[00:00:01] Luke: Dan, great to see you again, my friend.

[00:00:04] Dan: Likewise.

[00:00:06] Luke: Now, as someone who's been working on my sleep for the past, I don't know, 25-plus years, one of the tools that I applied along the way were these breathe free, I think that's what they're called, nasal strips-- these little stickers that you put over your nose to open your nose wider if you're an inbred, domesticated European like I am. And those have been very helpful. So maybe take me back in your career a little bit about what you had to do with that particular company.

[00:00:37] Dan: Well, actually the person who invented it, his name is Bruce Johnson, and he knew my VP of operations. And so he came in one day to meet with me, and he brought in a prototype, which was actually nothing more than a Curad bandaid with a strip of plastic glued on top of it. And as soon as I saw it, in my mind, I could see how the product ought to look.

[00:01:11] We named it Breathe Right. I licensed it. We were already a public company, and we were high tech medical. So my board of directors, if they could have, they would've fired me at that point for licensing a consumer product. But we launched it. And Proctor and Gamble tried to buy us before we launched it, but we didn't sell, and we took it out. And we used football players, and it was very successful.

[00:01:43] Luke: How much does breathing and oxygen play into our quality of sleep?

[00:01:48] Dan: Well, a fair amount. Obviously, you need a certain amount of oxygen to really perform all the functions of the body. So that's key. Breathing when it's disrupted will cause awakening, particularly in something like obstructive sleep apnea. So that's a big deal. But usually, the things that disrupt sleep as you get older are more intrinsic to the sleep mechanism in terms of losing deep sleep. And also, stress. Those are probably the two biggest problems. People that have stress and hold it can't sleep well. And then the loss of deep sleep as we age.

[00:02:36] Luke: How'd you get into the sleep game in the first place? Were you someone like me that realized as you get older that your sleep tends to get worse and worse, and at the same time you need it more and more?

[00:02:46] Dan: No. Actually, I got into it at a young age. I was probably in my early 30s, and as a company, we were making brainwave monitors to help prevent strokes during high-risk surgery. And then a friend of mine said, "The equipment you have can be used in sleep labs as well."

[00:03:07] And at the time, there were only 300 sleep labs in the world. And so I went and visited one, and I'm a neurologist, so it wasn't foreign for me. And I saw what they were doing, and I said, "We could automate this process for you." Because it was taking four to six hours for a technician to read through the half a mile of paper that they collect during the night. And so we got into that business, and we automated it. We ended up computerizing the whole process, and we took the four hours down to one minute in terms of analysis.

[00:03:43] Luke: How much credence do you give to our current wearables? Now, I know with your company, SOLTEC, I've got a wearable on right here so that I could demonstrate it during our conversation. But years ago, when the Oura Ring came out, and then I think the Whoop, or whatever it's called, the wristband, it became a thing in the wellness industry, people tracking their sleep.

[00:04:05] And it's been incredibly advantageous to me because I like the idea of gamifying something and competing with myself to see how much I can improve a performance, even if it's something as non-performance seeming as sleep. What do you think about the accuracy of some of these other devices?

[00:04:25] No need to throw anyone under the bus, but I think we can speak honestly. If somebody's using an Oura Ring, do you think that's giving them a realistic data set of what's really happening when they go to sleep?

[00:04:38] Dan: Well, I think there's two ways to look at this. One is, are you going to get the same level of accuracy as you would in a sleep lab? And I can tell you unequivocably, the answer is no. But when you go to a sleep lab, you go for one night, and you go there typically for diagnostic purposes. And so the level of accuracy versus a sleep lab is considerably lower.

[00:05:06] I'd say you're going to get probably 70% accuracy by and large compared to a sleep lab. What's really nice about the wearables is, although they're not as accurate, because they don't take all the measurements that a sleep lab takes, you get to see what happens with you night after night. And as a result you can see, am I getting better? Am I getting worse?

[00:05:34] And I think that's more important for general fitness, health and wellness, those kinds of things. It's one thing to say, "Hey, I want to know whether or not I have sleep apnea." Then you go to a sleep lab. "Or do I have narcolepsy?" Or "Is my insomnia due to some other reason that a sleep lab can detect?"

[00:05:53] That's when the professional sleep labs are really important. But remember, they measure brainwaves. They measure eye movements, chin-muscle activity, and so their sleep staging is as good as it's going to be. Although even in a sleep lab, when they looked at inter lab reliability, that was 90%.

[00:06:12] So I figure that's best case. And so even if you're getting 60 or 70% from a wearable, that's not terrible. And usually, the wearables are going to be pretty accurate in some of the sleep stages that are most important to track, particularly deep sleep and to some extent, dream sleep. We call REM sleep for rapid eye movement.

[00:06:35] And they'll be a little less accurate with REM sleep than with deep sleep. But deep sleep, they should be reasonably good. I haven't tested all of them. I know how ours works, and I know how it works in terms of deep sleep, dream sleep. But you're going to get the biggest discrepancy between the wearables and a sleep lab in wake versus the other stages like light sleep or REM sleep. So you're going to get a little less accuracy there.

[00:07:11] Luke: Got it. Okay. But over time, I guess what you're saying is we're able to see trends in our sleep patterns. And I think for me, I've been able to determine, for example, if I'm taking a certain supplement that might be stimulating and I take it too late in the day, I'll notice that my sleep score is less than it is on days when I don't.

[00:07:32] Or if I do take melatonin or other relaxing herbs or sleep formulas, it's a good way to tell whether or not they're moving the needle. Likewise sleeping cold has been a huge improvement ever since I got the first iteration of the Chilipad. Now I think it's called the Dock Pro.

[00:07:50] And literally, I don't know how I ever slept without one of those things, especially living in Texas. So I think the wearables like the Oura Ring have been useful for me over time just to see if any of the inputs that I'm applying are actually moving the needle or not in the positive direction or the negative.

[00:08:08] But I got to say, and I'm not just blowing smoke here, since I got your technology, you probably know when it was I feel like it's been a few months, if not a year or something like that, that I got the SOLTEC-- not only have I, whether it's your wristband or-- I also sleep with my Oura Ring too just to see HRV and things like that.

[00:08:29] My sleep quality in terms of deep sleep has gone up dramatically. And I know we've got some data that we can show here in a few minutes, but what I've noticed is, because I'm getting so much more deep sleep, and I don't know how much of this is placebo and how much is reality, but it seems like it matters less the number of hours of sleep I get than it used to.

[00:08:50] And I'm used to waking up and going, "Oh man, I only got six and a half or seven hours, and I feel like I'm going to be tired today." And then I'm not, because I got two and a half or three hours of deep sleep where I might've gotten 20 minutes before, before I was using SOLTEC.

[00:09:03] So how much does specifically deep sleep affect our performance and our energy levels the following day and so on?

[00:09:12] Dan: Deep sleep is definitely the most important stage of sleep. And the way we know that is there have been a number of studies performed on sleep deprivation. And so imagine you haven't slept in a couple of nights and then all of a sudden you sleep. It only makes sense that the stage that rebounds the most is the most important.

[00:09:38] And what we've seen is, the first stage to rebound in a major way is deep sleep. Then the second most important stage of sleep is dream sleep. And so you're absolutely right. Deep sleep is the most important, but it's the most important for physical restoration. That's what's so key. Let's face it. Humans are still human animals.

[00:10:06] We've got a body. We've got a physical body. It evolved from lower creatures, and we have all the same stuff that these other creatures have, and you need physical restoration. It's very primal. And deep sleep provides so many important functions that need restoration every day.

[00:10:33] Luke: Talk to me about some of the other influences. I mentioned temperature, and what I'd like to talk about is anything you know about-- well, temperature, if you have anything to add to that. And I think why that's important to me is there were years I was sleeping poorly and had no idea just because I was hot. And I was waking up due to overheating, and I had no idea, from sleeping on crappy mattresses.

[00:10:58] But then of course, now, thankfully, people are becoming more aware of the impact of light, of looking at an iPad or looking at your phone before you go to bed and blasting yourself with blue light or just having lights on in the room. What can you tell us about temperature, light, and anything else that would impact our sleep negatively or positively?

[00:11:16] Dan: Well, temperature is a big factor. It's better to sleep in a cooler environment because when you overheat, that will tend to wake you up. It's also particularly for women with perimenopausal symptoms and hot flashes, or even men who are uncertain anti-cancer drugs for prostate, hot flashes, very terrible to sleep with.

[00:11:43] And so cooling is extremely beneficial if overheating wakes you up. Now, there are some people like me, for instance, I have a difficult time falling asleep if I'm too cold. And my wife loves the house being really cool. And so sometimes I have to go to bed wearing my bathrobe just to be warm enough to fall asleep.

[00:12:07] So it works both way. You need to be comfortable enough to fall asleep. But then I really like it when I'm warm enough. And it is cold, then I sleep better. So cool is better for sleeping as long as you can fall asleep.

[00:12:23] Luke: I wonder if the temperature has anything to do with us evolving as hunter-gatherer people sleeping on the ground. That over the eons, we're used to having a cooler temperature taking the heat out of the body when we slept at night before we had things like mattresses, and houses, and whatnot.

[00:12:41] Dan: Yeah, I strongly suspect that's the case. Let's face it. Our genetic codes haven't evolved beyond hunter-gatherer state.

[00:12:53] Luke: Then what about our light environment? This is something that I'm just like, zero tolerance, non-negotiable, wearing my Gilded-- I created a blue-blocking eyewear line, actually, just because I'm so obsessed with blocking blue light at night. So in our house, it's either amber or red bulbs at night.

[00:13:13] And if I have to have the amber ones on for people to be able to see their way around and not bump into things, then I definitely have my blue blocking glasses on from the moment the sun goes down until I literally put my head on the pillow. And that's been hugely impactful. What's your experience or knowledge about different temperatures and intensities of light as they affect our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep?

[00:13:35] Dan: Well, light is key. If you're staying up late at night and you've got your computer screen on and you're watching a movie or whatever, and the sun's gone down four hours ago, you're battling against your normal circadian rhythm. Our bodies evolved in an environment where, when the sun went down, there was no light.

[00:14:00] And that's what your brain is used to. And it's like, okay, it's time for bed. And when you disrupt that scheduling, it's going to have an effect on your circadian rhythm. This is one of the reasons why, also, it's so important to try to go to bed at about the same time every night.

[00:14:18] Luke: Another thing I've noticed is the cortisol effect. If I, for example, work too late at night because I might be on a creative role and 7 o'clock rolls around, I'm like, "Oh man, I just want to finish this last thing," and maybe I work until 9:00, and then I try to go to sleep at 10:30 or 11, I'm going to lay there for two hours tossing and turning.

[00:14:41] Whereas if I would've stopped work at 6:00 and had a bit of a wind down period, the minute I go to bed, I fall asleep and stay asleep. What do you think about, being a neurologist, the brainwaves? Are we stuck in a beta brainwave, like a higher brainwave frequency if we tend to stay active and thinking and busy, even if it's not something particularly stressful?

[00:15:06] Dan: Yes and no. Okay. There's an aspect of it that you've hit on that is the thinking brain. So if you have the thinking brain on and you can't turn it off, then obviously you're fighting the need to go to sleep. So there is an element there. However, that touches on another aspect.

[00:15:31] Now, you may say that that's not necessarily stressful, but depends what you're thinking about. If you're going to bed at night and then all of a sudden you've been watching this movie and then you can't fall asleep because you're revved up, you have to say, "Wait a minute, why am I revved up?" Especially if you watch an action movie and then you say, "I'm going to hop into bed now."

[00:15:56] Well, that's really no different as far as your body is concerned than stress. Because you might have your adrenaline going, your cortisol going, and so the part of the brain that regulates stress is actually, believe it or not, the same part of the brain that regulates sleep. And it's a very, very primitive part. As a neurologist, I have to show you my brain.

[00:16:22] Luke: Oh, cool.

[00:16:24] Dan: But this is the brainstem. This is a very primitive part of the brain. And this area right here regulates stress and sleep. So this area is responsible for reducing stress, if you can, or going into deep sleep. They use the same frequencies in this area of the brain, which is very much different from the frequency that you see in brainwaves. This is a very low frequency. It's around between 0.15 cycles per second and 0.25 cycles per second. So it's really low.

[00:16:59] Brainwaves, when you're talking about beta, you're at 13 cycles per second and higher. So they're very different phenomenon. But if this part is thinking, it will influence this part, and it will keep it from going into deep sleep. I see a lot of records, sleep records, where this part is saying, "Go to sleep," and we want you to go into deep sleep, and this part is saying, "No, I don't feel like it."

[00:17:30] And so you won't go into deep sleep in that situation. Now, on the other hand, if you do go into deep sleep, then you hit that restorative phase, which is what you need. Let's come back at some point to what you were describing earlier about sleep compression. If you get that good deep sleep, why are you sleeping a little less? Because that's an important thing.

[00:17:54] But before we even go there, let's talk about the two most common reasons people don't sleep well, particularly as they age.

[00:18:05] There are two major reasons as we age as to why we don't sleep as well. And they pretty much affect everybody. One is the loss of deep sleep as we age. This is a natural phenomenon.

[00:18:25] We start to have a decrease in deep sleep starting in about the age of 18 to 20. And by the time you reach your mid to late 40s, you've already lost 60 to 70% of your deep sleep. And that really disrupts your sleep patterns overnight. Your sleep becomes more fragmented, and you have a lot more wake during the night.

[00:18:49] So overall, everything deteriorates in your sleep. Your deep sleep goes down, which is necessary for restoration, and basically, your overall sleep time diminishes. And so what occurs is a very less productive sleep period where there's less restoration, there's less deep sleep, and there's more fragmentation, and that's why you feel crappy the next day.

[00:19:17] The next part is stress. Everybody has stress to some degree, but 75 to 90% of all medical problems are either caused by or made worse by chronic stress. And same number, 75 to 90% of doctors' office visits in terms of primary care or internists, are due to stress related issues.

[00:19:40] So stress is very common. And with stress, there is a significant difficulty in either falling asleep or maintaining sleep. So then you don't sleep as long. And you, on the other hand, have an interesting situation because you recognize the fact that when you have restoration of your deep sleep, you're actually not needing as much sleep. And that's because deep sleep is so important, particularly as we get older, but we lose it, and our technology can restore it.

[00:20:18] Luke: I'm living proof of that. Like I said, I've tried so many different things to improve my sleep, and I think a lot of them have been helpful, but nothing has been this dramatic, which is why I wanted to have this conversation with you, because I want to help people understand the nature and architecture of sleep, obviously.

[00:20:41] But I'm incredibly curious as to how this thing that you created works, especially as it pertains to magnetism. And maybe a good place to jump off there would be if you could differentiate electromagnetism, which we generally would think about as negative, like non-native EMF versus magnetism itself, which is abundant in nature and is, generally speaking, good for us when it's produced by nature and not by us. So start there, and then I want to get into the more nuanced understanding of your technology.

[00:21:20] Dan: It's an interesting question that most people don't pay attention to, and they don't realize there's actually a difference between electromagnetism and magnetism. For instance, science knows the force carrier in electromagnetism; it's called the photon. It's very well understood in terms of what it is.

[00:21:46] What is the force carrier in magnetism, like an earth magnet? Science calls it the virtual photon because they've never been able to measure what the force carrier is. So number one, it's a form of energy that's not very well understood. But clearly, it's impactful. Just think about a refrigerator magnet.

[00:22:07] How does it work? Why is it holding itself to that metal? So obviously there's a force there that's in effect. When it comes to using magnetism, there's also a very, very interesting, distinction between electromagnetism and magnetism because in electromagnetism, when you get into very slow frequencies like brainwave frequencies and lower, due to the physical properties of the energy, you can't operate it at low frequencies.

[00:22:44] I don't want to get into the physics of it, but it involves Ohm's law, current, and what happens when you go to low frequencies. But the bottom line is if you use pure low frequencies with electromagnetism, your equipment will melt. And so they have to rig it up in a way where you amplitude modulate fast frequencies. And the impact of that on nervous tissue is not optimal, so it doesn't translate beautifully.

[00:23:15] On the other hand, using an earth magnet, you don't have that kind of issue. And so you can use low frequencies in a pure form. And that's what we found is so important. Because we're trying to use that to specifically target certain areas of the nervous system to support those areas.

[00:23:36] And what we're literally trying to do is speak to the nervous system in a language that it understands. And trust me, it understands magnetism because our nervous system evolved in the presence of the earth's magnetic field. And actually, that supports nervous system function.

[00:23:59] But what's interesting about the brain is you've got these more primitive structures, the spinal cord going into the brainstem. This brainstem operates at extremely low frequencies. The brain operates at much faster frequencies because as these different layers evolved in the brain, they had to operate faster because they controlled more functions below it.

[00:24:23] It's called control theory if you were an engineer. And so you need to be able to operate or affect low frequency functions if you want to get at the pacemakers of sleep as well as stress. Most people will look at our technology and say, "Oh, that's a sleep machine."

[00:24:48] And that's principally how you use it. You use it to improve your sleep. But we didn't invent it for that reason. We actually invented it because we were interested in solving the chronic stress issue. Because chronic stress affects so many people, causes or worsens 75 to 90% of medical illnesses.

[00:25:09] I used to ask my professors, why don't we treat that as a primary pathology? And they essentially said, "We can't. We can't get out that area of the nervous system." Imagine trying to get here with a probe like a pacemaker, for instance. You'd kill the patient. And because it's evolved so early and other neuroreceptors that this had got spread throughout the different parts of the nervous system, using a drug on this area would affect everything. So too many side effects.

[00:25:40] So you were left with behavioral techniques like meditation, relaxation exercises, and to be honest, most people can't get good enough at those to make a significant impact. So we started to figure, okay, we needed to find a way to safely and non-invasively support the part of the nervous system that causes relaxation.

[00:26:04] And there was a hypothetical, a theoretical technique called entrainment if you can produce waves that would resonate with that area of the nervous system, but it had to be essentially magnetic waves because the nervous system will respond to magnetic waves. And a lot of people think, well, you could do the same thing with sound. No. Sound doesn't do that. Sound is transduced through the ears, and it doesn't end up in the same frequency spectrum, and most people don't understand that.

[00:26:37] So you really need to infiltrate that area with these waves that work at the same frequency it works so that it's saying, "Hey, look, we're affecting the environment that is around you magnetically, and we're adding these frequencies that that part of the brain works at, and therefore we're supporting that area, and we make it more likely that those neurons will be active."

[00:27:03] In essence, that was a theory. And it took us a lot of years to figure out how to do it, and then it worked. And then the first thing we did was run into a sleep lab to test it, and that occurred back in 2018. And we showed that not only could we help people fall asleep, but we could actually-- I don't want to say induce-- support these deep sleep.

[00:27:29] And then what really surprised us was when we saw that, wait a minute, it's restoring deep sleep in people that had lost it, because we lose it as we age. I was a perfect example. So in a sense, you're right. Did I do it for me? No, but it worked for me, but I didn't realize what I was doing.

[00:27:49] But what was so bizarre about it, by the time I was in my mid 60s, I had lost almost all of my deep sleep, which by the way, is not that abnormal. But it really affected my sleep. I had gotten to the point where I was only sleeping three, maybe four hours a night. And so I was living during the day on caffeine and taking naps because I was dysfunctional at that point.

[00:28:18] And when I started to use this, there wasn't a dramatic change at first. I could feel that something was happening, and I had been using it. I've been playing around with it for stress reduction, and I knew, "Oh, this really works. I could feel the effects of that right away." But over months of use, my deep sleep started to improve.

[00:28:41] And I did not expect that. And obviously, it can't be a placebo effect. But the reason it started to improve was because the brain is a lot more dynamic than most people realize. And so that's what was happening here. It's called neuroplasticity. And since we were supporting that area of the brain, it started to regrow the circuits that cause deep sleep. And so now I'm 72, but I've got deep sleep like I'm 25.

[00:29:12] Luke: Well, I'm happy to report that I do too. And we're going to look at some of my sleep studies you guys sent me, which are super cool because you have backend data that I don't see when I use the app. I just see a graph. When I look at my deep sleep over the past year of using SOLTEC, I just see this massive increase in the deep sleep.

[00:29:31] So I'm like, "All right, it's working." I have empirical evidence, but more than anything, anecdotal evidence that, like I said, I find even if I don't sleep as many hours, I have tons of energy just because I'm getting such a solid block of deep sleep.

[00:29:47] But going back a bit to the magnetism and electromagnetism, it's so interesting because when we're talking about EMF that we would normally try to avoid, like radio frequencies and so on, some years ago, which is a story I'm sure regular listeners are really sick of hearing about, but I essentially got radiation poisoning from living under these cell towers.

[00:30:09] And I was in this place for about three years, and I couldn't see the towers because they were obscured by a wall, a faux wall just for aesthetics, I'm assuming, unless they were really nefarious and they were hiding it from the residence. But in any case, I had terrible migraines, insomnia, and brain fog.

[00:30:29] I started having to wear glasses. I got tinnitus. It really damaged my brain, unfortunately. But I've been able to take that passion and share it with people to help them not live by cell towers, ideally. But it's so interesting to think that that form of electromagnetism was so detrimental to my health in general, but specifically my sleep. And now here I am years later, deliberately introducing a more native magnetism into my sleep environment, and it's reversing a lot of the damage that was done by the radiation form of magnetism. So I find that really interesting.

[00:31:05] But going back to the funny accident that you were trying to develop something to help people alleviate stress, and it ends up really helping your sleep as an older guy, I remember when I first got my SOLTEC, and we had a chat about it, and you were obviously excited about the results you guys were getting in the sleep studies. But I remember you saying that it was really more about the alleviation of stress.

[00:31:28] And then on the app, there's a setting. There's one for like, okay, go to sleep now. And you have your tracker wristband on. And then there's another one that just says Relax, and you can do periods of that. So when I first got it, I was hauling it back and forth from the bedroom into my office, and I would just sit and put it under my desk as I was working.

[00:31:48] And I was really digging the relaxation, but you just reminded me, I fell out of the habit just out of laziness because I didn't want be unplugging it and moving it around all the time. And so now it just sits under the bed, and I have the cables neatly tucked away. But I appreciate the reminder on the relaxed setting because I just realized I could do the Relax one, and when I go meditate, just go into the bedroom where the SOLTEC unit is actually kept.

[00:32:15] So in terms of your user base, you're seeing some, if not all, of the data on the backend. Are you seeing a lot of people using the Relax settings, or are people primarily now using it for sleep?

[00:32:28] Dan: Well, you bring up a really good point. A lot of our users use it for stress. But many of them have come to us and say, "I have a problem falling asleep, so I would like it if I could run a relaxation session and then have it move automatically into sleep."

[00:32:55] Luke: Oh.

[00:32:57] Dan: Because what some of them are doing is they start out with a relaxation session while they're in bed, and then they end up falling asleep. And then, obviously, they don't have the rest of the night on the sleep because they've only set it for, let's say, half an hour. And then they wake up in the middle of the night, and they say, "Oh, I didn't turn on my system for sleep because I fell asleep in the relaxation mode."

[00:33:19] So we've taken that to heart, and we haven't released it yet, but it won't be long before we release that capability. So you could actually start a relaxation session and then have it immediately move into a sleep session. But what I've been doing, which I think gets to your point because I've been a meditator for a long time, and I like it for some of the spiritual reasons.

[00:33:53] Let's say I violate the tips I give for sleep, like go to bed at the same time, don't watch an action, thriller movie before you go to bed. I'm as guilty as the next person. I'll violate these rules. And so what I'll do is I'll get into bed and I say, "I'm too wired to fall asleep." And so I'll do a relaxation session to get me down to where I need to be. Then before I fall asleep, I'll do a Sleep session. At that point, I'll stop the relaxation, do a Sleep session, and sleep the remainder of the night.

[00:34:37] But you had mentioned that you're sleeping a little less because you get so much deep sleep. The same exact thing happened to me. I was getting really good deep sleep, not quite as good as you get. You're beating me out there. But what I realized is this is really nice because I'm feeling refreshed.

[00:35:01] I'll wake up, for me, after what was a good night's sleep. Because I was never a long sleeper, but three to four hours was ridiculous. But getting six good hours of sleep, where, let's say, an hour and a half, 45 minutes is deep sleep, and some of that is really deep sleep, I'm good to go.

[00:35:26] But what I'll do is I'll then say, "You know what? I'm going to run a meditation session," and do my meditation. And so the advantage of all of this is I don't have to move the unit. I'll just leave the unit under the bed. If I need to relax before I go to bed, I'll do a relaxation session.

[00:35:46] If I want to do a meditation session, I'll wake up. Typically, I'll go to the bathroom, I'll get back in bed, and I'll do a meditation session. So it's nice. I get all that in in that period of time where I'm in bed. But having said all of that, there are some people who really do need to do relaxation sessions more often.

[00:36:09] And these people, whether they move it or not, if they could take some breaks and do that, even if they're in bed, just position yourself in a way that you're comfortable, and you can still read, you can still work on your laptop, do whatever you need to do-- and we have people that are using it in offices, for instance, and they're doing their work while they're doing relaxation sessions. And it takes the edge off significantly just like you were talking about before.

[00:36:41] Luke: Yeah, that's what I found when I had it under my desk. It was like, "Wow, I really like this." Because even though I'm just doing computer work, I'm multitasking and getting-- when I do sit down at the computer, I'm not going to waste time. I'm really getting after it. And I find that I do tend to get a bit anxious and just in a rush. And when I had it under my desk, I thought, "Some of it could be placebo," but I definitely felt more relaxed. So then I thought, well, I'm going to have to get two of these things so I could have a permanent one under my desk, and then one in the bed.

[00:37:15] And then I just thought, "Jesus, man. I'm going to run out of places to put people. I have so much technology in this house. So that's a great reminder. So when I first found you guys, I think it was through Thaddeus, if I'm not mistaken. I get texts from friends sometimes like him that are, "Oh, I found this new thing. You got to check it out." And it got my attention because he mentioned sleep, and that's always something I'm working on.

[00:37:41] And then my first question with any kind of technology is about the impacts of the negative EMF, the non-native EMF. And I think I went on your site and saw that the wristband has Bluetooth connectivity with the actual magnetic part of the machine. And I think I dismissed it immediately and said, "No, no, let me find out more information. I don't think the Bluetooth is on all night," yada yada.

[00:38:03] Anyway, thankfully, he was patient with me and is like, "No, I think it's going to be fine." And then I think I got some information from you, which I quadruple verified that the Bluetooth element, you're getting exposed for three seconds a night or something like that.

[00:38:20] Forget what it is. But maybe you could explain that because many people that listen to my podcast are going to have the same concern, like, wait, hold up, you're syncing a Bluetooth thing to this thing that's going on your bed. And I'm such an advocate for eliminating EMF for your life. Can you speak to how that works and maybe what effort you had to put to ensure that you're not going to be getting baked by a Bluetooth signal all night?

[00:38:45] Dan: Yeah, yeah. What you're referring to is a typical function of the system. And you're right. Actually, over the entire night, you might get one second of Bluetooth exposure, so it's very nominal. But the reason you get that one second is we have something called real time sleep stage enhancement.

[00:39:10] Because remember how I was talking about we had to find the frequencies that were going to stimulate the part of the nervous system that affected sleep. Well, sleep is a little bit more complicated, and we've discussed. You have deep sleep. You have dream sleep. You have light sleep.

[00:39:29] Well, they're not using the exact same part of that small area of the nervous system, and they operate at different frequencies. So what we do with our Z Track wearable is in real time we determine what stage of sleep you're in or moving into. And then Z Track says, "Hey, wait a minute. He's making a change in his sleep stage. He needs to have this protocol with these different frequencies."

[00:40:00] And so maybe 30 or 40 times a night, Z Track will signal to Z Gen, the generator, what protocol to run so that it runs that protocol to support that stage of sleep. And for people that have deep sleep and good deep sleep, it'll even deepen that level of deep sleep. And so it probably signals on average about 40 times a night, but it's a fraction of a second. So very, very limited exposure.

[00:40:35] Luke: I was so glad to learn that because, especially in the realm of neurofeedback, there's a lot of these headbands and different things coming out now for meditation, relaxation, or whatever the case may be. And I get really excited about something, and then I go on the website and start looking at the specs and the FAQ, and I'm like, "You guys, I'm not going to put Bluetooth on my head for an hour a day, let alone in the nighttime while I'm sleeping.

[00:41:01] So I was very relieved that you guys had the forethought to take that into consideration. Because sometimes I find I have to throw the baby out with the bath water with emerging technologies that haven't thought that through. And I'm always just going, "God, you guys. It's only one step further to just eliminate that problem you have in terms of the R&D process.

[00:41:21] I was like, "Yes. Okay. I can do it." So for those who are watching-- let me see if I can grab this thing. I like to show and tell. So for those that are watching, this is the conditioner. So I'm imagining what's inside here. So there's two parts. There's the wristband and then there's the conditioner, and it's quite heavy. I just bumped the mic with it.

[00:41:46] I haven't taken this thing apart because I don't want to break it, but I'm imagining there's some magnetic coils in there similar to what a PEMF device might have. Am I on point with that? What's going on inside there that's emitting this magnetic field of specific frequencies that affect our biology in this way?

[00:42:07] Dan: Yeah. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because it's actually not a coil because that's what PEMF has. But PEMF is pulsed electromagnetic frequencies. So that's where you are getting high frequencies. You're getting stuff that's like the power line with that stuff. That's electromagnetism. That's not magnetism.

[00:42:31] Again, magnetism is different from the magnetism associated with electromagnetism. So what we have in that generator are two magnets within aluminum tubes. There's a motor hooked up to each of the magnets, and if we want low frequencies, we are literally spinning that magnet at those very low frequencies. So you don't have any fast frequencies interfering.

[00:43:02] If you had pulsed electromagnetic frequencies, the reason they say it's pulsed is because the electromagnetic frequencies are very high. They could be a couple hundred hertz, or 60, or 50 hertz, like a power line. And the reason they pulse it is they change the amplitude in a pulsed way so that it goes up and down. And that superimposed pulsing creates its own frequency, but it doesn't eliminate the fast frequencies. So you're actually getting the low frequency stuff, but it's contaminated with the fast frequency.

[00:43:43] That's the difference. And that's what I wanted to avoid. I didn't want that electromagnetic effect like a power line. I wanted the pure magnetic effect. But at the same time, I did want some faster frequency, but I wanted that to be pure as well, and I wanted that to override on the lower frequency so that it actually looked like a brainwave.

[00:44:08] And so what our engineers did, which was very clever, they took the aluminum tube, and they had an upper and lower half. And they didn't touch. So then they took a wire, attached to the upper one and the lower one, and they took those two wires and put them into a programmable connector on the PC board inside the generator.

[00:44:34] And they did that for both the tubes. And so what they could do is they could open and close that circuit, which created a smaller wave that rode on top of the bigger magnetic wave from the spinning. In this way, we could support not only the structures in the brainstem, but we could support very low cortical frequencies that you get during delta sleep or deep sleep.

[00:45:02] Because delta sleep, the reason it's called delta sleep is because it produces the brainwave frequencies associated with what was named delta, which is 0.5 to 3.5 cycles per second. So we can use the tubes to create those faster frequencies, even though they're slow, but then use the magnets to produce the extremely low frequencies down at around 0.2 cycles per second. So that's how the system is constructed.

[00:45:36] Luke: Wow, that's so cool. If I were to take a gauss meter to your SOLTEC while it's running, would I pick up any gauss? Is it measurable in gauss like another magnet might be?

[00:45:50] Dan: Yes, absolutely. And it's interesting because we tell people to position it under their feet, under the bed, or on the floor, by the footboard. So it's at that location. When you get, let's say, three to four feet away from it, the strength of that magnetic field is about the same as that of the Earth.

[00:46:19] But what we've done is we're adding frequencies that are specific to those areas of the brain that we want to support. And so that infuses throughout the magnetic field that the earth produces already that is around and through you. Think of it as a supplement.

[00:46:40] It's a magnetic supplement versus a pharmacologic supplement. So you might take vitamin D. Well, that's a supplement. But you can get vitamin D in your environment depending on what you eat, etc., sunlight, all of that. Well, this is like a supplement to the earth's magnetic field, but we're giving you the frequencies that the earth's magnetic field is not giving you enough of to produce these levels of delta sleep.

[00:47:08] Luke: Got it. Okay. That makes sense. And that brings me to my next question. I think I might have texted you or emailed you about this, and you didn't seem concerned, but just for due diligence, for anyone listening that is like me and maybe haphazardly experiments and stacks, different modalities together, that might not end up being compatible.

[00:47:30] For a few years now-- God, I'm going back to 2011-- I've been sleeping on this unipolar magnetic pad called the Magnetico that is in essence, in a similar way that you just described, mimicking the magnetic field that would've been much stronger some years ago, when the magnetic field coming from the earth was stronger.

[00:47:53] So the one I have, I think, is about 20 gauss. And depending on the thickness of your mattress, give or take, you're probably going to end up with between 15 and 18 gauss. And again, it's a unipolar field, like what would be natural in the earth, but it's diminished for whatever reason. So I have your SOLTEC under my feet, but I also have a static magnetic field on the bed.

[00:48:22] And from what I understand, and I'm certainly no expert in magnetism, the edges of the Magnetico create a return field where it essentially emits out and over the bed a choroidal field. And so the magnetism coming from the SOLTEC, because it's underneath the magnet pad, I'm imagining those frequencies, and again, forgive my ignorance here-- I'm giving it Princetonian-level explanation, but I'm hoping and guessing that that choroidal field for the return of the magnet pad is going to be encapsulating or capturing the magnetic field that's being created by the SOLTEC, thus not creating any incoherence or interference between the two of them. Does that at all make sense to you?

[00:49:16] Dan: Actually, you described it perfectly. It creates a choroidal field, just as you said. And all we're doing is we're adding frequencies to that field.

[00:49:26] Luke: Got it.

[00:49:27] Dan: So in essence, that becomes a carrier for what we're giving you. It's really interesting because maybe that's one of the reasons why your response has been so fast.

[00:49:45] Luke: Oh, interesting. Because I'm using the Magnetico at the same time, I'm my own unique control group in a sense because I'm adding that extra element of magnetism.

[00:49:58] Dan: We'll have to do some experiments on that because most people, again, it depends on age and brain health. If you're in your 30s and 40s and you haven't lost a lot of brain cells, you're going to respond to our technology faster than if you're 70 or 80. And just to set expectations appropriately, some people like you respond very nicely quickly.

[00:50:32] Some people that are 70, it may take them 6 to 12 months to get to delta levels that are really meaningful. But again, 6 to 12 months is not bad if you didn't have it before. So I was talking to Brian Dawkins, the Hall of Fame football player, the safety that used to play for the Eagles, and he yelled at me because he's got one of the units, and he was using it.

[00:51:00] And he says, "Why didn't you develop this when I was playing football? Because I noticed a big difference from the way I played when I was in my 20s versus my 30s. I would've loved to have been playing in my 30s like I did in my 20s. And it's the same phenomenon. It's this loss of delta sleep, loss of ability to recover and focus the next day and be fully present.

[00:51:25] Because that's what you get when you get good deep sleep throughout the night. And it could be that this Magnetico, because it is at a slightly stronger gauss level, it may be that it's carrying this additional frequencies or these frequencies-- and by the way, they're personalized for you-- I should get to that, talk about that-- are then carried in a more forceful way. Maybe that's why you've responded so quickly.

[00:51:55] Luke: I certainly have, and we have the sleep data to support that, which I'll show in a minute. But yeah, like I said, sometimes I'm a little reckless, might be strong, but there have been times that I've played with different technologies and not really understood the physics behind them and have probably caused myself a little bit of harm.

[00:52:17] So I always like to be the guy who's stupid enough to do that, and then also warn people that listen to my podcast or watch me on YouTube like, "Hey, I tried this thing, and it actually was worse. Don't do that." So I feel a sense of accountability and responsibility if I promote things or share things about which I'm excited to warn people that there could be counter indications. But it seems in this case, pairing of those two, based on my sleep data and the fact that I feel great, seems to be that I might have accidentally stumbled upon two compatible modalities that actually support one another.

[00:52:54] Dan: Yeah, yeah. Maybe. It's something for us to look into.

[00:52:59] Luke: I'd be excited if you guys do do some research on that. It'd be interesting to see how that works. Because one of the things about the Magnetico, the guy who invented it, Dr. Dean Bonlie, he's since passed, but he was a fanatic about magnetism. But one of the things that he warned me about when I bought this pad all those years ago was he said that because that return field is coming off the edge of the pad and it goes under your mattress, it's maybe, I don't know, inch and a half, two inches thick.

[00:53:26] He said, "You don't want to be hanging out with your legs hanging over the side of the bed because you're in the middle of that return field, and it's going to have deleterious effects over time." If you're sitting there putting your shoes on or something, not a big deal, but don't sit there and read a book for three hours with your legs hanging over the side. So I'm always aware of that and careful not to do anything that would have any negative consequences in terms of that return field.

[00:53:47] So it's nice to know that it seems like we found some compatibility here. Which brings me to my next couple of questions. With the magnetic pad, there was a time when Dr. Dean advised that you don't use grounding technology like grounding sheets, for example, because he assumed that the wire coming from, say, the ground outside, if you've got a grounding rod in the earth like I do, or if you're just going into the ground, plug in your power outlet, that wire is going to be crossing the return field to get to your sheet, which is on top of the mat.

[00:54:25] And so for a long time he said, "Don't mix the two. Do one or the other." And then some people that are pretty knowledgeable about magnetism, and grounding, and things like that, that I've talked to, said, "Ah, it's not an issue." He changes mind about it later on. He didn't fully understand what was going on.

[00:54:42] So I've been sleeping on a grounding sheets mostly because my room is a Faraday cage, so there's no EMF for me to soak up being a human ground, which can be an issue, I think, for people using grounding technologies in a strong electric field, you're now becoming the ground.

[00:55:00] Your body, you're the conduit for all those stray electric fields, which to me doesn't sound like a great idea. Have you looked at the interaction between the SOLTEC magnetic field and grounding? Do you think they're complimentary, or is there any counterindication possibility combining the two?

[00:55:22] Dan: To be perfectly honest, I don't know. I'd have to consult with our engineers. They've never brought it up as a concern. What's been interesting in our work is, and we've actually started to discuss this with the FDA, we've had a number of people report to us something we already knew, but we don't advertise this because it's a medical claim.

[00:55:52] But some of our customers have come back and said, "My peripheral neuropathy's better." We know that you've got your feet by this thing, and so we know we're stimulating that. Of note, a couple of years earlier, we had been testing people with diabetic peripheral neuropathy. And what we found is there's a big improvement in that.

[00:56:21] And again, what really surprised me was that not only did it help the pain, but it helped in terms of sensory improvement. And we were dealing with some people that had pretty bad peripheral neuropathy, and I didn't think that that would happen. Because for that to happen, you'd have to regrow nerves. And we're not salamanders. And so that idea was like, "Wait a minute. Is this real?"

[00:56:57] So we had an outside doctor who took care of a lot of people with peripheral neuropathy do a study for us. He's an expert in this field. And sure enough, all 10 of the subjects that completed the study had sensory improvement. And so that's why we started to talk to the FDA for them to tell us what kind of application we would have to do, whether it be a 510(k) or a De Novo application, to get clearance so that we could advertise for that.

[00:57:34] And so we still have more work to do with the FDA to gain that clearance. But when you talk about grounding and the like, we know that we're supplying a stimulus that impacts the nerves. And so if there was a grounding mechanism, I find it merely impossible to believe that it would siphon off those frequencies. I could understand how it could siphon off electrical stuff or electromagnetic stuff, but not magnetic stuff that hits you directly. Again, what we're transmitting is frequency, not current.

[00:58:20] Luke: Right.

[00:58:21] Dan: That's what's really interesting. And it's a different phenomenon. It's almost like you're talking about a different kind of energy, just like electromagnetism isn't the same as magnetism. And it's hard for people to understand that. And it's even hard for scientists to understand it, even though they say, "Yeah. You know what? We measured the force carrier in electromagnetism, but we've not been able to yet identify the force carrier in an earth magnet."

[00:58:50] Luke: Well, in terms of mixing the earthing or grounding technology and your delivery of magnetism, I always go back to just common sense and intuition on these things. If we're mimicking the magnetic field of the planet that we've evolved to congeal with, and we're mimicking-- well, not mimicking, but we're actually touching the ground through a wire and a grounding sheet or a grounding pad-- essentially we're mimicking the combination of those electrons of DC current in the earth and the magnetism of the earth, which we already know are compatible because that's how nature designed them. And we have evolved to be--

[00:59:33] I like to say, when I talk about earthing and grounding, if you think about, it's only been a very recent occurrence that we've disconnected ourself with rubber-soled shoes, automobiles, and sleeping in synthetic bedding, disconnected from the earth. Literally, every living creature, with the exception of birds while they're in flight, are grounded their entire life from birth to death 24/7.

[00:59:59] Anything that's not flying is always grounded and always in proximity to the earth's magnetic field or the human resonance and so on. So it just makes sense intuitively to me that there would be some great compatibility between grounding, provided you're doing it safely and you're not being inundated with a bunch of electric fields and so on.

[01:00:20] But I'm guessing that the combination of the two forms of magnetism that I'm using and the grounding technology, the three of those as a trifecta might, as you said, indicate why my adaptation to the SOLTEC has been so fast and so meaningful. It's crazy how my sleep scores have gone up.

[01:00:42] Before we get into that, I want to mention, if anyone wants to see the show notes for this, we're going to put all kinds of interesting links in there, including the images I'm about to show for the video. You can find the show notes at lukestorey.com/deepsleep.

[01:00:56] If anyone listening wants to check out the SOLTEC technology that we're speaking about, you can go to lukestorey.com/soltec. That's S-O-L-T-E-C. And if you use the code LUKE2024, you will get the best price available today. So there's going to be some kind of discount over there at lukestorey.com/soltec.

[01:01:17] One question before we move on to the images that I want to share, because I haven't seen these, by the way-- the sleep data that you guys have on the backend is a bit more sophisticated than what I see on my own app. So we talked about the issue that you preemptively solved of the Bluetooth signal exposure.

[01:01:38] I have wondered, since this device, the conditioner is plugged into the wall, have you looked at the electric fields coming off the cable? Would it be better to plug it in to an outlet across the room versus one that's running under your bed going to the wall behind you, for example? In terms of the electric field coming off the power.

[01:02:05] Dan: Yeah. We've been less concerned about that because we use a typical DC converter in between.

[01:02:11] Luke: Ah, okay.

[01:02:13] Dan: So you've got that. And so what ultimately is going to impact you, it's only coming DC into the unit. So it's really not what you get at the socket.

[01:02:25] Luke: Got it. Okay. So the 60 hertz alternating current is coming from the plug to that. I know what you're talking about. It's a little black box in between the wire that plugs into the unit and the one that plugs in the wall. So within that, we're converting that harmful AC current to a harmless DC current on its way to the device so that the device itself is not emitting an AC current of 60 hertz onto you while you sleep.

[01:02:51] Dan: No. We don't want that because that defeats the whole purpose of using a magnet.

[01:02:57] Luke: Right. Okay. Good. I'm glad you've thought all this stuff true through, because this is stuff that keeps me up at night. I'm like, "Ah, did they think of this? I hope so."

[01:03:06] Okay. Excellent. Well, let's go ahead, and I'm going to see if this works. I've not done this before on a remote online recording, but I'm going to give this a shot here and see if this works. All right. Are you seeing my sleep study here?

[01:03:26] Dan: Not yet.

[01:03:27] Luke: You're not. Okay, let's see. Let me try that again. How about now?

[01:03:39] Dan: I see talking points. So we've got something from your computer.

[01:03:44] Luke: That's not what we want. Hang on one second here. How about now?

[01:03:57] Dan: I don't see anything yet.

[01:04:00] Luke: That's funny because we tested it. Oh, there we go.

[01:04:04] Dan: Something's coming.

[01:04:06] Luke: Okay.

[01:04:08] Dan: Okay.

[01:04:08] Luke: It's one of those things where it works when you test it before you're recording, and then when you record, it doesn't work.

[01:04:14] Dan: Okay.

[01:04:15] Luke: You should be seeing it now.

[01:04:16] Dan: Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. You have got two of them. Why don't you go to the one you just had up?

[01:04:22] Luke: Okay.

[01:04:22] Dan: This one is your sleep stages.

[01:04:24] Luke: Okay. How's this one?

[01:04:27] Dan: There. That's it. That's it. All right. So can you see it as well?

[01:04:34] Luke: Yeah.

[01:04:35] Dan: Okay. So this is actually your data from, let me see, it's about September of last year. This is actually a full year of data that we're looking at. And actually, you had been using it for a little bit already. And what you see is, and it's hard to make an easy trend here, but your deep sleep in red, generally, you were already pretty good in the beginning of this timeframe. But then it got better. You had a dip two thirds of the way through. So I don't know what was happening there. It looked like it lasted for about six weeks.

[01:05:42] Luke: Yeah. I'm like, "It must have been a stressful period." I don't remember what was happening in--

[01:05:47] Dan: It was in May.

[01:05:48] Luke: 2024. Yeah. May.

[01:05:51] Dan: It was in May, and then you recovered. And again, each of these points is an average of, I don't know, 15 days. So you're not really seeing how consistent your scores have been or were before that six-week period. But your deep sleep at this point is like a 20-year-old.

[01:06:23] Luke: Wow.

[01:06:25] Dan: Yeah. This is really impressive. And the green is something that I want to contrast with the purple line. Our system analyzes sleep primarily based on motion and heart rate variability. But the other wearables on the market only look at heart rate variability in what's called the time domain.

[01:06:56] Essentially, it's like a standard deviation of the beat-to-beat interval. Let me put it this way. It's a level of analysis. It doesn't give you that much information. It just tells you, how much does it oscillate. But it doesn't give you frequency information.

[01:07:16] Luke: Ah, okay.

[01:07:18] Dan: The purple line is calculated from a frequency analysis of heart rate variability. And this one is better when it gets lower. And so you can see that as your red and green got higher, the purple got lower.

[01:07:39] Luke: That's the way it should work. But what this represents is, by looking at it in the time domain, which is green, and the frequency domain, which is purple, we're actually looking at the results of a couple of different areas of the brain. So the purple area, because of the math that's involved, the frequencies that we're looking at in that mathematical equation that we end up creating, that metric represents the activity of the brainstem, the pacemaker, for instance, of sleep.

[01:08:23] Dan: Now, there was a researcher in 2001, Gabrielle Brandenberger, in France. Her team looked at a comparison between heart rate variability changes and delta brainwaves to look at delta sleep. And what was fascinating is she saw this beautiful correlation.

[01:08:47] When the delta was high, the deviation, the heart rate variability deviation went low, which makes all the sense in the world because you end up in this very stable state in deep sleep where your beat-to-beat intervals are very consistent because you're in a deep state of relaxation-- high parasympathetic activity versus sympathetic activity, which is like fight or flight.

[01:09:18] Unfortunately, the whole scientific community was using this metric that was only good for normal people. And so when we tried to employ that for the general population, it was pretty much worthless, so we had to develop our own metric. And this purple line is one of those metrics we ended up developing.

[01:09:41] And what we found was a metric that identified with what the brainstem was doing. And one of the ways we were able to determine that is what Brandenberger did in her lab with her studies, was to show that heart rate variability changes occur five minutes before brainwave changes. So in other words, the pacemaker of these different sleep stages is not sitting in the cerebral cortex. It's sitting in the brainstem.

[01:10:12] Because the changes in the brainstem to make brainwave changes take about five minutes to work through all the different circuitry. It doesn't work at the speed of light because you have all these interconnections and there's chemical changes that happen with every connection.

[01:10:30] Neurochemical changes that transmit from one neuron to the next. And so that's the reason for the delay. And so what she realized was, hey, you know what? The pacemaker for sleep sits in the brainstem, and then it causes these other changes throughout the rest of the brain.

[01:10:51] And it wasn't too long after that that people figured out what the sequence was. And I won't bore you with that. But in essence, that change allowed us to see that the purple line represented that, the green line represented the cortex influencing that.

[01:11:11] Luke: I see that. Yeah.

[01:11:15] Dan: Yeah. And so the green line for you in your history parallels the red line very nicely. And that's good. That means you're not spending a lot of time thinking while you're sleeping. You're not stressed during the night. So you have very little cortical interference based on what the brainstem is doing. So the brainstem is saying, "Go to sleep," and your cortex is cooperating with you.

[01:11:46] And it's saying, yeah. Okay. Fine. I'm not going to stress out over anything. I'm going to allow myself to sleep. So you're doing very well from that perspective. That's one of the reasons why your scores are so good, because your level of stress at night is near zero. Now, go to the next slide, and I'll show you a little area where it's not zero. But it's only for a little area.

[01:12:11] If you look at the top part, that's your sleep histogram. Now, we show that with swim lanes, in the app. But this is a research package that we use, that we've developed. And what's nice about this is we can show some details, or I can understand more things that are happening at the same time.

[01:12:31] Especially, that green and purple line that we showed above, that's along the bottom here. And if you notice, about between two and a half and three hours into the night, if you look on the bottom, see how there's a separation between the green and purple? What that's saying is your brainstem, the purple one is saying, "Hey, go into deep sleep," and your green one is saying, "You know what? There's something on my mind."

[01:13:04] So this was a couple of nights ago, and this was in the middle of the night, so I don't know that you'd remember anything, but there may have been something that was bothering you that came into your mind at that point. But you weren't paralleling those things. If you look at your other parts where you dip into deep, deep sleep, they're very much consistent.

[01:13:28] But in here, and it's shown in the sleep histogram where it changes from yellow to red, at that point, you see that above there? That's what we call alpha non-REM. So if we were looking at your brainwaves at that time, you would see that, hey, you know what, I'm still getting the slow wave, but it's contaminated with fast frequencies.

[01:13:53] So my cortex is active, but my brainstem is saying, "Go to sleep," but I'm fighting it. That level will not be as restorative as deep sleep. So if you had a lot of that throughout the night, your quality of sleep would be poor. And that's really important because there's some people that are really stressed or people that have pain states, people that have fibromyalgia, where they'll have a lot of that, and that interferes with the quality of their sleep, which is very detrimental for their health.

[01:14:25] But we give this as a marker, and we actually have it as a stage. And we do show it in the histogram that you see in the app. We have this little orange area in light sleep that shows up when you have this. So if you looked back a couple of nights, you would see that little orange area in the light sleep in swim lane showing that.

[01:14:49] But by the same token in the Purple Swim lane, which shows your delta sleep, your deep sleep, you not only have deep sleep, which if you look on the right hand margin, you see D and then you see double D. That's an abbreviation for deep, deep sleep. In the old days we used to call it D3 and D4, back when the sleep society was young.

[01:15:19] And then they decided to just say, "No, no, delta sleep is delta sleep. We'll just call it all the same thing." But that distinction is really important. And especially for you, because what's happened over time for you, and this is just as important as the increase in deep sleep, is your deep, deep sleep has really gone up, and that's very impressive. You have a lot of nights where your deep delta sleep is more than your light delta sleep.

[01:15:47] Luke: Wow.

[01:15:47] Dan: That's really unusual, especially for somebody in their 50s.

[01:15:53] Luke: Yeah.

[01:15:53] Dan: That's rare. And so when you see that periodicity of your-- yeah. So you have more deep delta than you do delta in this [Inaudible].

[01:16:06] Luke: That's crazy. That's crazy. Wow. Dude.

[01:16:13] Dan: Well, there's something else to look at though in that. I guess we don't have to.

[01:16:18] Luke: No, go for it.

[01:16:19] Dan: Okay. Yeah. You're like me in the sense that you have short sleep cycles. And what I mean by a sleep cycle is the progression to deep sleep then up to dream sleep, deep sleep up to dream sleep. A sleep cycle is typically defined as that rhythmic pattern, and on average, across everybody, that sleep cycle lasts 90 minutes. But it ranges from 70 to 110 minutes, and you, it's a little less. I have the same issue.

[01:16:56] So our sleep histograms are not as pretty as some others, but what's nice about what you have is you've restored very nice rhythmicity. Look at the separation between the first, second, third cycle. You missed the fourth cycle. And if you see that your purple line was heading down there, the green line didn't make it low enough to give you that delta sleep there.

[01:17:21] But then your fifth one was there, and usually you're going to get most of your delta in the first half of the night, which is essentially what you got. You got everything you needed. And then you're going to continue on getting more dream sleep, REM sleep in the last half of the night. But you've established very nice rhythmicity, which is really nice.

[01:17:45] As we get older, we lose that rhythmicity, and we end up with a lot of wake after sleep onset. And you're not getting that. This is your typical night these days. It's very impressive. That's why I thought you'd even exercise more. But I was surprised to hear that you don't.

[01:18:06] Luke: Imagine how much I could improve it if I really worked out harder at least a couple of days a week.

[01:18:14] Dan: Well, I don't know that you need any improvement.

[01:18:17] Luke: Good. Then I won't. Is there anything else on this graph we should be looking at before I stop the screen share?

[01:18:25] Dan: You know what? If you look at that line underneath the sleep histogram, you'll notice that you have some movements, particularly during dream sleep. That's normal. If you think about a cat or a dog, when they go into dream sleep, how their paws twitch.

[01:18:45] Luke: Yeah.

[01:18:45] Dan: You've got the same kind of thing happening in a very minor way. Same thing with the next line. The orange bars, we call them arousals, but they're really just subtle changes in your heart rate. And that is associated with a part of dream sleep. Dream sleep is divided into phasic and tonic. During the different transitions, you can get these kinds of things. So it very nicely corroborates the accuracy of the sleep staging algorithm, which is nice.

[01:19:21] Luke: Yeah, I can see--

[01:19:22] Dan: And you could see in the beginning of the night you had a little bit of snoring, but that stopped.

[01:19:27] Luke: Good, good.

[01:19:30] Dan: Yeah.

[01:19:31] Luke: Yeah, it's interesting to--

[01:19:34] Dan: We use this for our research to basically confirm that all the algorithms are working the way we want them to be working.

[01:19:47] Luke: Epic. Yeah, it's really neat seeing these graphs stacked because you can really see the physical movement and the moments of waking and so on as they correlate to that top one there for people watching the video. For those that don't have access to the video, my apologies because some of this will make less sense to you without. But when you're looking at the sleep stages and then you see the corresponding bars of data beneath them, it's really interesting to see how everything just perfectly aligns the way it should. It's really fascinating.

[01:20:21] Dan: Well, even in the app, if you put it in landscape mode, there's a way to then expand it, and you will see more of these layers of data beneath it. So you still can see it to some extent but not in that detail.

[01:20:37] Luke: I love looking at the app every morning because I can tell, oh, I took CBD last night, or Extra Magnesium, or I watched a stressful movie or something and then my sleep score tanked. One thing that I've noticed with-- is there anything else to see on those or can I stop the screen share by the way?

[01:20:57] Dan: Yeah, you can stop.

[01:20:58] Luke: Okay. One test I've done that's been interesting is I have taken an ice bath just before I go to bed and just get super, super cold and then get in the bed, and I've got my Chili Sleep Dock Pro in there too, so the bed's actually cold when I get in there.

[01:21:19] And I have noticed when I do those ice baths before bed, that my deep sleep is even better the days before. That's been one for sure. Whereas some of the supplements, I don't notice that much of a difference, but definitely seems for me, getting really cold before I go to bed, even taking a warm or cold shower will do it and drop the body temperature, and I tend to fall asleep faster and going to deeper sleep faster also.

[01:21:50] Dan: I think that's generally a common phenomenon. And I haven't done literature search on that phenomenon, but I think it relates to the whole concept of hibernation. When you think about it, because hibernation occurs during the winter, during the cold, animals go into this state of profound deep sleep that just persists forever during those periods.

[01:22:24] And so you have to think that we retain some of that genetic code, that somehow, in terms of temperature regulation, it does have an effect. And when you look at heart rate variability in the frequency domain, there's a part of the autonomic nervous system, which is really what's driving sleep.

[01:22:44] It's a primitive area of the brain that I showed you. There's part of that that does regulate temperature. And so what you are doing is you're basically telling that part of the brain, when you do that, that you're in this state. And so I think that in that state it's saying, "Okay, in order to respond and be consistent, I'm going to move into deep sleep."

[01:23:11] Luke: Totally, totally. Yeah. Wow. This is so fun. I hope people listening and watching enjoy this stuff as much as I do. I think for younger people, they're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, sleep." But trust me, if anyone young, under 30, is listening, there will come a time when you're like, how can I improve my deep sleep? Because man, you really feel it as you get older.

[01:23:32] It's crazy to think I used to be able to get by with sleep deprivation and still function at a pretty decent level. And now, again, not so much about the sleep duration, but what I'm really noticing since I've used the SOLTEC is the sleep quality and specifically pertaining to the deep sleep.

[01:23:49] It's like a night and day difference in my, not just performance because that just sounds so techy, but performance as a human being, not just my work performance, but being a good husband, being patient with people in traffic, just being a better version of myself is so directly yoked to the quality of my sleep architecture in my deep sleep.

[01:24:12] If I have a bad night of sleep, I'm just not as good of a version of Luke as I should be and want to be. So this has been just an incredible discovery that you've made and created, and I'm so happy that I was able to find you guys and get on board with this as early as I did.

[01:24:34] And also, to be able to get the data that's in the app that, again, is just really encouraging to me, in a situation like this, say I'm really enjoying a TV show or something. I love watching the survivalist shows. That's my pretty much only thing I watch. That's my genre. And it'll be, say, 10 o'clock, and I just ended one, I'll think, oh, man, I really want to watch another one.

[01:24:56] And then I can picture the SOLTEC app yelling at me the next morning because I'm going to get lower scores. I want to see 100 every night. And so it does help a lot with behavior modification and building in better habits and self-discipline when you can see that data.

[01:25:12] I think there's so much value in that because you're not willing to pay the price. You get a competitive edge going with yourself to see if you can keep up those positive trends. And then over some time, as I've noticed, you start to see the benefits of those trends play out in your real, daily life outside of the app. It's a self-reinforcing positive habit builder.

[01:25:37] Dan: Yeah. Luke, let me comment on the scores. When you 100, what that's telling you is that you are sleeping like a 20-year-old. So the scores are calculated based on your proximity to ideal normal sleep of a 20-year-old. So, for instance, if I go back to myself, when I started this, my scores would've been in the 30s.

[01:26:09] Luke: What?

[01:26:10] Dan: Yeah. Well, look, I was only sleeping, a lot of nights, three hours, almost no delta. And because I was sleeping so little, I wasn't getting that much REM. And so the total score, when it comes right down to it, is a composite of those three with greater waiting for total sleep time and deep sleep.

[01:26:31] So it's 40-40-20, with REM being 20. And because REM is the most constant, you don't lose that as the age, so that should be okay. Literally, I'm down in the 30s, so a good night for me is when I'm above 75 into the 80s. I'll get some 90s. But again, my depth score is often 100 or in the 90s because now my quality of sleep is so good.

[01:27:04] But I've never been a long sleeper, so I get hurt on that score. And then it hurts me a little bit on REM because I miss out on the later part of the night where you get REM. But again, these scores are relative to ideal normal sleep. So I've looked at your scores, and I think, "My God. He's getting all these hundreds. He's sleeping like a 20-year-old."

[01:27:31] Luke: That's funny. I'm going to be honest because when I first started using this, and I think it took maybe two or three months to kick in where I started seeing my scores go up on the app. But when I was getting so many hundreds, I was thinking, "This thing must not be very accurate because there's no way I'd be getting those hundreds that consistently."

[01:27:49] So now, I think last night I went to bed pretty late and got an 85, and I woke up and I was like so pissed that I didn't hit 100. But to hear there are people like you who are going at 35 and still managing to function as a human being, I'm like, okay, maybe 85 is not that bad.

[01:28:07] Dan: Yeah, but not function well. I wasn't functioning well at that level. That's the problem.

[01:28:12] Luke: I can imagine. Well, aside from just my anecdotal experience, and I don't want to belabor people with so much information about me, as fascinated as I might find. Before we close out here, maybe give us some a rundown on any other studies that you guys have done. Have you conducted any clinical studies? Do you plan to do more? What's the status on objective data from other people?

[01:28:39] Dan: Well, the first thing we did back in 2018 when we realized we impacted sleep, we took it into a sleep lab, and it was really illuminating at that point. We did four nap studies in the morning where people shouldn't be falling asleep. We used the frequencies associated with deep sleep. And all four of them, despite the fact that they shouldn't have fallen asleep after a full night's sleep, they all fell asleep, number one.

[01:29:11] What was interesting about that though was they had a very significant amount of what's called slow rolling eye movements that you only see in normal sleep. But it was exaggerated. And the sleep doc that we were working with had 50 years of experience. This is one of the old timers in sleep.

[01:29:39] And when he looked at these four recordings, he said, "You know what? I've never seen this once, let alone four times in a row where you've got these trains that are lasting five, six seconds of slow rolling eye movements. Typically, they only occur in drowsiness, and they only last for two seconds or three seconds."

[01:29:58] And he says, "And you have these things that are happening in late wake drowsiness and sometimes extending into light sleep." And his statement then was, "This demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that you're initiating sleep through the pacemaker of sleep and the brainstem." Which we knew we were attacking that area because of the frequency we were administering, which is at that area based on all the research that HeartMath had done.

[01:30:25] So right away, we had a lot of validation that, based on the research of others, these were the right frequencies in that area. We knew we were stimulating at these frequencies, and this is the result we got, which was producing normal sleep-- very different from a drug, a sleep medication, which does not produce normal sleep. It produced sedation.

[01:30:51] So it knocks you out. It doesn't give you delta sleep and the other stages of sleep. It basically sedates you. So that was really key. The other thing we found in those nap studies is that in the morning, after a full night's sleep, we were able to put three out of the four into deep sleep, which shouldn't have happened.

[01:31:14] And then what was also bizarre, because we were watching them, they were all set up in a sleep lab with all the EEG, all the electrodes. And we were also recording them via videotape, which is normal in a sleep lab. We could watch them, and none of these people moved during the hour.

[01:31:33] It was like they were paralyzed, which is really unusual. But it just shows the depth of relaxation and stimulation of the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system, which produces that effect. So we were very gratified by that. And then as we started to use it amongst our internal group, we found that, hey, this is happening.

[01:31:57] And when you have that phenomenon happening, then you know it works. So the next study we did was one where we started collecting the data on the database where I pull your data from. And then we measured, after X number of months, what change is there for the first month.

[01:32:20] And what we found was tremendous statistics in terms of change in non-REM sleep quality, what that green line represents, for instance. We found delta increases, and we found sleep time increase. And all were very highly statistically significant. So we knew that it was working.

[01:32:45] The other thing that was nice was those people that already had reasonable amounts of delta only improved by a few percent. But those people that had, let's say, less than 75 minutes, which is still a lot, they improved by 15%. So it was very significant. And this is only in the first few months.

[01:33:08] So we did that. And this was at a time when the only thing we had other than the stimulation was the real time sleep stage enhancement. Since then, we've added what's called res F, where we go through a five-night calibration process, and we figure out, what's your resonant frequency? Because even though the range of frequencies in the autonomic nervous system is small, we may not be operating at exactly the same frequencies.

[01:33:37] So for instance, I can be on the higher end, and you could be on the lower end, and therefore we have to give you a slightly lower frequency than me who needs the higher frequency. And so we do that now, and the results are better with that. And then we added the cortical frequencies when you wake up in the middle of the night to get you to sleep faster. So we've used all of this research to help refine the product.

[01:34:07] Luke: Wow, so epic. That actually stimulates another question that I had that I almost forgot. Because this technology is so personalized based on the biofeedback mechanism of the wristband and the actual conditioner, what are the implications of using it if you're co-sleeping with someone who doesn't have theirs and yours is at the foot of your side and theirs is not? Is there a possibility that their sleep will be positively or negatively impacted?

[01:34:41] And would it be ideal or even possible or recommended if two people are into trying this, that sleep together? Would each of them have their own conditioner and wristband set at the same time, or would there be any negative interaction between the frequencies?

[01:34:58] Dan: Well, in the early days, before we built in all of the personalization, two people sleeping in the same bed, both ended up with the same benefits. As we added more and more personalization, the real-time, sleep stage enhancement, and particularly the res F, a bed partner who wasn't wearing the wearable that controlled the generator frequencies, the person who wore the Z-Track got better effects, but there was still some overlap.

[01:35:29] So there was still benefit that was derived, but not nearly as much without the level of personalization. So now we find a lot of our customers, if they've got a bed partner, they're both using it, and they place the generator below their feet a little bit more towards the outer ends of the bed so that they don't interfere with one another. There's about a four-foot radius of impact.

[01:35:54] Luke: Okay. I see. So it is possible to use two. You just separate them a bit more and not have them under the bed next to each other or something like that.

[01:36:03] Dan: Exactly, exactly. You don't put them in the middle. But in the beginning, when we didn't have all that personalization, we would tell people, "Put it in the middle, and they'll both get benefit." And they did, but less so as we've personalized it.

[01:36:18] Luke: Okay. Cool, cool. Man, awesome. So I want to remind people-- I know we've covered a lot of pretty technical stuff here in the second half of this-- you can go to lukestorey.com/deepsleep. And we'll go ahead and link to everything we possibly can to help you take a deeper dive.

[01:36:33] And then for those of you that want to check out the technology yourself, again, it's lukestorey.com/soltec, and the code there is LUKE2024. And we'll also make those clickable on your podcast app, the show description, and so on. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you feel is important to talk about before we part ways?

[01:36:55] Dan: Yeah. The only thing that I would like to emphasize is the technology, as I said, was developed for stress. Now, because the same area of the nervous system impacts sleep, that's great. It works for both. But the stress function, you made a comment earlier that you're not the same person. You're different. You're a better person.

[01:37:26] I would argue that that's more a function of the fact that your overall level of stress is down in part because you're sleeping better. Because, obviously, if you're sleep better, you're going to have less stress. But you are getting the benefits at night of stimulating, or I should say, supporting that part of the nervous system that basically reduces stress.

[01:37:53] So that's pivotal. It's pivotal to keep in mind, and it's one of the reasons why I'm so excited about the change that we're going to make pretty soon with the ability to do stress reduction, moving right into sleep. And as you've experienced with, you're getting more consolidated sleep because your sleep quality is so good.

[01:38:18] It doesn't hurt to start the day with one of those sessions and move into a meditative state. So all of these things I think are very, very positive in terms of affecting change in the person. And I know that I'm a better person too based on these things. And I hear the same thing from a lot of our customers or even more so from their spouses.

[01:38:44] Luke: Yeah, I bet. I bet.

[01:38:46] Dan: Yeah.

[01:38:46] Luke: I hope that my wife could attest to that, that anecdotally too. We'll see. We'd have to ask her to get an unbiased opinion. But yeah, I remember there was something that really struck me when we had our first call last year, whenever that was, is you said, "Yeah, Luke. We're working on sleep and stuff like that."

[01:39:05] But I think what you said was something to the effect of, you're really about upleveling the consciousness of humanity. And one of the barriers to that happening is, of course, not only sleep, but just our overall level of stress. And so I think the way you were explaining, you said, yeah, it's a bit of a Trojan horse of my larger spiritual mission to really support people in their nervous system and their ability to respond to the stresses of life and the stresses of our world, which are obviously increasing every day, especially right now at this time in America.

[01:39:39] So I sense there's a bigger picture behind it for you, which brings me to my last question, and that is, who are three teachers or teachings that have influenced your life that you'd like to share with us?

[01:39:52] Dan: Yeah, that's a good question. When I was 15, my mother gave me this book, Autobiography of a Yogi, and that book had a huge impact. That's why I became a neurologist. This phenomenon, what's happening over with these yogis and their ability to control things in this manner was mind-boggling to me.

[01:40:20] And I said, I have to understand. I'm going to start with understanding the brain. And so I developed a deep interest in metaphysics. What's the difference between brain and mind? Western medicine teaches that all mind comes from brain. And I can give you an honest, absolutely, 100% answer that says, no, sorry.

[01:40:48] It's absolutely unexplainable some of the other phenomenon that it can occur that can't mean that all mind comes from brain. And Autobiography of a Yogi inspired me to move down this path.

[01:41:07] And then there was another series of books written by a PhD psychologist. His name was Michael Newton. He's no longer alive, but I used to correspond with him. And his work was fascinating to me because he was a clinician for his entire life. And he would do hypnosis to help people get into their underlying problems, their underlying coping strategies, defense mechanisms. So they can understand themselves better.

[01:41:44] It gets along the lines of mindfulness. Are you mindful of when you get triggered and then what you go through? What are your emotions at that point? What were the thoughts that caused you to do this? What happened in your past that allowed you to develop these beliefs that got triggered?

[01:42:02] And so that whole process was very intriguing to me, and his work was excellent. But he took it two steps further, and he started to do something that-- there are a number of hypnotists, psychologists that do this. They do regression work. And I don't know what your beliefs are about things like past lives and the like, but he would do that kind of thing.

[01:42:31] But what was fascinating was, in his work, which I think lasted 40-plus years, he accumulated a huge number of clinical cases. But his work covered stuff like what happens in between lives.

[01:42:51] Luke: Cool.

[01:42:52] Dan: And when I read that, it was like, you've got to be kidding. Is this real? And let's face it. It's easy to be skeptical when there's no way to prove it. But what I've learned as a clinician, because I was a neurologist, if I heard one patient after another with a particular disorder tell me the same thing, using almost identical words, and they didn't know the other person, it's like, "Oh, wait a minute. These people don't have any reason to lie to me?"

[01:43:27] And if I'm going to be honest as a physician, I'm going to listen to them. What is the meaning behind this? How does it really work? And there's this condition, you've probably heard of it, called narcolepsy. It's a sleep disorder. These people have excessive daytime sleepiness. They have REM onset sleep, so they immediately move into dream sleep, which is a little abnormal. And they have a number of other phenomenon.

[01:43:57] But what these people also have that doctors don't want to talk about is they have out-of-body experiences. Will this fit perfectly with what Paramahansa Yogananda was talking about, what Michael Newton was talking about? Wait a minute.

[01:44:16] The mind is really energy. Because all these patients would say the same thing. They would say, yeah, all of a sudden I found myself on the ceiling looking down on my body. Same thing as near-death experiences.

[01:44:33] And so you look at that and you go, "Wait a minute. Is this real?" I've never had it. Why should I believe it when somebody else tells me? Well, I don't necessarily would believe it. I might dismiss it. But when all these people are telling you the same thing and they all have this disorder, it makes it real.

[01:44:54] And so I remember talking to some of my neurology professors when I was in residency, and I would start talking about it, and we'd be in the hall discussing it, and they'd say, "No, we never talk about this stuff in the hallway."

[01:45:06] And they would pull me into their office and say, "Okay, we can discuss it in private." And I said, "Well, why don't we discuss it in the hallway?" "No, no, it's not acceptable." In Western medicine, mind comes from brain. In other words, life is chemistry. And it's like, "Okay, so are we going to call all these patients liars?"

[01:45:28] He says, "No." He says, "I believe them." He says, "I just don't admit to it." And he says, "And that's what you should do." You shouldn't admit to this stuff. I said, "Oh, okay. I get it." So it's these kinds of things that are intriguing to me as a person, granted. Does it fit in with Western medicine? No. Does it fit in with Eastern philosophy? Absolutely. Does it fit in with Eastern medicine? Yeah.

[01:46:01] Eastern Medicine talks about things like chakras or meridians, chi, qi, if you're in Japan, all these energies. But guess what? In western medicine, the NIH coined the phrase biofield in 1993. And guess how they defined it. The same way as an Eastern medicine. But yet you don't hear anything about it in the West, even though NIH has adopted this. And when you read what they've adopted, it's the exact same stuff. So why aren't we talking about this stuff? This stuff is a lot more interesting than the stuff we do talk about.

[01:46:40] Luke: I agree. I'm totally aligned with that. And I had a sense the first time we talked that we shared similar passions in that regard, just understanding and exploring the nature of consciousness. I don't know of anything that could possibly be more interesting than, as you described, one example of the mind, the limited perception of the brain being the origin of mind.

[01:47:05] When you have near-death experiences, past life regressions, and the things you've described, there's clearly a field of awareness, a field of intelligence, a field of knowledge, sentients, that seems to pass through the brain but clearly doesn't originate from the brain. And that opens up a whole universe of curiosity for me. And that's something I'm constantly exploring on the podcast and in my personal life, I don't know of anything more fascinating than just the nature of awareness itself. It's just mind boggling in the best way.

[01:47:42] Dan: Well, just to give you one last thought, we had a predicate technology before the technology we have now. The technology was designed for relaxation. And I have a very close friend, and every time he got on that technology-- and it was sound and vibration. It only worked in this way for people who were predisposed to it.

[01:48:09] Now, he didn't have narcolepsy. If you put a narcoleptic on it, they would have their out-of-body experience. But this friend of mine didn't have narcolepsy. He never had an out-of-body experience. And the first time he did, he thought he had a brain tumor. So he immediately called me up and said, "I have to talk to you. I think I have a brain tumor."

[01:48:26] And I talked to him and said, "No, no, Frank." I said, "That was an out-of-body experience." Well, anyway, every time he got on that old technology that we had, he had one of those. The first time he had one, I said, "What did you do?" He said, "I hung out over the local Highway 494 in the Twin Cities." And he says, "And I counted the cars."

[01:48:48] I said, "Really? That's all you could think of doing, was to count the cars?" I said, "I'm going to put you to work." We spent the next five years meeting regularly. We did over 2,000 sessions together. I'm not kidding you, 2,000. And every time he had an out-of-body experience, we did experiments. And all that stuff that I was reading about, Frank didn't read that stuff. He didn't know anything about that.

[01:49:18] But I'll tell you, there's a lot of consistency there. So there's a lot of stuff out there that we can tap into that we just don't yet. And it's interesting. It's technology that's actually going to get us there, this kind of technology now, not what we have. What we have right now, what you held up, that actually has the opposite effect.

[01:49:45] My friend, Frank, he hates this technology. Because if I put this by him, he can't go out of body. But this grounds him. This anchors him in, and it gives them a greater sense of presence. And my guess is that over your past year of usage, you must feel greater presence during the day. Is that true?

[01:50:06] Luke: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:50:10] Dan: Think about what that's doing to you. But think about, what does it really mean? Presence doesn't have-- say, "Okay, I'm present. I'm aware of my surroundings." But it's deeper than that. It's within you. It's like you're anchored. Well, what is anchored? What is anchored in your body now that wasn't before? Can you answer that?

[01:50:37] Luke: I would say a more firm tether between myself as awareness and myself as the persona.

[01:50:51] Dan: Yeah. That's right. That's right. And yourself as awareness is bigger than you.

[01:50:58] Luke: Yeah. Thank God.

[01:51:00] Dan: Right. And ultimately, what's interesting, and this is where we're all screwed up, is our own self-identity. What are we really? We live in an age right now where we all see ourselves as our human animal and our ego, but that's not what we are. But yet, that's what we think we are, and that's how we respond. And you're right. This technology that we have now is more than that. Because of that increase in presence, that's why this thing is such a change maker.

[01:51:44] Luke: Wow. Epic. Well, Dan, we're about at the two-hour mark. I had a feeling we were going to be able to go. When I do online recordings, they're typically shorter just because everyone gets exhausted staring at their screen. But I knew once we got going and got the software working that we were going to have a really nice deep dive that was going to be hopefully inspiring to a lot of people and obviously reach beyond just the context of, hey, sleep's great for you. Here's a way to improve your sleep.

[01:52:14] But I know your mission, and I know my mission exceeds just physical benefits. It's really about bringing the best version of ourselves into the world. And as each one person is able to do that more effectively, you have a different world eventually. So I appreciate the work you're doing.

[01:52:33] I'm so happy to know you. I'm so glad that you guys were persistent when I was worried about the Bluetooth and all that stuff in the beginning. You guys like, "No, just try it. Just try it. Don't worry about it. We fixed it. We figured that out. We're way ahead of you." And thank you for creating something that works. And you've also managed to eliminate any parts of it that could be harmful.

[01:52:54] As I said earlier, a lot of people invent great technology that has benefits, but they also have some side effects and consequences that are less than desirable. So thank you for your attention to detail and your engineering and doing it right, which I'm sure is more time in labor and financially costly than just throwing something out there, seeing if it sticks. So I appreciate your commitment to humanity in all the ways.

[01:53:20] So thank you again, Dan, and I can't wait to speak to you again soon, man. And keep me abreast of the new developments of the app. I'm looking forward to being able to run the Relax session before it kicks into the Sleep session and everything else I have going on. So I'm excited to share this with people.