviously, a couple of the symptoms of vagus nerve dysregulation or underactivation, we’ve already discussed stress, like high stress, poor, like, trouble sleeping, nervousness, fear of the future, these types of things, extreme sadness, trying to avoid certain medical words. But are there any other common symptoms associated with underactivation of the vagus nerve?

Nicholas Hool [00:36:21]:
You we can talk medical terms too. Like, auricular vagus nerve stimulation, I I believe the at least the first two medical applications were for epilepsy and depression, drug resistant depression. And when you stimulate the vagus nerve, it does improve mood. There are fMRI studies that show how the areas involved in your brain that are associated with depression, you know, they change in such a way that it boosts your mood, and you just feel better. Usually, you have to do that every single day for several weeks before you start to see those changes. But, for people with low vagal tone, yes, there there tends to be a correlation with increased anxiety, increased depression, worse digestion, irritability, things like that. And one thing that we’ve learned is if you have low vagal tone, meaning just a a poorly functioning vagus nerve, you’re not gonna wanna dive into electrical stimulation right off the bat because it’s very strong and it can overwhelm the vagus nerve. And, it’s not gonna cause any harm, but it it could be very uncomfortable.

Nick Cool [00:37:34]:
Think of it like if you haven’t worked out in a long time and you go back to the gym, you don’t wanna lift super heavy weights from day 1. Otherwise, you’re gonna wreck your body and you’ll be so sore for, like, a week. It’s very similar with the vagus nerve. You wanna start very slow. So if you are chronically ill, chronically stuck in fight or flight, and you have a weak vagus nerve, you’re gonna wanna do very slow. Our product is meant to be used at a high intensity, so it’s probably not a good fit if you’re someone with low vagal tone. You can use it, but you would use it at a very low setting. And usually, you’d use it at the lowest setting for, like, 5 minutes at a time, and you’d wanna do that every day for a few weeks before you start turning it up.

Nick Cool [00:38:16]:
So it can take 30 plus days before you’re actually ready to crank the thing, which, again, you can use it, and it will help you with that protocol, but it’s not really our primary thing. We’d recommend, honestly, doing more like like breath work protocols and more manual softer vagal nerve activation techniques for, you know, several months before you advance into electrical stim.

Nick Urban [00:38:41]:
Any research you’ve found interesting? One thing that I was thinking about would be how to, like, stack or combine this with other things for particular outcomes. Like, can I combine this with, say, like, some GABA Agonist supplements or, like, L thanin to, like, enhance meditations or to work on my, like, rewiring my, like, subconscious beliefs or, like, really anything? Like, what are the some cool potentials here?

Nick Cool [00:39:05]:
It’s such an easy device to stack with any biohacking protocol, any wellness protocol. My personal favorite one well, I guess I’ve got I got 2. The first one, if I’m trying to, like, fully maximize that potent calming effect, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna exhale slowly and forcefully while I’m stimulating. So when you do a forced, prolonged exhale, like I’m pursing my lips and pushing my exhale out of my lips for about 5, 6 seconds, I’m activating the lower branches of the vagus nerve. And when I stimulate the upper branch, I’m getting a more fuller vagal activation effect, and it’s very, like, strong. I mean, you do that for just 3 breath cycles, and you’ll be like, woah. Like, I I don’t wanna move right now because my body is just still. I don’t do that very much longer than 60 seconds because if you force your exhale, like, it sounds like you’re blowing up a balloon.

Nick Cool [00:40:03]:
I mean, you can get lightheaded, but that is a technique that can, like, kind of really strengthen your vagus nerve in a natural way. So I’d say that’s my favorite if I’m, like, really stressing out. And if I’m about to take stage or do something in front of a bunch of people, that’s what I would do to calm my nerves, and it works really well. The the second one is my personal favorite, but it’s more like a long term you have to kinda create a daily habit with this. If you’re a high performing individual and you deal with stress anxiety, or even if you don’t deal with stress and anxiety, what I like to do is combine it with a visualization protocol. So just, again, take golf, for example, because I’m a golfer. You can apply the same concept to anything. But let’s say I’m I’m gonna go play in a tournament a week from now at a really nice course, and I’m paired with some really good golfer, and I know I’m gonna be nervous.

Nick Cool [00:40:55]:
What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna lay down in my room on a comfortable place, close my eyes, and I’m gonna visualize myself on that golf course playing with that person, with everyone around me watching me. I’m gonna feel the wind. I’m gonna see everything that I’m seeing. I’m gonna feel the club in my hands, and I’m gonna visualize myself playing perfect golf under pressure, executing perfectly. I’m gonna play the whole round in my head doing that. And when you do that, you’re activating the exact same regions in your brain that are associated with executing the actual motion. And so your brain doesn’t actually know the difference between what you’re imagining and what you’re seeing. That’s why dreams feel real sometimes.

Nick Cool [00:41:40]:
And so when you’re practicing in your mind, you’re giving yourself extra reps without actually giving yourself extra reps. So let’s say you wanna practice sinking a 5 foot putt to win the masters or, you know, giving up a presentation in front of a 1000 people. How many times do you actually get to practice that in in real life? Probably, like, 0. Like, most people when you get in that situation, it’s the first time you’ve ever been there. So how can we practice being in that position without actually being in that position? Through visualization. You you literally make it up in your head, make it as real as possible, and see yourself executing it perfectly. And when you do that over and over and over and over again, once you get there in real life, you’re gonna look out and be like, I’ve done this a 100 times even though you haven’t. And it totally brings the stress down because your brain, again, doesn’t know the difference between what you are visualizing and what you’re doing in real life.

Nick Cool [00:42:46]:
The one thing that I think people don’t understand about visualization is how much time and effort it actually takes to do it right. This is not take 5 minutes and just see yourself out there doing it. No. This takes an hour every single day of rigorous practice. You can’t be distracted. It’s very easy to fall asleep and get distracted if you’re visualizing, which is why most people don’t do it. It’s very hard to do. So I I tend to do it right when I wake up, then I do visualization.

Nick Cool [00:43:13]:
If I do it at night, I’m gonna fall asleep, so it’s not the right time to do visualization. But if you’re a high performer, I highly recommend you do a few minutes of vagal nerve stimulation to prime your brain and then go right into a visualization protocol. You may not have to do it for an hour, maybe 30 minutes is good, but what I found is to do it right, it does take some time to go through the entire motion of what you’re doing. You don’t wanna just visualize one little thing. You wanna visualize the whole thing. Like, do it all. And do it one day, do it the next day, do it the next day, do it every single day up until that event.

Nick Urban [00:43:49]:
No. I I’m totally with you with you on that. I know a lot of the top athletes use visualization. A lot of the top teams, coaches, they, like, require their players to do these things because they work so well. I’ve even seen some research about, like, piano players and what visualization can do for them. Like, not even actually playing the piano, which is visualization of that on top, like, for someone who knows, like, the basics, obviously, and it’s mind blowing. And I’m glad you brought up the other examples too because, yes, it applies to elite athletes and really any high level athletes and anyone who wants a competitive advantage, but it’s also applicable to everyday situations and other events that might bring out some nerves in you.

Nick Cool [00:44:32]:
And it it also like, when you’re really good at visualization, once you get good at it, you can then take that skill with you when you’re out there, and you can do these short micro visualizations right before you do something. What’s crazy is you can perform things that you didn’t know you were capable of performing when you get really good at visualization. For example, for me on the golf course, when I when I first started really doing this, I was practicing visualization. Like, I I might hit a tee shot into the woods. Typically, I’m like, well, I’m screwed. But I would I’d literally pick, like, the tiniest little window through the trees, and I’m like, let’s see if I could pull that off. And I’m just visualizing it. I’m, like, feeling the shot I know I have to hit, and I’m doing it over and over in my mind.

Nick Cool [00:45:16]:
And then I step up maintaining that feeling, and I hit it, and it’s like, boom. Right there. Right through the window. And I’m like, woah. Did I just unlock some, like, unknown level of performance of the human body that I never knew existed? Not really. It was always there. I just didn’t know how to activate it.

Nick Urban [00:45:33]:
And I think, an important caveat here is that the first times that you visualize in excruciating I don’t like the word excruciating. In a lot of detail and you really make it an experience, it’s normal to have some level of resistance to it. And the more you do it, the more you practice it like any skill, it becomes easier and more vivid, more powerful. So that by the time you step up to that little window of opportunity and you actually go to maintain that feeling of the drive through the that window, you hit it versus if that was your first time visualizing, you’re probably not gonna get it just by that one visualization.

Nick Cool [00:46:09]:
That’s a great point because I remember when I first started visualizing, I was terrible at it. And I was like, what am I is this happening? Like, I’m not doing it right. I keep getting distracted. And for me, the visualization routine went like this. If it was say it was an hour long, the first 20 minutes was actually spent on relaxation techniques. Had nothing to do with visualization. It was all about calming my mind, calming my body so I could just chill. It took 20 minutes to do that.

Nick Cool [00:46:36]:
Mostly, it’s like a lot of breath work. It’s a lot of, like, muscle activation. It’s just getting all the tension out. After 20 minutes, I spend about 10 minutes going to my happy place. I’m visualizing my favorite vacation spot or, like, place in nature, and I’m just walking around having a good time being relaxed. So for the first half of your hour is spent trying to calm your nervous system so that you can focus. And that’s where this comes in as an incredible tool to enhance visualization. It calms your nervous system for you.

Nick Cool [00:47:08]:
So I can I can eliminate that 30 minutes it takes me to get into the right visualization state, and I can bring that down to about 5 minutes? So I’m effectively enhancing my ability to visualize. And now it helps anybody who wants to get into visualization, do it a little better. And I can also take it with me when I’m out there and use it right before a performance to just prime my nervous system, visualize a little better, and just execute what I need to do under pressure better.

Nick Urban [00:47:36]:
I wanna go back to what you were talking about along the lines of the research around this. Last time we talked, you mentioned that there have been brain scans showing what this does. I think it was fMRI specifically.

Nick Cool [00:47:47]:
Yeah. So when I first started looking into the research, you know, I’m reading the published literature out there. I’m like, what have people done? What’s happening? There were at least 2 fMRI studies, I wanna say 2013, maybe. Might have been earlier than that. But they stimulated the auricular vagus nerve inside the ear, and then they they did it while they’re inside of an fMRI machine. So they had to rig up a certain electrode to make that happen. But they found reduced activity in the amygdala, which was really interesting because that’s where fear is generally known to come from. When your amygdala is fired up, that’s the fear response.

Nick Cool [00:48:24]:
And a lot of people with PTSD, panic attacks, any kind of trauma, you tend to see over activation in the amygdala. So when you you bring that activity down, it makes you a little less on edge, a little less afraid of things. Really cool there. There’s regions in the brain stem. I’m not I don’t need to talk about all the specific names because they’re long and they don’t really specifically mean much, but, basically, the brain stem is sort of where the emotions are processed. And when you stimulate the auricular vagus nerve, we see activation in certain areas of the brain stem, deactivation in others that are associated with regulating your emotions in such a way that it reduces fear and increases mood. It makes it a little easier to process things that might irritate you, so you’re not gonna get as irritated. Any memories that come up aren’t gonna affect you as severely.

Nick Cool [00:49:17]:
So think trauma. Right? Like, trauma is characterized by your your remembering a traumatic event, and those memories pop up and trigger that response. When you stimulate the auricular vagus nerve, one, it has an immediate effect of calming, you know, the nervous system. But by doing it every day, you’re strengthening the emotional regulation centers in your brain so that when those memories pop up in the future, you’re not as, I guess, negatively responding to them. Auricular vagal nerve stim, it the effect it has on the brain is mostly internal. We did a lot of EEG studies, monitoring, like, the, cerebral cortex and, like, all over the top of the head with 32 channel EEG caps. And in general, we didn’t really see much difference in brain activity. One thing we did see was an increase in what’s called coherence.

Nick Cool [00:50:07]:
So it just means, you know, all the frequencies throughout the brain generally become more aligned. If you’re in high beta, it might mean all of the brain waves are in high beta. If it’s in alpha, it means all the brain waves are in alpha. That would be a perfectly coherent brain state where all the regions in in your brain are putting out the same frequency. Generally, that doesn’t mean you’re gonna be more relaxed or more focused, but it means your brain is processing more efficiently. It’s not using as much energy to process whatever it is you’re processing, which is where the cognitive enhancement aspect comes from. It helps you retain more information better. It just puts your brain into a more efficient state where neuroplasticity can happen.

Nick Cool [00:50:48]:
And, usually, you see that immediately. You stimulate it one time for 1 session, and you see those changes after 1 session. They don’t last forever. It’s not like you do it once and boom, I’m perfectly coherent for the rest of my life. No. You gotta do it a lot.

Nick Urban [00:51:01]:
Do you know how long that brain coherence lasts? Is it, like, a minute afterwards, an hour, a day, a week?

Nick Cool [00:51:08]:
Well, it’s at least 10 minutes because we would do these 10 minute baselines and 10 minute post sessions, and we would just take the average during a 10 minute session. We never did any long term follow-up. We were mostly interested in what what’s the immediate effect this has on the brain and the body. And I was interested in immediate effect because I wanted fast results. I I wasn’t looking to have something where I do it in the morning and it lasts all day. I just wanted something where right before I’m gonna do something stressful, I want immediate results. So that’s why we were looking at what’s the immediate impact. But I would say from what I’ve seen the research, the effects that vagal nerve stim has on the body at most might last an hour.

Nick Cool [00:51:54]:
That’s very average. Right? There’s people where it can last all day depending on your underlying conditions, and there’s some people last 10 minutes. But there’s one study I found that they made a conclusion that the duration of the lasting effect is about 4 times the length of the stimulation session. So if I do it for 10 minutes, it’ll last for 40 minutes, and it maxes out at around an hour. So if I did it for a full hour, I’m not gonna get 4 hours of lasting. I might only get an hour at most. So there is a limit to the lasting effect. And so for us, because there’s a limit, there’s no reason to use it for an hour at a time, you know, unless you have a a chronic condition where you just need it to be on for a while.

Nick Cool [00:52:39]:
If the effects only last up to an hour, then let’s just do it for a few minutes at a time because that’s all that’s really necessary anyway. But what’s cool about this is I can I can whip it out and use it for 5 minutes, put it away, and 10 minutes later, I can do it again? 10 minutes later, I can do it again. I can do this all day. But if I have a wearable, I have to take it off, put it away, take it out, put it back on, reconnect it. It’s like, that’s kind of annoying if I wanna use it multiple times a day.

Nick Urban [00:53:03]:
And your body doesn’t build a tolerance. The effects and benefits don’t get attenuated over time, do they?

Nick Cool [00:53:09]:
No. That’s that’s been a question that has been asked for a while. And so far, I’ve never seen a study that has demonstrated that people get used to this, and they just stop effect you know, responding to the vagal nerve stimulation. If anything, you respond better to it because it’s it’s electrical stim. You’re strengthening the nerve.

Nick Urban [00:53:31]:
One cool use case I was just thinking would be to for talk therapists to have one of these in their office and before their sessions, they can stimulate their their clients or patients.

Nick Cool [00:53:41]:
Yeah. We have a a lot of EMDR therapists who will use it, right at the very beginning of every session to kind of prime their brain to get through the session. You know, with EMDR, it’s very focused on bringing up past traumatic memories and then trying to deal with them. When you stimulate the vagus nerve, you can bring up and remember the past memories, but your body is not gonna go into that that fight or flight state. And so you can focus better on, you know, shifting your perspective around that traumatic event to ultimately give you, you know, the lasting relief you need and to overcome that traumatic experience. That’s one really cool application. We have some functional neurologists who use our product with every single patient the first 10 minutes of every visit. Some of these clinics, they primarily deal with people with sympathetic overdrive, and so they’re super high stress.

Nick Cool [00:54:32]:
And they’re just really wiry, and they’re hard to work with. And so what they found this is actually really cool. We maybe even talk about this, but we actually built our stimulation into a pair of headphones. So we have a a new model coming out. We’ve been selling these privately, but you put them on like a normal pair of headphones, and it targets both sides of the auricular vagus nerve at the same time. So I’m getting faster effects that last a little bit longer, and it’s hands free. This is the perfect model for the clinical setting because patients can come in, they put them on, sit in a comfortable chair for the first 10 minutes before their visit, during their visit, and then the rest of their visit is chill. And we even have some, clinicians who the they’ll have their patients just sitting there wearing them the entire time while they’re talking to them.

Nick Cool [00:55:23]:
And, you know, it just totally helps keep them calm during the conversation when they have to bring up, you know, past traumas or triggers.

Nick Urban [00:55:32]:
That was one thing I wanted to ask you about. What does the research say about which side you stimulate? Are you supposed to stimulate both, or does it can you just stimulate one side?

Nick Cool [00:55:41]:
It’s a question that not a lot of people have done research on. We did in my PhD, and that was something I wanted to look at was what’s the difference between both sides. Does one side, you know, versus both sides at the same time? Is one more effective? So we did that. We started with just the left side because all the re most of the research was left side. There were maybe, I don’t know, like, 5 studies at the time that were published that did both sides. And when I looked at it, there were no differences in the literature. So I was like, it seems weird. Like, if there’s no differences between right and left, like, why why not do both? So we did both.

Nick Cool [00:56:20]:
We we did one side at a time, and we did both sides at the same time. And the the effects were interesting. You know, we didn’t do hundreds of patients, so we we have a limited sample size. But in our one side at a time, we saw the biggest increases in HRV versus both sides at a time. We didn’t really see any changes in HRV. I’m not totally sure why it could be because when you’re doing both sides at the same time, the electrical pathway kinda goes back and forth. Whereas on one side, it’s concentrated on just the nerve, so you might get maybe a little more vagal activation on one side versus versus both in terms of affecting the HRV. But on the subjective relaxation side, which is really the most important if we’re talking about stress relief, we wanna make people feel better.

Nick Cool [00:57:11]:
The the two sides at a time was far and away the most effective. We saw the biggest decreases in state anxiety after a single use with the with the two sides at a time versus one side. And in such a short amount of time, at least in the research, I’ve looked at running the same protocol. So I looked at Benzodiazepines that were delivered through an IV, and I looked at yogic breathing for 10 minutes and the effects on state anxiety right after. So IV is immediate. Like, it’s not a pill that takes a while to kick in. When you inject yourself with a benzo, you’re getting effects very quickly. And so we saw that our product reduced state anxiety about by about 36%.

Nick Cool [00:57:49]:
The IV benzo was 34%. So in the same amount of time, we’re just barely a little more relaxing than a benzo, but no side effects, no long lasting zombie effect. You’re just chill, but focused. The yogic breathing was about 25% reduction, which is still very effective. Like, that 25% when you’re really stressed out, like, that’s that’s a big drop that can take the edge off and bring you back to a a level that’s comfortable and easy to focus. So as far as effects on the body, I guess it would suggest one side at a time might have a a bigger impact on HRV, but both sides at a time is more relaxing as a whole. Both of those models, so so bilateral and unilateral, both did show significantly reduced heart rate right after using it. When I say reduced heart rate, I’m not saying it like you have a huge drop all of a sudden.

Nick Cool [00:58:43]:
It’s not causing bradycardia, which is a a drop of 10 beats per more in a short amount of time, and it’s going about 10 beats per lower than your baseline. It’s not doing that. All it’s doing is it whatever your your baseline is, we’re just bringing it down a little bit more, your average. So in terms of heart rate, nothing is happening during stem, but once you remove it, heart rate comes down. And so heart rate also comes down when you’re just sitting still for a long time. So that’s placebo. Right? But what we found is when you stimulate, heart rate came down even further in a statistically significant way. So, one of the other, metrics that we looked at to say that, okay.

Nick Cool [00:59:24]:
This is obviously working. It’s better than just sitting still or breathing for a while. But both models are pretty cool. Right? Like, wear the headphones if you want, you know, that longer lasting, more potent relaxation feeling. And then handheld when you’re out there. And maybe if you’re really into biohacking and you’re, like, kind of obsessing over HRV metrics, you might wanna use the handheld.

Nick Urban [00:59:46]:
Yeah. I wanna underscore something you said a minute ago that you kinda just glossed over. And to me, it was very profound that this had a 30 per 6% improvement to state anxiety versus benzos, which are incredibly powerful drugs, only had 34%, which makes this more powerful and, yes, not quite as fast, but that alone shows that this isn’t just another little device that may it has can have profound effects.

Nick Cool [01:00:15]:
Yeah. It’s crazy. When I looked at that study, I was like, this can’t be real. But the way I ran that analysis was I looked for there’s there’s so many benzo studies out there, but I looked for the ones that had the exact same protocol where they would take a a baseline measurement of their state anxiety using what’s called the state anxiety inventory. This is a clinically validated anxiety questionnaire. It has 20 questions that ask you questions about, like, 20 different symptoms of your anxiety levels. So we’re really dialing in your like, I guess, quantifying your current anxiety state. This is not a yes or no question.

Nick Cool [01:00:50]:
This is very specific and detailed. So they take a baseline measurement, and then it’s 10 minutes of whatever intervention. And then after 10 minutes, it’s another measurement. That’s what we did, and so we’re looking at what are the benzo studies that did that if if they exist? What are the the yogic breathing if they exist? What are all the other ones? And so in that 10 minutes, you know, the one state I found, they did it with a ton of different, benzos. They they tried it with IV. They tried it with pills, and the IVs had the strongest one. But in that 10 minutes, brought it down by 34%, but ours brought it down by 36. I’m like, that’s crazy.

Nick Cool [01:01:27]:
It’s it’s just slightly more effective than an IV benzo. Now I’m just talking in 10 minutes. Right? We didn’t look at an hour later, and IV is gonna have a long lasting effect. And there’s a a good chance that maybe the IV benzo might take an hour to really kick in. And there is a lot of research out there where you take a benzo, and it just brings your state anxiety, like, way down almost to 0. And that’s the zombie effect. Right? You’re just completely, like, resistant to any emotion at all. But that’s not what you want.

Nick Cool [01:01:57]:
We don’t want that. That’s good if you have severe, you know, anxiety disorders and mental conditions. But, again, if we’re talking about, I need to calm down fast, this is it. This is gonna be the best, and there’s none of that long term side effect. Because high performers don’t wanna be a zombie. You need to be focused. You need to be mentally alert but calm. Yeah.

Nick Cool [01:02:19]:
So, yeah, I would say it’s pretty mind blowing that this is in the same league as Ben does. I don’t I gotta be careful with how I say that because this is not a medical product. If you have clinical diagnosed anxiety, this is not for that. This is just a strong way to calm yourself.

Nick Urban [01:02:36]:
And, of course, check with your primary health care provider, your personal care provider before you implement anything as we discuss here, but it’s definitely worth exploring more.

Nick Cool [01:02:48]:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Nick Urban [01:02:49]:
Yeah. Nick, if people wanna connect with you, they wanna try one of your models. You have, I think, 3 currently. How do they find you, and what are the offerings?

Nick Cool [01:03:01]:
Yeah. So you can go to our website at hoolest.com, h o o l e s t.com. That’s where we, have our online store and sell, all of our different offerings. We have right now, we have 3 core offerings. The headphones, are out of stock right now. They’re very low volume and, very early. We’re just kinda getting those out there. But the the main offerings we have are the handheld device.

Nick Cool [01:03:25]:
We have 2 different models of this. So the first model is what we call our kind of all purpose biohacking in your pocket model. This is the VeriLeaf Prime. It has 5 different modes and we have 7 different protocols in a booklet that it comes with to teach you all the ways to use it, which includes auricular vagal nerve stim, media, trigeminal nerve stimulation, and even median nerve stimulation in your wrist. So there’s there’s other ways you can use it. The 5 main modes is you got a little sticker on the back here are for state anxiety, for stress, for sleep, for performance, and for panic attacks. So we kinda have, you know, all the main modes that you need to cover all of the mental wellness side of things. This is definitely the best value in an electrical nerve stimulator, especially a vagal nerve stimulator because it it combines a lot of different modalities in 1.

Nick Cool [01:04:19]:
And this is offered on our website. We have an intro model for 299, and we have what’s called the lasting relief bundle, which just comes with a lot more accessories so you can use it for longer for 3.99. And then we have the the really intro version where if you’ve never used vagal nerve stim and you’re only interested in just the fast stress relief or, you know, when you’re out there performing and just need to calm down quickly, we also have a single mode model where it just has the stress relief protocol and that’s for 199 on our website. So you can get one of those 2 options. They’re they’re all really cool. You know, if you’re not really a biohacker, you’re just more simple and you’d want the the basic stress relief, I’d go for the 199 version, which is called the VeriLeaf Reset to reset your nervous system very quickly. But if you want all those other cool applications, you know, auricular, trigeminal, median nerve, definitely go with the Prime. It is an awesome tool if you are interested in in multiple uses.

Nick Urban [01:05:18]:
Yeah. And I think do we set up a code for mind body peak performance listeners?

Nick Cool [01:05:23]:
I believe we did. I

Nick Urban [01:05:24]:
will put a the code and a link to this in the show notes so you guys can go ahead and check it out. And I’m also gonna be creating a review of my experiences with this tool after I play around with it a little more. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the Mindbody Peak Performance podcast today.

Nick Cool [01:05:45]:
Awesome. Thanks, man.

Nick Urban [01:05:47]:
Thank you for tuning in to this episode. Head over to Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating. Every review helps me bring you thought provoking guests. As always, you can find the show notes for this one at mindbodypeak.com/andthenthenumberoftheepisode. There, you can also chat with other peak performers or connect with me directly. The information depicted in this podcast is for information purposes only. Please consult your primary health care professional before making any lifestyle changes.