The Apollo Neuro with Dr. David Rabin: Rational Wellness Podcast 401

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Dr. David Rabin discusses The Apollo Neuro with Dr. Ben Weitz.

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Podcast Highlights

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Dr. David Rabin, MD, PhD is a board-certified psychiatrist, trauma specialist, and neuroscientist.  He is the Co-Founder of Apollo Neuroscience, the first scientifically-validated wearable system to improve heart rate variability, cognitive performance, sleep, focus, relaxation, and access to meditative states by delivering gentle, layered vibrations to the skin.  The website is Apolloneuro.com and if you use the affiliate code Weitz you will get $40 off. 

Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure.  Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.

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Podcast Transcript

Dr. Weitz: Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates and to learn more, check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me and let’s jump into the podcast.

Hello, Rational Wellness Podcasters. Today, we’ll be having another conversation with Dr. David Rabin about stress and the science behind a wearable device, the Apollo Neuro, that uses vibrations to help us to activate our parasympathetic nervous system.  Also known as our rest and digest nervous system. So we can have a better balance with our sympathetic flight or fight nervous system. We last spoke three years ago [00:01:00] and Dr. Rubin and his team have been very busy refining his products and conducting research. Documenting some of the many benefits of these wearable devices.

It’s interesting that the last time we spoke, we were in the 19 crisis and the whole world was on edge, in sympathetic dominant mode. And now, The city I live in Los Angeles has been living through Another high stress trauma these horrible fires With continuing reports of strong winds coming and continuing dry conditions leading to Everybody being back in sympathetic dominant mode Dr. David Rabin is a board certified psychiatrist, trauma specialist, and neuroscientist, and he’s also the co founder, along with his wife, Catherine Fantuzzi, of Apollo Neuroscience, the first scientifically validated, wearable system to improve Heart rate variability, cognitive performance, sleep, focus, relaxation, and access to meditative states by delivering vibrations to the skin.  Dr. Rabin, thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Rabin: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Ben.

Dr. Weitz: I mean, this is amazing that a perfectly safe easy to use product Can deliver all these valuable benefits.

Dr. Rabin: Yeah. It’s a, I mean, it’s not unheard of, right? We know that music can deliver a lot of the similar benefits we often take for granted, but you, you know, as well as all of our listeners that.  When you are having a bad day and you step into your car or walk into a room and one of your favorite songs is playing, you almost instantly [00:03:00] forget that you were having a bad day and you feel better. Right. And it’s, that’s, I always liked that as a, as a former musician, amateur musician and music lover, I’ve always noticed that effect. And as a neuroscientist wondered, you know, how does that work? Because it’s nearly universal across all humans and music has the ability when it’s fast and loud to give us energy and it has the ability to calm us down and help us fall asleep when it’s slow and soothing. Right. And yet again, neurosciences had very few explanations over the last 100 years for why that happens.

And so, when I was in the lab studying how to create, I was, you know, I was working with a lot of veterans and people with severe trauma that were not getting better with medicine. And we were trying to figure out, well, Maybe there are ways to help alleviate some of the suffering of these folks using technology and maybe music that the body feels as a solution because music through the ears works [00:04:00] so well, but you can’t have stuff in your ears all the time.

Like, I couldn’t be listening to music while I’m talking to you, but I can use Apollo. On my chest when I’m talking to you and you can’t hear it right right and so this is the same for our patients with PTSD and the same for most working people in the world who are busy throughout their day. They can’t have music in their ears.  And so we thought, well, maybe if we study the neuroscience of music and rhythm. That we could start to understand how to give, deliver to people many of the same benefits that you get with music, but through your body instead of your ears. And so, effectively, that’s what Apollo is. And anybody who wants to try it on OneVibe, we have OneVibe for free on the Apollo app on iPhone.  And you can download the Apollo Neuro app on your Apple Store and just Turn it, open it up and it will play automatically for you. And you can hold that to your chest and you’ll feel exactly what we’re talking about.

Dr. Weitz: So is it well known that music works through vibrations?

Dr. Rabin:  Yeah, so it is in the science world.  In the non science world people think about music and, and vibration differently, but everything in music is auditory and vibrations is tactile.  Right. But the whole premise of what sound is, is vibration. So, vibration means frequency over time that is moving like this, like it’s moving air. Right. Right? And that’s what sound is. It’s physical Energy that moves air like this in a certain frequency and rhythm and that frequency is what we feel when, for example, you’re standing next to a subwoofer at a show or you have you’re in a movie theater and you feel the base in your body.  That is all from the movement of air and the air or through the through the floor and through the seat you’re in and that transduces the vibration through the physical physical form of air or a physical seat into your physical body and you actually don’t need to hear sound to feel the benefits, which has been known for a long time.  But of course, hearing it is great, but we don’t always have that option. But I think to your point. Everything we experience on a bigger level, everything we experience in the world is made of vibration and frequency. So this is, you know, something that was discovered by Einstein and many of the other most famous physicists of our time.  Even Nikola Tesla described the entire world of experience is vibration. And vibration just means something moving over time. So whether it’s the whether it’s smells, taste, touch, vision, you know, vision being light being a very high frequency vibration, sound being lower frequency vibration, touch being even lower frequency vibration.  It’s just what is our body’s physical, physical [00:07:00] organ sensing as part of the frequency experience around us. But everything in the world is vibrating and everything is frequency.

Dr. Weitz: Can deaf people appreciate music by feeling the vibrations?

Dr. Rabin:  Absolutely. And there’s lots of evidence of that. Even before current times, there were people who were deaf musicians.  Right. So I think so one of the most famous try to remember my classical music history now, but I think one of the most famous, I think Beethoven was deaf, right? And he wasn’t deaf in the beginning of his career, but he did lose his hearing nearly completely from what I recall of my music history towards the end of his career.  It’s been a while. And, and that’s really remarkable, right? That he was able to compose so many tremendous pieces. Concertos and, and symphonies after losing his hearing in large part because he was able to sense the vibration of the sound. And, and in addition to knowing already what the, in his [00:08:00] memory, what the notes sounded like, he was able to feel the music and other folks like David Eagleman make products now.  Based on the theory of how to help people who have lost their hearing still feel sound. And, and this is a growing era, area of research.

Dr. Weitz: Interesting. What about wearing it on the chest? I am not familiar with that. I thought you had to wear it on the wrist or the foot or the leg, ankle.

Dr. Rabin: Oh, no. So Apollo can be worn anywhere.  We designed it to be worn anywhere because not everybody likes to wear things in the same place. And we wanted to make this really easy for people. So, this is Apollo with a clip. You just take it off like that. It’s like a little money clip. And you can put it on and, you know, attach it anywhere.  I, ultimately It’s because low frequency vibrates Apollo delivers gentle soothing sound waves to your body that you can feel so in the same idea of what we’re talking about Apollo is [00:09:00] sound that you can feel it’s not electricity. It’s not sending you shocks. It works through clothing so you don’t have to have it against your skin.  You can have it anywhere in your body over a sock. I have an undershirt on and it’s not against my skin right now. And. It works by sending these very deep base rhythm vibrations through your, your body to your skin touch receptors that are the same touch receptors that get activated when you feel soothing, touch from a loved one or a pet, or you get a hug from a friend or you feel ocean waves slowly crashing over you.

Those are, those are all deep base vibrations and so they have sound component and they have a in the case of the ocean. But in the case of or a purring cat, but in the case of a hug, there’s no sound, right? It’s just it’s just feeling. And so we have you know, at least six or seven different tactile or touch receptors in our skin that receive the feelings of pressure that that come from getting a [00:10:00] hug, for instance, and that those receptor systems are tightly connected into our nervous system that go all the way up to our brain, and particularly the emotional brain.  And this area is called the limbic system and the area that they go to is an emotional memory area that reminds us that that feeling feels safe and that particular area of the brain, that these kinds of frequencies that we discovered with Apollo activate. That part of the brain, the, which is called the insulate cortex directly interacts with the amygdala, which many of you probably have heard of, which is that fear center of the brain and for almost all of us who live in modern society, the fear center in our brains, that amygdala is it.

It’s overactive, it’s blasting off all the time because it’s overstimulated, it’s too much input from screens and news and responsibilities and all of the things that we have to deal with every day, the amygdala is sensitive to the fear center, it’s sensitive to overstimulation. And so basically [00:11:00] too much, too fast, too loud sends that amygdala into overdrive and that makes us feel afraid, even though there’s nothing around us to be afraid of.

There’s no survival threat. There’s no predators. There’s no lack of food, lack of water, lack of air. All of our major needs are taken care of. And yet we still feel anxious, worried, afraid, alone, right? And Why is just because that’s that our nervous system never evolved for the overstimulation of modern society.

So to counteract that, there’s lots of different ancient eastern tribal techniques, deep breathing, yoga, meditation, mindfulness, soothing touch. But we know from trying to teach our patients that for 100 years that it’s really hard to learn and master those techniques. It can take a really long time, like years.  And so we wanted to make something that could help deliver some of the benefits to people. Of feeling safe and present in your own body without requiring you to master those techniques. That also trains you how to do those techniques more easily. And so that’s what [00:12:00] the rhythms of Apollo do. And that’s what we discovered in the lab at the University of Pittsburgh.  And I’m gonna say like it was like, I guess it was like 10 years ago now. Wow.

Dr. Weitz: Wearing it over the heart. I wonder, have you looked into the possible benefits for patients with arrhythmia conditions like AFib that have to do with the rhythm of the heart being off?

Dr. Rabin: So, so the location that you wear it in doesn’t really matter from what we can tell from our research.  As long as you can feel the gentle vibrations, the effect is still is happening. You’re getting the benefit of the, of the technology. We have had people who are wearing Apollo and other parts of their body tell us that they have been using it for A fib for high blood pressure for a high heart rate, tachycardia, other cardiovascular issues.  And they’ve had great results personally. And this is in the order of like, I don’t know, a couple of hundred people who just have sent in their, their data over the years showing, Hey, I track my [00:13:00] blood pressure or I track my heart rate and. I have less AFib episodes or lower heart and lower heart rate and lower blood pressure when I use Apollo and look at my data.  And so we have seen that from individuals and that’s really exciting. We have a cardiovascular health study that’s in the works, but it hasn’t started recruiting yet. So we have to wait and see on the study of that.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. Since we’ve been talking about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, maybe you can talk a little more about that, how that relates to stress and, and then, you know, the balance between the two where we’re supposed to be at and how the Apollo can help us to create a better balance.

Dr. Rabin: Sure. Yeah. And, and I think the, this, this is the most important. So what was one of the most important things to understand if you take anything away from this conversation is how our stress response system works, because it’s very poorly taught. And I had to go through college and medical [00:14:00] school and graduate school and residency.  And I still didn’t learn through all of those studies, exactly how this, the stress response system was working in our bodies until I actually read. And studied Eric Kandel’s Nobel Prize winning work from 2000 which was probably towards the very end of my training and Eric Kandel is fascinating character.  He’s a neuropsychiatrist Holocaust survivor who had basically pioneered the research on with a, we’re building off a lot of other amazing researchers on how memory works around fear and safety learning and fear being the major reason why our stress response nervous system gets turned on. And this is not, this is not unique to humans, which is really important.

So all, all animals going back to ancient sea snails from 300 million years ago, we probably talked about this on the first conversation, but it’s good to, good to recap. All [00:15:00] animals have the same basic core stress response system, and it goes back hundreds of millions of years. So it’s hardwired into us.  So it’s really, really important to understand. And that is that when we experience anything that makes us afraid, fearful, and that’s real, real threat, like a real survival threat, like lack of food, water, air or predator chasing us, or it’s perceived survival threat, like too many emails or being late for a meeting or any of those kinds of things, then we get.

Transcribed Our fear response gets kicked on in our nervous system, and that’s called the sympathetic fight or flight response. And that’s the response that takes the main function of that response is to take all of our blood flow and divert it to the systems that are required to get us out of a survival threat situation.

Right. So if you imagine we have an entire body worth of organ systems in it, and [00:16:00] there’s not enough blood to go around to all those systems at the same time, there’s only enough blood to feed certain systems at certain times, and then keep other ones on like background alive, but not functioning highly.

And so the way the body, the way and the brain determines what systems get prioritized is based on where the blood goes. So when we are under threat, actual threat or perceived threat from emails, and we believe ourselves to be afraid or under threat, the body constricts the sympathetic fight or flight nervous system activity, the amygdala fear center goes off and it’s and it constricts through through downstream activities through the nervous system throughout the whole body, all the blood vessels that are going to our the Our reproductive system, our digestive system, our immune system, our sleep and recovery system, our empathy system, everything that’s not required for survival gets reduced blood flow so that all of that blood [00:17:00] flow can go to skeletal muscle.  Our heart, our lungs and our motor cortex of our brain and our fear center of our brain to get us out of that threatening situation as quickly as possible. 

Dr. Weitz: In other words, our bodies are perceiving this stress over emails the same way it perceives the fear of a lion chasing us and that we’re trying to run away from.

Dr. Rabin: Exactly. Unless we tell it, hey, these are just emails, don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay. If we don’t remind ourselves of that, which is what makes humans really unique, is we have the ability to, what’s called, top down control. So we can say, hey brain, I know you’re freaking out right now, I feel my heart rate going up through the roof, I feel my face getting flushed, I feel my vision shrinking into tunnel vision, those are all signs of Fight or flight nervous system getting priority, we can say, Hey, brain, I know I’m not under threat.  These are just emails. Don’t worry, let’s take a [00:18:00] couple deep breaths, everything’s going to be okay. And as soon as you do that reminder of those couple deep breaths, you have convinced your brain that you’re safe enough to take a couple deep breaths. And if you’re safe enough to take a couple deep breaths by decision, because you decided to do it, then you can’t possibly be running from a lion in that moment, because if you were running from a lion in that moment, your body would not allow you to stop and take a couple deep breaths.

Does that make sense? Yes. Thank you. So, so that is how that’s that system process works of what’s called de escalating yourself or calming yourself down is with breathing count to five, count to ten, we’ve all heard all these things, right? Right. Nobody’s ever explains how it works, but that’s how it works.  is count to five count to ten you take a couple deep breaths ideally like 60 seconds worth of deep breaths if you can and you’ve just reminded yourself that you’re safe enough to not let your stress response fight or flight system run amok and steal all of your [00:19:00] blood flow from all your organ systems that matter and so when you get to safety by taking those deep breaths and reminding yourself you’re safe or by getting a hug or using Apollo or whatever it is that you’re doing to make yourself feel safe And reminding yourself that you’re safe in this moment, then your, your vagus nerve system gets activated and your vagus nerve is called, is cranial nerve 10.

It’s the most important nerve that governs rest and rest and recovery relaxation in the body. And it’s the core nerve of what’s called the parasympathetic system, which you mentioned is also known as the rest and digest system. And so when that system gets activated, it says, Hey, we’re not under threat.

We’re safe. And that system gets activated by safety and it says we’re safe. So let’s send signals to the body that dilate all the blood vessels to the organ systems important for recovery. The reproductive system, the digestive system, the immune system, the skin, the empathy system, [00:20:00] creativity, all those parts of our brains that we want to be active when we’re not being chased by a lion.

Get activated by the vagus nerve through releasing more blood to those systems, and then it constricts blood flow to all the stress response systems to divert blood back to recovery. And so the more, this is why, so this is why doing relaxation techniques decreases blood pressure. Because you’re, you’re opening up blood vessels, quite literally, to so many different organ systems in the body that are important for recovery.

And so guess what? Your blood pressure comes down because it doesn’t think it needs to be, it doesn’t think you’re being chased by a lion and need to have your blood pressure high. That’s when you need to have your blood pressure high is when you’re being chased by a lion, right? It doesn’t need to be high the rest of the time.  And so our, our stress response system is constantly being regulated in the background for these purposes, but it’s up to us to remind ourselves or use technology. Or tools like [00:21:00] breathing and techniques like breathing, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, all of these things to remind ourselves when we’re not actually in a survival situation, so that our bodies can recover and heal.  And then what’s beautiful about this system is your body starts to actually heal itself, which is really just stunningly incredible.

Dr. Weitz: When it comes to vibrations, do all people respond the same way to the same types of vibrations or is it an individual response?

Dr. Rabin: Well, there’s always some variability with stimulation, right?  In all kinds of stimulation are variable, but most people, for instance, so we’re talking about like vibration of all spectrums. Think about like sunlight, right? Sunlight is a very high frequency vibration. It’s when you, when most people experience sunlight, most people, if not, everyone feels good.

Dr. Weitz: Okay.

Dr. Rabin: Right. So that’s like one of the more universally positive reactions to vibration. Music little more [00:22:00] variability, right? Some people have certain kinds of music they really hate. Other people have certain kinds of music they really like. My parents get recovery responses when they listen to classical music and show tunes.  They get stressed out when they hear house music, right? But if you look at what music is most popular in the world. It’s actually house music for dance, for dancing and, and human interaction. It’s house music. Why is house music so popular is a question that people in my generation and above ask all the time.  Why are so many people into house music? There’s a scientific reason for it. It’s because the beats per minute of house music, the rhythm of house music is very, very similar to, if not the most similar of all the kinds of music we hear. To the rhythm of the blood flow in the womb, right? Interesting. So think about that.  It’s a sub, completely subconscious experience. When you listen to music, a song you like, you’re not saying, Oh, it’s because I reminds me of the [00:23:00] womb, right? You’re, you’re, you just like start moving and your body starts doing its thing. 

Dr. Weitz: What I mean, is that deliberate?

Dr. Rabin:  Nobody knows that, right? Do they? No, I mean, you know, people have studied music, people who study music know it.  But, but the, but the people who first started making house music didn’t know it. They just made music that people like, like any producer. Right? They just made music that they like. They know they like it. And I think that’s what’s so interesting, is there’s a subconscious thing happening where with, especially with music, we notice that We, we experience it all the time, but we don’t necessarily notice it, which is that the body knows what it likes and touch is very similar, right?  So touch is less variable than music on the lower end of the spectrum. Most people who have their hand held by somebody they trust really like it. Or like if you, if, if your crush holds your hand. Is that an experience that anybody ever dislikes? Usually not, right? [00:24:00] It’d be very strange if your crush held your hand and you were like, Ew, gross, right?

Like you never hear that happening. Same with hugs. If you get a hug from somebody you trust, or, or you snuggle a pet, almost everyone universally likes that experience. And so, the, the question is where, when you’re talking about vibration, like how do you deliver the right thing to the body where the body doesn’t.

Become aversive to it, meaning it doesn’t recoil and music is tricky because again, music has a melody. It has a base. It has a middle, a midsection has all these different instruments and rhythms that has vocals. And so music can polarize people one way or the other. And so It actually, for a lot of reasons, is not ideal as a therapy, even though it can be very therapeutic when it’s chosen properly in the right setting light, super therapeutic if used properly, especially sunlight.

We know and touch low frequency sound, like sound vibrations that [00:25:00] induce touch, which is what Apollo is. almost everyone responds the same way, which is really interesting. I would say about 5 percent of people that we exposed to Apollo, we’ve had over 150, 000 people using it to dates since we last spoke.

And only about 5 percent of people respond differently to the vibrations than the norm. Most people fall into the norm, and the norm is that if you’re using it properly and you feel the gentle waves of vibration, like if you were to download the app and feel it on your phone right now, most people respond the same way, which is that they feel relaxed, calm, their heart rate starts to come down, their breath rate starts to slow down, and they feel a little more at ease and present in their bodies, and the reason why that is is because we designed it based on how The body responds to touch, not how the body responds to music.  So Apollo is sound waves. It is music, but it’s composed for your touch receptor system instead of your ears. And our ears are much more picky [00:26:00] than our touch receptor system. And so that’s how Apollo is able to affect people in such similar ways, regardless of your background or size, effectively.

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Dr. Weitz: I’ve really been enjoying this discussion, but I just want to take a few minutes to tell you about a product that I’m very excited about.  Imagine a device that can help you manage stress. Improve your sleep and boost your focus all without any effort on your part. The Apollo wearable is designed to just to do just that created by neuroscientists and physicians. This innovative device uses gentle vibrations to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, helping you feel calmer.  More focused and better rested among the compelling reasons to use the Apollo wearable are that users experience a 40 percent reduction in stress and anxiety patients feel that they can sleep. There’s sleep improves up to additional 30 minutes of sleep per night. It helps you to boost your focus and concentration and it’s scientifically backed.  And the best part is you can get all these benefits with a special $40 discount by using the promo code whites. W E I T Z my last name at checkout to enjoy these savings. So go to Apollo neuro and use the promo code weitz today. And now back to our discussion

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Dr. Weitz:  Heart rate variability. This is something that Apollo Neuro helps to improve.  This is related to recovery from athletic performance and ability to be successful. Can you talk about heart rate variability and how Apollo can help with this?

Dr. Rabin: Sure. So, so heart rate variability. Since we were just talking about the vagus nerve, right? The vagus nerve being the critical nerve of recovery in the body.  Right. So heart rate variability is our best measure of your vagus nerve activity. It doesn’t look at anything else other than vagus nerve activity. That’s like the main thing. 

Dr. Weitz: By the way, when you talk about vagal nerve, I know you say it doesn’t matter where you Put it, but could you put it like where the vagal nerve is?  And would that have an additional potential benefit by stimulate? Can you physically stimulate like the vagal nerve?

Dr. Rabin: Yeah, absolutely. But, but the vagus nerve is

Dr. Weitz: like devices, like electrical devices. And we’ve used red light therapy directly over the vagal nerve to help patients with, for example, gut problems for sure.

Dr. Rabin: Yes, that’s all true. And the main way [00:29:00] that you activate the vagus nerve through one of the, what’s called, it’s called an afferent site, A F F E R E N T, is through like through the neck or through the inside of the outside of the ear or by implanting a device into the body that stimulates the vagus nerve directly is by using electricity. And electricity is very useful to activate the vagus nerve, but it activates the vagus nerve very strongly. And when you activate the vagus nerve very directly and strongly by actually sending a signal straight to the vagus nerve, you do increase heart rate variability in the moment, and you do slow heart rate, but you can also have side effects, like You, when you increase anything too much, you can have side effects, so you can over sedate people, people become too tired, they can pass out, people can have what’s called orthostatic hypotension, so they stand up and then their heart rate doesn’t catch up and they pass out people can get headaches, they can get dizzy there’s lots of other things that can happen, you can burn the [00:30:00] skin, right, or you have to have surgery for doing an implant vagal nerve simulator.

Right. Right. So that category of vagal nerve stimulator is very important and it’s actually the foundation of our field of vagus nerve study is electrical stimulation of that nerve. But the that category of device that uses electricity to do that is called direct Vagus nerve stimulation meaning it’s hitting the nerve directly.

It’s all straight on the nerve Okay, that form of vagus nerve stimulation has side effects because it’s very strong You can only use it for about 20 to 40 minutes max a day for instance And you can’t use it when you’re doing other things. It’s very hard to focus on anything else when you’re actively Directly stimulating the vagus nerve.

So when we were working on this Direct vagus nerve stimulation was one of the leading new treatments for PTSD when we were working on Apollo, and so we thought well Why aren’t more people using this and then we realized there were side effects from it And you can’t do other things when you’re using it.

You have to take time out of your [00:31:00] day and And there were, and it’s also, you know, shocks your skin. So at that time, the only devices that did that mostly were FDA clearance devices, which require a prescription. And so there were lots of barriers and issues with that treatment. And so we thought, well, what if there’s a way a vagus nerve activity activation is so important and health of the vagus nerve is so important.

Then maybe we can activate it indirectly, right through not hitting it right at the source, but to hitting in other parts of the body because the vagus nerve goes everywhere in your body. It literally innervates your entire body. So that’s, that’s why somebody holding your hand where there’s no technically no vagus nerve receptors, somebody holds your hand and you like that person, you vagus nerve because Your positive touch receptors in your hand or positive signaling of your touch receptors in your hand is sending a signal to your emotional brain that says, Hey, I like this feeling.

And then that activates the vagus nerves to the brain and then the brain stem. So there’s all these other ways to get to the vagus nerve. And [00:32:00] so we thought, well, Let’s look at indirect vagus nerve stimulation and see if that can be delivered on the go for people without taking time out of their day.

And that’s how we actually, one of the ways we actually discovered Apollo was because we forced ourselves to look outside of the traditional electrical stimulators, but HRV heart rate variability, not just in the moment, but over time is a major indicator of success because if you’re doing yoga, deep breathing, biofeedback Regular healthy meditation practice, getting regular healthy exercise, you, or any kind of vagus nerve toning technique, any techniques that regularly improve the health of your vagus nerve, you will see heart rate variability go up, not necessarily in the moment, sometimes in the moment if you have a Lab grade EKG machine, but definitely over time if you do them over time and the more the higher your HRV, the reason why this metric is interesting is because it’s the best way for us to measure vagus nerve activity and now we have [00:33:00] studies of HRV showing in the population that if you have low heart rate variability, then you’re more likely to get sick.

You’re less likely to recover quickly if you get sick. You’re more likely to get injured in athletic pursuits. You’re more likely to make mistakes at work. You’re less likely to live a long, healthy life. And the opposite is true if your HRV is high, meaning if your vagus nerve activity is high, And you’re well recovered, you’re well, you’re sleeping well on a regular basis, sleep being the number one way we improve heart rate variability and vagus nerve activity.

So if you’re getting, if your HRV is high on a regular basis and trending upward, doesn’t mean high today necessarily, but trending up over time, that means that your recovery is getting better, you’re more likely. To function and close to your peak, you’re more likely to overcome and resist illness if you get sick, and you’re more likely to live a long, healthy life.

HRV is now one of the leading biomarkers of longevity and healthspan, so [00:34:00] it’s critically important. And up until this point, there’s never been devices or technology that have helped to improve vagus nerve tone and heart rate variability. What we call passively, like in the background without you having to do anything, you always had to do something.

You always had to take time out of your day, go meditate, go breathe properly, go sit in this breathing apparatus, go sit in a float tank, right? Go do these things. And very few people, we don’t acknowledge this a lot, but very few people actually have the time. to go and do those things on a regular basis.

It’s hard. And so, and it can be frustrating. And so, we thought, well, like, let’s, let’s focus on making things that don’t require a lot of time. And it’s hard to do that too, but if we can do it, it’s a huge win. And so, we tested different vibrations, different sound waves that increase heart rate variability in double blind randomized placebo controlled trials in the lab to try to understand what [00:35:00] rhythms Do the touch receptors respond to that increase heart rate variability just like getting a hug?

And it turns out that there are very specific slow wave rhythms that are between five and seven breaths per minute, which is important because if you were to breathe at five to seven breaths per minute, in fact, if any human on the face of the earth was to breathe at five to seven breaths per minute for a, for like 120 seconds, you would increase your heart rate variability.  Immediately. That’s really cool, right? That’s like the the cheapest, easiest way to boost your health in the moment and to help yourself feel calm and relaxed. So we thought, well, maybe there’s something special about this 5 to 7 times per minute rhythm. And so we started to explore that rhythm with sound and then that ultimately proved to be true That you can use.

You don’t need to breathe that rhythm. If you send that rhythm to the body, the body will figure it out. It recognizes that rhythm just like listening to a song that you like and you [00:36:00] start to dance automatically that your body likes that rhythm and it starts to breathe at that rhythm automatically. And then when you breathe at that rhythm automatically, your heart rate variability goes up and you feel better.

And that continues over time. So that was a really important discovery that we published in the first study was a double blind, randomized, placebo controlled trial published at the University of Pittsburgh in, I want to say like it was 2021 that showed for the very first time that you can send these vibrations to the body.  From Apollo and your HRV goes up significantly and that had never been shown before. So that was the first, that was the first of many studies that have now shown this. And it’s exciting because it’s a new era for mental and physical health that we can use technology to augment our well being without putting so much work into it.

Dr. Weitz: And this is also, this would be a good anti aging marker, wouldn’t it? HRV.

Dr. Rabin: Well, that’s what’s coming out now. So the most recent data around, this is from [00:37:00] epidemiological studies, which means, fancy science word for population based, large population based studies have shown that if you, if you look at populations where people live the longest and have the healthiest longest lives.  The blue zones. Yeah, like the blue zones. The people who live the longest in blue zones have the highest heart rate variability. So that is interesting. We never known that before. But that is just, it’s not, it’s not causal, but it’s another clue that suggests that having high vagus nerve activity and doing activities that increase our vagus nerve activity, getting a good night’s sleep, exercising regularly, Eating healthy, all the things we teach, we tell people are important, right?

This is not, shouldn’t be news to people, but this is just evidence that all the things we tell people are important, including living a low stress lifestyle, are critical to living a long, healthy life. Right. And the more that we do all of those things, the better. It’s not just, there’s no, there’s no silver bullet for health [00:38:00] and longevity.  It’s, you try to do as many things that reduce your stress as possible, and you’ll increase your chances of living a long, healthy life as much as possible.

Dr. Weitz: I, I was reading somewheres where you were talking about some of your studies or, and you were mentioning how there aren’t a lot of biomarkers to track with stress.  What about salivary cortisol levels that can be measured throughout the day? Is that something that could be correlated and see improvements using the Apollo?

Dr. Rabin: So, yes, but salivary cortisol. So, so HRV is by far the heart rate variability is by far the easiest, best biomarker to track around stress. The reason why is because you can track it with one of these.  Or, or with one of these, right? You don’t have to spit into a tube or do [00:39:00] anything. Yeah, no lab tests. So one, it’s a one time fee for each of these things, right? You just wear it and then you can track it over time and you get the, you get the day daily results, and you get the overtime results. And it’s not a hundred percent accurate, but it’s like 90% accurate if you’re wearing the devices properly and using them properly over, not in the day, not day to day resolution, but.

Weeks and months resolution, you’re looking to like a 90 percent accuracy, which is pretty darn good. Yeah. Now, let’s look at salivary cortisol, right? Salivary cortisol is challenging because we love, you know, in Western medicine, we love labs. But, but, but salivary cortisol I love labs. Yeah, no, they’re great for certain things, but they have their downsides.  And one of the downsides of salivary cortisol, or measuring cortisol in the urine or in your blood or in any way, is that your cortisol levels change every, like throughout the day. There’s a normal cortisol cycle. 

Dr. Weitz: But that’s the advantage of the salivary measurement is you can do it multiple times. You can, you know, you can do it when you first get up and see the cortisol awakening response.  You can see it in the morning, afternoon, evening. Right. But how much does it cost to run each of those tests?

Dr. Rabin: I mean, everything costs, right?

Dr. Weitz:  Yeah, sure. I mean, it is a box to do a panel.

Dr. Rabin: Right. And then you and then you have one day’s worth. Right. Of data. Right? So you’ve paid the same amount as you paid for an Oura ring for one day’s worth of data.  Right. And then you have to do that to get an actually accurate assessment if you’re a man. Right. If you’re a man, to get an accurate assessment that’s useful, you need at least two weeks of that. 14 times, three times 300 Right. Is a lot of money. I see. Right. It’s not, it’s not cost effective for a healthcare system to deli, to, to assess stress in that way.  If it, if you’re looking at a woman’s stress, you have to do it for at least a month because of their menstrual cycle. [00:41:00] 

Dr. Weitz: Right. Well, yeah, we, we, we, we could talk for about 12 hours about how non cost effective our healthcare system is.

Dr. Rabin: Right. Oh, yeah, for sure. But I think to your point, like they’re like, you know, there’s lots of different lab grade measures we can do that are that have been around for a while that Interesting.  But they’re not repeatable. They don’t give you immediate feedback, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. And they also have a decent margin of error. So like, if like me as a, as a physician, if I was going to say, I need to assess somebody’s stress level and do it in a cost effective way, that’s going to give me the data I need quickly.

I would tell them, buy an Oura ring and let’s track your heart rate, your heart rate variability, your respiratory rate, your activity levels, because it’s one of the most accurate and you’re going to just wear that every single day for. 30 days and then wear that and then keep wearing it for a couple more months and then we’ll introduce interventions and we’ll watch your HRV go up and we’ll watch your sleep go up and we’ll watch your heart resting heart rate come down [00:42:00] and to me, you know, not just from the money, the money is a big piece of it because a lot of people don’t have the money to pay for all those tests and insurance doesn’t cover them, but that is revolutionary for health care quality delivery because I can then look at your data.

Yeah. Real time through the ordering portal, I can look at your data and I can see, Hey, by the way, you just had a week where your HRV dropped by 10%. You need more sleep and I don’t need them to come into the office. Tell me that, but I do need them to spit a significant amount of saliva into a cup multiple times and then send it to a lab and have a lab run it and then sending the data and then I need to review the data and compare it to all the past.

I mean, it’s like a huge hassle to do that. I can give an assessment and feedback right away with technology. And I think that is that’s the real exciting piece about the future of where we’re going as a field that we’ve never had the opportunity for before because we didn’t have technology that was this advanced.

Now we [00:43:00] have such advanced technology for measurement and therapy delivery. That we can start to combine the two and actually personalize medicine to the individual, which we started to do in Apollo with smart vibes, where we’re using AI to actually personalize the experience to you and you can watch your biometrics go up because if I don’t have to be involved and you don’t have to pay me, that saves you even more money, right?

Dr. Weitz: So the Apollo improves sleep. I understand total sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep. Improving all of those parameters is pretty amazing.

Dr. Rabin: Yeah, well, that’s what Vegas that’s what doing Vegas nerve activity or improving Vegas nerve activity does right if you if you do 30 minutes of meditation a day, you 2030 minutes of healthy exercise.  If you do deep breathing every single day, you’re boosting your Vegas nerve activity every single day. Your deep sleep, your REM sleep and your total sleep time will increase about as much as what you get from Apollo. If you combine those activities, you can [00:44:00] get it even higher. But that’s the benefit of the vagus nerve activation is because sleep is our most vulnerable state, right?

Like in REM and deep sleep, we’re basically paralyzed. And so we’re physically vulnerable to anything in the environment. That could come our way. So when our body senses threat around bedtime or sleep, even subtle things like the thought that there might be something wrong with me, that I can’t sleep when everybody else can.

Well, guess what? That’s not true because everybody’s having trouble sleeping, but it’s because of those thoughts that make it hard for us to sleep because they make us afraid. Of ourselves, if you believe there’s something wrong with you, then your body becomes an unsafe place, psychologically speaking, and then it resists dropping into deep and REM sleep stages.

So that’s where a lot of psychotherapy and sleep practices come in is just helping and vagal practices. They help you feel safe in your own body. And when your body feels safe, all of a [00:45:00] sudden. It conks out because it wants to sleep desperately. Our bodies want to sleep for all of us, like 99. 99 percent of humans.

We were built to and born to sleep for a third of our entire lives. A third, right? How much do we actually sleep is much less than that. Right. But we were evolved and built to sleep for that much time. So it’s really more about allowing ourselves to access those deep sleep stages by helping and reminding our bodies to feel safe.

That is what the vagus nerve vagus nerve practices do. And so that’s why we saw those effects with Apollo, which we actually saw by chance because we didn’t design Apollo to do that. We designed Apollo to help you focus during the day, but then people were sending us their data from wearables saying, Hey, this just gave me 30 more minutes.

Of sleep at night and we saw this across like thousand people and we’re like, okay, we got to run a study and then we ran the study and the preliminary results showed what you just described, [00:46:00] but the full study is coming out in the next couple months showing a very significant improvements in sleep like Two times what you’d get from a pharmaceutical sleep aid just by wearing Apollo to help you wind down at the end of the day and during the night.

Dr. Weitz: Vagal nerve controls gut motility, and there are a lot of patients with gut motility problems. Some of the most common conditions like IBS, reflux, etc., there’s often a problem with the motility component. Have you researched the ability to track Improvements in gut motility with using the Apollo.

Dr. Rabin: We have not researched that yet.  That’s one of our areas that we have not looked into. We have started some studies looking at microbiome and the health of the microbiome, but those studies are really expensive. So they’re still in the works. I think the. [00:47:00] It’s it’s hard to say what would happen. I mean because a lot of it also has to do with your diet And so even if you’re calming your body, but you’re eating the same bad diet Your gut health may not improve significantly, so there may, you know, there’s, there’s many, yeah, of course,

Dr. Weitz: there’s definitely the dietary component, but separately stimulating gut motility is a big deal that device on the market that you swallow and you have to swallow one every day that uses vibrations to stimulate gut motility.  Oh, is there really? Yeah. Oh, that’s fascinating. Dr. Satish Rao developed it.

Dr. Rabin: Oh, wow. I’ll have to check that out. That’s really, that’s really interesting. But I could, I could imagine that working for people because you know.

Dr. Weitz: If you could just use the Apollo and not have to swallow this device every day, which.

Dr. Rabin: You know, yeah, well, well, I think suffice to say, to your point [00:48:00] doing the evidence supports that if you have healthy vagus nerve activity, regardless of Apollo, because I can’t tell you if Apollo improves gut health or not, we don’t have that data, but if you improve your vagus nerve activity with these other practices that we’ve been talking about, then your gut motility will get healthier and you will absorb more of your food, Because when you’re stressed out, your gut motility often slows up and speeds down and you get a speed slows down and speeds up and you get this IBS type response in irritable bowel syndrome, which is now extremely common.  We see this all the time. And irritable bowel syndrome is alternating constipation and diarrhea. That is often almost always worsened by stress. 

Dr. Weitz: And so add to that millions of people now who are taking medications to help them lose weight that act by slowing gut motility. Yeah,  that’s true. So Apollo could be very beneficial for them.

Dr. Rabin:  So it could stay tuned for those studies and they come out. Hopefully, hopefully to be published. I think, I think with that study, we’ll hopefully publish this year or next year, the gut motility study.

Dr. Weitz: Oh, so you have a gut motility study

Dr. Rabin: coming? Oh, sorry. Sorry. Microbiome study. We don’t have a gut motility study.  It’s a microbiome study.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah.

Dr. Rabin: Because you see the microbiome in the gut also changes when we’re experiencing stress and that’s, that has a lot to do with gut motility. And so this particular study did not look at motility. It looked at the microbiome, but the microbiome study will hopefully be coming out in the next.  Yeah. 

Dr. Weitz: You should talk to Dr. Pimentel at Cedars about doing a study on the gut motility. I just interviewed him. Oh, that’s a great idea. I’d love to chat with him. Okay, cool. So, I think it’s time to probably wrap up. What about final thoughts?

Dr. Rabin: I just really appreciate you [00:50:00] for having me on the show.  Grateful again to, to catch up. I think the, you know, the, when, when will this be aired by the way? In about a month. Oh, in about a month. Oh, well, in that case, I have a new, I have a new product. I can tell everyone about so. Okay, cool. Yeah. So maybe I’ll, I’ll restart that final thought section. You can edit this out.  So. Yes, it’s so one thing that we have. It’s very exciting. That’s coming in is and that actually should be available right now. It’s called Apollo sessions. It is a mobile app only version of Apollo. Most people look at our website. They look at me wearing this wearable on this interview and they say, Oh, that’s just a wearable tech.  Another wearable technology. As you’ve heard us discuss, Apollo is very different than your standard wearable. It actually impacts your body through vibration. And so, we, over the years, developed Apollo not just to be, to work through our wearable. We, we figured out how to use other technology in your life that [00:51:00] vibrates to deliver Apollo to you.

And so Apollo vibrations. And so if you’re listening to this and you have an iPhone, you can go to the app store, you can download the Apollo neuro app, and you can just open the app and it will play an Apollo vibe for you that increases your Vegas nerve tone just by holding it to your chest and feeling the vibrations.  And by the time you hear this this, that mobile app will be available to you. To subscribe, and you can actually get Apollo vibrations scientifically backed on your iPhone as a free upgrade on us to give you calm, soothing, science backed benefits of vagal nerve improvement in instantly on your iPhone.

And then if you want to upgrade to the premium version, you can, and you can get. Full access to many different vibration patterns that improve Vegas nerve tone for different activities. But the main, we really wanted to make Apollo more accessible because wearables are expensive and they’re not for everyone.  I’m just thinking about the cost benefit and, and the [00:52:00] challenges that many people are having, you know, you mentioned the L. A fires. A lot of people are, Are really struggling right now financially and otherwise. And so we made Apollo the core core of Apollo for free now for everyone. Thanks to, you know, tons of work, years of work and great innovations in technology.  And if you have an iPhone, you can try it right now. And if you like it, upgrade and we love love your support and please reach out to me and tell me what you think. I’d love to hear from you. And you can find me on socials at Doctor David Rabin. On Instagram and Twitter and at my website drdave. io or apollo.clinic. And you can find Apollo Neuro at apolloneuro.com or wearablehugs.com, which is what the kids call it.

Dr. Weitz: Thank you so much. It’s my pleasure.

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Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would very much appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five star ratings and review.  As you may know, I continue to accept a limited number of new patients per month for functional medicine. If you would like help. Overcoming a gut or other chronic health condition and want to prevent chronic problems and want to promote longevity. Please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310 395 3111.  And we can set you up for a consultation for functional medicine. And I will talk to everybody next week.