Gladden longevity — Episode #55

Steve Reiter: Welcome to the Age Hackers Podcast with Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, MD, FACC, founder and CEO of Gladden Longevity. On this show, we want to help you optimize your longevity, health, and human performance with impactful and actionable information by answering three questions: How good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30? And how do we live well beyond 120?

I'm Steve Reiter. And Dr. Gladden, we just had Peter Wasowski from Vasper on. You've talked a lot about Vasper and how great of a piece of equipment it is. Just quickly explain to listeners what Vasper is and why you found it to be so beneficial.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. We had a great conversation with Peter. I met Peter 11 years ago. I had an introduction to Vasper at that time. It's elliptical, if you will, a sit-down elliptical that uses cooling and blood flow restriction technologies as well as some electrical grounding. It's a phenomenal piece of equipment. What Peter has managed to put together, you're going to hear about the science behind it, why you get such exaggerated benefits for the amount of work that you put in, how it can be used with people that are in their 90s, and how it can be used with elite athletes and kids as young as ten years old.

So, it has more and more data being published on it all the time, from concussions to diabetes to rehabilitation to all kinds of things. I think you're going to find this to be a fascinating conversation with Peter. I really enjoyed it.

Steve Reiter: Yeah. It was good, and I'm looking forward to trying Vasper. I might even hit it. I found one up in Monument just north of Colorado Springs, and I think I'm going to call and see how much it is for me to do it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Well, if you're in Dallas, come down to Gladden Longevity. Jump on ours.

Steve Reiter: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Welcome, everybody, to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I'm sitting here with a long-time friend of mine, Peter Wasowski. Peter and I have known each other for over a decade. Apparently, he just informed me. It seems like a couple of weeks, but no, it seems like many years. I met Peter actually at Singularity University in California, and we were taking a tour of the facility there, and he had a Vasper system set up at that time on campus and was talking a little bit about it. I was very, very impressed with what I was hearing. I was there for about five days, and I remember that I signed up to do a Vasper session every morning for five days straight.

Steve Reiter: Really?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. And then, I had signed up to do a 5K that my cardiology group was sponsoring that Saturday. So, I flew home Friday, having done five Vasper sessions. I hadn't done any training for the run other than that. And when I got on the plane, it was like my thighs were growing through my pants. And when I went for the run the next day, it felt amazingly easy, quite honestly.

I've been hooked ever since, quite honestly. I mean, I think it's really just a fabulous piece of equipment. I'm ashamed to say how many of them I own, but I have them scattered around. I have them scattered around so that I have access to them, actually. I have one in Puerto Rico, and then I've got a couple in Dallas at the moment. So, anyway, Peter, welcome to the show, and thanks for agreeing to join us.

Peter Wasowski: Well, thank you, Jeff. It's an honor to be on a show with you. Of course, I've been your admirer for a number of years, over a decade. Love your work, and we have learned a tremendous amount from you. I mean, you were a Chief Medical Officer at Vasper at some point, so very grateful to be here.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, absolutely. No, we're delighted to have you. Yeah, we did some really nice work together. Bring the audience up to speed. All right. We're throwing around the term Vasper, V-A-S-P-E-R. It probably doesn't have any real meaning for them. Maybe you can just introduce them to the technology a little bit.

Peter Wasowski: Sure. So, the word Vasper basically stands for vascular performance. So that's where the name came from.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Peter Wasowski: Of course, all physicians, including yourself, would agree that exercise is the foundation of health. Most people do not have exercise in their daily practice or even weekly practice, mostly because of the side effects. If you look at United States, I think about 8% of the country has a membership in some kind of gym facility. But most of those people don't use it—just monthly fees. In fact, that's the business model for a box gym.

So, with Vasper, we have designed a brand new technology. I like to call it based on biomimicry rather than biohacking, where we mimic the physiology of a young child in an adult person. We do that by compressing the peripheral venous blood flow. These small veins remove the blood flow from the muscle tissue.

When we compress it with a special liquid cold compression cuff, we create a massive concentration of lactic acid under the compression. What happens then is that there's a very strong signal to the brain, specifically to the pituitary gland, requesting additional hormones to rebuild the muscles back to a pre-exercise condition because the higher the concentration of lactic acid in the blood, the stronger the feedback, the pituitary gland basically reporting that there was massive muscle damage, so there are additional hormone levels needed to restore the muscle back to pre-exercise condition.

So, whenever we do conventional exercise, there's microtrauma to the muscle tissue. There are small tears in the muscle tissue that requires restoring the muscle back to pre-exercise condition. And that's why we have sore muscles for one or two days or even longer, depending on the intensity. And the problem is that if we overtrain, our endocrine system cannot restore the physiology back to pre-exercise condition. There's just not enough.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Not enough time.

Peter Wasowski: Time and growth unavailable. So, we basically designed a very based... It's a technology based on three principles. The first one is vascular blood flow restriction exercise, which is a mild compression to the upper legs and upper arms. And that is designed to create massive amounts of concentrated lactate that-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Let's talk about that for just a second, blood flow restriction exercise. It's something we've mentioned before here on the podcast. So, this was originally developed in Japan by Kaatsu, if I'm not mistaken, where they were putting tourniquets around muscles and constricting them really to high degrees. And if I'm not mistaken, some of the people actually suffered... In fact, Kaatsu himself, I think, suffered some rhabdomyolysis from that constriction. But they were noting that they would have improvements in muscle performance, size gains, strength gains, and things like that.

And then I think Kaatsu himself backed off on the pressures that he was using. But it sounds like, just so the audience understands, this has been around for, I don't know, when he first did that work, but it's been around for some decades, actually, in terms of the benefits of blood flow restriction. You've adopted that as one of the core principles of Vasper, which is great because, quite honestly, it's difficult to get metered out with blood flow restriction. I was just looking it up. Only 5% of the population exercises 30 minutes a day. Right?

Peter Wasowski: Wow.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Or less than 5% of the population. Right?

Peter Wasowski: Absolutely.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, the percentage that is using blood flow restriction is going to be vanishingly small on a regular basis. And yet it's such a helpful technology when it comes to building muscle. So, it's nice that you created a system where you can use blood flow restriction. My point was that even if people have Kaatsu bands or they have blood flow restriction bands or whatever, it's difficult to know exactly what to do with them. How much should you do? What should you do? And I think what you've done is actually put it into a program format, which is very, very cool. So, blood flow restriction. And then, what are the other two technologies?

Peter Wasowski: The second one is temperature control. So, normally, whenever we exercise conventionally, there is an increase in core body temperature. As a result, of course, the blood vessels dilate, the blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up. And the blood oxygen levels drop. So, we use a liquid-cooled device that gives you the sense of swimming in a cool swimming pool or a lake without getting wet.

So, there is a special back-of-the-chest cooling panel that cools the back of the chest. There's another one behind the pelvis. You’re also barefoot on the machine, so we cool your feet at the same time for one reason. We cool your feet as your feet are thermostats and radiators. So, if you are sleeping under a hot blanket, what do you do? You stick your foot out. So, we figured all this out. It took about eight years. And the goal is not to promote sweating but to simulate a very intense exercise without sweating, without body temperature rising, and without heart rate and blood pressure going up.

So, this makes it basically easy to use for the average person. I mean, our oldest user right now is 97 years old. Our youngest is ten years old. So, then we have a professional military athlete and so forth.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Sure.

Peter Wasowski: So, it basically eliminates the side effects of conventional exercise, and that's why it's been extremely popular.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, this has been done on top of a machine called a new step, which is kind of like a... You're in a seated position like you're sitting at the steering wheel of your car, and you're hanging on to some levers with your hands, and you're basically pushing back and forth, and your feet are going back and forth. I don't know. It's not like pedaling a bike. It's not going round and round; it's going back and forth. More like, I don't know, pedal pushers or whatever.

Your arms and legs are moving in opposite directions at various times. So, there's a certain nice rhythm to it. But the point is that as a user, I'll just say that it's almost impossible to get hurt on Vasper, right? In fact, I'm not exactly sure how you would get hurt unless you fell off the chair or something. Because once you're in there, the grips are adjusted, everything is adjusted to you, and now you're just going back and forth.

So, to your point, the Achilles heel of almost all exercises is the potential risk of injury. So, now you're eliminating the potential risk of injury, you're making it accessible, it's an acceded position. You're using blood flow restriction to lever up or leverage up the effects that you're going to get. And you're using cooling to decrease the sweating, which actually enables you to get away from putting cardiac output up to the skin, and you're now running it through the muscles, bringing oxygen there so you can get more work out of the muscles, so to speak. So yeah, very exciting technology. So, how's your 97-year-old doing?

Peter Wasowski: Oh, he's doing great. He's using it in a studio in Marin County in Mill Valley called Jison. And he's doing extremely well. But the point that you brought up about safety is actually the critical reason why we chose this piece of equipment. It's a sit-down, and we work with some very high-value athletes who, if they miss a game or two, mean significant loss in cash flow and eliminate the ability of additional injury and the elite military forces and so on forth.

So, when a physician from a sports team sends us one of their key athletes, the first thing they ask is, what is the possibility of additional injury? Because they want him back as soon as possible. And we just sent them a picture of the device, a sit-down elliptical, and no more questions were asked. So, that was the key reason why we chose that.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, you've got the elliptical, you've got blood flow restriction, you've got cooling, you've got compression, the elliptical. And then talk us through a little bit; what is the protocol that people go through? What does that look like?

Peter Wasowski: So, the basic protocol is called Super Six, which is the 21-minute protocol. Actually, 20 minutes of exercise, which is interval exercise, and there are six 30-second sprints. Again, all of this is low impact. So, a 97-year-old can do that, of course, as well, as a professional athlete can do that, of course, at a different level. So, the protocols are precisely adjusted to each individual on the device. The idea is to get an output no more than 70, 75% of your capacity, or even less in some cases.

However, what the brain registers are that you just ran up a 2,000-foot mountain and did CrossFit on top of it. So, it starts recruiting additional endogenous, your own hormone levels to rebuild the muscles back to pre-exercise condition. However, there is zero muscle damage. So, you're getting the benefit of intense exercise without the intensity and without the side effects.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I'll say one of the things about having used Vasper a lot is that you're never sore the next day. You never really end up sore, which is kind of a very, very interesting thing. So, let's talk about the elderly, really. I believe you did a study on the elderly in some sort of assisted living or retirement community or something like that. Can you tell us a little bit about how it worked for older people?

Peter Wasowski: Absolutely. Of course, older people are at risk for what's known as elderly falls. And once you fall at 75 or 80 years old, that could be a death sentence for that individual because, of course, the bones don't heal as well. Infections happen, and sometimes those people don't survive. So, we did an elderly falls trial in Honolulu, Hawaii. By the way, I invented this technology in Hawaii on a big island.

What we found is that the strength in their legs and coordination went up incredibly high because they were actually creating the benefit of intense exercise, which they were definitely not capable of doing it with conventional equipment, with the added safety that you spoke about. And the reason they did not experience sore muscles is because we actually cooled the body. We don't want to increase the blood temperature or body temperature, but we also don't want to go have it go below a normal body temperature.

So, when you're exercising at a normal body temperature, your blood flow is normal, your blood pressure is normal, you're not putting out shunting a lot of blood to the skin as you would doing conventional exercise. But at the same time, you're getting these huge benefits of the endocrine system responding physiologically as though you would be doing intense exercise. So, with the elderly, we have seen a significant increase in their ability to move, ability to sit and stand without using their arms. Increase in the quads, the strength of the quads, and so forth, which obviously increase their quality of life tremendously.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: How long was the trial? How long did it take for people to see those improvements?

Peter Wasowski: This was a six-week trial.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. So, six weeks, so not very long.

Peter Wasowski: Not long at all. We had one lady who was 94 years old at the time, and she broke her ankle. After the cast came off and after a number of physical therapy sessions, she was still unable to stand without holding on to something and definitely not able to walk. So, she came to see us, and after one month, basically, it was about three sessions per week, we had a video of her dancing.

So, imagine the change in the quality of life, a massive change in the quality of life of an older person. I'm going to be 75 next month, so I could be considered an older person by conventional means. I had my biological age checked a few months ago. So, my biological age is 41. My chronological age is going to be 75 in February.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Good for you. No, that's perfect. Have you been using the Vasper? I'll put you on the spot.

Peter Wasowski: Yes, I have. We spent holidays in our home in Hawaii, and I have a lab there and several machines. I also live actually in California, within five minutes walk of our facility.

Steve Reiter: How often are you using it, Peter?

Peter Wasowski: Usually, a minimum of three to four times a week. It's a very addictive exercise protocol. So, we are opening up later this month. We're opening up to the public after being closed for three years due to the pandemic. Of course, we don't have time to explain to everybody how long it takes, how it works, and why it works. So, the deal we have for people is when you show up for the first time, we give you three Vasper sessions at zero cost.

However, you need to experience those sessions within one week. So, if you do it in one week, it costs nothing. Some people show up the following week and accuse us of working like drug dealers because they get addicted, which is sort of unusual. Sorry if taking [inaudible 00:17:49].

The other thing that came into the light is, of course, the pandemic, where it's been scientifically documented that if you are endogenous, your own endocrine system is operating at a higher level, and your natural immunity, of course, goes up as well. So, prior to the pandemic, about 50% of the machines that we sold were sold to private homes, and right now, it's close to 80% that are being sold to private homes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, we can use it in the elderly, and it can have a massive rehabilitative effect for them, or it can also be a massive prophylactic effect from the standpoint of losing their strength, losing their balance. I've got a 93-year-old mother. She'll be 94 this year; who would benefit from having Vasper? What you see is just this decline in strength that happens, and being able to counteract that in a safe way for an elderly person is critical.

But now you're also using it for elite athletes. So, you're rehabilitating professional athletes, but then you probably have athletes, and I use it to train just to stay in shape. What I've noticed myself is that if I have an injury, I'll recover faster from the injury using Vasper, or if I've had an illness or something, I'll come back faster with the Vasper than I would otherwise. And then I can also push myself really hard.

As you know, I can use it probably outside your guidelines. I mean, I can get my heart rate way up there, and I can go very hard. But the point is that in doing that, there's just a wide range of accessibility to what you might want to do with the equipment. I know that you've also started doing some interesting things with oxygen and low oxygen, higher levels of oxygen, and things like that. Do you want to talk a little bit about what you've been doing there?

Peter Wasowski: Yes, thank you. Most people are not aware of the fact that in 2019 there were three scientists that were awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for applying science to hypoxia therapy. Hypoxia therapy basically means progressive intermittent lowering of your blood oxygen levels. The reason most people don't know about this Nobel Prize is because that's when the pandemic hit, so that took all the news cycle.

So, we have a device now that we're working with, which does exactly that. It lowers the blood oxygen. Basically, you sit with a mask on for anywhere from 33 to 45, 50 minutes, and your breathing oxygen that has normal concentration, and then we drop the concentration of oxygen for about two minutes which recruits the self-defense mechanism in the body where you're basically growing additional stem cells, additional brain cell and so forth to prevent the body- I mean, to allow the critical organs to get whatever oxygen is available. And then, after a two-minute pause, we go back to normal oxygen and then bring it down again. So, this has been extremely, extremely effective.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Extremely effective, in what sense? In what sense has it been effective? What have you noticed?

Peter Wasowski: Extremely effective in actually teaching us how to breathe because if you breathe through your mouth, you're actually increasing the aging process. If you breathe through your nose and you control the blood oxygen levels, it does the opposite. So, this has been known for thousands of years back in Egypt and places where they have caves. When somebody would get sick, they would send them down to the cave where there were slower blood oxygen levels, and a couple of weeks later, they would come back and be healthy.

Currently, there was a discovery of a 600-year-old whale who is doing very well, and that animal can go up and take a breath and then go down for seven-eight hours without taking another breath. So, there is a specific breathing technique that was developed in India called Pranayama. When we look at lifespan, we basically look at we're born on such a date and we die on certain dates.

So, we look at it in terms of time. In Ayurvedic medicine, which is the oldest medicine known to men, they look at lifespan as the number of breaths that we have to take. So, if you can breathe more efficiently, you're actually extending your lifespan. You're also extending the quality of your life. So, to become a Pranayama practitioner, it takes a significant amount of practice and learning from a master.

This machine does it all for you. You sit on the reclining chair and put a mask on. Most people sort of take a nap. It's a very relaxing exercise, but it does the Pranayama for you, and it teaches you how to breathe much, much more efficiently.

Steve Reiter: This episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast is brought to you by FocusCalm.

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Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: What I've enjoyed about it is actually seeing the depths to which my meditation takes me. It's like instant feedback. It's such a cool thing. It's like you think you're meditating. Well, how deep are you? And then when you go really deep, and it maxes out at a hundred percent. It's like: "Oh, okay. I guess I just got there." Although as soon as you look at it, you drop down to 60.

But it's fun. It's really fun. FocusCalm, train your brain to better focus, and a calmer mind.

Now, are you also doing this in conjunction with Vasper, or is it a standard or a standalone activity? Or how's that working?

Peter Wasowski: This activity is following Vasper. We are working with engineers who have designed that to include it into the Vasper protocol. That's something that should be available in about six to eight months. But at the moment, we do Vasper, and then we put them on hypoxia therapy, the device that we have used in concert with Vasper is level two, which is a very unique piece of equipment, and it's many more people know about it because it's been around for quite a while.

It also takes you through a process, in this case on Vasper, where during sprints, we eliminate the delivery of oxygen for 30 seconds and so forth. It has very, very important positive effects as well.

Steve Reiter: I've tried out a LiveO2 device up in Denver, and I freaking loved it. It's fascinating. It's a company I want to have on. I've talked with you, Dr. Gladden, about having them on because it's great to flip between that high-oxygen environment to that really, really low-oxygen environment while exercising. I've thought about getting one and pairing it with my CAROL bike right out there and trying that out.

Peter Wasowski: Of course, CAROL Bike-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Do you have that set up in the Vasper Center now, Peter?

Peter Wasowski: We have both of those technologies at Vasper, yes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay, great. Are there indications where somebody should do the LiveO2 or do the hypoxia training? Do you have particular criteria or exclusion criteria, or how do you select who does that and who doesn't? It's just: "Oh, I want to try that. What's the criteria here?

Peter Wasowski: I think at, this case, this is pretty much what Steve just said that he loved it, and it's really not what you tell people. It's how you make them feel. So, people who are athletic and like this type of protocol where they have to push hard without oxygen, and then actually a similar effect is created where you basically starve the oxygen for a very short period of time, and then you go back to normal oxygen or even higher blood oxygen levels.

So, most people that are athletic that can handle this type of protocol, just like Steve, they love it. We do use it in concert with Vasper. The elderly people who would not, or people that are out of not in that kind of a physical condition, benefit from the other device because, on that device, you simply recline on a chair and fall asleep. Anybody can do that. And the fact that the three scientists who applied science to receive the Nobel Prize speak for the credibility of the technology and how it works.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: With a LiveO2, it has the ability to go to higher oxygen concentrations and lower oxygen concentrations. So, could it be a standalone with regard to this, or am I missing something there?

Peter Wasowski: No, no, you're not. I mean, LiveO2 could be used with CAROL Bike, as Steve mentioned, and with any piece of equipment. It's a very adaptable technology to any piece of equipment, and they've built a very strong following, again, especially with people who are more athletic. So, we have a number of people that love it. Absolutely. Just like Steve did.

Steve Reiter: The engineer that I had met with from LiveO2 up in Denver, he had said that Rob Gronkowski, former New England Patriot and former Tampa Bay Buccaneer had used it in preparation for getting ready to get back into the NFL with the Buccaneers and raved about it.

Peter Wasowski: Yep.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Awesome. I've read about it. I have yet to use it, but I'm curious to get one. I think we'll put one in the office. We may couple it with the CAROL Bike or put it with the Vasper, actually.

Peter Wasowski: Next time you're in Bay Area, you're welcome to come over, and we'll stick you on it with Vasper, and you'll see exactly what it feels like. We have the biggest machine they built, which was three oxygen generators and a very large bag. So, actually, two people can use it at the same time.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Great. Well, I'll definitely try that out. But I may get one anyway. I just like this whole direction. Do you find that people use it at all to train before they go to altitude?

Peter Wasowski: They do. Or basically before the competitive event. So, we had one athlete who was a triathlete. She was about 42 years old. Just finished a triathlon someplace in Colorado, actually, and qualified for the world championship, which is the Ironman in Kona. She came to me. She had a tremendous amount of overtraining issues because of the triathlon she just went through. So, she did Vasper for 10 days every day, 20 minutes on Vasper for 10 days. That's all she did. And then she went to Kona, and she increased her race time by 50 minutes, 5-0, which is unreal for a very highly-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Trained athlete. Yeah, absolutely.

Peter Wasowski: Yeah. So, she actually learned how good she was because we repaired all of the over-training issues so that she could use it very successfully. And we have sports teams all over the world that use Vasper specifically for that. And in 20 minutes, they get a benefit of a much longer conventional exercise, and they have zero muscle damage, which means that they have much less or almost no overtraining issues, which basically means that the endocrine system could be available for performance, so they could perform much better.

With athletes just to throw that in, one of the major pain points that they have is the quality of sleep. And that's why when you lose a game, it's very difficult to break the losing streak because you don't sleep afterward. You think about it, and then you wake up one day and two later and three days later, and you're more and more tired. So, it's more difficult to win a game after that. So, we have a very specific sleep protocol for athletes.

And overall, the biggest benefit reported from Vasper is a huge increase in the quality of sleep. Quality of sleep was measured by the nighttime cortisol level. So, the stress hormone at night, if that is high, your sleep is not going to happen for you. If we can reduce the nighttime cortisol level, the whole endocrine system basically comes up, and you sleep much, much, much better.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I've known that myself, personally, and I've seen that in responses from other people as well that there's improved sleep when you're doing Vasper.

Steve Reiter: Peter, when you say ‘sleep protocol’, do you mean a program on the Vasper, or is it something separate from the Vasper that you're teaching people how to do?

Peter Wasowski: Thank you, Steve. That's a great question. Actually, it's a protocol on Vasper. So, it's a 10-minute protocol. It is not designed to crank up your endocrine system and to build strength. It's basically designed to flush all of the lactate that you have stored in the muscle tissue and lower your core body temperature slightly, so you sleep much better. So, it's a 10-minute protocol. Does not have any sprints in it, and it's something that athletes use after games or whenever they have some stressful situation.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, they're still using compression and cooling with that?

Peter Wasowski: They're still using compression and cooling, and they're using a cooling table afterward. So, the whole device consists of the main piece of equipment, which is a 20-minute interval exercise protocol with compression and cooling. After you finish any kind of an exercise, your core body temperature tends to go up rapidly. So, we want to stop that, and that's why we put those people on a cooling bed for 10 minutes. The idea there is to slightly lower the core body temperature and prevent the core body temperature from going up. And when that happens, some unique aspects of physiologists, such as a massive increase in your endocrine system, I mean in your oxygen levels and endorphins, happen. So, this is part of this addictive component of Vasper, which is a beautiful addiction to have.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, yeah, endorphins would go up. I can see that as well. And then talk to us a little bit about cuff pressures because I think these can be adjusted between different ranges. Do you have recommendations for people about how high, how tight, that kind of thing? What are your thoughts about that?

Peter Wasowski: Thank you, Jeff. The default pressure that we use is 65 millimeters of mercury on the legs and 40 millimeters of mercury on the arms. If you compare that to Kaatsu, Kaatsu uses about 300, 280, to over 300 millimeters of mercury on the legs and slightly less on the arms. So, Kaatsu is, basically, could be compared to a tourniquet because you're compressing the peripheral venous return, the deep veins, as well as the arterial flow.

We are compressing below the diastolic level of 65 millimeters of mercury below your diastolic pressure. And that is exactly what allows a Vasper user to do anaerobic exercise and aerobic exercise at the same time. So, during sprints, you're obviously supporting your heart and have an aerobic exercise. During the entire time, by applying compression and restricting blood flow and oxygen to the muscle tissue, you have anaerobic exercise.

So, it's a very unique combination of three, basically, scientifically supported principles. And first one is compression, the second one is core body temperature, and the last one has to do with electricity. And if you wish, I could describe that as well.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Talk about the electricity element of it.

Peter Wasowski: Okay. So, human body is an electrochemical device, and back in the early '60s through '70s, there was a famous scientist, Dr. Robert Becker, who actually was an orthopedic surgeon, and he planned to find a cure for arthritis, which is an autoimmune disease. What he found is that autoimmune disease took off on a very steep curve in western society when we invented polymers, when we invented synthetic clothing and synthetic carpets.

And when we walk with synthetic clothing on, as those surfaces rub against each other, there's massive, massive amounts of oxidant static electricity that enters the body. And then you go outside wearing rubber sole shoes, so you have no way to discharge that electric charge to the ground and no way to pick up electric negative electrons. And that is what waxed the autoimmune system. That's where autoimmune diseases took off like crazy.

So, he looked around the planet, and he found that there was one country in the world that had no idea back in the early '60s; they had no idea what autoimmune disease was, and that country was India. So, he actually traveled there, and he realized that most people, almost a billion people, they were wearing cotton clothing and they were working barefoot.

So, whatever static electricity they had, they would discharge to the ground, and they would pick up negative electrons from the ground and no autoimmune disease. And he published a book. The book is called Body Electric. He was two times nominated for Nobel Prize in medicine for this work. So, I used his research in designing Vasper. So, that's why you're barefoot on the machine. Your feet are on brass plates, which is a very conductive material. So, we take all the static electricity out of your body, and we bring back negative electrons because, underneath the brass plates, there are copper tubes with water that take that static charge to the ground and bring back negative electrons from the chiller.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That would also improve sleep. Being electrically grounded is also good for sleep.

Peter Wasowski: A hundred percent, yes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Absolutely. There was another brilliant man, Clint Ober, who designed grounded sheets. Exactly what you're talking about. So, it has silver wires and organic cotton that you sleep on.

Yeah, I have a grounding pad on my bed. It works well. But when I'm here in Puerto Rico, walking on the sand, walking on the grass, barefoot, whatever it is, being in the water, of course, you get a good chance to neutralize all that. But yeah, so that's great. So, really, the beauty of about Vasper is that you've really brought together in a very intelligent way a system that gives people great results in a short period of time without a whole lot of effort on their part, is really what I'm hearing. That's really how you're thinking about this, yeah.

Peter Wasowski: Yeah. So, anytime you create a very healthy addiction, I think you've hit the jackpot. We've happened to do that. So, I don't think that I've created it, really. I think that this technology came through me rather than from me. I was lucky enough to be given the stewardship to share it with as many people as possible. So, I absolutely love what I do.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, it's kind of a download. So, I know that you did develop this on the big island, and I know that you were tinkering with it in your garage if I'm not mistaken. There's a story about you being part of a canoe club over there or something. Do you want to tell the audience a little bit about that, just so they get a feel for how this got kicked off?

Peter Wasowski: Sure, thank you. So, I sold my previous company when I was 50 years old and basically moved to Hawaii to the big island with my wife and two children that were just before high school. When we moved to the tropics, I realized that my two health challenges… one was diabetes. I was pre-diabetic. My grandfather died of diabetes, and I also had two trimalleolar fractures in both ankles. So, I had had traumatic arthritis in both ankles.

So, both of these became extremely acute and definitely painful from the arthritis point of view. When we moved to the tropics and the doctors were telling me that I was actually close to going on insulin. Once you go on insulin, it's usually a one-way trip that's not a lot of fun. So, I wanted to design something that addresses the root cause rather than treat symptoms.

And that was my motivation. I was retired, I didn't work, and that was my motivation for developing this technology. I got into a lot of Hawaiian cultural activities, including outrigger canoe racing. When you're in a canoe or outrigger canoe, the person who is number one is called the stroker, and he is usually the strongest person on the canoe. There are six people on the canoe. It's 40 feet long. And that person has to actually push quiet water and give a tempo to the canoe.

So, if you have a good stroker, you have a pretty good chance of doing much better with competing with canoes who don't have a very good stroker. So, after a few months of using Vasper at home in my lab, I showed up for practice, and the coach put me in the number one seat, which surprised me. I looked behind me, and everybody behind me was half my age. So, when we came back after the practice, they all circled me, and they said: "Peter, what kind of drugs are you on? This is not possible that you could perform on such a level."

So, I said: "Look, I never took drugs. I never will, but I have this piece of equipment I'm currently developing, and I need Guinea pigs. So, if you guys want to come over two times a week, I'll be happy to show you how this works." So, I ended up with five men, all of them older than me. I was 50, and the next one was 60, 65, 70, and 72. They all started coming three or four times a week, and they experienced very similar results that I had.

After about three months, there was a woman that showed up. She was about 64. Over 60 years old, and she said: "Peter, we have to have a talk." So, she sat next to me on a bench, and she says: "Peter, do you know the meaning of menopause?" And I said, "Of course, obviously not from personal experience, but I know that." She says: "No, you have no idea what menopause is. Menopause means men on pause. What the hell have you done to my husband? I was enjoying my menopause. All of a sudden, he wants sex all the time."

That completely stunned me. I had to think about it for a while. And then I realized that we are actually triggering the endocrine system. So, I sent him to have his testosterone levels checked. He was 71 years old. His testosterone was about 950.