If you go to see a physical therapist, they're going to do manipulations of your joints and your muscles. They're working on the hardware. What if you could work on the software? We're going to find out more about that.
On today's episode of the movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body. I like to say, starting feet first, but now we're going to talk about the whole damn body. Whatever. But we also break down the propaganda and mythology, the frankly lies you've been told about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body and to run, work, play, do yoga, do cross fit to work out.
Whatever it is, you like to do it. Do it joyfully, efficiently, effectively, do it, I say, enjoy it. I know I did. It's a trick question.
I'm Stephen Sachin, CEO, co-founder of Zero Shoes and the host of the movement movement podcast, which we call it that because that was almost a sentence because we're creating a movement about natural movement, letting your body do what it's made to do naturally. And when I say we, Dan and Val is everyone watching and listening, doesn't take any effort. You'll find out in a second. I'll get to do it.
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Happy to do that, Stephen. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm Garrett Salpeter, the founder of NewFit and I believe that the most powerful and transformative way to help people recover from pain and injury is to work directly with the nervous system. And I feel very fortunate to have found the sort of Venn diagram where my interests overlap, my backgrounds in engineering and neuroscience and also like you, I've been an athlete.
I talk mostly growing up and in college and I got into this field because of a few different experiences. One is something that happened to me when I was playing college hockey. I got injured. I was supposed to have surgery to repair some torn ligaments.
And I met a doctor who was doing functional neurology and using older versions of direct current as opposed to alternating current, this kind of niche specialty within the electrical technology realm. And working with him, neurologic functional neurology, we're looking at not just the tissue damage, we're looking at what the neurological response was and how the nervous system was or was not supporting healing both locally and globally. And then using this direct current technology, I saw firsthand how it helped me heal and lungs very shortly. And I was excited as an athlete, but as a pre-engineering student, as a physics major, I was just beside myself with joy to find something that actually made sense scientifically from first principles.
Sort of like you described the obvious kind of reasons why you want to try out minimalist shoes, right? So to find something that made sense, I got that's what really got me excited. And that's what really instilled with me with this sense of being called to share this work with many people. And that's now 17 years ago.
And during that time, I finally figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up and launched the new V device, which stands for Neurobiorelectric, launched that about six years ago. So that gave me a lot to start with. And I'm trying to think of where I went again. So to be actually, let me start with this.
You and I met at some event, I don't know which one, could be in some trade show you something. And I've had a number of shoulder issues for years because I'm a former owner. And gymnast, and I don't know one gymnast who hasn't escaped without shoulder problems. And you hooked me up to your electrical device, which we will describe in a bit and had me go through some things that were, let's say, awkward or difficult at best and we will describe what that means as well.
But after a very short treatment, which again, we're at a trade show. So it's like, you know, Wambam, thank you man, get people in and out to experience it. There was a demonstrable significant change in the range of motion that I had and the pain that I had had. So I knew there was a there.
That's why we're on this call. So even about the movement, what we're talking about is about what you're doing. Again, we'll get into more specific about that in a sec. Then actually facilitates movement when you have some sort of injury or other restriction etc.
So that's part one. Part two, I want you to dive in a little bit and let's kind of do the history of electrical current things and healing. The one thing that the two things that I know have experienced, one is that I'll do the experience first is that a friend of mine when I was in high school, he had a chainsaw accident and cut his form pretty badly. And while he was trying to recover, they gave him a electro-stem device to keep the nerves below the where he cut towards his hand functioning so that while the nerves healed, they were still actually engaged.
Otherwise, the nerves and the muscular chair was just atrophy. And when he wasn't using this device, me and his other close friend, we were playing with it. So we would put it on your bicep and activate it and your arm becomes an amazing catapult. And if you put it on your face, well, if you put it on someone else's face while they're talking and then you activate it, like their whole face shifts a couple inches to the right or left and they can't talk properly, which was hysterically fun.
And then when I get to college and I'm in biology and they're like, hey, we're going to dissect a frog hamstring and show that you can make them also contract by adding electricity, I'm going through that, I'm attaching electrodes to people's faces and the TAs were not happy with that, but they were entertained. So anyway, that's one thing that I know that will lead us into what you're doing. The second thing is I know that for a long time, people have been using electricity and magnetic fields to help with bone repair. So those are the two things that I know.
Can you then dive in again, like I was asking a moment ago, to kind of the history of using electricity as part of a healing modality and then lead that into the newbie and what you're doing? Yes. And I know that we were in a lab class in college because I think that was a lot of fun. Absolutely.
So I think to start this, it probably is worth talking about that experience that we had at the trade show with your shoulder and then we can kind of create the context for why some of this matters. And there's a couple of interesting points about that. When you have an injury or experienced trauma like that, there's of course sometimes tissue damage and things that need to heal. But a lot of the reason that we experience pain and limitation is not about the original injury as much as it is how we respond to it.
It's a neurological response to injury and trauma and that involves a whole suite of protective patterns including creating tension in some muscles to guard and brace the body. It involves shutting down other muscles to limit movement. It involves pain. Pain is an active signal created by the brain in order to tell you to do something or more likely to stop doing something.
Don't use this area. Don't do that movement, et cetera. And it's at least partially therefore a software problem. And what we want to be able to do is find where the brain and nervous system are imposing those patterns on the body in order to be able to correct them or be able to optimize them so we can restore movement within the realm of what's responsible and safe if there is any sort of tissue damage.
So that of course is factored in from the beginning. But that is a really interesting path because it's a lot different than what other people are taking. I want to pause there because I really want to highlight this because it's something that seems a little counter to it for most people. That especially when you're healing but even when you just get into any sort of motor pattern and I'm going to highlight one that's relevant for runners in a sec.
What's going on is mostly your brain telling your body what you can't do. I don't know about mostly but it's often your brain telling your body what you can't do. And this shows up actually in endurance athletes as well where there's the theory of this from Tim Nokes, there's a thing called the central governor that's a part of your brain that's keeping you from doing something stupid essentially. From over exerting in a way where your tendons could pull so hard on your joints or bones that they could break the bone or snap a joint.
And so I see this often where we will develop a habit and your brain goes, okay, that's what we're doing now. Okay, cool. And then you think you can't do more than that because you do experience some sort of pain when you try but it's not true. I mean one of the ways that I see this is relevant for runners.
I see runners in my neighborhood and I live in a neighborhood with a lot of really good runners who are midfoot strike perfect form but they're in big thick high heel shoes and they'll say, well, I can't use minimal shoes because it's hurting my Achilles. It's like, hold on, hold on. You've just trained yourself not to use your Achilles fully, not to let it stretch fully with that high heeled shoe. Your Achilles is totally fine.
In fact, if you stay in barefoot, are you having a problem? They go, no. Yeah. So you taught your brain that when you're running, you can't use your Achilles fully and you could unteach your brain.
And this is the principle behind, I've mentioned on the podcast a couple of times Feldenkrais work, which is a bodywork style where basically there's a whole bunch of really cool techniques to fake your brain into remembering that you have more movement possibilities than it remembers that you have. So again, I know this can sound crazy because we do experience these limitations as if they are purely hardware, purely physical. But so much of it is literally just your brain getting acclimatized or something so that it thinks that is, you know, those are the edges no more, no less and tells you so with pain coming from it, not from the musculature. Did I get that?
Yeah, that's a very true, very profound, just a few different points of connection here. One is I have sometimes in conversation described hard work as electric Feldenkrais because that as I think I'm so glad you brought up most of Feldenkrais in his work because that is exactly what he's trying to do is find where these habits, these deeply ingrained habits are imposed as patterns on the body and their limitations, you know, and being able to work through those, it doesn't create new capacity. It allows the individual to tap into existing capacity that they already have. They're just blocking themselves from being able to express it.
And that plays into what you're talking about with Dr. Noakes and this notion of a central governor. He talks about fatigue actually being a governor that the brain imposes because our brains are trying to get us to do less, right? Like you talked about, but don't pull muscles too hard.
So we don't pull tenants off the bone. Right. Of course, that's a safety mechanism. It's important.
We don't want to override that, but it's often set way too conservatively. And so it weakens us. And likewise, our brain doesn't want us to expend too much energy because it thinks there might be a famine tomorrow. Think about the evolutionarily, you know, we came of age in this time where famines were common, right?
And we're not necessarily fully adapted to this modern life, you know, this modern world in which we live. So these patterns are imposed. And a lot of times the first stage of rehabilitation or training or, you know, any of these goals that people have a lot of times the first stage is not building new capacity, but it's just recalibrating these limitations so we can use more of what we already have. It's like there's a governor, you know, to just to borrow that governor metaphor.
You know, if a car is capable of going 155 miles an hour, but there's a governor that limits it to 90, you know, you, it could go a lot faster, but it's just limited by that, essentially by that software. Once you change that, all of a sudden you can get the same car, you can get to 155 miles an hour instead of 90. Yeah, I would never buy that car. So I took my car to a Subaru VRZ and I threw a supercharger in it.
Just make sure it could get a little more than, you know, what they say in the book. So right. So now let's, so we talked about, you know, a piece of the software component, but let's, is this the corporate time to move into the history of electricity and bodies and neurology? Yes, it is.
And I think it's just important because that establishes the why. So we now know, okay, the nervous system is important, how we can interact with the nervous system via technology becomes important. And this is where some of those distinctions between alternating current and direct current become really meaningful. And we're, we're some of the history now.
I think in context will be more interesting. So when we have alternating current devices, the signal goes back and forth positive, negative, positive, negative, and it causes muscles to contract actually to co-contract and fight each other. So back to the car metaphor, it'd be like if you were driving your car hitting the throttle and the brake pedal at the same time, even with your Subaru turbocharger, you're still not going to be going very fast because you're some of that energy is wasted overcoming the resistance of the brake pedal, right? So there's limitations there.
And also the nervous system, our nervous systems work naturally and direct current. And so when you use these alternating current devices, which just for reference is virtually everything that's out there, these tens units, Russian stem, interferential, FES, NMS, anything that people have generally experienced, generally popular brands of electrical modalities are typically alternating current because of the history that we'll get into. But there's these limitations. And when we use direct current, we're able to bypass a lot of the protective co-contraction, a lot of that stress response that happens.
So we can speak more powerfully, more precisely, more directly to the nervous system to both find where the limiting patterns are being imposed. So we do this scanning process. Like we do with your shoulder at the event, we actually take many electrodes and scan around the body to find where those patterns are being imposed and then use the direct current to stimulate those areas, typically also with exercise. So we accelerate that process of motor learning, but we would stimulate those areas in order to teach or recalibrate the nervous system to allow better function in those areas.
So the direct current allows us to do that. And there's also benefits of direct current with these electric field gradients on tissue healing. But in turn, answer your question here about that. The history is interesting because some of these benefits of direct current were known back in the 1960s, 1970s.
And you might wonder, well, okay, why is it? Why are you telling me this is new and different? I just been known for that long. Well, there was always there was always this one kind of, you know, kind of important limiting factor with direct current, which is whenever you would turn it up high enough to create enough stimulus to drive adaptation within the body, it would always sting and burn the skin because direct current did these ions build up and that increases resistance, which leads to heat dissipation, right?
So you could burn and the Soviets would literally burn their athletes and they could do that for Mother Russia, but we're not doing that over here in the Western world, right? So so it totally fell out of favor because of that limitation, except for a few niche use cases like microcurrent, some of these things that I mentioned, I experienced on my own injury, rehabilitation, and things like that. But it really fell out of favor. And so in that void came all these alternating current modalities because you could get them into the body without singing and burning the skin.
You just missed out on some of these other benefits in terms of how these electric fields can influence tissue healing and some of these more powerful effects on the nervous system and how they promote improved function. And that's why over the last several decades, all electrical modalities have somewhat fallen out of favor. You know, the insurance reimbursements for using electrical modalities in physical therapy has either been dramatically reduced or has been eliminated, for example, because statistically speaking, scientifically, they've shown to not be able to do very much. And so there's a lot of limitations.
And I think we are now showing that we're able to really overcome those limitations and move the field forward by going back actually and bringing direct current and doing it in a way where it was part of the special sauce here with our device, for example, is being able to find ways to get that direct current into the body without singing and bringing the skin. So we get the comfort of alternating current, but with the health and rehabilitation and functional benefits of direct current. So let's get people a flavor for how this would play out. I'm picking out your injury or dysfunction of choice and describe what happens when somebody walks in.
And I mean, you mentioned it, you know, briefly about scanning and then applying the direct current in a particular way. But I want to get people to imagine it in their mind or imagine they're going through it. So what's the most for that? I might stop you just in case I think you've skipped a set.
Well, you mentioned a little bit about your shoulder. Let's go to the other side of the bike. Let's talk about, you know, someone who just sprained or rolled an ankle. So we're in Texas, you know, we got a lot of high school and college football players, you know, it's common, but you know, someone out playing recreational basketball or falls off a curtain rolls or ankle, the same rules apply.
So so there's a very common use case that we see all the time where, you know, an athlete will come in, they might be on crutches or at the very least be limping because they're really favoring the side with the freshly rolled and sprained ankle. And they will they'll come in and oftentimes we'll go through this process where we sometimes would would map and find these areas or sometimes we'd have them actually for the first treatment, sometimes put their foot in a bucket of warm water and put one of the electrodes in there. So that it'll be a little more global, a little less precise, but we'll send the current through that entire foot and ankle because there's so many nerve pathways in there so neurologically dense. All right.
My phone is rang my apologies. So hold on. The first thing you're trying to do explain a bit what you're trying to find when you're doing the scanning thing and do it and talk about the global version for like foot in a bucket of water versus the more specific version and also what the patient's experience is that you're using for confirmation that you've found what you're looking for. It's like, what are you looking for?
What's the patient experiencing? How do you confirm that this is this is happening? Right. So the patient is hobbling in and they're experiencing this version of these protective patterns that we're going to mention a little bit earlier where some muscles are hyper tense to guard and splint and brace.
Others are shut down and weak because that's the brain's way of saying don't move that area. It's also pain mixed in as part of that whole suite of protective patterns, which again is the brain's way of saying, you know, don't use it. If this hurts, right, you're not going to use that area. It motivates you to use the other leg to not load that area, to not move it, et cetera.
So, so the person walks in experiencing all of that. And our question essentially looking at this person is, okay, how much of this issue is a hardware issue where it's a true tear of that tissue or something that and how much of it is a software issue where it's not as much about the physical injury as it is about that neurological response and those limitations being imposed. And so, you know, clinicians, the physical therapists, chiropractors, athletic trainers are going to use their skill set to determine and make sure they think it's safe. You know, they're going to screen for obvious fractures or something that's, you know, requires immediate attention and stuff like that.
So, screen for that first. But then, you know, most of the time we're able to continue treatment. And so, through the, through either the mapping and placing electrodes more precisely or doing the footpath, what we're trying to do is target these areas where the brain and nervous system are imposing those patterns on the body and then stimulate them, create this sensory feedback. So, instead of just causing muscles to contract like that typical alternating current technology, we're going to be sending this, this sensory signal, this input in.
And what it's, if you think about what it's doing, this is, this is the process of neuromuscular reeducation here, true neuromuscular reeducation, reeducating or teaching, re-teaching the nervous system, how to better control the muscles. So, we're sending these, these signals that, that essentially mimic movement. So, the brain, the person's brain is telling them not to move that foot and ankle, right? Not to load it.
We're going to send the signal, the same signals that would happen as if they're moving it. And so, at first, their brain is going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, Steven, don't move your ankle, right? Don't remember, we're in the state where we're not doing that. And it's going to be uncomfortable.
Remember, pain is the brain's response to perceived threat. So, we want to turn it up to the point where it actually does hurt a little bit. So, this of course is intentional. We're going to do it in a way that's safe and we know we're not creating any further damage.
But by going outside the comfort zone there, we know we're eliciting that response and giving the person an opportunity to recalibrate. And so, we do a few movements, typically not even weight-bearing movements, just moving the foot around a little bit, just doing little ankle circles or pointing and flexing the foot, et cetera. And by going through those movements, we give the brain a chance to recalibrate. The brain can evaluate this and say, okay, we're either, you know, things are damaged and we're not going to let off that, we're not going to ease off on those protective patterns.
Or what we have very commonly see is the brain sees that and says, oh, okay, we actually can do these movements safely. We actually can allow a little bit more and it incrementally starts to lift off on those governors. And a majority of the time we'll see people over the, you know, be able to take more on the current, be able to increase their range of motion a little bit. And after 10 or 20 minutes, they might get up and walk normally, virtually pain-free.
And they're just, you know, astonished at the amount of change that they've made in that 10 or 20 minutes. And it's, you know, of course nothing is healed, right? The ligaments haven't reattached in 10 or 20 minutes. What's happened is they've changed that neurological response and that helps us know that more of what we're experiencing was that functional response to injury.
So it's a little bit uncomfortable, but it's really, it's kind of validating for people when they see, when they have that experience of, okay, yes, we turned it up, it was uncomfortable. But as I move through it, the brain started down, regulate, and it felt like it got easier to manage everything, sort of relaxed. And if you repeat that a few times, it becomes this very empowering realization of, yes, I can adapt, okay, my body's responding. I sort of see a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the recovery from this particular injury.
So A, thank you. That was really good. And B, I was going to interrupt you because I wanted to slow the film down a little bit bit and get people slightly more granular visual sense of what's going on. So I'm going to describe my experience.
So I'm going to go for you to chime in. So the first thing is that scanning to identify where there might be something that is, let's just for lack of a term I'm going to call it this little neurological glitch, where your brain is doing some protective thing, for example. And what you're, what my experience when you're finding that is it's like, oh, this little electrical current, little electrical current as you move this electrode around, then you hit spot and we're like, oh, gee, holy crap, holy crap. And you go, okay, that's a spot.
And then you're going to take an electrode and place it in a different location clearly, so that you're going to find you're going to find a current moving through that area. So far so good, yeah? Okay. And then you start turning up the current on that device.
And what that's going to do is going to create this contraction that is undeniably not, let's just say not pleasant. It doesn't hurt, but it's definitely not pleasant. It's basically like, you know, if you've ever had a calf cramp, it's not that bad, but it's that similar flavor, like something's, you know, kind of cramping up. And then you would ask me, as you have in the past, to move, you know, get some range of motion, move through some spots, especially ones that have been historically painful, things where I couldn't really make that movement.
And even just trying to do those movements, you know, move my arm in whatever way that is, I'm fighting against the contraction that the electrical current has created. And so to your point, that's where you're sending signals back to the brain that are different to what it's been providing you. But so, but to be clear, it's like this phenomenon where, like you described for flexing a point in your toes or doing circles with your ankles or circles with your feet, for example, you know, you're going to find that there's certain places where it's like, you know, it's really hard to go through that. And then, but that's one of the places where maybe there's an injury, maybe it's just been protective.
And you go through that a number of times, a number of ways, maybe move the electrode a little bit to get a different angle and then, you know, take everything off and aside from the relief of, hey, you're not electrocuting me, which by the way, again, I don't, I mean, it's, again, I want, when I say it's not pleasant, I'm choosing that word somewhat specifically because I like it, like, because there's something about when that's happening where it's not enjoyable, but it feels correct. There's something about it where it's like, oh, that's a good thing. But it's like lifting weights, you know, those last couple reps are really hard, but you know, that's where the money is. It's a similar kind of feeling here, just cognitively.
And so anyway, so there's that kind of annoying thing of trying to find the initial spot and then the different thing where it's not quite as localized, but you've got this contraction going on that you're moving through and against, it's kind of waking up your brain of it and giving you some movement that maybe you haven't had for quite a while for all those governor reasons. And then you stop everything, current off, that feels good. And then suddenly you're like, hold a crap. I've got more motion than I thought I had before, or motion that I had before that was painful is, is either reduced or limited.
I mean, that was my experience. Do you want to add any color to that? Yeah, I think that's a great way to describe it. In terms of finding the spot, I think one other little bit of color I would add would be to say that it's, it's somewhat similar to the feeling of if you're having body worked on getting, you know, massage or something like that where if someone's working around and they find a trigger point, it's like, so good.
Exactly. Yeah, it's clearly uncomfortable. It's also productively uncomfortable is one of my favorite ways to say it. Like you know there's something there that needs to be addressed.
And even though it's unpleasant, you know that it's worthwhile and you kind of want more, you want to go through it because you know this stuff. Yeah, that hurts stuff. Exactly. Exactly.
So here's the, so I want to ask a number of questions. I don't even know where to begin. We start with this one. What are the kinds of things that you are typically treating?
Or what are the kinds of things that were, you know, that's one way of asking the other is, what are the kinds of effects you're currently typically seeing? So the effects are certainly related to reductions in pain, improvements in strength, range of motion, in terms of the context and the types of conditions or situations in which people would seek out this sort of treatment would be immediately after injury, like we talked about that acute recent ankle sprain or injury like that. Also chronic pain, post-surgical, and then there's a whole category of being able to work with people who have experienced stroke or spinal cord injury or have MS and where we're talking about not curing MS for example, but talking about helping them restore function through that process of neuromuscular education to improve quality of life. And there are some people who over time have been able to get off of walkers or get out of wheelchairs and it takes a while, but really tap into the power of neuroplasticity.
To improve function. So there's a, you know, there's a, there's a, of course, that's a very broad range. I just share this whole range of all these different populations. And you might think like, how can you possibly be talking about, you know, elite athletes and MS patients in the same sentence?
And the answer is that there's this common thread throughout all of those populations and specifically about the issues that they're dealing with. And that common thread is the nervous system. Are there any contraindications, anything for anything where it's like you would say, somebody walked in the door or hobbled in the door or rolled in the door, you'd ask them something and go, yeah, you're gonna have to go next door and see somebody else. If someone has a pacemaker or is currently pregnant, stuff like that, you know, those those things you suggesting that if somebody's pregnant and they got this treatment, it would not give their babies superpowers.
Well, we don't know what's done the research yet to know. So until we find out, until we find out we don't do it. Yeah, I'm going to hold out that this is how you create the next spider man, some sort of. So that's why I believe that I'm sticking to it.
Instead of shooting spider webs, he should electricity out of his way. Oh, nice. Electron man. There was some, there is some superhero that's got, you know, electrical, something or other vacuum or who is clear new fit is not recommending that.
Well, I don't work for you. So I can say whatever the hell I want. So, so, so, so the next question, I mean, you've been doing this for how long? Well, you know, in versions of this for about 18 years at this point.
Now, here's of course the wacky question. How many people have learned how to use your device and do this technique? If you will, use this modality. That's a better way I want to say it.
Or let me, sorry, I'm actually asking a different question. How come everyone doesn't know this and have this experience? Well, when I mentioned I've been doing this for 17 or 18 years, the first eight to 10 of that was using older versions of technology. I also went back for additional graduate school and neuroscience and kind of piecing together both the methodology and then continuing to see ways to improve upon the technology.
And for a while, I was just kind of waiting for someone else to do it and finally, finally, you know, decided, okay, I'm going to do it. And so, you know, then it was a couple of years of work. Well, did you do what Lane and I did? I referred to as uttering the five dangerous entrepreneurial words.
How hard did this be? Basically, basically. And the answer is it was a lot harder than I thought. And I'm glad I didn't know going into it.
I don't know if I look dude, when we had some guys about seven months and who had all been in footwear for 35 years say that, you know, hey, we would do this with you because we believe in you and what you're doing. But we've been in footwear so long that we're not super enough to start a shoe company. And Lane and I both said, yeah, we know we're hyper optimistic in naive, but that's the only way anything ever gets started. So, you know, that's just that's just not uncommon.
And back up to your point of view, I was waiting for someone else to do it. There's nothing, nothing. I like more than when I have an idea for a product or a business and someone else does it before I can because then I can just buy it and I don't have to go through all those entrepreneurial problems and hassles and craziness. So, so good on you that you got the point of going, I better do it myself.
I can, I can relate to that. So, so then, you know, and we ended up launching the device finally about six years ago and, you know, it's sort of, it's sort of this interesting point in terms of, you know, how many people are using it? Well, you know, there's several thousand people certified in it among physical therapists, chiropractors, athletic trainers, other professionals. And then there's also, you know, a lot of people listen to this, likely never heard of us before.
Right. So, it's this interesting place where I like it to us trying to climb up Mount Everest and we've made it up a little bit of the way so we can look back and appreciate the view and appreciate how far we've come. But it's also very humbling to look up and say, Oh, shit, we got a long way left to go. Right.
Because I think this can help so many more people. I know this can help so many more people. And, you know, it's part of my job. But I feel as a real responsibility to help get the word out.
It's why I'm grateful to be on here talking to you, you know, to share this message with people. But I think it's in this, this interesting state where, you know, there's somewhere between three and four thousand people who have been certified in the use of the newbie so far. And, you know, for them, many of them tell us that it's changed the way they practice, even physical therapists who are in practice 20 or 30 years and are extremely skilled and knowledgeable. They tell us that this is either the missing link or this gives them a new direction, this helps them train their staff or this helps them get more enthusiasm and faster results with their patients and, you know, exchanges the way they practice for the better.
So people who I think can and will have that experience, but they're less of that kind of early adopter mindset and they want to wait for the research. They need to wait until it's closer to becoming the gold standard before they'll even look at it. And there's this, this, you know, filtering effect of the amount of time that takes for techniques or technology to go from, you know, basic research into random control trials into daily practice. And so it takes time to filter through there.
And we have just published, you know, our first three or four legitimate scientific articles showing the validity of the newbie and the benefits and different use cases. And we've got another one that we just completed that's going to be published in the next several months from the time we're recording this, which I think is going to be a real game changer showing nerve regeneration in neuropathy patients. But in terms of the arc of this conversation here, I think that, you know, in order to get this in the hands of more people, part of it is our responsibility to meet people where they are and conduct those studies, both so that we can demonstrate, you know, the efficacy of the newbie. And then so we can learn how can it be better?
Where does it work? Great. Where it might not work as well. You know, there's a lot of stuff that we don't know everything yet, but we're learning right along, right alongside people, but also being able to validate and meet people where they are when they want to see that research, you know, we want to give it to them.
And we have a full-time PhD neuroscientist running our research program. You have a weird question. This kind of related to this. I mean, first of all, in the physical therapy world, it always cracks me up when there's some product that's advertised as an infomercial that is fundamentally looked at as a joke.
I will mention to my favorite being the Shake Weight, which Saturday night live did the best spoof commercial ever about how absurd this thing is. And now you go into physical therapy offices and they're everywhere. And before that was the body blade. It's like they're everywhere.
You know, like five years after it's a joke infomercial product, suddenly every physical therapist is using it. So the latest, you know, one of the latest trends in physics or two latest trends of physical therapy that have really caught on everywhere. One is dry needling. The other is coming.
And for people who don't know dry needling, it's I'm going to be rude for just for the fun, I call it dumb acupuncture, which is insulting to both acupuncture and dry needling, which was my intention for the fun. But that's, but the gist of it is sticking needles in tight spots to get the muscles to contract basically more than the other ones. Good until they've the chemical thing that happens, stops happening and things can relax different than acupuncture, which is based on whole other theory. Don't get into it.
Let's not get into whether it's valid or not. The other one coming is where the way it was done traditionally in traditional Chinese medicine, which is just another way of saying old Chinese people, again, just trying to be rude for the fun of it, is they would take some thing that would heat up air within a, just imagine a thick light bulb, just the glass part of the light bulb, they'd heat up the air in that light bulb, and then they would light bulb like shaped piece of glass and stick that on your body and create some suction, which of course pulls blood into that area because you're basically breaking the capillaries and, and you know, that can do some things as well. Anyway, those two things become really popular lately. And I'm not saying they're not efficacious.
I'm not saying they're at work. But what I'm pointing out is somehow they became the thing that every physical therapy clinic that you'll ever find is doing one or both of those. How the hell did that happen? And I asked that obviously as a, you know, how can you do the extent that that's replicable?
How can you try to recreate that pattern, that thing that made that happen? That's a great question. I think it's a, I think they actually followed similar trajectories that, that most or all products that gain widespread adoption do follow. And sometimes there's different, different stages of that, that crossing the cat is on that product adoption curve, different stages.
And sometimes you can accelerate or sometimes it takes longer, different things like that. But I think there's that early adopter stage where there's people who just are willing to try it because the concept really lands with them, it kind of resonates with them or they feel it for themselves or they see someone experience it. And that experience is enough for them to say, like, OK, yeah, I'm willing to give this a shot. And then there's the, then there's the early majority, then the late majority, those people need to really see it become the gold standard.
And so for for Dr. Needling, you know, there's the kind of early adopter mindset. And then there's, you know, how do you get, how do you cross the chasm to get those other people involved? It's like, blend of a couple of things.
Some of it is, you know, those next stage, the next group of people needs to hear it, hear it from someone that they trust who's in that early adopter stage, or they need to see the research or they need to hear it enough times where it starts to build this critical mass in their mind. And there's different things that you can do to accelerate that. I mean, if there's particularly influential and intelligent people talking about it, that can accelerate the rate at which that next phase of people can hear about it or the amount of them that are open to it based on based on what they're hearing. So, you know, where we've seen progress, you know, it is some of that, some of it is the research that we've done.
Some of it is the very intelligent and influential people who are using our product and talking about other people. So we're seeing glimpses of that. And then of course, the question is, as a business, how can we, how can we accelerate that? And, you know, that's the question of course we're trying to answer right now because we believe we have something that can help so many more people and that's our responsibility.
This is called a, this is a horrible bad idea. Is there anything you could do that would be creating a device that's sort of dumb down that could be more of a personally-using, I mean, you know, infomercial friendly, if you will. That's possible. We're actually, we're looking at, you know, of course, we're always trying to improve our product.
Never want to be caught flat-footed or just, you know, we know that, you know, especially with this day and age, with technology, advancing things like that. So, so right now we're looking at ways to miniaturize some of the components so that we can take our relatively large device and potentially, you know, do just like you're describing, make, you know, more personal use versions and stuff like that. So, you know, as the time we're sitting here, it's certainly further down the road, but we did have a breakthrough in terms of being able to miniaturize some of the key components that open up some of that there. So, yeah, I think something like that could be a big part of the future of our business and ways to make it make it more accessible and still even work with the, you know, physical therapy clinics and their practices that we've collaborated with so well because they could then provide it to their own patients and we can work together to get it out there too.
So, I think there's, I think that's a good idea and something that is definitely, you know, we're looking at as part of kind of part of our future plan and where we might go as a company. Are there any, are there any issues about insurance covering this treatment? The treatments are, so there's a few different things for any practitioners listening. They'll know, they'll, you know, likely you have experience what I alluded to earlier where, you know, reimbursements for traditional electrical stimulation are either gone away or have been so limited or not even worth pursuing.
But these treatments, because they're active, there's a real methodology to it. It's not just put the pads on and leaves on there. So, these are often built when clinicians choose to build insurance when it's appropriate to do so they build them using codes like neuromuscular education, therapeutic activities, sometimes manual therapy. We can hook up the electrodes to a glove and do some manual therapy there.
So, billing where it's appropriate. And then some practices are able, you know, some practices are hybrid and they're out of network. And so they're charging cash to their patients. And for them, they really like having something that creates that sense of value and enthusiasm.
So, people are willing to invest. They're willing to pay out of pocket. It's a real different thing. Yeah.
It's like, if insurance is picking up the tab, it's a different thing than you putting your money down and committing to it. Yeah. It's like a friend of mine is one of the guys who, I don't know, he didn't invent pro-therapy, but he's what, he's like the expert and taught almost everybody how to do pro-therapy, which for people who don't know, you, if you know platelet-rich plasma therapy, PRP, PRP is the insurance coverable sometimes version of pro-low where they're injecting, in case of PRP, injecting platelets that they've spun out of your blood into ligaments and tendons typically to initiate a healing response. The platelet part is possibly a little hand-waving, but the thing that's doing heavy lifting is this sort of selective injury.
And I asked my friend, Tom, so, you know, what about the research on pro-therapy? And he says, I don't need research. I said, why is that? He goes, well, because what I do is extremely painful and extremely expensive.
And people come back over and over and tell their friends about it. He says, that's all the research I need. So I was like, I'm quite well taken. The, there was one of the, oh, so how often are people just anxious about the whole idea of electricity at all?
I mean, how much are you affected? But just what people have in their mind upon intent or appropriate metaphor intended with electro-stem or electro-shock therapy? Because that's what most people are familiar with when it comes to electricity in your body. So that definitely is a little sense of reservation for some people when they come in, but in our experience, it's very easy to overcome that just by putting the pads on someone turning it up slowly, letting them ease into it and feeling like, okay, this is actually kind of pleasant, especially at lower power levels.
And explaining to them this is a medical device. When our clinic, we can say we've literally treated thousands of people with this and have an excellent safety record and all those different things that we can say, but letting people kind of ease into it so that they can let their guard down. Because even if they understand intellectually, they won't hurt them, they're still. We talk about these parts of brain outside of conscious control that are limiting our movement, the pain, those parts of the brain can still be in alarm mode and high alert thinking, oh, my gosh, this is threatening.
So helping them, letting them feel it so that those parts of the brain even can start to really understand that this isn't going to hurt them. And sometimes the first session is just about acclimating to the sensation and you might not do as much work or maybe there's a little more gentle and conservative in that first session and wait until it's a little bit more meaningful work or increase the power a little bit more in the second session until someone's kind of acclimated to the sensations. It is funny how your brain will have ideas about some phenomenon and then protect you from this imagined phenomenon. So there's a trail right outside our backyard and there's a horse farm and they have an electric fence.
Now I've touched an electric fence. I can't, painful is not the right word and I don't want to say shocking because that's too on the nose. But it is like one of these like it's not what you expected to be and it really is this primal kind of holy crap. The joke is they have an electric fence and I come nowhere near it.
Even though I know it isn't turned on. I'm like hyper aware and that but I know that it's not doing anything which is what tracks me up. So is there anything we missed about just giving people a good introduction to what we're talking about and what you're doing? Well, that is one thing just to call it there that does speak to even though you know intellectually it's not turned on.
You have that fear response from having or that speaks to how difficult it can be to talk with rationally, you know, those subconscious parts of ourselves. And so there's a whole lesson in there regarding psychology and helping people with trauma and stuff like that. But also why work like that? Why body based work like we're talking about here can be so useful because you can without language and rational thinking communicate more directly with some of these subconscious areas of brain and nervous system control.
So I just I think that's a really powerful example. I like that. I can tell myself that I can tell myself that I'm not sure if I turn on but I still I'm like kind of sweating but I don't really want to touch it. No, it's funny.
I mean like you could show me that the battery is not connected and part of my brain is still going to go. I don't know. It's right. And I think of myself as a rational person but there are some of these things where and I look if I saw the batteries disconnected and people and someone else grabbed it I'd be the first one to do it but I'm the second one to do it but I'm the first one it's like maybe there's something that's supposed to discharge me.
I mean it's so fascinating. And of course we're dealing with a similar thing which is just when people have any belief getting people to unbelieve something whether it's for immediate just for a moment an immediate treatment or something more long term this is the challenge actually it's got an email from Dan Lieberman, Dr. Lieberman from Harvard who helped create the whole barefoot movement thing and he has a couple new papers and he said you know I'm just trying to bust a bunch of myths and I sent him a video back saying yeah that's not the way it's going to work because if people have a belief you can't just tell them they're wrong and bust them in they're going to pick it apart and find some reason to hold on to what they still believe because that's what we do the us humans. So it's so this is what's fascinating to be one of things that's fascinating to be about what you're doing from a practical standpoint is just again what does it take to wake people up or introduce people or give people the experience of something unusual slash new that's demonstrably valuable because that's what we're both fundamentally doing and it's an intellectually interesting process but for those of us running the businesses you know sometimes you want to be your head against the wall and as my wife always says this would be so interesting if it wasn't about us if we were just reading it in a book it would be really interesting but the fact that we're having to deal with it you know that's a whole different game.
That's right the whole emotional of course you being a founder and we're on that same emotional roller coaster ride if something bad happens and then we have those same subconscious traps that are brain extrapolated. Oh my gosh does this mean that we're in trouble and the business is failing? Does this mean that? No no no that's why I have my wife so I don't do that.
I'm always seeing what you know could be happening that's all good. She's always seeing what's happening now and extrapolating to how it could be wrong which is perfect we're a great combo that way. I mean she says you have the fun job of thinking all the cool shit that could happen and I have the difficult job of protecting ourselves from what could also happen and also telling you we don't have the money to do what you want so there is that but it is yeah it's yeah I don't do that kind of wacky extrapolation for better or worse it means that Lena does a lot of planning and she doesn't tell me about it because I'm just oblivious I just show up and she tells me what to do. We take vacation she's done all the planning I just go for the ride.
It's a perfect division of responsibility there. I would agree with that. I mean again she does her job is way less fun than mine but it's really important to have both of those things in play otherwise it's a real mess because people do the opposite too they see things going well and they extrapolate and they go it's just going to keep getting better it's like whoa put the brakes on that one this is not what you think it is so just just because Kim Kardashian promoted her thing that doesn't mean you're going to have a business in two years and so that's a whole lot of story. Anyway we don't need to talk about unfvernial angst.
Most importantly if people want to find out about new fit and have someone treat them with a newbie how will they find out more about you and find someone where they can experience what we've been talking about for the last half or minutes. Two best places to do that would be our website which is www.new.fit that's n-e-u like neurological n-e-u.fit and then also on social media where most active on Instagram our handle is at newfit r-f-p for rehab fitness and performance and we're most active on there and interact with direct messages and stuff like that but on our website there's a link if you click the four patients there's a link to find a provider and it'll take you to a map or a computer or a map on your phone it's be a little widget where you can search for people in your state or region and there's many hundreds of locations listed on there and certainly more by the week and there's also if there isn't anyone near you please reach out to our team we can talk about ways to work remotely with us or different options like that. That's very interesting. There was some thought I had about that that fell out of my head just the idea of what you're doing is to go ahead and look at your Instagram so that's going to be fun to take a look and imagine you're showing people getting treated and showing them before and after that etc as well as information about the device and the technology behind it so am I incorrect about that?
Trying to make it a little bit fun along the way too. That's right. That's the part where we're creating the person who can shoot lightning bolts out of their hands. I think frankly that's going to be the thing that's going to sell this product.
If once you've got one baby who comes out shooting lightning bolts it's all over. You've got to make it. That's what I'm aiming for. We're going to talk to our FDA consultants about trying to set up a trial on that one.
Once again not my concern. First of all for everyone listening and we're watching I'm frankly hoping you're not currently injured but if you are definitely check out what Garrett's doing with newfit and if you want to keep this in the back of your head for when and if something does happen and if you're not going to remember newfit and EU.FIT just remember hey it was on the podcast and you can come over to www.jointhemovementmovementmovementmovement.com geez man I cannot think today and you'll find out this episode. That's all you need is a reminder just go check out our website and when you're there again find the previous episodes find the ways you can find us on social media find a place that you can leave a review and a thumbs up and a like and a hit the bell icon on YouTube to get notified of when we have new episodes and if you want to reach out and drop an email with requests or questions or suggestions for people have on the show and as if you've listened to this before you know I'm dying to have a conversation with someone who thinks I have a case of cranial rectory orientation syndrome and if you're that person that's cool I want to hear about it. I'm open to the conversation and if someone ever proves me wrong I'm happy to adjust and find either something different or something new I'm not I'm more attached to the truth than I am to my opinions about things which is I've been told by some of my friends in anoint rate so because anyway that's a whole lot of story.
Anyway bottom line you can drop me an email just send me an email at move mov at jointhemovementmovementmovement.com most importantly oh actually second most important if you want the most comfortable pair of shoes to let your feet do it's natural and let your body do it is job is so when your feet do their job your body can do it's job that was almost English in my head until it came out of my face then go to zero shoes.com and find we have casual and performance shoes boots and sandals for everything you can think of that you might want to do but the most important part go out have fun and live light feet first.