← The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
566. How to Rebuild Muscle and Relieve Pain Without Hours in the Gym
01:02:47
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- [00:01]
A
As I look at the wearables we all have and come to love, one of the key things about it is it's easy to implement into your life and it facilitates you achieving some goal that you have. And that's what the role of tech has. It shouldn't replace everything. It's supposed to uplift and facilitate. And that's how we're trying to build Sugi.
- [00:19]
B
Welcome to the thyroid fixer podcast, where we dive deep into the world of thyroid and hormones, especially for you ladies navigating perimenopause and menopause, and really for anyone struggling with hypothyroidism. I'm your host, Dr. Amy, thyroid and hormone specialist and CEO of a global telemedicine practice where we prescribe the right thyroid treatment and bioidentical hormones to all safety states and most of Canada, helping you become that badass human that you're meant to be. So if you're battling weight gain and hair loss, you can't lose weight no matter what you do. Your energy levels are plummeting and your libido left town. Then you're in the right place and you have found yourself your tribe. Remember, I want you to embrace every inch of that badass woman that you truly are. So if you're ready to dive in and fix things, let's get started. You have questions about your thyroid, about your labs, what they mean. What about your hormones? What about insulin? Why are you gaining weight? Why are you so tired? Why are you losing your hair? Why won't my doctor listen to me? Why won't my doctor test these things? All of these questions that you have running around in your brain and you know that if you just had the answers that that could push you over the edge into optimal health, that you could be that badass human that you are meant to be. Well, I got you covered there because I am going live every single week in the just fix your thyroid Facebook group. That is my Facebook group. A beautiful community just filled with amazing people where I am in there, my nurse practitioners are in there, My health coaches are in there. There are patients in there that have been with me for so long, they're experts in their own right, and they answered just the way that I would. So we have you completely covered in this group. So not only can you post your question every single day, every single hour, if you want, you can mark your calendars for our weekly live Q and A sessions. We where you get to ask your question to me and I'm going to answer it live on Air. And not only that, we are doing product giveaways. We're doing working with our team giveaways. You're going to want to be in there and actually be live on that call. If you're at work going in the closet, just shut the door. Take minutes for yourself, take a half an hour for yourself. Take an hour for yourself so that you can get the information that you need to, to bring yourself into optimization land, where you're not looking sideways at a brownie and gaining weight at the same time, where you can feel amazing every single day. Because that's my goal for you. You know that I love, love, love to answer your questions and this is the place where you can get them answered live. I completely and totally hear you and I see you and I understand you and I know exactly where you're at. You're gaining weight. You can't lose. You have all the symptoms that no one's listening to. The fatigue, the hair loss, the brain fog. You can't remember why you walked into a room. You don't want to get dressed and go out because you know if you have that glass of wine with your friend, if you have that dessert with your husband or even order an appetizer, you're going to be five pounds heavier the next day and your clothes are already tight. Every single doctor is telling you that you're normal and everything is fine. You've been to multiple conventional medicine doctors trying to use your insurance, hoping to God that somebody has an answer. Then you've dropped thousands of dollars on functional medicine or integrative medicine because you keep hearing how functional medicine gets to the root cause of the problem. But not every functional medicine practitioner knows the thyroid and knows the hormones and, and can treat you as a nuanced, personalized individual, a unique person. That is exactly what my team and I do. We specialize in thyroid problems. We specialize in hormones. You can't do one without the other. You cannot just see someone for your thyroid and have them ignore your hormones or have them half ass your hormones. They better be a hormone and thyroid expert if you are going to spend your time, your energy and your money. If you are going to invest in functional medicine, they need to be a thyroid and hormone expert and treat you as an individual. They can't have a cap on how much T3 that they're going to give you. They have to personalize your treatment plan to get you feeling your best, no matter what that looks like, so that every system in your body functions at the very top, at the very best. And that is exactly what we do. I made it my mission because I went through this. I was dismissed, I was gaslit, I was misdiagnosed, and I dropped thousands of dollars before I found an answer. That is why I made it my mission to be able to treat people in all 50 states so we can prescribe via telehealth, thyroid and hormones and peptides. Yeah, the GLPs as well, to all 50 states, most of Canada and now Puerto Rico. That is my mission, to be able to help you wherever you are, because I want you living your best life. I want you to join me in optimization land, where you can go out and love life and go out with your friends and go out with your partner and not gain weight looking sideways at a brownie. Yes, we do have financing options available. I'm talking like 0% or 12 months, the whole thing, based on your credit score. We got you. And our programs are affordable. They're completely and totally affordable. And they will get you from point A to point B. They will bring you into optimization land. So please don't waste another moment struggling, please. I want you living here with me, a great, happy life in optimization land. So go to my website@dramy.com, click the Become a patient button so we can have a chat. Let's talk it out. Let's hear what you've done, what you haven't done, what's worked, what hasn't worked, and let's get you on the right path to feeling your absolute best. If you can imagine the best life ever, that is absolutely possible for you. I'm not BSing you. I am not BSing you. I was in your shoes. Many of my patients have been in your shoes. We will get you there. And that is my promise to you. Welcome to the Thyroid Fixer Podcast. We're recording this live from London at Health Optimization Summit and what we're talking about today and introduce my guests in a moment. But what I want to talk about today is muscle. We talk all the time of the importance of muscle and how it is your organ of longevity. As we age, and especially ladies, we lose muscle every single day. And we need to do things to keep that beautiful, sexy organ of longevity on us. Guys, after you crest the age of 40, you know your muscles declining as well because you're losing testosterone. And all of us sexes, both sexes are more prone to injury as we get older. That's just the reality. But there are so many things that we can do, so many different tricks and biohacks that we can be doing right now to preserve that beautiful, sexy, lean muscle. So I brought with me today Alex Baker Burks. He is a muscle tech expert. You're going to learn what that actually means as we discuss today. But Alex, welcome to the Thyroid Tricks or podcast. It's beautiful seeing you here in person in London. And I am so excited about this because we're going to go deep on a bunch of different levels. Our backgrounds are similar in the athletic department, and obviously we both care about people staying healthy, not injured out of pain, able to work out and maintain their sexy, lean muscle.
- [08:47]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
- [08:50]
B
So I introduced you as a muscle tech expert.
- [08:53]
A
Yeah.
- [08:54]
B
But what does that actually mean? I want to hear your story about how you. You got into really learning about the body, keeping muscle, preserving muscle, getting side of pain, injuries, all of that.
- [09:07]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So sort of starts way back, early teens. I used to compete at boxing. I boxed for five years and was nationally recognized. And from a young age, I think understood the importance of what we call muscle health, which combines one's experience with pain, their bone density, tendon strength, muscle strength, as well as their ability to coordinate all of that via their neuromuscular system. Because from an athletic point of view, or performance point of view, athletes have a job to turn up and perform. And so they spend all of this time training and so on and so forth, working. Where I think that extends though way beyond the athletic world. And what people at a subconscious level might understand but don't consciously practice it, is their experience with muscle health will largely dictate their quality of life as they age. Because if you're in pain or you have inadequate bone density, tendon strength, or muscle strength, your body can't mobilize, you can't move. And you alluded to it just a moment ago, as you age, you start fighting that over time, you start breaking muscle down as you age and that gets more rapid. And I think in some people it even starts as early as 30. Right. Which a lot of people don't understand. Of course it gets faster as they age, but really that's when the tide starts to turn. And So I, at 18, stopped competing, went to university and studied robotic engineering. So it's kind of my background in terms of tech. And unfortunately, two years into my degree playing sport, recreation, I completely snapped my knee. So tibia, ecl, meniscus, all at once, pretty miserable. Yeah, I had two operations to fix it and then I went into rehabilitation and I had some. We're sitting here in London, we have National Health. And so I was fortunate that I had fantastic surgery. It was free, it was amazing. But what I was really disenfranchised with was the post operative approach and care, which was do nothing for 16 to 18 weeks. And with a background in sport, you know, we often watch these athletes on the TV return from pretty catastrophic injuries in record time. And quite often people are wondering what they're using, what they're doing. So my insight to this, now that we service close to 40% of all American sports teams, as well as some European and UK teams, is that actually what these training rooms, these athletic staff, these healthcare professionals who work in elite sportman, these athletes understand, is that when they're injured, even postoperatively, one of the primary things they have to do is maintain their muscular health. So prevent the degradation of muscle strength, tendon strength, bone density and even prolonged periods of time, you can start losing your ability to coordinate your musculature as well. And so what they'll do and what I ended up doing only days after my operation was loading my body in a way that didn't compromise my injury, but maintained as much of the muscular health as possible and quickly worked back towards it. And what this resulted in was taking my brace off after six and a half weeks instead of a full 16 to 18 weeks. It meant I was running after six months of rehab instead of the original one and a half years. And the only difference was the mentality and the approach. And I think coming out of that experience, having my background in sport and then kind of casting my mind forward to like, well, why do we just become more mobile as we age? To some extent, you know, it can become inevitable as you really cross into the very older years of life. But it really kind of dawned on me that people just aren't consciously paying attention to their muscle health, particularly as they age. There's an aversion, and this is changing, thankfully to strength training, because people always think about strength training, they think about Arnold Schwarzenegger and becoming huge and ripped, which is not what it is.
- [12:27]
B
Right.
- [12:27]
A
And I think it's also a rhetoric change where, you know, I grew up and was introduced to strength training probably at 14. This was competing. And I remember my mom said to me one point, she's like, oh, that could stunt your growth. I think I'm like, no, like this is the irony of the whole thing. And I don't blame anybody for that. Like it was, you know, the time and whatever. But I'm glad to see that tide changing because if people paid more attention to their muscular health, they'd have a better quality of life.
- [12:51]
B
I totally agree. So similar to you started very young, 13, 14, lifting in the gym, doing. I, yes, I did step aerobics, but I was lifting as well and then moved into bodybuilding and fitness and figure powerlifting. So I feel like you and I had an advantage. We learned at a very young age the importance of building that muscle. And even if you don't know the science at that age, you know that, hey, this muscle is improving my body composition. It's keeping the fat off. I feel better, I feel more confident. Oh, I'm stronger, I'm not in pain. And then as we age now, you're still young, but I can speak for myself. I look at other women or other men in their 40s and then 50s and beyond and just like you said, they're not moving. Yeah. They're sidelined because of injury. And with that loss of muscle from not moving, from not lifting, from not even understanding the importance of this thing we have on our body called muscle. You see this decline.
- [13:53]
A
Yeah.
- [13:54]
B
And you see various disease states. Come on. And I know the listeners probably right now are going, well, wait a minute. How do you connect muscle with diabetes? How do you connect muscle with cardiac disease? Well, you absolutely can.
- [14:08]
A
Yeah.
- [14:09]
B
Because that loss of muscle from injury or from just not activating your muscle is going to dysregulate glucose, dysregulate insulin. Here comes type 2 diabetes.
- [14:19]
A
Yeah.
- [14:20]
B
You know, your heart health is imperative on movement. And we're not just talking cardio.
- [14:25]
A
Yeah.
- [14:25]
B
Or jumping on your peloton. You actually have to pick up weights and do that resistance training. And then like you said, that that extends into bone density and bone health and tendons and ligaments. So it really is all connected. No pun intended. It really is all connected. So I want to dive into. Let's start young and then let's move through the ages because this really is an episode for, for everyone. Y let's go back to my 20s and 30s when I was competing, I had a hard time putting on muscle. I actually have more muscle now than I did when I was competing. Well, I believe because I know how to activate it properly and how to avoid injury.
- [15:06]
A
Yep.
- [15:06]
B
So let's start back. You have this 20, 30 year old athlete.
- [15:10]
A
Yep.
- [15:11]
B
Male or female, doesn't matter. And they want to be in shape. But maybe they have a sports injury. Maybe they blew their knee. I mean, my husband blew both of his knees. Right. So what can we do for them tech wise to improve their muscle tone and to literally prevent injury as they're training or as they are, you know, going through the ranks as an athlete like you did.
- [15:36]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think I can answer that directly, but first preface it with maybe a mental framework that will help people understand, like from a dumb engineer's point of view, I like to break things down often by first principles, just understanding the root cause. And one of the things, I think the way that I view our bodies is that they're essentially big meat sacks that have bones, tendons, ligaments, muscles that prop it up. And your ability to coordinate all these things dictates your ability to be mobile. So when I say muscle health, and then when I extend that or a derivative of that one variable of that to muscle strength, it's all relative. And that's why I don't want people to picture. I mean, I love Arnold Schwarzenegger, he's an incredible person, but I don't want people for that to be their mental framework or their point of reference for muscle strength because it's all relative. So coming to that athlete that we're speaking about and sorry. Actually, of course, as you, as you, you can then imagine with that framework in mind. Okay, well, when you're born and you come up as a child and you're developing, obviously everything's growing and so you're working the tides with you. But when you inflect at that point of 30 to 40 years old and it starts, the aging process starts taking over and it starts breaking it down, you can suddenly see the importance of being able to have good bone density, strong 10 strong muscles, good ligaments and good coordination because you're like, oh, suddenly your mobility will just start significantly decreasing. And I'd encourage people to even cast their mind forward to an older person that they know who's tripped, broke their knee, broke their hip and suddenly become bedbound and they have a whole bunch of other health complications that follow in the years after largely because they're hereditary and mobile. And so coming into the athlete example, an athlete's experience of muscle health is very important because they've got to show up and compete on a sports field court in front of an audience, whatever it might be. And so I think when a lot of people cast their mind there, though of course athletes need it because it's for their job. It's like, yeah, but it's Also for the 44 year old male, female who's a busy professional, who plays pickleball, tennis, golf, goes for A run goes for a walk. Your muscle health relative to your activities of daily living in your lifestyle is just as important as an only athlete. And that extends to the eight year old grandparent who just wants to walk their dog and play with their grandkids.
- [17:40]
B
Right.
- [17:40]
A
You don't have adequate muscle health and your ability to coordinate all of it or you're in pain, you can't get up and down off the floor by yourself. If you stumble and you don't have any type 2 or if you have poorly trained fast twitch muscle fibers, you won't catch yourself and you will fall and you will break. And so it really comes. Your muscle health is really all about durability and your ability to stay mobile. And of course you can then obviously see how that extends your kind of health span. I truly believe muscle health is like the forgotten vital health indicator that's right up there with sleep and nutrition, if not just below, because it's foundational. If you want to be active and mobile and even just live independently.
- [18:17]
B
Well, and this is the message that I want to get across too, because you nailed it. We're in a space right now, you and I, in this health world where I think there's more awareness of sleep, of, of seed oils. And it's almost, I want to say people get like this tunnel vision where they go, okay, what I'm going to do for my health is avoid all the seed oils in the world. Right. And then we're over here going like, okay, that's good, but there's so many other things that you need to do. Or okay, I'm just going to focus on healing my gut and take all the probiotics I possibly can and they're missing the really vital pieces. And just like you said, I love how you said that, that I agree with you. I would put muscle at the top. Yeah, I would put at the top. Because as we're going to uncover today for the listeners, it ties into hormones, it ties into thyroid, it ties into perimenopause and menopause and andropause for the guys. So it's not just about aesthetics.
- [19:13]
A
Yeah.
- [19:14]
B
It's not just about performance. It's about so much more that I just want to like pull the layers apart.
- [19:22]
A
And I have a term, muscle health. Because health is all encompassing. Right people, where again, muscle strength and I love muscle strength, but too many people associate this with being a jack todonist.
- [19:32]
B
Yes.
- [19:32]
A
And that's not what it's about. Muscle health is purely about enabling you to go and live Whatever activities of the living you have, whether you're an athlete, a middle aged person or a grandparent, doesn't matter. It's all relevant to you. And I think as you go down that age spectrum and it varies dramatically between genders. You know, I was talking to you, I think, earlier about Dr. Vonda Wright, who I think a lot of people will know is a surgeon and certainly a woman. Health and longevity expertise. Vonda, a couple years ago was telling me about the impact of peri and postmenopause on muscle health. And I remember reading a little bit about this afterwards. It's something I was never really attuned to before. I'd obviously heard of the terms and I remember just sitting there like, thank God I'm not a woman. Because this is tough, right? This is really tough. Right. Like the osteoporosis that comes on, therefore the joint pain, the depletion of estrogen, make it very, very difficult to maintain and build muscle. And then she educates me on the whole hormonal situation going on that makes it very, very difficult to just live the activities of daily living that were going on before. And I'm like, with all this going into the mix, I'm like, man, you guys have it tough.
- [20:29]
B
Yeah, we do. Thanks for acknowledging that at least.
- [20:32]
A
Yeah, absolutely.
- [20:33]
B
Yeah. But no, I mean, guys also lose testosterone and I mean, look, all we have to do, I mean, you and I talked about obesity and food and everything before we went on air. And really you can go to any country. We could walk outside and look at the streets of London or we can fly back to the US and go to Iowa and you're gonna see obese people everywhere. You're gonna see men with man boobs and huge beer bellies and they're almost starting to look like women. Like, not because of choice, but because they're losing their muscle and their body shape is changing and they're becoming almost more estrogenic and, and gaining fat in their hips and thighs. So it's, it's affecting men too.
- [21:16]
A
Yeah.
- [21:16]
B
As we age now, do you think it's more because of the lack of education that maybe males and females are saying, I don't want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'm not going to lift heavy, I'm not going to activate my muscles because I don't want to bulk up and they just avoid the gym, they jump on their peloton, like I said in the beginning. And that's all they do is cardio or what's. Or is it pain or is it injury? What's the sticking point?
- [21:42]
A
I think it can be multifaceted. I think we're certainly into an era where we're probably more hereditary than we've ever been before. You know, we have all the information at our fingertips. In many cases, you don't even have to leave home to work anymore. You know, so it's like it's easier than ever to be less active. So I think there's always cultural shifts going on. I think there's always an access to healthcare issue, depending on wealth being one of the big barriers to entry. But I think pain is always a big issue, right? One in two American adults over 30 will experience chronic pain for 30 days or more in a given year. That's the biggest cause of disability worldwide, biggest cause of missed work days, productivity days lost every year. And that ironically increases to about 2 and 3 if you're more active and then older. And so some people might look at that data and go, oh, I should be less active then. And that's the wrong thing to take away from that data set. The right thing to take away from that data set is I want to stay being active because my social life is wrapped up in it. It makes me feel good. I feel great. And even though I get this little bit of stiffness and joint pain, I know my mental health is better and I feel better, my skin's better. Well, what I'd encourage those people to do is go and say, oh, maybe I shouldn't be less active. Maybe I should make sure I'm doing sufficient things to maintain my muscular health. Because what's probably happening is your activity level is staying idle, but the aging process might be degradating your bone density, your tennis strength, your muscle strength. And muscle strength is the primary modifiable risk factor associated with MSK pain, musculoskeletal pain, which a lot of people don't realize. So I'd encourage people like, if you're playing a racket sport, if you're playing golf, if you just like to walk, if you like to run, cycle, whatever. As you age, you need to find solutions. And this is where I think tech has a role. I don't think tech should be all encompassing and take over. I think as a role in supporting us achieve what we want to do. And so that's kind of where, you know, at Tsuji, we produce a wearable device for targeted compression training, or scientifically known as blood flow restriction training, that helps rapidly build muscle without stress on the joints. And so it can offer Significant relief from joint pain, joint stress, whilst building your muscle health to enable you to do the things that you love. That's where I'd always encourage people to start from. That pinpoint is like, okay, I'm a semi active middle aged person who has a 9 to 5 job. I have a couple kids and I want to on the weekends hang out and play my kids. I want to play pickleball or padel three times a week. And I don't want to deal with joint pain or stiffness getting in the way of all of that. I'd encourage you to say, okay, well, if you want dealing with joint pain, stiffness, how can you find convenient ways to build your quadriceps, your hamstrings, your glutes to facilitate your activities of daily living?
- [24:16]
B
Right.
- [24:16]
A
Because I think people can get lost in that. It's not about replacing what you want to do with four hours of strength training every week necessarily. For some people, that is the answer, but it's about finding ways to just keep that muscle health up as you age. Because your age is going to take a battering with that.
- [24:30]
B
Well, yeah. And that's something that none of us are going to escape. No, we're all aging. We are all going to lose hormones and nobody is aging like Benjamin Button in reverse. Right. But another thing that you said that I want to touch on is, is. Well, you didn't say it, but one thing you said that triggered my mind. People also are intimidated to go to the gym. So whether it's an hour or four hours, just that walking into the gym will keep someone away. It's that intimidation factor. So I like how we're talking today and we're going to give everyone advice on how they can do things at home effectively and actually build muscle and reduce their pain. But I love giving people answers that fit their lifestyle.
- [25:13]
A
Yep.
- [25:13]
B
To where it's not. Oh, you, you know, you must carve out at least two and a half hours, half hour drive to the gym, an hour long workout, half hour drive home. That's. That's a barrier. That's a barrier for entry for a lot of people. So not only are they overcoming pain.
- [25:28]
A
Yeah.
- [25:29]
B
They're overcoming the mental thought process that they're going to get bulky, especially women. 100 and now there's the schedule and the gym and the intimidation. So really what we're talking about with Suji is you've covered all of those bases and remove the barrier for from people. Healthy hormones begin with healthy cells. So when we talk about thyroid or hormone Health. We usually focus on labs, supplements or, or symptoms. But there's a deeper story happening in your body and that's one that begins in your cells. Every hormone your body produces relies on healthy, energized cells to do its job. And at the heart of each cell are the mitochondria, your energy centers. As we age or when the body is under stress, mitochondrial function naturally declines. That can show up in so many ways. Fatigue, slower recovery, or just simply that feeling off. This is where Timeline Nutrition's breakthrough Mito Pure comes in. Mito Pure is a highly pure form of a nutrient called urolithin A, if you've ever heard of that. It's backed by over 15 years of research, multiple human studies, and has been shown to support mitochondrial health, muscle function and overall cellular performance. By helping your mitochondria work more efficiently, you're supporting the foundation of your energy and your long term wellness. I personally found that this deeper cellular approach to health is a powerful compliment to everything we do for thyroid and hormone balance. It's not about quick fixes, it's about building resilience from the inside out. If you're ready to support your body at the cellular level, Mitopure offers a clean, clinically backed way to start. So you are going to go to timeline.comforward/doctor Amy. So that's T-I-M E L I N E.com forward slash dash R A M I E. And you're going to see the code on there. Doctor Amy 10 D R A M I E 10. But if you want to try the gummies, the Mito pure, it's actually going to give you 20% off your order. So just go ahead and click that code. D R a m I e 10. You'll see it on the page or you can add it at checkout. You're going to save some money while giving new life to your cells.
- [27:56]
A
Yeah, I mean, so I was first introduced to target compression training during my own rehabilitation from my knee surgeries. I was introduced to it by, I think at the time he was the head of rehab at the Scottish rugby national team. And this is something they'd been doing for like 15, 20 years. But the equipment experience is just terrible. And so it never really made it mainstream. And coming from an engineering background, I kind of figured like, oh, like if you can make this portable and take it into the home, it actually touches many of the facets of muscle health. You can use it as a warm up for literally seven minutes doing bodyweight exercise. Take it off and have a significant reduced pain state for two to 24 hours. It depends on the exercise protocol, what you're about to do. In the individual. You can stack sessions, kind of physical therapy, like sessions like three to four a week, 10 to 15 minutes a session. Again, just doing body weight exercise with these compression garments worn at the top of the legs or the arms. For people listening, the mental picture you can build in your head is something similar but different to a blood pressure cuff.
- [28:54]
B
Yeah.
- [28:54]
A
Whilst you're doing very low intensity exercise that could be walking, bodyweight, squats, lunges and you'll significantly improve your muscular strength, strength, tendon strength and even increase your bone density. One of the really interesting things observed with targeted compression training can be significant increases in human growth factors or HGF once you take the cuffs off, which is fantastic for muscular recovery and building muscle. And you can also use it as a post exercise recovery device similar to the big air boots that you use for passive recovery. Sitting on your sofa where it essentially goes through, you're lying on your sofa and it will go through compression cycles similar to a little massage. And it helps increase overall blood flow through the limbs, it helps offset muscular soreness and can help you jump into exercise the kind of next day. And that's what I loved about it was it touched all of the facets of muscle health and you can do it in at most a 15 minute session a few times a week with body weight in your home, in the gym, on the side of a tennis court or whatever you're doing. I'm like, this is a no brainer. You can bring the equipment experience to a level that people like.
- [29:55]
B
People are already not believing you right now. So let's back up, we're going to unpack all of that. Back up to targeted compression therapy or targeted compression training therapy.
- [30:06]
A
Yeah, okay, yeah.
- [30:07]
B
Explain to people what that even is because I'm sure there are listeners going, well, I'm going to cut off my circulation like you're going to cut off blood flow. I thought we need that.
- [30:16]
A
Yeah. So we're not cutting off blood flow. What we're doing is we're actually allowing blood flow into the working musculature so the working set of muscles. So imagine in your heads you're wearing something similar but slightly different to a blood pressure cuff at the top of both of your legs. It's compressing the limb, allowing blood flow into the muscles, but reducing or making it harder for it to leave. What this does is a couple of things. First of all increases the cardiovascular Load from very low intensity exercise. So doing low intensity exercise with the compression on mimics very high intensity normal exercise. And it feels like it. So your heart rate elevates, doing very fluent exercise and the muscular fatigue rapidly onsets.
- [30:56]
B
Okay, so wait, you have to say that again for the listeners. So you can literally do less and it will equal the same amount. Let's say in the gym for an hour, you're getting in 15.
- [31:07]
A
Similar, similar, like, and I'm always very careful here where, you know, normal. If you're very capable of doing normal high intensity resistance training and you like doing it and you dedicate time to doing it and you have no reason not to do it, go and do it better for you. But for individuals who are load compromised, that could be post surgical, that could be acute injury management, that could be joint pain, stiffness, that could be chronic disease. Or you're just an individual that doesn't like strength training or doesn't have the time because you would rather be running or playing pickleball or doing something else. But realize you need to get rid of this pain. That's where this becomes a fantastic alternative. And the way it works essentially is by allowing blood flow into the muscle, but making it harder to come back and therefore increasing the heart rate. And we're doing two things at the muscular level, which is increasing metabolic stress, which is one of the primary mechanisms of action for improving muscular strength and muscle growth. And we're recruiting type 2 muscle fibers which usually are only recruited with very high intensity exercise. So usually you have to cross about 70% or more of your exercise intensity to recruit those, but they have the greatest capacity to grow. And so where this is relevant, again, kind of giving context here is relevant in sprinting, in running. You know, a lot of people say like, well, why does an older person care about type 2? Well, I asked like, okay, if they stumble and they try to catch themselves, that's type two type of muscle. Exactly. That's your ability to put your foot down and stop and catch yourself and sustain your weight without falling. That's all required. Because if you fall and break again, we've already spoken to this, that will lead to further health consequences.
- [32:33]
B
Right.
- [32:34]
A
But what's amazing about it and what the experience that I had and my physical therapy that was amazing about it, is just how effective it is. You immediately feel it. So you don't need to wait eight weeks to see something. You're like, wow, that felt like a high intensity exercise session. If you watch your heart rate on your wearable, like this is crazy, but one of the things that the Sugi's tech does, which is only a few solutions in the market even do, is we regulate the level of compression based on your blood pressure data so you can't over compress. And it's, it's, it allows you to standardize the, the intensity session by dialing in like, I want a low intensity, I want a medium intensity, I want a high intensity. And so we're never fully restricting, we're actually allowing blood flow into the muscle. It's just making harder for it to come back. And we're only doing it for 15 minutes in a sort of normal session.
- [33:17]
B
Right.
- [33:17]
A
Sometimes if you do the passive, it can be 30 minutes, but then you're cycling where you're compressing and then decompressing. And contrary to belief, that actually increases the overall blood flow in the area over the same time period as if you did didn't do it. Almost like hot cold therapy. Wow.
- [33:31]
B
Okay. So I'm also picturing more nutrients flowing into the muscle too. So more building blocks for, let's say our more advanced people that are working out like, I'll use suji during a workout to improve my overall outcome. I want to continue to build muscle. It's not even about just maintaining, it's also building for the aesthetic look.
- [33:54]
A
Actually some work going on at the University of Central Florida right now where we loan equipment. We don't fund any of the research. We helped fund one study, but we largely just loan equipment and they do their research with it because it helps prove the validity of our attack. They were looking at time to fatigue. And why this is important is they were looking at the stimulus on the muscle. So muscular fatigue induced with targeted compression training versus normal resistance training. And there's still some more work to be done here, but the preliminary findings were that they could map a 1 to 3 minute efficiency ratio. So 1 minute of target compression training, or 15 minutes was their protocol, could fatigue the muscle similarly to 45 minutes of normal resistance training. And so again, like for people who are looking to be time efficient, who are looking to build muscle health to service some other aspect of their life, because strength training isn't their primary goal or their desire or something they love, this can become a very efficient and convenient way to make sure their muscle health is increasing to support whatever they're doing.
- [34:49]
B
Yeah. And the convenience factor is huge, I think, for so many people. Oh, I was saying about the nutrients going in. Right. So I'm using it because I want to build muscle, but let's say you had an injury, same thing. You want those nutrients to flow into the muscle structure, into the muscle fiber, so that your body can literally build and repair. Now we're going to go deeper on the human growth hormone. The growth hormone increase aspect as we move along, but just staying with the efficiency, staying with that increased blood flow, staying with the benefits of using it, whether you're a beginner or an advanced trainee. I mean, it just blows my mind that something so simple can produce such tremendous results. Now, let me share with you really quickly. I tried blood flow restrictive training in the past and I'm not going to say what company, but it was just there was a barrier for me because of there's all these wires hanging off me. And it's very interesting what you said about Suji. I also felt like it, it hurt, like there was too much compression and I couldn't quite get the right mode and the right setting before with, with the other brand that I'm not going to mention.
- [36:01]
A
Sure.
- [36:02]
B
So it's sitting in a corner. It's sitting in a corner right now. I love what you have built with Suji because there's no wires hanging everywhere. It's convenient. You could do it at home, you could take it with you to the gym and. And you're wearing something that you don't look like an alien. Right. While you're walking around the gym lifting. But you know that you are making your workout more efficient and you are pushing so much more nutrients, protein, amino acids into that muscle to heal, repair and grow.
- [36:35]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think this is like, you know, my background's in robotic engineering and tech and like, I have a passion for consumer wellness and muscle health and, and experience going through it. And I think this is something that I feel really passionate and we're still improving at this. But like, one of the things I often think people forget when they are looking at new products or new world, new to the world products coming to the. The market is they forget the human element of why. Not only why somebody should adopt this, but the practicalities of bringing it into their lifestyle. So it'd be very easy for me to go. Broad strokes, right? Well, one in two American adults suffer from joint pain. Therefore one in two American adults should just buy Suji. It's like, sure, it's a very logical argument to make, but we're not logical beings. We look bottom up. And actually, if you think the most likely candidate at this point in time is somebody who is active in some regard, active being relative to their lifestyle, who has joint pain or stiffness and is looking for a solution to be able to get rid of it so they can stay active because it requires some level of buy in, which is important. And that's the same in a post surgical case where somebody's actively looking for a solution. One of the things I've spent a lot of time working on Suji with is, you know, first of all, we're an FDA registered product. That's important because we want to make sure that we have a high standard of design engineering compliance. And it's the relative comfort level of Suji can compared to some of the other solutions on the market is one of the reasons that we've been told from, you know, we supply close to 40% of all American sports teams across major pro D1, 2 and 3 schools. One of the reasons for that is not only the simplicity of setup and use, but it's also the relative comfort level. And that comes down to two things. Number one, I think as I alluded to at the beginning, Sugi will set the compression level based on your blood pressure, which is really important because there's several factors, not only blood pressure. Your limb circumference makes huge, huge difference. The level of compression that's applied to a very big person compared to a very small person varies wildly.
- [38:23]
B
Right.
- [38:23]
A
The other really big factor, and we actually lent on a lot of surgical tourniquet literature to design the compression garments. Because what a lot of people don't realize, even the people building this tech, is the width of the compression garment needs to be not too wide, that it gets in the way of your exercise. But if it's too thin or the thinner you go, you have an exponential relationship with the level of compression you need. So what that means if you start reducing that width, the amount of compression you need to achieve the same stimulus skyrockets.
- [38:55]
B
Sure.
- [38:55]
A
You imagine in your head just wrapping a string around your finger how uncomfortable that is. Yeah, that's the same thing. But you're now doing on a much bigger limb. Right. So you do, or doing it on a big limb, you're doing it on your leg or your arm. So one of the reasons I think Suji's been well adopted in outpatient physical therapy clinics and sports training rooms and now in the consumer market is people get the benefit of reducing their joint pain, stiffness and rapidly building muscle at the same time or their muscular health. But the relative comfort level is way higher. There's no cables, completely cable free, and it guides you through your entire session. Of use. And that matters to me a lot because as I, you know, look at the sort of wearables we all have and come to love, one of the key things about it is it's easy to implement into your life and it facilitates you achieving some goal that you have. And that's what the role of tech has. It shouldn't replace everything. It's supposed to uplift and facilitate. And that's how we're trying to build Suji.
- [39:46]
B
I love that. Now you nailed that. So did you create Suji based on my barriers as well? Have you tried other compression type devices and said, listen, there's all these wires and it's too tight and people aren't going to use it. You have to use something.
- [40:05]
A
Yeah.
- [40:05]
B
In order to get the results of it.
- [40:06]
A
Yeah. I mean the first thing I used was a big solution that I had to wheel around gym on like an IV pole and had cables coming off and I was like, this is really effective, but this is dumb and annoying.
- [40:16]
B
Yeah.
- [40:16]
A
And then I wanted something that I could take home with me so I could use it more often, particularly when I was in my rehab, because it's so important for frequency and compliance to improve your outcomes. Right. And I was given a handheld, essentially a blood pressure cuff. And I was like, this is rubbish. Like this doesn't work. And also the compression level is not personalized to me. So the level of compression massively varies the intensity as well. So if you go a higher compression level, it's going to be way more intense than if it's a lower compression level. And so I was like, man, like I want that really expensive, inconvenient solution to be way more convenient, way more cost effective and portable that I can take with me.
- [40:50]
B
Yeah.
- [40:50]
A
And that was the real premise that started it. I built the first one in lab by myself and shared it with some people on sport who I knew and they're like, it was powered by AA batteries, sometimes didn't connect to Bluetooth. And what was amazing was we put about 10 of them out to different UK based sports teams and they started using that over the big annoying solutions, a bunch of cables whenever. And they're like, if you built this, like we'd buy it. And I was like, man, it's powered by AA batteries and sometimes it even connect. And so it started out as just like a fun hobby, building something and using two passions of mine being health and engineering turned into like, oh cool. Like people really care about this. And so we iterated on that made a better one. Sports Teams bought it and then we iterated and we launched our Generation 2, which is what you have received. And it's now something that can live in the home. And like, you know, I already think in my head now with the consumer feedback we're getting, which is like this, you know, the outcomes are great. This is this. I'd love this tweaked. I'm like, yes. Okay, great. Now we're getting real insight to how people want to work with this. Let's go make a generation three.
- [41:45]
B
I mean, it's a one of a kind. It really is the most unique way wearable on the market because it does so much and it really is for every single age group. Y so we started with younger 20s, 30s, you want. I mean, I remember those days. I just wanted to build muscle and I wanted to recover and I. It's hard. It's hard. It's even hard as a woman to put on muscle. And no, you're not going to get bulky ladies, but it's hard as a woman to put on muscle. So now we move into, let's say 40s, 50s. Right. I'm going to say on ladies, women's hormones are changing. Their testosterone starts to drop.
- [42:25]
A
Yep.
- [42:26]
B
In really as early as 30s, but definitely by 40s. Every single set of labs, I look at 40 and above. Low t, low T on women Y as well as men. So that loss of testosterone, they start to lose motivation, they start to lose their muscle mass, you know, and, and we just see the body comp changes, but we also see the hormonal changes too, and we see the bone density and it really sets a woman up for a multitude of different disease states. So she already is struggling with perimenopause and menopause. The one thing she needs to do is keep her muscle on. And that has now become exponentially more difficult.
- [43:09]
A
Yeah.
- [43:10]
B
Now add on top of that family career work, I mean, as entrepreneurs, we have to carve out time to even get a workout in. So making something more convenient.
- [43:20]
A
Feel comfortable in the gym already. Now if you add that, right. Like, hey, I don't even like going to the gym. That's a huge barrier right there.
- [43:27]
B
Huge.
- [43:27]
A
Yeah.
- [43:27]
B
So this could literally change that. The health spans and longevity of, of everyone if they implement this. I mean, that's how I'm looking at this device.
- [43:39]
A
It's fascinating to us because we launched the consumer line of business this year. We started it on a pre sale where, you know, some consumers were waiting up to 16 weeks from the point of purchase to receive it and that's because we were taking a lot of market learnings, figuring out how we position it in market. And we've released, you know, we have more than 5,000 devices active in the field and we see tremendous anonymized and aggregated data sets. So we don't look at it at the individual level, but we look at it at the sort of high level and, and group it based on like different demographics. What's amazing to us is below 40s are the highest purchasers by a small margin. Over 40 are slightly less purchasers, not by a crazy amount, but a massive increase in frequency of use compared to the younger demographic.
- [44:23]
B
Okay.
- [44:24]
A
And so to kind of paint a picture here, you know, under 40s we can see people maybe log about a Median Number of 11.3 sessions a month, which aligns closely with, okay, if some of these exercising three times a week, that's your 12. Right. That's not far off. But we take a, you know, again shall not be named individual that we've become close to who's a customer. They are in their 50s and over the last, I want to say sort of 40ish day period, they've logged 153 sessions and so a massively greater number. And we work that individual because they've give her some great feedback and whatever else. And so we know a bit more about them than typical people that we, you know, say we look at things at demographic levels. But it's just amazing to me because I think for again it kind of validates that hypothesis of muscle health. It's like it's important all through your life but it gets way harder as you bridge that inflection point. And that's where you know, I'm really excited about what we're building is like I don't look at us as just a one wearable company. I look at us as like, oh no. We're improving the awareness and impact of muscle health at a, at a population level, which is really exciting to me.
- [45:29]
B
And it's never too late.
- [45:31]
A
No.
- [45:31]
B
So if we move into 60s, 70s, 80s now we're seeing more injuries. I mean sometimes life altering devastating injuries. The stat is if a person falls and breaks their hip, they're at a 50 mortality rate. Now they have a 50, 50 chance of dying basically. And that's scary. So you're at a greater risk of breaking your hip if you don't have the muscle surrounding your bones to protect it when you fall, you and I can fall. We're not going to break our hip.
- [46:05]
A
Or even when you fall. But also I would say if you have greater muscular strength and better neuromuscular coordination, you may even prevent the fall from happening because when you stumble, you'll catch yourself. Or you may put your arm, arms down and actually have the muscular strength to support bearing that load as it falls to prevent the break from occurring.
- [46:23]
B
Right.
- [46:23]
A
You know, two more talking points that I think really interesting around the importance of muscle health. It's very tightly coupled to cardiovascular disease, which a lot of people don't realize, you know, like really tightly coupled and actually so far and so forth that both grip strength and quadricep strength or the degradation rate, so the rate at which your core strength falls away are two really strong predictors of all cause mortality.
- [46:45]
B
Yeah.
- [46:45]
A
And again like a lot of people are like, what? How can that be? It's like, well because these are the foundation that hold your body together, that keep you moving, keep you mobile. And when you lose mobility and you become redditary, you open yourself up to a whole roster of comorbidities or complications that just make your life very difficult to keep having a good quality of health and lifestyle or live independently. I think that's always the big one people are concerned about is like, yeah, if you want to live independently, guess what? Don't have pain. Build sufficient muscular strength and coordinate all of it and you'll be able to move.
- [47:17]
B
Yeah, yeah. So I have my dad in mind now. He's 77, 78, pretty healthy bouts of cancer, all that. But he's, he's moving. I got him working out back when he was in his 50s and he's continued an off and on schedule. But now he has ankle pain and knee pain. So I cannot wait to get his hands on Suji and start using it because now he can, he can do his little 15 minute workout but get exponentially more benefits and reduce the pain. So can you go into how it actually helps with pain and injuries too? Because we've been talking a lot about muscle and that's important. But then what about the pain part?
- [47:59]
A
Yeah, so the pain part essentially, essentially works on a premise or the proposed mechanism of action is something known as exercise induced hypoallergesia, which is basically a body's response to an increased or elevated heart rate where you dump a boatload of endorphins that are systemic, it's whole body and they significantly relieve pain or your pain sensitivity significantly reduces the way people can actually have probably experienced this before you wake up, you're sore, stiff, you've Been lying down, sleeping for eight hours. You get up and you're sore, your knee hurts a little bit, or maybe you're warming up before exercise and then about 30 minutes into your day or your exercise, suddenly the pain's gone and you don't feel sore anymore and you're like, wow, I feel amazing. And then you come back from your run and you cool down and 12 hours later you're like, man, I'm all stiff again. That is exercise induced hypoallergesia where you've elevated your heart rate significantly, that you get this endorphin drop that significantly reduces your pain sensitivity. Now that's amazing. And again, it's all natural. It's your body just reacting. It's an inbuilt system. But one of the problems for a lot of people is the pain stops them moving in the first place, right? So they can't do the 20 or 30 minutes of being active to get the elevated heart rate, to get that pain relief or reduction. So what we can do with suji is we can wear it typically on the lower limbs in this use case, or if it's, it's targeted, we can put it, you know, for elbow pain, you can put it on your upper arm and you will do 7 to 10 minutes of continuous movement whilst it's compressing the limb.
- [49:28]
B
Now that movement real quick does not have to be picking up a weight. It can literally be an air squat.
- [49:32]
A
For some people it can be walking. You know, one example I use is I might, because of my history of knee injury, before I do weightlift or before I go for a run, I will do seven minutes on a stair climber. That's it. Seven minutes on a stair climber and you feel significant fatigue in the quad, the hamstring and the glute, which is nice because you're like, oh, this is working. But then when I take it off and I rest for two minutes, I could immediately go lift. So instead of having to do 20 or 30 minutes of stretching, warming up, mobility and high intensity exercise, I've now suddenly got a tool where for seven minutes of just literally stationary bike cycling or a stair climber, or in some instances going for a walk or walking lunges or squats, that can be enough to take it off and get two to 24 hours of a significantly reduced pain state to go and do the thing that you want to do. The other use case, that is more passive and can be used prior to sleep, for example, this is a bit longer, but you can do it lying on the sofa, which is a great thing where you basically. We call it passive recovery and it's similar to the big air boots people may be familiar with. But instead of covering the entire leg, we can do the same thing by just covering the top of the limb. And it basically goes through compression cycles. So it'll inflate, compress for 3 minutes and then deflate and be completely deflated for a minute. And it'll run through these cycles for 10 to 30 minutes. And what's really cool here is it's almost like a little massage where you're mechanically just compressing and decompressing. And contrary to belief, it actually increases because you know, contrary to belief, because you're using compression, it actually increases the average blood flow through the area in the same amount of time of not doing it. And what a lot of people have described is when they stand up and they take it off, it feels like they're walking on clouds. They feel light footed again. Their stiffness has kind of gone away. They feel like they're in a reduced pain state. So that's the sort of whole pain stiffness angle. We're just tapping into what your body can already do, but making it more efficient and reducing the exercise dosage.
- [51:22]
B
Right.
- [51:22]
A
To make it more convenient and more accessible.
- [51:24]
B
Now you're not going to build muscle if you're lying on the couch with them on. Right. That's just more for the PT recovery.
- [51:29]
A
What you can do though is if you were post surgical or you're immobile, it can prevent muscle wastage because you trigger growth hormones and you allow a lot of oxygen rich blood to flush into the muscle musculature. So you can offset for a period of time, not forever.
- [51:42]
B
Yeah.
- [51:42]
A
The rate or the significance of muscle loss to quite a substantial degree. But no, we would generally encourage a level of movement if you're trying to build muscle strength. And the way that people could mentally picture this is it's a little bit more like physical therapy style exercises. So quite specific, quite targeted to a desired outcome or use. And it'd be, you know, if you're trying to build muscle strength, it can literally be something as simple as three to four sessions a week, 10 to 15 minutes. It's body weight doesn't require a whole lot of equipment. Doing your home, do it in the gym, wherever you want.
- [52:13]
B
Your hotel room. I should have brought it with me.
- [52:15]
A
I have mine with me.
- [52:16]
B
Yeah, brilliant. So when you're traveling. Right. When you're traveling, I can I put it on? Just do some air, squats and just basic movement. I mean I could even picture just having it on and just doing like a bicep pump without the weight. And you're still going to activate everything?
- [52:33]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Like it's all body weight. You can use low load if you want to, to progress the intensity. Sure, yeah. But you don't have to. And that's what's so good about it, it's why it's so convenient. In fact, some of the research we're supporting right now is, you know, targeted compression training or scientifically known as blood flow restriction training, has been known about for over 60 years, very well researched and understood for more than 20 years and used in clinical settings or professional sports settings for that same amount of time. It's very well understood for post operative care for acute injury. So like sprained ankle, that sort of care. Aging adults, active adults with joint pain or stiffness. And where the research is now being pushed heavily chronic disease patients. And so we again support, just through loan of the equipment, various research institutions, but two of them I'm happy to kind of call out. One of them is University of Central Florida who do some amazing work under Professor Ethan Hill at the muscle Strength Lab there across astronauts, active adults, aging adults, chronic disease patients. We did some work there that we were writing a blog that was going to be published on in using this for patients with Ms. And we're doing something here in the UK that is yet under peer review at the moment, it's yet to be published where they use SUGI as an at home exercise intervention for COPD patients because COPD patients typically can't do normal exercise to get the exercise benefits. So by being able to give them something where you take simply walking up the stairs to simulate or stimulate similar gains or improvements to normal hydrant exercise, it removes the barriers to achieving the exercise outcomes, which is just awesome. Wow.
- [54:04]
B
And one of my best friends has Ms. And I know she used to be in the gym all the time and now she has to reduce the amount that she's there, especially when she travels. All she can do is walk on the treadmill when she travels because she'll get her ass kicked. I mean, one workout and she's off for a couple of days. So this would be something that she could actually incorporate and get those benefits.
- [54:26]
A
That's what that research starting to suggest. Yeah, absolutely. Which is awesome because again, like the thing I want to be really clear about is we're just tapping into and reducing the barriers to getting the benefits of exercise.
- [54:36]
B
Yeah, that's all that's exactly it.
- [54:38]
A
That's it. And so if you are somebody who has no contraindication, no reason to not do normal high intensity resistance training, or you are very active and want to pursue this, go and do that. This is an enabler to helping you. If you then get joint pain to helping somebody who's post operative to, as somebody who has some reason, that high intensity exercise is either not appealing or not an option.
- [55:02]
B
Right.
- [55:02]
A
And that's what excites me so much about, you know, if I kind of build back on what we're doing at Suji Tsuji is there as a company to advance the awareness around the importance of muscle health. This wearable that we've built is one tool and hopefully amongst many different pieces of technology that we continue to build, helping that mission because it's one of the most effective. It touches on pain and stiffness, it helps build muscle strength. There's great research to talk about the impact it also has on tendon strength and bone density. It's great for recovery and it really brings the barriers to getting the benefits of exercise down. It's very efficient, doesn't require a lot of equipment, doesn't require a heavy load on the body.
- [55:41]
B
Yeah, no, that's why it's. I'm just blown away because it really is for every person, every age, at every stage of athleticism or fitness. I mean, this is really the first device that it can span all of that. That's crazy. Okay, now I want to get into the, the growth hormone aspect. So we know after a weight training session we know that growth hormone increases and testosterone increases. So even men or women who are not on TRT therapy can get a natural testosterone boost from activating their muscles.
- [56:14]
A
Yep.
- [56:15]
B
Suji does the same thing.
- [56:16]
A
Yeah, I mean we're still understanding, I guess like the mechanisms of action as to why. And this actually in some instances still the same with normal hind tense exercises. There's different proposals as to why these things happen, but in some research they've observed a 19 times increase in human growth hormones, even comparing it to normal resistance training. Now, I want to be careful because the research varies, but we can categorically say is that your human growth hormones and your T levels will increase using bfr. And what is interesting is even in a passive recovery capacity. My own guess, and this is my own guess, my own opinion is it's linked to heart rate and elevations in heart rate because as I kind of spend more time observing this and observing target compression training, it behaves very similarly to the Same principles of normal exercise. A lot of those benefits are related to an increased heart rate.
- [57:03]
B
Okay. So it's not necessarily from the activation of the muscle.
- [57:06]
A
I don't know, it may be a combination. This is where I want to be very careful. Like yeah, I'm good at building the tech and I lean on some amazing exercise physiologists and doctors to kind of help guide us on the research and the medical piece. But yeah, it is pretty astounding that you can really achieve the similar or the same benefits of high intensity exercise, but up doing essentially less in less time.
- [57:29]
B
Well, I bet we can also bring the, the growth hormone and the testosterone component into recovery and pain.
- [57:37]
A
Yeah.
- [57:37]
B
Because as you increase your growth hormone, you're going to recover faster. You know, a lot of people will do now they're in the peptides like the epamorellin and CJC to do what? Increase IGF1, increase growth hormone.
- [57:49]
A
And that, that goes to the point that I made about the past massive piece being able to offset the loss of muscle after surgery because you're triggering these effects even when you're passively doing it.
- [57:57]
B
Right.
- [57:58]
A
So yeah, they're all really important facets of just overall improvement in muscle health. And here's the other thing that I'll just reiterate. For a lot of people, every single person listening to this at some point in the next two years will probably experience more than 30 days of pain or stiffness in their joints. The primary modifiable risk factor they can play around with is their muscle strength. And so if you go to somebody who listen, there's always, there are always time periods where you may have to rest a little bit.
- [58:23]
B
Sure.
- [58:24]
A
Because you maybe have some significant swelling or the pain response is so high that you actually just need to bring that sensitivity down. And time is the option here. Usually that's four to six days at most. Unless you've had a, you know, again, very. There are edge cases, but usually what you want to do is intervene in some way and this can be across nutrition. Using tech like Suji, you want to find a way to stimulate your musculature so that you don't lose it. You really need to be very focused on that because when you start losing it, you significantly increase the. It's way harder to get back. We all know this.
- [58:52]
B
Right?
- [58:53]
A
Right. It's way easier to build muscle when you're younger and earlier and then it's way quicker to lose it than when you build it. If you've taken any time off, you'll you know, everybody experiences that and it's awful. It's unfair.
- [59:03]
B
Yeah. No, you're so right. Well, and now we're in this age of GLPs too.
- [59:06]
A
Yeah.
- [59:07]
B
So we have to bring that into the conversation. Conversation. Oh my goodness. Yeah.
- [59:09]
A
Yeah.
- [59:10]
B
Muscle loss with these GLPs is real. I mean, I've shared with my audience, they already know that back when Manjaro first came out. I mean, I think we're talking like three years ago now. Of course I tried it. I want to biohack. I want to see what this is all about and then be able to bring it to my people. Right. I'll Never forget Peter, Atia released that article that 40% of the weight loss that's occurring is lean muscle. This. Yeah, yeah. And I remember reading and I'm like, oh, Peter, you're so wrong. I kid you not, Alex. Within a couple of weeks I was like looking at my arms, I'm like, oh my God, I'm losing muscle. Like this thing is literally eating my muscle. And we didn't know back then to, to increase your protein and do all of that, even though I was eating enough protein. But that muscle loss is real. Now I, I have a lot of people on GLPs. I mean there are a lot of people, we have patients too that are using it because they are type 22 diabetic or we'll micro dose it with them to help improve inflammation and, and pain and just, you know, body composition. Now with Suji coming in, this is where I can see it being a key component. I always tell these people, listen, if you're going to do a glp, you're going to eat protein like it's your job and you're going to resistance train. But what is the barrier for resistance training? Injury, intimidation, you know, hair, am I going to go to the gym, all of that. So now this can come in as that key component. Like everybody on a glp, you need this.
- [60:38]
A
Using sushi, something we talk about internally, sort of a high level is long term, like being a GLP1 drug companion device at some point where this could be a solution because we can like bring in, you know, one thing I think we have an interesting opportunity for Suji is because we get some interesting data points around blood pressure and everything else is we can start looking into, eventually we can start looking into some cardiovascular insights and this will be really interesting for me long term around supporting the whole thesis of like, hey, you improve your muscle health, your cardiovascular risk may come down.
- [61:09]
B
Yeah.
- [61:09]
A
And then it's also looking at it where if you put this in conjunction with something like a drug or as a drug companion device like in GLP1. Okay, can we offset the negative impact of the GLP1s on your muscular health, bone density, tennis strength, muscle strength, and start looking at the impact it has on your cardiovascular insights as well? That would be super interesting. And that's kind of where we want the tech to advance into. And I actually don't think we're too far away from doing it. But yeah, I mean, look, I personally can never see a point at which I would want to use GLP1s even if I was trying to combat a weight issue for myself. Now, it's maybe easy for me to say sitting in the position that I am, but witnessing and you can see this in images of people who use GLP1s. The GLP1 face has made trends and memes on social media right now.
- [61:53]
B
It's so real. Real.
- [61:54]
A
It is a very real problem of losing your muscular health. And why I think this is such an important thing to come back to people is again, just like the dumb engineer point of view that I take on it. Think by first principles, your body is essentially a meat sack. You have bones being your skeleton, you have muscles being the muscular part of the musculoskeletal system. And then you have your tendons, ligaments and neuromuscular systems. Your ability to coordinate all of this. Love that if you lose that or it becomes painful, mobility becomes very difficult. Your fragility or your likeliness for injury goes, you know, significantly increases and your, your health span will reduce as a result of it. So I'd always take like temper, like I think, you know, you spoke to some there and you're way more qualified on this than I am to talk about it. But I'm sure there are use cases for GLP1s, you know, but it has to be complemented with a holistic approach.
- [62:45]
B
Yeah.
- [62:45]
A
And I think that's the same. And that's the same for our tech, by the way. It's part of a holistic approach. Right to helping you. We're giving you a convenient way to increase your muscle health here, an effective way to do it, to service you being an active person and living your activities of daily living. There's not, there's never going to be a silver bullet that does things by itself.
- [63:03]
B
Right now, are there any contraindications? Is there anyone that should not use suji?
- [63:07]
A
So at the moment, we do have contraindications. There's actually A contraindication medication list that you can check out. It's on our website. It's also in the app prior to using it. They typically involve things like negative cardiovascular events that you've had in the past that could be like a stroke or something that affects the cardiovascular system. Now, the reason they exist is not because there's data to suggest that it's dangerous. We don't have enough data right now to tell you categorically it's not dangerous if you have these contraindications. However, there was some work, research paper that came out, St. Mary's actually here in London, either in 2019 or 2021, that concluded from their meta analysis, their review, that targeted compression training, or scientifically known as blood flow restriction training, is just as safe, if not safer than normal high intensity exercise when properly employed. That goes back to that key part about the level of compression you're setting needs to be. You need to use some sort of tech that bases it on your blood pressure, your limb circumference, and it's tailored to you. You just go and pull something tight around your limb, you could poop, putting yourself at risk.
- [64:05]
B
Right, right. And that was kind of the really, really old school compression were literally bands.
- [64:10]
A
That people would just rip and rip it.
- [64:12]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay. Okay. Well, this is just, I mean, this has been so fascinating, Alex. I just, I'm genuinely blown away by what my mind is doing with the use of Suji in so many different people. Like, again, I, I'll say it again, crossing every age span, every level of fitness really, from beginner to advanced. I mean, there's, there's a benefit across the board and I know we kind of more focused on kind of like the beginner and intermediate. But again, even your advanced athletes, like you said, you have, you have professionals, you have the majors, you have D1, 2, 3 schools, you have athletes that, you know, you and I were just, it's ingrained in us. We're never going to stop, but we always want to improve no matter what your age is. And I just see this, this wearable as being so effective for so many people. It's incredible.
- [65:06]
A
That's certainly what excites me about it. And like, you know, that's where we're going to keep striving to innovate is helping people, more people improve their muscle health in a convenient manner as possible so that they can go about their lives in a reduced pain state and feeling stronger.
- [65:20]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of tech out there. There's a lot of devices, there's a lot of biohacking. Some of it works, some of it doesn't. But this is one that I'm. I'm really going to encourage the listeners to invest in and to utilize because of the health benefits.
- [65:34]
A
I wish there was more in muscle health.
- [65:36]
B
Yeah.
- [65:36]
A
You know, I love sleep wearables. I think it's really important.
- [65:39]
B
Right.
- [65:40]
A
It plays a role. Nutrition is another really important one. There's a lot around cgm for example. Again, like rightly so, like some of this is really important. I still maintain the thesis, of course, like I've been talking about for the last hour here, there needs to be more in muscle health.
- [65:52]
B
Yeah.
- [65:53]
A
Because honestly, for most people listening, that'll be the answer to a lot of the joint pain and stiffness they're dealing with.
- [65:57]
B
Yeah. And hormones.
- [65:59]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [66:00]
B
You know.
- [66:00]
A
Exactly.
- [66:01]
B
And perimenopause, menopause, andropause, the hormones, the just aesthetics too.
- [66:05]
A
Yeah.
- [66:06]
B
I mean, you know, we're talking a lot about joint pain and pain. But the bottom line is you look better when you have muscle and you're not like a dad bod.
- [66:16]
A
You feel, you feel better, you function better as well. Right. Like it's all encompassing, it's holistic.
- [66:20]
B
Yeah, it is, it is. So yeah, this is one device that I am recommending across the board. And so for our listeners, you're actually giving them a discount code as well.
- [66:30]
A
Yes.
- [66:31]
B
What's the website?
- [66:32]
A
The website is trysuji.com t r y s u j I dot com. That's also our Instagram handle.
- [66:38]
B
Okay.
- [66:39]
A
Come over to try Suji. We also have phenomenal blogs. You spoke about your dad actually is one thing I was gonna say. We just wrote a blog and a 71 year old cyclist who's been using Suji religiously. It's actually funny in part of it. He says that his wife is frustrated with us because it's the first thing he packed on his holiday when he went on vacation. But it'd be a cool blog for your dad to read. Yeah, I think you mentioned he was 70.
- [66:56]
B
He's like 78 now.
- [66:58]
A
78. So yeah, the guy we wrote about 71, you know, an active cyclist and he uses it daily like he loves it. Okay. So it be a cool one for him to follow. But yeah, all of that and more over@trysui.com and that's the same as our Instagram handle. So you can find us there and then of course, course. I'm sure we can add some details and bio, whatever else.
- [67:15]
B
And oh yeah, we'll put it in the show notes. Okay. But I just want to say it to the people, though, so cool. All right, so yes, Suji is giving you all a beautiful discount. You gotta grab this. You're gonna go to try suji.comforward/doctor Amy. So T, R, Y, S, U, J, I forward slash D, R, A, M, I, E and use the code Dr. Amy. And that's going to give you 15 off. So this is going to be like my, my favorite tech of the year of the next five years maybe.
- [67:43]
A
People can also use their HSA FSA accounts if they have them to purchase on top. So that will give them an even better.
- [67:50]
B
That is huge. Okay, y', all, you've been saving up in your MSA and hsa, which we were talking about before we started recording of how many people let that build up and they don't spend that money that they have for hurt their health on prevention. They're waiting until they need a surgery, until they need a drug. But now's the time to use your HSA FSA on Suji for prevention of everything that we just talked about. Absolutely amazing, Alex. Thank you so much for having me, for teaching me and for getting me so excited to get back into to the. The. What is it called?
- [68:27]
A
The targeted compression train.
- [68:29]
B
Targeted compression training. Right. Because my other thing is in the corner so I know my sushi box is at home when I get home. And I'm so excited. So excited.
- [68:36]
A
Thanks for having me and appreciate the time.
- [68:38]
B
Amazing. Thank you.
- [68:39]
A
Yeah.
- [68:46]
B
The information shared on the Thyroid Fixer Podcast is intended solely for informational and educational purposes. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, treatment or before making changes to your health care regimen, including medications, supplements or other therapies. Use of the information provided in this podcast does not establish a doctor, patient or client provider relationship between you and the host or between you and any other healthcare professionals featured on the show. Any medical opinions or statements made by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or affiliated parties. Statements regarding dietary supplements or health related products mentioned in this podcast have not been evaluated by the fda. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Some episodes of the Thyroid Fixer Podcast may include sponsorships or affiliate links. The host may receive compensation for discussing or promoting certain products or services. Any such sponsorships or affiliations will be clearly disclosed during the episode. All opinions expressed are those of the hosts or guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of any sponsors. The inclusion of a product or service does not imply endorsement by any healthcare professional featured on this podcast.