#445: Why is your wearable shaming you?

0:02This stress over longer periods of time is deeply harmful to our health and well-being. Most people don't really know the tools to reset and do something about it. Kind of in a daze where you just go on and on and you just run in this hamster wheel. Most other apps out there and softwares that are connected to a wearable, they shame you. So Wip and Aura and Fitbit and all those can take the leads and the top 5%, but where Endor really wants to make a change is the middle 75%. Tyrell Elstad, welcome to Healthset Podcast. How are you? Good, thank you. How are you? I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm really looking forward to this because you're a medical doctor by background.

0:48you're now a founder you're a ceo you're running a very very interesting what i would call regulated wellness company so there's lots for us to get into um and yeah before we get into the company and everything you're doing there it would be great to hear about your background so um yeah how did you get into medicine how did you then get out of medicine and into entrepreneurship why don't you tell us why don't you tell us the whole story so actually i did the master degree in economics first inst andrews in scotland oh nice and so i feel i was originally in uh the business world and i worked in pwc as a consultant um yeah and i i made like a i loved excel so i made the economic systems for private hospitals and i rocked excel well the question here then is how much did you use the mouse i know i tried to stay um or it was a competition amongst us to use it as little as possible i was not the best at that but okay fine okay fine um i remember that was a big thing amazing and then I got into med school and I was so curious about learning more about well both how the body works but also about the universe and and so for me that's just looking inward and you can also look outward but yeah it's interesting to go for to go from economics to medicine that seems quite the leap was it something that you were always interested in medicine and the body and biology and that side yes or was it it was it was always it wasn't just learned through I don't like economics it was actually that you liked both yeah yeah and when I it's really hard to get into med school in Norway but then I got in and I just felt that I had to try so I never went in with the lens that I have to do this or this is a duty or I have to complete I just started and I and then I loved it it's such a fascinating subject to learn about how the body works you would know i would know i would know yes and actually one of the reasons that i struggled actually at medical school originally was because um i i actually failed my first exam at medical school quite spectacularly because it was that can happen yeah for a variety of reasons um i think finally being sort of let out into the real world and able to do whatever i wanted with relatively full autonomy was probably not the best move for me um it was good though I mean it was in not it was it was in Nottingham it was a very lecture-based program which again if it was a if it was a self-directed learning program I would have gotten even worse with it I think so at least there was some structure of having to go to lectures and and be spoon-fed information somewhat but um yeah I I struggled until I got onto the wards and until it was about people so actually the theory I didn't get on with as much as I did of getting on the wards and just getting things done with other human beings that I then I started to connect the dots but actually for me it was so difficult to just learn out of books like I just couldn't I didn't connect with it you know but I can get that where most people are very young when they start med school and I think it's actually one of the subjects that you you often benefit from taking when you're a bit older that is actually true do you feel like you benefited from from doing it later then definitely and what was the what was the value of doing economics beforehand i mean that's quite a specific specific value in medicine because i mean look what in in especially when you get into technology and and start thinking of both at the same time i think you can start to spot opportunity because one thing that I've actually noticed is health economics is such a powerful skill in everything that I look at and do now so you know when we're when we're looking at even like who do we bring on as clients and how do we help those clients and how do we communicate for those clients like so much of it so much of it comes back to health economics and so I can imagine actually going through medicine particularly once you've qualified having an economics background i imagine did you see the world slightly differently to other people of health care i imagine you did and that takes me to preventive medicine because in my mind that will save us a lot of money if we invest more in preventive medicine it's a lot more costly to save someone with a heart attack or cardiovascular disease or you know instead of um doing the preventive work it takes before and it doesn't have to cost anything you know just good lifestyle movement good social relations prioritizing sleep and and your mental health it's free almost well it is almost and actually you know when you even when you look at brian johnson and these people with the amount of things that they're doing even people like that will say that at the end of the day it just comes down to the basics of once you've got very good sleep and a very good diet actually the rest is very incremental it's just that the challenge is obviously for most people getting those basics right you're still at the mercy of your economic situation your social situation all of those different things and so it becomes a difficult thing to to solve for everybody but there are clearly things that we can learn so how did you how did you start to think about moving back into business then like were you did you enjoy medicine did you in did you practice as a doctor did you enjoy that was it a case of mixing the two was it a case of wanting to leave like talk to me about the transition from from doctor to founder yes i I worked in the ER and also as a private, or what you say in English, GP, general practitioner.

7:18Yeah. I liked it. But then I got into functional medicine, which is basically holistic medicine. And I worked with patients coming to me with stress-related disease. And I saw a trend. And I loved helping one by one, but I could clearly see that, you know, I have something here where I can get more reach through health tech than being a medical doctor one-to-one with patients in the office. So that's why I left the clinic and started Endor for better reach on a massive public health scale. Talk about that a bit more practically then. So you said you were seeing people with stress-related conditions.

8:10And obviously, as a doctor, you've got an understanding of the physiology behind that. So you definitely understand how people are getting to that symptomatic position. And therefore, you obviously spotted that they weren't getting what they needed from what you were doing in functional medicine, say or that they needed something extra or needed something different so um talk to me a bit more about what you saw the problem as and how you arrived at what the solution is so it's actually not stress but distress we don't have that word in Norwegian which is so weird but I see distress as chronic stress over time without any breaks.

9:03So your cortisol levels and your adrenals and your whole system is under stress for long periods of time without resetting. And that's the problem because stress itself is necessary for us. Take, for instance, our muscles. When we do physical strength training, we actually stress the muscles in a way where we tear down the muscle fibers and then it's not until after when we rest that they rebuild stronger and that's called resilience you know stress resilience we get stronger and our tolerance window increases so we're totally dependent on stress same with our mental stress and memory function and whatever system in the body we have it kind of needs some friction and stress to to work properly and to calibrate even our emotions we need to calibrate them once in a while um and so we need stress but when it's uninterrupted for so long and I have so many patients and friends and family and even myself where you can catch yourself waking up in the morning with the alarm and then you check the world news and you check all your inboxes and then you go to work and you rush from thing to the meeting, picking up the kids.

10:25And then when you go to bed, you haven't had even a minute of just mental digestion or being bored or having that reset of your whole system. And that's the problem, you know. Then these symptoms start showing up from the body. If that's symptoms of anxiety or depression or sleep issues or skin issues or irritable bowel or you know you name it the the symptoms can present themselves in so many different ways but what we know from the science is that this stress over longer periods of time is deeply harmful to our health and well-being and it's not just symptomatic it increases the risk of cardiovascular disease you know diabetes all that it increases the risk of autoimmune disease it increases the risk of even cancer and the list goes on and on and on and on and so I really think that maybe distress could be seen as the new smoking and maybe we don't really know how harmful it is just yet but I think it's deeply harmful and that most people don't really know the tools to reset and do something about it because we're kind of in a days where you just go on and on and you just run in this hamster wheel it's really interesting because what i mean you've quite accurately described what the last particularly week has been like for me or a couple of weeks i'm normally really good at giving myself time to relax and i mean i almost consider it as like parasympathetic time right like i just in my mind exactly right like in my mind i know because i've spoken to longevity scientists on this and and plenty of other people that that will talk about parasympathetic time being a real key a real unlock to rest and repair and like you say that the exactly that that's the time where we can actually then heal stronger as you say build that stress resilience and and keep it and i'm normally very good at that and have built it into my routine and and that side of things the last seven days i really haven't and like even like at the weekend we went to you know see some family so i had to get a flight and so you know you get a flight on friday afternoon with a one-year-old that is that is that is not a relaxing experience um and then you get you know you've got all the airport stuff you get the fly you get the other end you've got they don't like their new car seat because it's a travel car seat there's just all of this stuff and that's and that was meant to be a rest time all of that and then and then you're back on the treadmill and and like you just described that morning alarm goes off you read the news you check your inboxes that's exactly what i did this morning um and then yada yada yada yada and and this is and this is what's interesting to me most people do that that's super interesting and it's do you know what it's a failure of i think our attitudes to to technology because you hear all the time don't you about oh through history we've had these times of machines come along and everyone is scared that they're not going to be a farmers anymore but then everyone gets machines and everyone finds something new to do and we've got this like repeated i get history repeating itself of technology coming along but then expectations changing everyone thought that i don't know vehicles would mean that oh everyone's just gonna have loads of time off and and no one's gonna need to do any work because of machines and vehicles and all these things and oh no one's gonna have any work to do wrong because then expectations change i think that for me is what devices at home have been you once you there was a very short space of time where early adopters had a productivity advantage but then everyone could afford an iphone and now everyone gets email 24 7 so now expectations are availability and of your friends and arranging social stuff of work and so because the expectations are now on everyone there's no advantage for anyone that's now the baseline it's just it's just the expectation so now with ai coming in we've got the whole wave again of yeah okay we're in this brief moment where the super users have got arguably a productivity advantage you could also argue absolutely not the amount they're experimenting with it but but but at some point that's now going to become a new expectation then we've got all of that to do it's just i don't know even me explaining that is at the same time our physical bodies and how the human system has developed through evolution is still stuck you know thousands of years back so we're not meant to process this information in that pace and you talked about the parasympathetic nervous system and that's part of the problem people don't really know their bodies and they don't listen into the signals and know how to rest efficiently um do you know how to get your body into parasympathetic state quickly and do i know well no no is the answer i don't know i don't know an exact mechanism so i think there's ways that i think i'm good at it but i don't know scientifically so most people don't really know this and that's why we created and or because in our app you can train yourself at getting into these states in seconds and minutes.

16:26And so we use something called heart rate variability, HRV, and we measure it from your phone. So you just put your finger on the camera or you can put it on your chest and it uses the accelerometer on the phone to measure your heart rate variability. And then you get a real-time closed loop biofeedback system to teach you how to get into parasympathetic state because heart rate variability is a proxy for that at least when you use rmsst and then there's tons of other measures like coherence and resonance breathing and all that and we have that too if you want to geek further into this field yes i do but i mean that's the core of this to to actually learn how to rest better and you like with your one-year-old maybe you're not meant to rest for hours but take a little break to reset and you can do that in minutes and so i think that's what my patients benefited the most from and going back to the start we talked about how preventive medicine is often not the extreme biohacking but more the maybe call it the 80 % what you can do the free stuff the easy stuff eating less processed foods and more real food moving a little bit every day prioritizing better sleep um prioritizing spending time with good friends that make you feel better um and also prioritizing these minutes of resets to to reset all your hormones and all your stress levels to come back to a state of centeredness and clarity because I mean that's what most people lack these days and with AI now I mean productivity is on steroids but it's not as you said it's not necessarily a good thing maybe you just cause more mess I mean if you don't see clearly then you will just make more mistakes or bring your company in the wrong direction so what we all need these days is just to recenter and to see clearly it's more important than ever it is oh god there's so there's so much that i want to talk to you about here one of the things that yeah where to start where to start yeah one of the things that uh came to mind then you know when people say like they lose themselves like i can see you know in the last seven days i've just it's been it's been absolutely they disconnect and they lose themselves yes it's sort of how i'm starting to feel now almost it's like i'm starting to feel a bit more disconnected um i'm using this as like therapy now but um yeah but but it's it's funny i think that there's also a little bit of obviously lack of sleep with sleep training like levi like a son at the minute as well so um it's just a wait from like 2 a.m to 4 a.m today and like that certainly knocks me off massively and doesn't help and then when you're just on the go on the go like losing that sense of self like you mentioned i think is it's interesting to me how we use language to actually identify these things that show up physiologically as well.

19:40But anyway, that was one thing. I think the other thing is that it's super scary to me how the AI leaders are talking about AI and actually just their, I don't know, the flippancy at which they're just like, yeah, it might just shift entire global workforce and economies and loads people are going to lose their jobs and it is going to be pretty horrendous for a few years. but you know we'll all sort of like recover as a species and it's like it's our goal as a species to be more productive like is that like is it is that what we're meant to be doing like there are there are enough sci-fi films about this like i think it's the goal of the capitalist of capitalism yeah to be more productive and as of now that's what our whole economic system is based on it's hard isn't it because unless you cap unless you unless you put the measures in space uh in place sorry to um to cap cap uh capitalism and to and to make sure the bottom end it is improving things for everybody you get this concentration of power near the top and that's it's like we're we're just approaching that moment aren't we but before this gets into like super political stuff and more about i worry about the same too uh that the differences will increase and that the power resides with a very few uh not state systems anymore but with a very few capitalists and who knows maybe they become so powerful that the state system also will change we don't know that yet but um for sure private humans decide a lot these days on behalf of the whole world and that is a sad state of affairs and it certainly doesn't stress me out any less knowing that i'm sorry but i'm also very hopeful because i think also that people will the pendulum will shift and people will come to their senses hopefully and i think that hopefully people will choose the to use the companies and the ai that they feel have integrity um where their leaders actually care about them um feeling good and being good and healthy instead of just pulling them into some toxic algorithms that make them feel worse yeah maybe people don't see this yet it's still early but people will see it clearly uh with time and that matters a lot who is leading and who is the visionary behind i think that the source of the information will matter more these next years i i definitely agree i think i think there is a lot of cause to be optimistic on this i i do also think that But the way that media is working with capitalism at the moment as well is that unfortunately those big companies own the social media, which is where so many people are spending so much time.

22:50And there's this idea and this sort of illusionary veil that it's actually in the power of the creators. And therefore, as long as you're a good creator, like you can spread good in what you do. it's just that in a 15 second video you're just going to get scrolled past very quickly and forgotten it's not it's not media from the creator it's actually the platform that's benefiting rather than at large yes the creator is but but actually it's more pat more more good going into that would be better and essentially i think policy has a great deal to play here and i think that's where this will go i think i i think as we learn the dangers and we learn what's actually happening with social media and the way that people are consuming on there i think it will i think to our grandchildren it will be very strange that i hope it is anyway very strange that we had completely unfettered access to social media it will almost be and i've heard this from a few people that it will be almost viewed like smoking and actually we are the first guinea pigs through it we have unfettered access we're going to use it as much as possible and so we're going to know where the line is and actually then that's where the regulation comes in that's where the policy comes in that's where the self-policing comes in frankly as well and yeah i think that's an interesting spot and hopefully that's one less thing in our day and we can actually find the time for a bit a bit more parasympathetic activity um in that i guess i don't know do you think that's where it's gonna go you're i mean you're from a very very well a lot more socialist part of the world than uh norway yeah um i think that's where it's gonna go um as long as the state system still is in power to enforce the regulation and policies yes and this is key that's the assumption and this is key and get and then give people the belief that they can actually vote for something that does look like actual change um it's funny we've seen the green party really go up in uh up in popularity in the uk they just want a seat in parliament and so uh but so is reform on the right and there's a lot going on over here but anyway let's not make this too much about politics let's let's let's geek out on the technology and the metrics because you mentioned you mentioned heart rate variability there as one of them i've got an ultra human ring on now like heart rate oh you do yeah i've tried that too or i've tried it all oh have you yeah so we can talk about that as well so yeah most of my patients that came into the office often came with a report from some of these devices interesting what do you think of them that's why i created ender i think they're really bad all of them because they overwhelm my patients with lots of information and graphs without actually giving them the key to practice and that's one of the worst things i think now about our information era is that you know there's too much information almost you you have chat gpt and you have podcasts and you have self-help books and you have these rings and these bands and everything and you know don't misunderstand information and knowledge i love it But the real key to unlocking your well-being is not in the information alone.

26:28It's a good motivation and it can give you direction. But the real practice is in the choices you make every day. The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine and what you choose over and over again. And you see this also with people trying to lose weight. You can't just read a lot of books about losing weight and you can't just do a few weeks of a new diet. You kind of have to adopt a new lifestyle over time that serves your body and your routine. And you have to like it so much that you continue to do it for a long period of time until it became a new habit. and so that's what we did with Endor we I gathered my favorite teachers in bath work and meditation and nutrition and sound healing and sleep and all that and put it into the app yeah and it's only minutes long so that our algorithm knows all your data we connect with any device through apple health kits or directly with some devices um and if you want to use a device that's fine but then we also have an ai that that suggests what you can do as your next step yeah and that will help me over time and then there's a feedback loop so the ai then knows what you practiced and can evaluate and see if it helped and then you can spot correlations and patterns over time For instance, I had a member who saw an increase in their morning heart rate variability when she was on vacation.

28:17And so you don't know if it was because the weather was better or if it was because she didn't bring her laptop so she didn't work or maybe it was something completely different. Maybe there was a man in this new country that made her feel good. but you know with enough data i can spot trends and inform you about this over time maybe it knows that every time you prioritize going for a walk in nature because that we know because we have your location uh you feel better you know and so then i can encourage you to or the app can encourage you to do more of that and i think that's key too to share for you and to show you the good stuff you can do because most other apps out there and softwares that are connected to a wearable they shame you they directly just point out to everything you're doing wrong your sleep depth or you know your inactivity or you know most people don't feel good after some time wearing this and they take them off on average people take their wearable off after three months unless you are have really good data well this is the thing isn't it then they keep it this is the this is the thing and then it's just another example of the best get better and the people who need it don't wear it yeah exactly and you know and you know that curve i can't remember the english name but the normal distribution curve oh you have two tails and then you have that's it and so you know weapon or and fitbit and all those can take the top part the athletes and the top five percent but where endor really wants to make a change is the middle 75 percent and we want to shift this up a tiny bit and then you can make a huge impact on public health and i think that's one of the you know the the best things you can do for our well-being and health in the whole world to help these masses just learn how to recenter and recharge and realign in this crazy world we're living in yeah that's amazing that's amazing so i completely agree i completely agree and i famously completely agree jessica my wife loves wearables she's she's the uh she's the quantified self biohacking like loves loves all the data just absolutely loves it um I am historically historically the opposite I have been wearing the ultra human ring but again I I know I feel like I can contextualize it and I don't wear it every day I sometimes forget I don't really care like whatever um and I think broadly it doesn't tell me stuff I don't already know I am a medical doctor by background though so that so I'm I'm different in that regard um it it tells me i need to do more cardio it tells me like i slept badly like all these things already know sleep depth tells me sleep there yeah yeah and scores and scores yeah and i i don't know i've got the ultra human ceo coming on actually that i can ask a lot of these questions too um um but i i'm interested in like do they actually know the effect of telling people they're in sleep there does that actually help people sleep better they should know because there have been done um studies on this where there's one study that's i'll send it after but it looked it gave you a group fake data so they told the group that they slept poorly and then they performed worse on cognitive tests and you know this is the nocebo effect you would know nocebo yeah it's the opposite of placebo if you you're someone is telling you something good then you feel better and the opposite if you're you're telling someone they're bad then you also feel worse and perform worse it's the anchoring effect as well in in in action there as well yeah exactly and so i do and all research on habit formation show this you know and and and the way you would teach a child or a dog or anyone you would reinforce the good you would tell them anything they do that's good you cheer for that and i just can't see how a solution that's built on the opposite can serve your well-being yeah i don't know i i i don't know and i'm looking forward to to asking him a lot of those questions as well um the other thing i think is really interesting about this is i love that frame around the standard distribution and you're going for you know the middle 50 the middle 75 like that's that's really interesting because something i've been saying for a little while now i've talked to neco health i've talked to i'm going to talk to like i'm talking to a lot of people in the prevention space at the moment and trying to figure out what's prevention what's longevity what like what how do we how do we actually go from a private sector model into something that benefits more people in the public sector like how do we how do we use the private sector as the r &d layer to then show the public sector what's actually got roi and therefore can be rolled out nationally so a lot of those conversations I'm having we're actually going to do a few events in the UK about this as well um I'll certainly let you know about but I've got this idea that I think prevention even take the private sector right now I think I think prevention is one on who can convince the late majority to do things because i think the more prevention clinics wearables uh services that come up that one to three percent that you mentioned i think people are basically sharing that number of people just amongst more and more services okay i think as time goes on there is a recruitment of people into that innovator early adopter category that category is getting larger and i can definitely appreciate that but i don't think it's getting larger at the pace that's needed to have true impact and actually it's about convincing people that currently aren't convinced about preventative measures i think that's the real win i think anyone that i think for any investors listening you know anyone that comes to you with with oh here's a new preventative health model here's a new clinic here's a new service we're going to aim it at these people we're going to test this we're going to do this cool yeah sure like you'll test some stuff you'll make things better but for a small number of people who are interested i honestly think the the greatest preventative health companies now will be actively thinking how do we convince in inverted commas normal people that aren't doing this that this is a good idea and in part that's helping them with their situation and their circumstance to even make it a good idea but i think that's really interesting that you're aiming for that i think that's great and so yeah and within that group uh we see that our target group is 35 plus oh interesting i i think i have my hypothesis but i i think that then you have when you are a bit older you tend to get into a state where you appreciate and learn that what you've done before didn't work out and you you kind of have to make the effort to practice to see effects you know um and so and that's the same with meditation and and movement and yeah you have to kind of do the work yeah or non-work like actually set silence on your schedule to be bored it's so easy to plug in whatever feed of information but it's come to that it's almost like a rebellion act to to take two minutes in silence yeah i i've all do you know what that's one thing i've always been pretty good at which is if my calendar's empty that does not mean i'm available like i've been very clear i've always been actually very good at that i think that's because i'm so naturally introverted and i have i can honestly feel the yeah charge that's an interesting word i feel that i can almost my the way my brain works i see a lot of like shapes and patterns i don't really think in words i think in like conceptual visuals yeah i'm very visual very visual in the way i think and learn and all that sort of stuff honestly honestly i i can see and feel a battery recharging when i i just know that i can just sit on my own in a room and watch my thing on a laptop and like i i feel it so i've always been very good at that but i i know i definitely know people that that aren't and i get it wrong a lot as well like i'll i'll i'll forget that i need that sometimes after something else that's been in my calendar it's so easy to forget and and our mind kind of tricks us our ego so the thoughts that if you just run a bit harder if you think and analyze a bit more then you will be more productive and better it's so true it's so true you know do you know my mistake cereal is when i am in a really good mood i agree to all of these things i agree to all of these social interactions i agree to all of these meetings i'll have these meetings about these new ideas and oh this person wants to start a company and i can advise this and and i'll set all of these things and then and then i'll i'll come down off this whatever mood i was in like episodes like oh and then i'm looking at my calendar just just in worlds of pain and i'm like oh no no what have i done what have i done to myself oh it's fine we all do it oh it's funny this reminds me of a book i am oh yeah i talked to do you know ty lopez no he's like a famous coach from la but he recommended the one thing a book by gary keller i've heard this yes but i haven't read it myself but i i i read about it and and i think it's quite relevant to this to stay on course and to reprioritize and to actually also remember to say no um but it's so hard because especially if you're a curious soul you kind of want to say yes and to explore and to do it all that's the positive that's the positive way of putting it i'm also a people pleaser and therefore just historically a people pleaser and therefore i put myself in those situations when i definitely shouldn't have done um and you have something to learn i do have plenty to learn a good part is that you you know this about you many people don't even know their own patterns you know that you're an introvert and that you charge from alone time and that's a great thing so now the next step is just to communicate it out to the to your wife and you know if if you get them on board maybe you did already then it will be in her best interest to give you half an hour on vacation to just be alone because then you come back and you you're fully charged so So it's a win-win for everyone.

40:30I'll give you an email address so you can send that email to her and let her know, but that's what I need. No, Jess is great. Jess is great. We do communicate that, actually. We are very good at communicating that. Unfortunately, she's also introverted, and so we're able to give that to each other, which is wonderful. Oh, that's nice. That's love. Yeah, it is. It is. That's one thing about my life. I am surrounded by a lot of love, and I'm very, very, very grateful for that. I just need to I know that I can benefit from that parasympathetic time just sat enjoying that rather than thinking how can I make this situation better which is yeah just often not what's needed right um yeah I want to talk about other metrics and technology with you because that's one thing that we glossed over that I want to come back to that you mentioned because you talked about um You mentioned heart rate variability, but then you mentioned a few other things.

41:24And so I'm interested in those other things, actually. I'm interested in what... Coherence and resonance breathing and all that. Yes, I'm interested in... And biofeedback, yeah. Yeah, and I'm also interested that because you're a medical doctor, you will see, and you've talked about it a lot on this already, you'll always seek evidence for things. And so you've therefore chosen what you're doing, through endor so i'm interested in those choices i'm interested in in in how you went about choosing that be it through an evidence framework or or something else and also i imagine as a doctor you're then interested in in in the physiology and linking that physiology to the evidence to the effect and figuring that out and and and just so you know the reason i ask this is because i I don't know what it's like in Norway in terms of public perception and things like that.

42:21But I obviously trained as an anaesthetist. And so I think as an anaesthetist, you get very comfortable in, well, science moves on and there are things that we don't know. And you get, I felt very comfortable in, well, quite. And I felt very comfortable in that, frankly. I think there's an esist that, you know, very much have a, have a, like a more logical view of the world. But actually, you know, like I've said many times on here before, we manipulate consciousness for a living and all's got a clue what that is. We use anaesthetic drugs that manipulate consciousness for a living. We don't have a clue what they do or how they work.

42:59We've got theories. We know more than on some drugs than others, of course. But there's a lot, there's a lot that we don't know. and actually when it comes to whatever the brain is in this receptor of consciousness like um yeah we there's a lot we don't know right so yeah so we end up being quite comfortable in that um but i think in in in the uk we i don't think well my perception is we've not really figured out where these things fit into a worldview of physiological and pathophysiological medicine and and i feel like there's a there's a disconnect and we're we're trying i think more than we have done at any other point i think with functional mri testing of uh like meditation and like kundalini and stuff like there's functional mri that proves that certain areas of the brain will get larger or smaller or connections will form greater or be fired up more or less you know there's there's there's functional mri centers in the u.s that figure this stuff out like there's there's we're doing more than we ever have on this but i still think it's this really clunky this like uncomfortable meeting of the almost like the ancient world and what we know to be right when we were just humans versus the technological world and the desire to break everything down into atoms and what they're doing so i'm interested in that so how did you choose what you're doing with endor and how do you think about it broadly it's a big question that's a very big question yeah sorry i sort of went off on one there but real time heart rate for ability okay let's just start don't know what consciousness is no uh what scares me the most just to throw in something more in this puzzle why not is uh neural link um an ai chipped into our bodies before we actually know what consciousness is so i think actually the next big discovery we will see in the world the next decade is a more unconsciousness research yeah and the soul i mean are we just a machine or are we something more and this is a bit scary to talk about for a medical doctor because it as of now taps into almost religion or spirituality yeah since yeah we don't know you know because we don't have a scientific framework for it yes i completely i completely agree and that's what makes it really uncomfortable i completely agree but also scientists are saying there are scientists saying quite rightly that look at some point on some level x plus y equals consciousness we just haven't figured that out yet but once we do we have this greater understanding scientifically yeah i totally get it So, and I'm, I don't know if you know, but I'm a yoga teacher and I've been teaching yoga for more than 15 years and been meditating for more than 20 years.

46:04And so, and part of yoga and the yoga tradition or meditating or whatever is to become one with consciousness. And so you can live kind of in your own head and believing every thought. and there's a trigger and kind of like a reaction and you're kind of just lost you're not clear but for me consciousness is this space where you kind of see every everything clearly you are not your thoughts you're not your emotions you're not the senses you're not everything that is happening to you you are the force that kind of observes everything neutrally come and go which is what I try and do when i'm angry by the way i try and observe my anger rather than i am not angry i am just feeling anger so i try i try and honestly it's like taking a crowbar to it to separate those two things sometimes and famously i get that wrong quite a lot but yeah and then we lose it and when you've lost it and you kind of believe your thoughts then you're lost so you have no uh you have no awareness in that moment.

47:13But once you come back to presence and seeing clearly, then you know you're back. But if you judge yourself for having lost it, then you're out of it again, you know? Interesting. So this is a fun play with meditation because the more advanced kind of it gets, the more you also have to accept that you're only human and you have these thoughts and you have these emotions And it's totally okay. It's part of the human experience on earth to just, you know, accept them. And it's part of the game almost to be here and to just play around with it and explore and to, yeah. And so that's consciousness.

47:57And then about awareness, to be aware and be in a space to be present and aware of everything that comes and goes, that we think we can measure. And that's part of what we're doing in Endor now. And we've tested it for a year now and we're about to release it. But since we are given this possibility to have real-time heart rate variability by feedback, it's real-time ultra-human and Wuppen, Aura and Garmin, and none of them have that, you know. But we have a technology where we gather your live heartbeat and your live heart rate variability directly from the iPhone camera or from the accelerometer.

48:40Meaning we can also ask you to give us feedback. So if you lost it, then we can ask you when you are back, when you are present to give our AI a notice that you are back. So with this work, we are kind of trying to measure presence. The problem is that no one has done this yet. So we have to play with it and we release it as beta. So we have a toolbox in the app where we're open about, you know, we don't know exactly here. But what I'm hoping for is that we will get a lot of people to help us to give biofeedback and to give feedback to the AI. And so we can discover trends and patterns over time in your heart rate variability.

49:29what i see for myself is that it increases a lot when i'm present and when i'm safe so it's almost as if if i try too hard to breathe or to be present then it falls again it's too much pressure and too much force so the for me and my body the higher heart rate variability and coherence is when i sort of almost give up when i'm just fully accepting the present moment and i feel safe and aligned with the sun or feeling the wind and then accepting a thought coming and that's me but then i have some patients where i test this with and they respond really well to sounds and then some respond well to the the lower frequency sounds so bass and gong and stuff like that whereas others respond better to um bird song and nature sounds and and yeah and then um so that's that uh to to measure consciousness or measure presence and awareness and trying to dip our toe into that space with technology I think is very fascinating and then there is the measures heart rate variability is just kind of like an umbrella term and there's lots of way to measure that and none of it is standardized so it's still a mess you know um in most wearables they have something called nocturnal heart rate variability which which is nightly heart rate variability and most use rmssd which is seen as a proxy as for the parasympathetic nervous system what's rmssd root means square difference so it's just It's one way of calculating your variability.

51:35And so to explain heart rate variability for anyone, if your body is under high stress, so cortisol and adrenaline, then your heart beats as a clock. It beats very rigidly. And there's the same interval between every heartbeat. so and that interval is measured in milliseconds so let's say it's 900 milliseconds between every heartbeat then you have zero heart rate variability and you're dying uh or very very very stressed i haven't seen that before but i have seen vt at that point and so and then you have the opposite if you have different variability between every heartbeat then you have a higher heart rate variability and that can be random but if it has a pattern if it's synced up with your breathing so when you breathe in the heart beats faster you know this and then when you breathe out it beats slower this is called respiratory synesthetmia and it's a form of heart rate variability but it's synchronized with your breath and and if we tap into the physiology why this is happening is uh purely actually mechanical things so when we breathe in oops you can see here our diaphragm is pulled down and so the space within the lungs increases or in the thorax and of course then also the heart volume increases and so the pressure drops.

53:24And when this happens, the baroreceptors within our system registers a quick drop in the pressure, sending signals to the brain to speed up the process. Yeah, you have to compensate. So then the heart beats a bit faster. And the opposite it happens on the exhale. The diaphragm pulls up again, squeezing air out of the lungs. And in a moment there, it's higher pressure. So the heart is smaller. The baroreceptors notice this, it's higher pressure inside the heart because it's smaller, sending signals to the brain. And then parasympathetic nervous system is boosted. So it slows the heart. And so this happens again and And again, every time we breathe in, it beats faster.

54:10Every time we breathe out, it beats slower. But this only happens in a state, how can you say it, in a body that is safe. If you are stressed, why would the body bother saving energy on the exhale? Then it just continues beating as a clock. So you don't get a slowdown with the parasympathetic system. that's an amazing explanation i've never had that explained to me before that's incredible that's that's amazing i do you know i've never i've never even looked into it i i actually assumed it was something different that's that's actually like a massive education for me i should have i definitely should have known that previously but that's took me back to my anesthetic exams that actually that that's amazing do you know do you know who's got the um largest sinus arrhythmia that I have ever seen.

55:05No? My dog. My dog has the most outrageous ECG of sinus arrhythmia. Did you take an ECG on your dog? Well, kind of. Proxy for it. Arguably. Two lead. Yeah, because I was worried about it because I thought he had AF or something. I thought he was like... Do you know what? I honestly thought he was in heart block because like his pulse is like 32. I was like, what is going on? And I can feel his heart, you know? Yeah. When he's sleeping on his back. And we can feel it on ourselves too. Yeah, of course, of course. Anyway, I didn't take him to the vet for that, but I did, but while he was there for something else, I did say, could you just have a listen to it?

55:57They're like, yeah, don't worry. They've all got sinus arrhythmia. I was like, oh. Yeah. oh interesting yeah because they they don't have tax to pay and revenue to worry about and it's good to be your dog that is it is a dog's life it is a dog's life honestly um anyway so that's the coherence and and there are studies also and there's one in nature actually doing research on states of coherence to states of emotional or emotion yeah and so if i'm not mistaken it's been a while since i read it but i i can remember that the state of being in awe and having goosebumps is correlated with really high coherence and also love state of love being in love or sharing love and and that's actually higher up than uh than joy and yeah other so-called positive emotional states my my next question is if it's possible to have high coherence even if you're sad or angry so long you accept it fully i think that's possible uh but that's a great We need to do some research on that.

57:17I would love to have more data to explore this further. I think it's important to learn. And we're such a great team. We have two PhDs in heart rate variability on our team to help us with this and a physicist. So we're deep into this right now. And the app is free. we have a freemium just to get this data and to to to learn over time that's great so uh yeah and and then there's um resonance breathing is something else uh that we also have in the toolbox and that's finding your respiratory frequency that gives you the highest coherence uh so this is called And yeah, so then basically we test different frequencies from three breaths per minute.

58:15That's very low. I wouldn't advise starting there. As you know, normal humans usually breathe at the rate between 12 and 18 in rest. My perfect resonance breathing is 5.5 these days. I think it changes from day to day and where you are in the context and if I'm sick or not and so on. And so it's always just a moment picture of where you are. There is a study saying that the typical frequency for most people, the best one is six breaths per minute to get the highest coherence. but it's so cool to find your own you know so that you can do in under and it's very fun I love it it's it can be a bit difficult for people who are used to breathing really fast if you are have symptoms of anxiety and you know for me anxiety is to be scared or have the emotion afraid for a thought.

59:23You're thinking about the future, worrying about the future, and that triggers an emotion fear. And so you're in this constant loop of being worried and anxious. And if you are, then you typically also breathe faster. You're hyperventilating. And then, you know, this changes our physiology and the way we respond. Carbon dioxide drops. perhaps it's an important vasodilatator we know this for sure so that means there's more constriction in the small arteries in the legs and feet so many people with anxiety that breathe fast tend to have colder hands and feet they also have dry mouth and eyes because the parasympathetic nervous system is not the atropinic effects yeah exactly and so there's a range of physiological changes in the body and and when you do this over a long period of time and you breathe fast then uh the body adapts so when you then start to breathe slower again then it can the body's not used to having a rise in the co2 from breathing slower so then it's just important to to do this gradually over time um and so on there's so much i want to talk about in the space it's so cool um but yeah but uh yeah that's you you started asking about the basics for andor and i think we're just a bunch of geeks that love this space and we really believe that we can um contribute to this space of uh biometrics but also practice yes so bridging those two in an easy way and this brings me back to the 80 you know in school when you needed an a plus it takes a lot of effort to get that last uh 20 but it's not too hard to get the b you know then you just sit down the day before and you follow the recipe and and then you know but it takes so much more to get that last uh grade and it's the same with the body i mean it doesn't take so much to learn to just go into parasympathetic state and to play around with this over time and it's kind of just a fun game you know anyone can do it just do it uh and then you know and then whoop and or and all them they can have the top five percent that want to be top athletes or to i don't know get all the data you get that in end or two but then you have to go to insights and or ask our end or mind which is an ai coach and all that it's more it's more hidden because i don't think most people need it or want it uh yeah amazing um terry it's been an absolute absolute pleasure thank you i've learned a huge amount and this has really helped me because i you might i mean you might have picked up from this i'm on this sort of quest to to really figure out the prevention space and to understand i'm trying to map it really in my mind i'm trying to understand what players we have like yourself and how you're going about things and i'm trying to i'm trying to put this into some sort of framework where i can plot the future and i can try and understand where public private partnerships might exist and trying to communicate that through this podcast and through the newsletter and through the media that we produce everywhere.

1:03:03I'm just trying to get us to a place where at least I can understand it a bit more and start to talk about it from a more informed position. And so even the link, what I found really useful actually is the links biometrically actually with what you're doing the the requirement for you know two phds in in higher rate variability and a physicist to actually understand and appreciate this in order to then develop a product good enough that it actually works and like i said this is going to be one on the late majority this space actually making impact is going to be one on the late majority i believe because you're right the top 3%, the top 5 % are just going to keep biohacking.

1:03:56They're going to stay at that very top end. They're going to be at the technological frontier. They're going to be at the technological border of wherever we're pushing that stuff. And that's fine. That's needed because they are the research and development layer for the rest of us who might be following up behind, you know, me particularly as a bit of a laggard in, in this, in the grand scheme of people in health tech i think i'm a bit of a laggard on this but um yeah it's really it's really helped me understand this the final question for me i guess would be what's your what's your goal with endor and how do you go about reaching it is it to capture as much of this market as possible Is it to create this market by educating people this is what they need?

1:04:49Is it that you have more impact metrics and that's what you're going for? I'm interested in like what are you trying to grow here? What are you trying to build? What are you going to be happy with once it's in the world? There is a gap in the market now because the retention rate for most other solutions is so low. Agree. uh but our retention rate now eight week retention is between 20 and 25 percent which is like unheard of yeah wow it's really really good and i think it's a witness to that we're onto something that people want this kind ai and they don't want to be overwhelmed with data but they want easy low barrier to entry pragmatic practices that actually work and you know world hate World Health Organization, Lancet, all of these have called for this for a decade.

1:05:47Yeah. And still it doesn't exist. Yeah. And so I think this is our answer and I saw it amongst my patients. They need it and that's why we created it. Nice. So that's our goal to shift public health on a grand scale through these easy, low barrier to entry, no nonsense exercises and practices. and then we're not rejecting data and ai we're leveraging it but in a kind way it's it's really not not that i mean it's not it's nothing crazy biohacking you know but it's still needed and it's quite hard to make you know you have to make the exercises and you have to validate and you have to have the team and i agree but that's where the ip is that's where the nuance is that's where the hard thing is it's managing it you know it's managing the strength of the uh intervention with the rate that it would be adopted and used and at the same time giving people an understanding of it which makes it stickier and how much you go down that route and and i think that's the other thing that i would say here as well which is that in a world of increasing misinformation and in a world where i think that the lay person is becoming more aware of studies and i'm doing air quotes for people that are just listening um people need i believe to be communicated a level of scientific rigor i think people can handle it i think people want it i think it adds a adds credibility and i think it's like we talked about before about this clunkiness between you know communicating the benefits of of uh you know more evolved consciousness or a better version of your consciousness versus biometrics that's clunky and and doesn't really fit together nicely at the moment but plotting the journey to understanding that i genuinely believe is an opportunity i think the people that will communicate that best will start convincing an early majority and the late majority because i think people are craving that scientific connection to this and you know some people don't need it obviously um but i do think in a world of misinformation it becomes more important because people are used to being communicated misinformation therefore to say something without that scientific rigor it feels like it's missing something so i actually really appreciate the way that you've communicated for example heart rate variability and why it's so important and how that links to parasympathetic activity.

1:08:50And now you can mention breath work and yoga and Kundalini and this and that, the other. You can mention all of that. Those are just the tools to activate these scientific mechanisms, which then deliver these benefits physiologically, which is how we know it works. And therefore, guess what? Look, TLDR, you're just going to feel better, but you'll also feel better. You'll have more of an appetite. You'll do these things and all these things that we know. But so thank you. It's a long winded way of saying thank you because I do appreciate, you definitely appreciate the way that you've explained all of that today.

1:09:26I'm sure I listen as well too. For people that want to learn more about what you do, they might want to get in touch with you to learn more. They might want to learn about Endor. They might be another medical physicist that wants to join the company. What's the best way for them to get in touch? Well, our email is on our webpage, endor.global. global because we are trying to create a global movement people wanting to check in every day on their body signals instead of checking out because in the end i think that feeling better and the key to your well-being is actually not out there it's inside us so go to andor.global and check out our app it's it has a freemium it's free and that's important for me too because we are after all medical doctors because we want to help and this is my contribution back to the world um so yeah it's free if you want to try it or you can get the premium and then you get me as your coach directly at least for now let's see if it explodes after this podcast i don't know how sustainable that might be but for now anyway for now and thank you so much for inviting me it's been a real pleasure um let me know if you come to norway james and i will i will as i say we've got clients we've got clients up in norway so uh innovation norway has actually supported us so nice thank you so much we'll let them know we'll let them know we chatted um thank you yeah you too