Gladden longevity — Episode #28

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Gladden Longevity podcast with Dr. Jeffrey Gladden MD, FACC, founder and CEO of Gladden Longevity. On this show, we want to answer three questions for you. How good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30? And how do we live well beyond 120? We want to help you optimize your longevity, health, and human performance with impactful and actionable information. Now, here's today's episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.

The Gladden Longevity Podcast is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. The use of any information and materials linked to this podcast is at the listener's own risk.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Welcome, everybody, to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, and joining me today is going to be Mark Young. This is Mark Young II, for those of you that know his father from the prior podcast. I've known Mark Young II for probably five or six years, and he is now the CEO of a company called Zona, Z-O-N-A Plus. He also has a marketing firm and has a variety of graduate degrees and a number of things, including: psychology, etc., but today we're going to be talking about a device that has the ability to treat high blood pressure and improve sexual function, which is the exact opposite of what antihypertensive medications do, which is lower blood pressure, but they also many times destroy sexual function and erectile function, and even if you don't have high blood pressure, it can improve the age of your arteries and also sexual function. So I think you're going to want to listen to this episode. It's actually a very interesting conversation.

Welcome, everybody, to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, and I'm joined today by Mark Young II and it's a pleasure to have Mark on the show. Mark and I have known each other for probably four or five years now I'm thinking.

Mark Young II: Yeah, it's along those lines.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah and he's an interesting healthcare entrepreneur that has been working with a device that's really kind of focused in the cardiovascular space that I think is pretty fascinating. I think you're going to enjoy learning more about this. So with that, Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Young II: I appreciate that, Jeff. Always good seeing your face, that 26 year old face.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, that's right. Not everybody says that when they see my face, no matter what age it might be. So I appreciate that. Good to see you too.

Mark Young II: You too.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Although, you're just covered with a beard now, but we won't talk about that. So, bring us up to speed a little bit on the Zona and maybe you can introduce it for the audience. What is it? A little bit about how it works and then we can dive into some of the ramifications of it as well.

Mark Young II: Yeah, that'd be awesome. So, Jeff, I'll tell you a little bit, and you're doing video here, so I'll kind of show a picture of the device here. The Zona Plus, interesting story, I got involved with this company many years ago and, as you know, I'm a bit of a serial entrepreneur, and with this device, I made an early investment in the company, and then as the company began to materialize and do more and more, I got more involved with it and then found myself in the leadership position in the company. So, that's kind of interesting right there, but the values of the company...

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: What kind of leadership position? Is this a board seat or you're the CEO, or what's happening?

Mark Young II: Oh, I'm the CEO of the company now, which is kind of interesting. I was an investor and as the board was looking to make a leadership change, they had actually engaged me to and asked if I was interested in leading this company knowing that I did that before and have done it with others, and I laughingly said, "No, thank you." And after a little bit more conversation, I agreed to six months that I would help and fix a bunch of stuff, and that was four and a half years ago, so you know how that goes…

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, it sounds like you got a few things fixed.

Mark Young II: We've got some stuff fixed and then we've opened a few other cans of worms, but all exciting stuff. So, the Zona Plus, one of the things that I love about this, Jeff, is that I know your enthusiasm for what I'll use the word: biohacking. I'm sure your audience is familiar with that terminology.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Sure.

Mark Young II: My love for health and longevity and fitness and all of these things has me constantly looking for new ways and new things that I can do to hack into my body's natural defenses and hack into my body's ability to do things beyond what it normally would, less that stimuli, and so Zona, strangely enough, just fits right into my wheelhouse of the things that I love about biohacking, and specifically, as you mentioned, in the cardiovascular health. So, for your audience, I want to kind of explain what this device is and then they'll probably understand my intrigue with it once they hear a little bit, but Zona is a handheld device. It kind of gets described a lot as a phaser from star Trek or kind of like a scanner from a checkout at the grocery store.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: It looks like a scanner from a checkout at a grocery store. It looks like the handle of a handgun, sort of, also, right? I mean it's, just so people understand, it fits in your hand kind of like that handle does, and then it has electronics on top, kind of like your phaser or your checkout kind of thing, but the handle fits in there kind of like a colt 45.

Mark Young II: Well, I'll tell you exactly what it's shaped like, and that it is shaped like the joystick in a fighter plane.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Well, there it is.

Mark Young II: And the reason for that is not a coincidence, Jeff, and that is what Zona's technology actually started with. It was researched first back in the 1980s, that long ago, and there was a research scientist by the name of Dr. Ronald Wiley. Dr. Wiley was commissioned by the US Air Force to study the impact of G-force blackout on fighter pilots. So, as you know, I'm sure most of your audience knows that when a plane starts to go into Mach speeds, the pilot has the potential to pass out, and that was actually really cool. If you saw the new Top Gun movie, as they got into those speeds, the danger became that they would pass out and lose control of the plane. So, the air force wanted to study this and find out.

And, of course, back in the 80s, they're not as developed as they are nowadays in terms of military equipment. But, as they were studying this, of course, they took all of their biometrics at the beginning of the study, they did all their studies and so on. And then, at the end of the study, they tracked everything, and Dr. Wiley, while studying this, noticed a strange observation, and that was: every fighter pilot had relatively low blood pressure. But, at the end of all of their studies, their blood pressure had even gone down more, and he's like: "How in the world, someone with such a high stress job and this life or death day, every day they sit into one of these things, has such low blood pressure. This is weird." So, that wasn't the purpose of his research, so he kind of put it aside and thought: "Okay, when I'm done with this commission, I'll get back to this." Years later, he got back to his research.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: What I'm hearing here is that what you're going to do is somehow equate them holding onto a joy stick in a high G situation. So they're holding onto it with significant force that somehow that was correlating with a lowering of blood pressure.

Mark Young II: 100%.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Young II: So, what Dr. Wiley did later was he pulled this data back out as most scientists do and it's this serendipitous finding. He pulled out this data, started doing more research and that's exactly what he found, Jeff, was that these fighter pilots ended up with lower blood pressure and he decided to research the hypothesis that it's due to the isometric grip that they had on the joystick, that it was not fluctuating. It was very consistently held tightly. So, he started doing more research on this, which got to be really cool because then he started researching: "Okay, well, if they grip it at this strength, what happens? If they grip it at this strength, this is what happens. If it's for a certain amount of time, this is what happens.” And he started working all these different algorithms and calculations on how tight to grip a device. How long do you have to grip it for maximum response and so on… So, interestingly enough, he made the connection that isometrics improves cardiovascular health and specifically lowers blood pressure in that respect.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Now, so is he noticing it was lowering both systolic (which is the upper number) and diastolic to lower numbers? Was that what they were observing?

Mark Young II: So, what we have found, and I'll get into that in a moment, is his observation was trying to study systolic, specifically, when he started doing that. But as you and I both know from cardiovascular standpoint, systolic blood pressure is much more reactive to environmental circumstances than diastolic. So, most people think systolic is the number that has the greatest impact, but in fact, your diastolic number is actually a better indication of your overall cardiovascular health. And so, that became an interesting thing because as they're looking at the systolic, that became the more variable of the two numbers. So, that being said, he started moving forward, did this research, came to an algorithm that made sense, and the device started going into functions… And we're into third iterations on it now.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, let me ask you this, just to interrupt, is I'm imagining that a fighter pilot, because I've never flown in a fighter, and I don't know if that, as a CEO of the company, whether you got a ride to lower your blood pressure or not… But I'm just wondering, if a pilot is holding the joystick with just one hand or if they're ever holding it with two hands when they're in a high G situation. I assume that they're holding it with their dominant hand. I'm assuming maybe they're all right-handed, and I would guess also that maybe there's gripping it with different strengths, right? Because when you're just cruising along, there's no G force, even if you're going Mach two, there's no G-force if you're just on cruise. It's only when you're accelerating, either by change of direction or change of speed, that you're actually getting the G-force, so either diving or climbing.

Mark Young II: This is what's interesting there, and that is one of the things that people tend to think when they look at Zona is: "Oh, I just squeeze this as hard as I can." And answer's no, not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what you do. So when the device begins, it's internal mechanics are set up in such a way that you squeeze the device as hard as you can when it starts. You turn it on, squeeze for three seconds as hard as you can, but that is just the device calibrating to your current maximum voluntary contraction. That MVC we refer to it as.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay, does it give a readout on grip?

Mark Young II: It does.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Does it give a readout on grip sync? Yeah, okay.

Mark Young II: Yup, so it would actually tell you what your compression score was and then what it does is, when you start the exercise, it actually holds you at a percentage of that maximum grip because nobody can hold it at maximum grip strength for two minutes is the therapy. No one can hold it at maximum. So what it does is it calculates, based on your grip strength, what your ideal hold should be, and then using auditory and visual cues, it has you hold it within a 10% tolerance of its ideal number. So, let's say that it said you squeezed it at 100 and it said: "Okay, perfect. We're going to have you hold it at 37."

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, I see. So it's quite low relative to your max. It's like a third. I see.

Mark Young II: Well, it varies because it's all based on an algorithm, but yes, it's not close to your max at all.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right, and is there a problem if you squeeze harder than that?

Mark Young II: So, what happens in it is we calculate based on our algorithm that we consider a successful therapy, one in which you stayed in the ideal zone for 80% of the time. So if you were to squeeze it too much, it would start whistling at you and start giving you visual cues, telling you're squeezing it too hard. If you let go a little bit, it would do the same. I try to explain this to people in such a way that this is considered anaerobic exercise. It's not aerobic. So, the equivalent of there's three different types of exercise that are really categorized in most fitness, and that is you've got an eccentric exercise, which is for instance, the down part of a sit up. You've got concentric, which is when you're contracting a muscle, so the upside of a sit up.

This is using isometric, which would be the equivalent of doing a plank. So, it's not a sit up at all. In fact, it would be more like a plank or a wall sit or something along those lines. Isometric is when you hold a muscle group, iso being equal, metric being measurement. So at the exact same measurement over a period of time, our science is kind of... Go ahead.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: It's a different form of training. I think a lot of people have a misconception about it that it's a range of motion training that has all the benefit, but actually range of motion is important for sure, but isometrics are incredibly important because it enables you to recruit more muscle fibers over time than you can with just a barbell, push it out, bring it back in, concentric, push it away, eccentric, bring it back down, and so you're actually activating different musculature with this. Do people notice their right forearms getting bigger with it?

Mark Young II: Strangely. Well, you use it on both your left and your right hand. So, you alternate hands using it, so they don't get Popeye arm. But, at the same time, people's grip strengths do improve, which, strangely enough, there's a lot of publications out there that are connecting grip strength with overall longevity.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Absolutely. That's a longevity metric. Yeah, we measure it. It's an important metric. Yeah.

Mark Young II: Absolutely.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, at the very least, it's a way to increase grip strength. But, really, what you're doing is having an effect on the vasculature. So, keep talking to us about it.

Mark Young II: So, this is the part that I get excited about because right now we're just talking that it's magic, right? You squeeze it, your blood pressure goes down and the reality is that's not the case. That's not the science behind it. That's kind of the way it happens in terms of your overall functioning, but there's so much, physiologically, that's happening here. So, I'm going to walk through two explanations, and one is going to be my layperson's explanation, and then I'm going to go into a little bit more science-y, which you'll love.

So, the first thing is, when I use the Zona, I first calibrate it to my maximum grip strength on my right arm, then I calibrate on my left arm, and then I go. I get two minutes on my right arm, one minute break, two minutes on my left arm, one minute break, and then repeat. So, overall, it takes about 11 and a half minutes to do the entire exercise.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I see…

Mark Young II: And we tell people to do it five times a week. Reality is if they did it three times a week, they would still get the benefit from it. Five times is even better because you can't do it too much, right?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay, what if they did it twice a day? Would that be a problem?

Mark Young II: It wouldn't do anything great or it wouldn't do anything bad.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, there's kind of a plateau in the effect after a certain amount?

Mark Young II: There is, which I'll get into in some of this. So, the first thing is, so I use the device two minutes, two minutes. Well, when I'm using the device for two minutes, I, again, I'm going to liken it to that plank and I'm going to tell you, I squeeze the device. I'm like: "Oh, this is easy. I can do this." And then, probably around 60 seconds into my two minute countdown, I start to notice it's happening, right? And I always tell people, you say: "Oh, do a plank. And everybody jumps into their plank position, and they're like planks are easy.” 30, 40, 50 seconds into a plank and most people are ready to just collapse to the ground, right? Unless they actually do this on a regular basis. Using Zona's much like that, except it's not as hard as a plank.

So, you're going to do it and then around 60 seconds, what happens is your body flips into what we refer to as a parasympathetic response, right? Your body starts saying something's wrong, I need to react to this and what's happening is you're constricting blood flow in the arm over the course of this time because your muscles are constricted, which is stopping blood flow to that area. Your brain triggers the emergency alarm and says: "Whoa, wait a minute here, something's wrong. We've got to do something about the situation. There's no blood flow going to the arm and, certainly, I'm not dumb enough to do this voluntarily. We're in trouble."

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, it sends a signal through the parasympathetic nervous system to relax the blood vessels.

Mark Young II: Correct.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Is that what you're going to say?

Mark Young II: That's exactly what I'm going to say.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Young II: So, we have to do something to increase vasodilation. The body's response to vasodilation is the production of nitric oxide.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Mark Young II: So, the body produces nitric oxide, which is a natural vasodilator. System wide nitric oxide pushes through the body, blood vessels expand, blood flows more freely, but by the time all this happens, your two minutes is up. So, your two minutes is over, you let go of the device, you get a minute to recover.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right, so one thing for people to understand here that what I'm hearing is it's very important not to pump the device through the two minutes. You basically want to go to a static hold and just hold it there.

Mark Young II: That's correct.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right ,and I'm assuming that, physiologically, if there was a little bit of crescendo in pressure, that wouldn't be a problem. That would actually be consistent with the response you're going to get because you're decreasing blood flow, right? If your grip got a little tighter over time, that's fine, but if you release, then you probably kill the signal to dilate the blood vessel. So, it's very important, if you're gripping it, to maintain a steady grip. That is really what you're going for.

Mark Young II: We measure that whatever the algorithm outputs as the optimum grip, we stay within 10% of that. So, if it tells you 40%, or 40 pounds per square inch... So, if it's 40 pounds per square inch pressure on the device, you would need to stay between 36 and 44 at all times, and there's signals both on the screen as well as auditory signals that tell you “you're squeezing too much”, “squeeze a little harder”, so on so forth. That signal helps to keep you in that range because it's too hard for anybody to stay at exactly the same pressure for two minutes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. No, I get it. Yeah, two minutes is actually a pretty long time for an isometric hold.

Mark Young II: It is. It absolutely is, but it is optimal. By the way, two minutes is the exact optimal hold for a plank, by the way, for maximum muscle output on a hold. Any plank longer than two minutes has diminishing returns.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Interesting.

Mark Young II: So, yeah, interesting there.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I think somebody set a world record in plank where they held it for eight hours or some crazy thing, some Marine.

Mark Young II: Right, I don't even know who wants that challenge. I'd stick with pie eating or something like that.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: There you go.

Mark Young II: So, back to two minutes with those one-minute breaks... So, that cycle we just talked about, that parasympathetic response, that nitric oxide flush, that vasodilation... You're making your body do that four times in a row. So, there's two things happening there. So, the first thing is, as with any muscle or any tendon ligament, anything in the body, the more you stretch it and contract it, the more flexible it becomes over time, right? That's part of stretching. So, you're doing this over and over again, a few times a week, cardiovascular system gets a little more flexible based on that… However, now I want to go into a little bit more of a scientific conversation because we can say the nitric oxide flow reduces blood pressure by opening the cardiovascular system. Nitric oxide, typically, stays in the body for approximately six hours before it starts diminishing.

So, you do notice the effect of it in a matter of weeks. You notice the blood pressure starts going down because the cardiovascular system naturally becomes more flexible. It starts to reshape it, if you will, in that respect. Now, for your science junkies out there, this is the part that I probably love more than any of it, is what's happening with an isometric muscle constriction, and this is true of Zona... This is true of many other types of isometrics... The problem with most isometric exercises, though, is that people don't actually hold it isometric. You know, I see people at the gym, they're doing a plank, but they're fidgeting back and forth. They're piking their butt in the air. They're letting their stomach sag. They're doing all these things. It's like: "I get that you're on your forearms, but you're not doing a plank because a plank requires you stay in the exact same position, and you're fidgeting like a toddler." You're not getting the benefit of that plank.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Well, you're getting something, but you're not getting everything you could, that's for sure.

Mark Young II: Correct, you're getting more of a concentric or eccentric exercise by moving around. You're not getting the benefit of an isometric. So, what's happening in an isometric exercise, and this is what I find most interesting, is that when a muscle is constricted over a period of time, such as this two minute period of time or whatever, what happens is that, in order for the muscle to stay in that constriction because you've got the muscles, for lack of a better word, it's cramping, right? You're the muscle into an unnatural cramp, and what happens there is the muscle gets fed by sodium. So, at a cellular level, you're pushing sodium out of the cells, which is what the muscle is forcing that to do. Now, anybody who understands physiology in this way understands that there's an equal balance of sodium and potassium that must exist in every cell at all times. Check me if I'm wrong, doctor.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: No, it's a sodium potassium pump, is what it's called, and basically you pump potassium outside the membrane and when the muscle contracts, the potassium rushes in and that stimulates calcium release, which activates the actin myosin fibers to, basically, slide across each other. It's almost like a machine in there, actually, and that causes a contraction of the muscle.

Mark Young II: Yep.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: It's a biochemically driven machine, is really what a muscle is.

Mark Young II: Absolutely.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, and it depends on that gradient of potassium being higher outside the membrane of the muscle and the sodium being higher on the inside. So, as it contracts, as the potassium rushes in, the sodium will rush out to balance it to keep electrical neutrality.

Mark Young II: Correct.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: But I think that's what you're referring to.

Mark Young II: Yes and, so what's happening in this sodium-potassium balance that's taking place is, potassium, as it moves through the cellular wall, specifically at the cardiovascular level, moves through the endothelium. Now, backing up to the cardiovascular system, keep the potassium on pause. The endothelium is the lining of the cardiovascular system and what most people don't realize is, I'll use the word “age-related hypertension”, because hypertension comes in multiple different ways. There's a lot of stuff that can happen related to hypertension. Some of it, as we mentioned earlier, systolic blood pressure is much more reactive to external stimulus or stress and those types of things, but what I'll call age-related hypertension, you start to experience arterial sclerosis, right? That's the arteries in the body begin to harden over time, and that happens to just about all people. Not everybody, but depending on...

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: It actually has to do with an increase in senescent cells inside the arterial wall, leads to that excess thickening and then it's also complicated and stiffening. And it's also complicated by destruction of something called the glycocalyx, which actually lines the endothelium and it's incredibly important. Okay, so the arteries thicken over time, it's part of the aging process, in the sense of senescent cells building up in the walls of the arteries.

Mark Young II: Correct.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, okay. So, now?

Mark Young II: So, what's happening here, on a more technical basis, is that the endothelium, most people don't realize is actually the body's natural, I'll use the word “thermostat”, to regulate blood pressure. The endothelium is what realizes that blood pressure is too high or too low. So, for a lot of what's happening in age-related hypertension, again, I go back to that age related because not all hypertension is related to the same cause. What happens in these situations is that the endothelium begins to harden with senescent cells, begins to thicken, it stops and, again, I'll use layperson's terms to say it stops realizing that its blood pressure is high, so it stops regulating it. So, blood pressure's going up because the endothelium loses its ability to regulate blood pressure the way the body was intended to do so.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, that's true and a piece of that is due to the fact that the glycolic gets destroyed, which is really kind of the sensor if you will, that then transacts the signal of how much flow is happening to the endothelium and then the endothelium responds to that by either constricting or dilating to modulate, regulate flow, and also pressure. So yeah, it's a complex system, but it involves multiple parts here.

Mark Young II: Absolutely.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: But, to your point, over time, there's increased oxidative stress on the arterial wall as well. Something that will happen, basically, with the aging process, and so one of the things that's very important, one of the reasons that people on a Mediterranean diet don't suffer as much high blood pressure is because they're eating fresh herbs. It's not really the wine, and the food's important, but it's those really fresh herbs like basil, rosemary, summer savory, tarragon, those fresh herbs, they're like magic for killing off that excess reactive oxygen species, which keeps the arteries supple, decreases senescent cell formation in the arteries and actually keeps your blood vessels young. So, that's another thing. If you want to use a Zona, if you really want to optimize the gains and make sure that you're eating those fresh herbs, would be a corollary to this, right?

Mark Young II: And dealing with oxidative stress through ordered water, but that's a whole different conversation.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, and molecular hydrogen for that matter. It does the same thing, it balances oxidative stress.

Mark Young II: I've got another guest for you on that topic on another conversation, but I'll get back to that with you later.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Young II: So, the interesting thing about this is we've gotten to the point that we're now doing this. Now, the endothelium is what's acting as this body's natural thermostat. It's what's regulating blood pressure overall. When potassium's releasing into the system, you're getting the potassium release into the endothelium and potassium actually is able to break down that hardening of the endothelium. So, over time, this potassium release is actually putting the endothelium back on track to be able to regulate blood pressure.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So interesting.

Mark Young II: We're actually getting...

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, what you're saying is that muscle contraction in and of itself is stimulating more pliability in the arterial wall?

Mark Young II: 100%.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's kind of what you're saying.

Mark Young II: 100%.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah and, so that's always the value of exercise, but it's different than cardiovascular exercise where you're asking the arteries to dilate. This is actually a situation where you're getting them to constrict on some level, which is part of the value of resistance training, but really the value of isometric training from a cardiovascular perspective.

Mark Young II: 100%. With the beauty of this, so what happens here is I'm going to go back to where we were that is that endothelium doesn't regulate, particularly, I said in age-related hypertension. Then we go backwards into this potassium release. The potassium is your longevity doctor. The potassium moving through the endothelium is reversing the age of the endothelial lining that, in effect, because the age-related hypertension is going backwards, because the endothelium is losing the age-related effects, it's reversing time.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's pretty cool.

Mark Young II: It is.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, now you're actually reversing not only functional age of the arteries, but what you're saying is you're actually reversing anatomical age of the arteries.

Mark Young II: I would argue and say yes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, so that would be really interesting to see if it would decrease arterial thickness in a carotid intima-media thickness study, which we measure on people all the time, right? Where you do what's called a CIMT and measure arterial thickness. So, is this a systemic effect?

Mark Young II: Well, it is a systemic effect, which is what's really interesting. So, the short-term benefit is the nitric oxide release because the reversal of the arterial age is not happening for some time, right? That's happening over a longer period of time, but the nitric side is an immediate issue. So, you're getting a short-term and a long benefit.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, what is the timeframe for that? Is that a three-month, six-month, 12-month, two-year? Depends on where you start, I'd expect.

Mark Young II: No, actually the higher the blood pressure, the better. It's kind of like weight loss. That is the more weight you have to lose, the faster you lose the first few pounds. We actually notice and, again, I'll give you some numbers, but I will say the FDA has not approved these numbers. So, please take them as their independent research.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Take it as a grain of salt.

Mark Young II: We've been researched by the Mayo Clinic, by the Harvard Health Review, by Johns Hopkins University, some of the biggest names have done research using the Zona Plus as their instrument for research on isometric exercise. So, I'm confident in everything we see. By and large, we notice the higher the blood pressure, the better the drop. What we also notice is approximately a 15% drop systolic, but we've noticed up to a 10% drop in diastolic, which is amazing.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Young II: Now again, one of the questions comes up and says: "Well, what if my blood pressure is too low or what if my blood pressure's okay, can I still use this?” And the answer is it's no different than if I'm reversing the age of the endothelium, right? And that's a pretty big claim to make. I can't reverse it back to before birth, right? It's only going to go back to its optimal state, which is when you were young. It doesn't go back to when you were seven years old, it goes back to when you were a fully developed optimized adult. So, you can't exercise yourself younger than perfect shape.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, that's interesting too. The other thing I'm thinking about here that the audience is likely interested in is that if it's reversing arterial function and it's boosting nitric oxide in the short term, but reversing arterial age, then this should have an impact on sexual function for people, both men and women, right? Both men and women should actually get a benefit from this and what's interesting about this is that most antihypertensives that people take impair sexual function.

Mark Young II: Correct.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Typically, for men. Erectile dysfunction within antihypertensives. It's one of the main reasons guys don't take their meds, right? And so what you're talking about here is potentially the exact opposite where now you're doing the therapy for your blood pressure, but you're also getting the sexual benefit. Am I on the right track here?

Mark Young II: You're 100% on the right track and there's two things I'll say to this. The first one is we, anecdotally, and I don't have clinical support on this, but it's more anecdotal support, and that is we have a lot of people who use Zona because, to quote one of our board members: "It just makes your Woody woodier."

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Young II: So, using Zona increases blood flow, which obviously can reverse of erectile dysfunction or eliminate that symptom, but even for people who aren't experiencing an erectile dysfunction, it still increases performance.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Interesting. Yeah, that's really fascinating.

Mark Young II: Even in the short term. Now, in concert to that, one of the things I will mention is we actually work with another company called Vatellia Life, V-A-T-E-L-L-I-A. And Vatellia, we actually partner with them because there's the production of nitric oxide in the short-term can also be taken through supplemental means. This nitric oxide is actually fueled by L-citrulline, not L-arginine for multiple reasons. L-citrulline means is actually a better ingredient, but it also contains others that we use.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, we use L-citrulline also in the Neo40 Pro and things like that. So, there's a number of products out there, and I was thinking that some of these things might be useful in concert, actually, and then just a shameless plug here. We actually have a blood vessel formula that we've developed that actually, it's a tincture so it has a little bit of ethyl alcohol in it as a tincture, but it actually contains all the ingredients from summer savory, basil, rosemary, and tarragon, and then a little bit of EGCG. So, what you do is you take a dropper full and put it in your tea, put it in your water and drink it, and now you're getting those herbs in there, which are also youth-ifying, so to speak, for the arteries. Now, you add it to the Zona Plus, now you drop your nitric oxide, boosting supplement and the next thing you know, you're having kids.

Mark Young II: I'll tell you what, I use this nitric boost myself and I use it as a pre-workout because it increases blood flow, my energy increases, but I use it as a post workout sometimes too because I think dioxide's amazing. It's a molecule that I don't know how people do without it because not only does it just help grow energy, mental clarity, muscle recovery, the obvious benefit, circulation. I mean it's incredible and like you're saying in concert using this. I had a period a few years ago, Jeff, this was really interesting to me because I was involved with Zona and I'll do the “I'm not just the president, I'm a client” kind of pitch here.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right, the hair club.

Mark Young II: I was running Zona. Yes, it's a hair club moment and about three years ago, my blood pressure spiked, and I went to 140. I was always 110 over 72. That was my blood pressure. I was [inaudible 00:35:16]. I was good. I went into 150, 149 area over 90 something, and I was kind of [inaudible 00:35:24]. I was like, "Oh shoot." Like, what just happened? I never had to use Zona. I never had to worry about those things and, all of a sudden, here I am in my 40s and my blood pressure spikes.

And I'm like, "Oh shoot." And I'll tell you, it was one of those moments where the rubber hits the road, and I'm like: "Well, I really got to put my money where my mouth is right now." Because the first reaction if someone gets a blood pressure reading like that is go get on your antihypertensives, right? Now, I'm going to live on blood pressure medicine the rest of my life, and I'm like: "Hell no, that's not going to happen here." I'm going to biohack my way to something, and I'm sitting here going, literally, the CEO of a company that produces a medical device. I made a phone call down to the warehouse. I'm like: "Bring me a Zona." This is where it starts. I was back at 120 over 75 in about four to six weeks.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay, nice and how were you using it? You were using it three days a week, five days a week or what was happening?

Mark Young II: I literally, Jeff, I left it next to my computer at my office and I would use it on the days I was at the office in the morning. So, some weeks five days, some weeks four, some weeks three, it depended what my travel schedule looked like. Although I'll use it on an airplane, but it would sit by my computer because when you first use it, it takes a little bit of concentration because you have to hold it in that optimal zone, but after you're used to doing it, your body kind of gets used to the movement. So, I would use it on my right hand while checking my email with my left and then in two minutes, I'd switch and I'd check email with my right and do the Zona with my left, but because it sat right next to my computer, I did it. It became part of my morning routine.