The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode - #361 - Dr. Jo Brown

TRANSCRIPT

Jo Brown
We train strength, we train skill, we train tactics, but how crazy it is that we don't actually train the nervous system that can control it all. So we need to have stress in our lives and it's not about avoiding stress, it's about controlling and monitoring and modulating our response to stress.

So it's not that sympathetic is bad, it's only bad if we get stuck in that state.

Melanie Avalon
Welcome to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast, where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind, we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics lying herein. So friends, are you ready to join me? Let's do this.

Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. Oh my goodness friends, words cannot describe how grateful I am that I found the company Nuropod. And this conversation today with Dr. Joe Brown is beyond fascinating when it comes to everything regulating your nervous system and just how profound of effects doing so can have on your health and overall wellbeing. We often talk a lot vaguely about stress relief, but it's rarer to go into the specifics of how to support vagal tone and how to actually address your vagus nerve. And as I learned by researching and talking with Dr. Joe Brown today, Nuropod is the most clinically studied device on the market when it comes to toning your vagus nerve, you're going to learn all how it works and what it can actually do for you.

We're going to talk about the differences between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system and why the sympathetic nervous system is not necessarily a bad thing, but rather how it's about your adaptability and skillset when it comes to switching between those nervous systems. You're going to learn the far reaching effects of toning your vagus nerve, including how it can help athletic performance, your immune system, your hormones, your mood, and even your sense of self as a human being. By the way, once we stopped recording, Dr. Joe and I just went on and on offline about how much we adore Nuropod and what it does for our life. And I learned something that I wish I'd been recording because this was so interesting. Did you know that when you get stuck in the sympathetic state, empathy is the first thing to go. That's because evolutionarily when you're running away from a tiger or fighting in a war or whatever it may be, your body doesn't have time to care about others. That's a reason that supporting your vagus nerve with a device like Nuropod can actually change who you are as a human being.

That's right. It can make you kinder, nicer, and just feel more like your authentic self. We're going to talk about how to use it and also how to interpret things like HRV, which can be a little bit confusing with all of the data out there. And Nuropod is so kind. They are giving my audience 5% off. I cannot recommend getting this device enough. It can truly change your life indefinitely for the better.

Just go to Nuropod.com slash Melanie and use code Melanie to get 5% off. That's a Nuropod.com slash Melanie with the coupon code Melanie to get 5% off. The show notes for today's episode will be at Melanie Avalon.com slash Nuropod. Those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out.

Melanie Avalon
I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Definitely let me know in my Facebook group, I have biohackers, intermittent fasting, plus real foods, plus life comments, something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love, and then check out my Instagram, find the Friday announcement post, and again, comments there to enter to win something that I love.

All right. I think that's all the things as a brief reminder, you can get 5% off Nuropod. I use this device every single night of my life and cannot recommend it enough. Just go to Nuropod.com slash Melanie and use code Melanie to get 5% off. That's a Nuropod.com slash Melanie with the coupon code Melanie to get 5% off. And now without further ado, please enjoy this beautiful, fabulous conversation with Dr. Joe Brown. Hi friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I'm about to have. It is a long time coming. So the backstory on today's conversation, I have talked for quite a while about the importance of supporting our nervous system. In particular, I've talked about things like bagel nerve stimulation and how to support the parasympathetic nervous system and the rest state and all the things, and there are a lot of modalities out there to do that, but I recently came, well, recently, I guess now it was last year for us, but last year I met this incredible company called Nuropod. It was at the Unimonia conference, which by the way, I highly recommend that conference. I always have the best time there. And they had at the time a new vagus nerve stimulation device. And I was so excited to try this because I've tried devices like this in the past and I've had good experiences that said I haven't found one that was super easy to use and super user friendly and just easy to integrate into my daily life. So I was really excited to try Nuropod. I tried it at the conference and then I brought it home, which is so exciting. And I've been using it and it is absolutely incredible.

I will talk all about it. It's a device that you put into your ear and it stimulates your nerve via direction to the brain. So we will talk all about that. But I am here today with a fabulous woman who I met at the conference as well. She was actually there at the booth. This is Dr. Jo Brown. So she is the head of human performance at Paracem and that is the parent company of Nuropod. And she is a global authority on nervous system modulation, HRV intelligence, the science of activation, readiness and recovery. She's worked with elite athletes all over the world. She's just done so much stuff and talking to her at the conference, I was like, okay, this woman knows what she's talking about. It was so excited to connect there. And now many months later, excited to have you on the show. I can't wait to dive into all the things. So Dr. Jo Brown, thank you so much for being here.

Jo Brown
Thanks, Melanie, and I'm super excited to have this conversation. This is a conversation the world needs to hear right now.

We are on more than anyone else previously in history. So our nervous system needs more support than ever before.

Melanie Avalon
What led you to your interest with this topic? Did you have your own experience and issues with being overstimulated and stressed out and all the things, or what led to what you're doing with all this work?

Jo Brown
Essentially, it's twofold. So one is my personal story, and the other is working with elite athletes. So essentially, I've carved out a career helping athletes meet the moments that matter. So athletes can actually perform on demand.

So in Olympic finals world championships, they can actually deliver the capacity that they've trained and what we see with people that don't have a regulated nervous system. They either can't deliver when it matters, or they actually are struggling to be consistent in their performance. So essentially, I've become this performance problem solver. So people hire me when they're not performing well, and whether that's in high performance situations or just consistently over a year. And one of the things I was finding was the problems were consistently related to the nervous system. So they weren't physical, they weren't psychological, they were related to that capacity to perform when it counts. And so essentially, I started looking for ways to solve that problem. And that's essentially how I came across Vegas nerve stimulation, and came to really be hunting out to find what are those components of nervous system regulation? What does it really do for the athlete? How can we train it on an individual basis? And I think we've been obviously looking to solve these problems for thousands of years. But what we don't really think about is that our nervous system is very individual. And so our nervous system essentially has a memory, it is impacted by our experiences and our history. And we need to understand that when we're trying to get the best out of our nervous systems. And essentially, that's what I started doing for athletes.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness. Okay. So many questions. And then your, your personal experience during that, were you also personally experiencing nervous system dysregulation as well?

Jo Brown
So I've seen my life traveling around solving problems for athletes, right? So I'm always on a plane every couple of days, literally just got off a 29-hour flight just now. And what I was finding was not just the impact of travel and jet lag, but I'm also not 21 anymore. So there was a hormonal component that I was battling as well.

And really understanding how to regulate my nervous system has actually meant that I've been able to overcome a lot of those perimenopausal horrible issues through regulating my nervous system. So this, and I think that is the piece of the puzzle that so many people don't realize is the nervous system to me is the last frontier in performance and in medicine. It's a thing that we really haven't 100% explored yet. And there's so much power in solving performance problems and medical problems for each and every one of us and the difference it made for me using Nuropod every day to regulate my hormones, regulate my nervous system meant from me being a person that was questioning, do I have MS? Do I have some other crazy thing going on to having no symptoms at all?

Melanie Avalon
Wow. Okay. So a few things there. It's so interesting because I was looking over Nuropod's website and they had a list of... I'm trying to find the actual list again. Well, they had a list of all the different conditions that Nuropod has been studied for and it's things that people might not even think would relate to the nervous system, but it was stuff like flu and virus recovery, you know, and pain and all of these different things.

Like it's just wild just how far reaching, you know, the effects are with everything in the body. And then what you're speaking of about how it's kind of like the final frontier and people aren't talking about it as much, even me. So I'm like super, super aware of this, I think, you know, and I'm integrating it into my life. And still, like in real time today, I was thinking about how I have some upcoming travel and I'm trying to decide... Actually, it's to the biohacking conference. I don't know if you guys will be there in Austin in May. Yes, yes, we will. Oh, yay. Okay, so I can see you. So I just got an invitation to the enhanced games, which is happening like the week, like that few days before. And I'm trying to decide if I can energetically have the capacity because I do not have your travel skills. If I can energetically like do both back to back and...

Jo Brown
I can help you with some travel protocols for your near abroad.

Melanie Avalon
No, that would be amazing. And so that's my point is like even me, because literally like right before this, I was thinking like, can I do it? And like, when am I going to rest? When am I going to recover? And I was thinking about it in terms of, you know, sleep and like food and fasting and supplements.

And even me, I don't immediately jump to like nervous system regulation. And I'm like, this is my sphere. So I think there's, you know, a lot of awareness and education that can happen out there for how this can actually really help people.

Jo Brown
I'm the girl that wants to stand on that soapbox for you, don't worry.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, good. Okay, perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect. I'll bring my Nuropod. I'll work through it and I'll do all the things.

Okay, here's a big question I have. And I've been confused a little bit about it ever since I've been learning about the nervous system. So I think people, at least in this audience, you can talk about it as well, but are pretty familiar with parasympathetic, sympathetic state. So sympathetic state, either the fight or flight mode, the on state, and then the parasympathetic, rest and digest, that state. So first of all, is that sort of terminology that we use too simplistic to actually describe these states? And are they binary? Is it like you're either in one or the other? Are they both on at the same time? How do they actually relate to each other as far as going back and forth between them?

Jo Brown
Big question, big question. So essentially, it is as simple as that, really. So we have, like you said, sympathetic, the on switch, fight or flight, freeze. And then we have parasympathetic, obviously, rest, digest, recover. And like I said, my, most of my career has been spent working in that high performance space. And most people have thought for a lot of time that it's about the being in one or the other. So either being, you know, it's really good to be in sympathetic, or it's really good to be in parasympathetic. But the key is being able to have that capacity to switch between the two, and that capacity to switch between the two seamlessly and on demand. That's what we want to be able to have. So it's not necessarily about being always in sympathetic or always in parasympathetic, or how much parasympathetic you necessarily have is the capacity to switch between the two.

That what I could talk about is autonomic flexibility. So when we talk about parasympathetic and sympathetic, we're talking about the autonomic nervous system. Essentially, it controls everything. We don't have to think about it. And it does that because it's driven by the vagus nerve, the biggest, one of the biggest nerves in our body, and it connects our brain, our heart and our lungs and the rest of our body. So that's why it can influence so many of those systems that we were talking about earlier, including that immune and stress responses. But the confusion I think most people get is that we want to be in one state or the other. It's not about being one side or the other. It's that ability to move between the two. We call that autonomic flexibility. So and just like if you think about flexibility in our muscle, we can actually train that autonomic flexibility. And essentially, that's what we're trying to do with Nuropod.

Melanie Avalon
Wow. Okay. So if a person is just sitting here, like we, you and I are sitting here, can we tell which state we're in?

Jo Brown
So generally, if you're feeling calm and relaxed, your breath is in a nice, deep, controlled state. Your heart rate is relatively low and resting. You're not overthinking. You would say that you're more in that parasympathetic state, but obviously the complete parasympathetic state is complete rest.

So at that point, you would be really down-regulated, like when you're going to sleep. On the opposite side is sympathetic. And so when we're in that sympathetic, that on state heart rate is elevated, essentially it's a biological response. The simplest thing is running away from the bear or the lion back in the day. It's all the things to prepare us to be able to do that. So our heart rate is elevated. Our heart is pumping harder. We might have more blood flow to our muscles. We potentially will be experiencing different types of emotion because of that need to be able to react to that response of running away from the lion. So sitting here, most people right now, if they're listening and they're chilling out, lying on their couch, they're probably going to be more towards that parasympathetic side.

Melanie Avalon
Okay. And what if, because I think we associate sympathetic, you know, because you use the example of like running away from a tiger. And so we associate it with stress, I think, and intensity.

What if it's something about, what if you're like excited? So what if you're high energy and you're excited? So it's like a positive emotion. Can it be a positive emotion, but still a stressful state, like a sympathetic state?

Jo Brown
100%. So we need to have stress in our lives. And it's not about avoiding stress. It's about controlling and monitoring and modulating our response to stress. So it's not that sympathetic is bad. It's only bad if we get stuck in that state.

And so analogy I like to use is if you think about sympathetic being your foot on the accelerator, foot flat to the floor, so to speak. And then if we think about parasympathetic is that capacity to downshift and shift through gears and brake. So if our foot's always on the accelerator and it's stuck there, at some point we're going to crash. If we hit a bump, hit a turn too hard, we're essentially not going to handle that curve. We're going to eventually crash if our foot's stuck on the accelerator. We can have our foot on the accelerator and be safe as long as we can downshift and use the brake before we get to the corner.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, I actually really love this analogy because you couldn't really have I mean, you could but if you push the brake And the accelerator at the exact same time like that would not Do not go anywhere or that would not work. So But but I can see how there would be like a sliding scale so if the analogy still continues for example, say you're like Can you be accelerating like foot on the accelerator?

And then you take your foot off the accelerator, but your foot is not on the brake yet So you're slowing down but you're still like moving forward. I guess my question is I'm really intrigued by the levels of sympathetic and parasympathetic and Yeah, like literally when you switch between one or the other

Jo Brown
And it's literally a balance, right? So everything needs to be in balance. So the most effective people are going between a little bit of one on the other. So we're not ever stuck for any long amount of time in one or the other, apart from obviously when we're sleeping.

So you can literally have foot on the accelerator, take the foot off the gaff, downshift a little bit just by putting foot off the gaff. And then you need to put your foot back on the gaff again because you're going up a hill. That's OK. The only problem is when our foot is 100% on the gaff pedal all the time. It's like if someone puts a rock on your gaff pedal and you can't take it off, or someone takes your foot to the gaff pedal, that's an issue.

Melanie Avalon
How much does this correlate this parasympathetic, sympathetic, and vagal nerve stimulation to HRV? How do those relate?

Jo Brown
Very, very similar. So, HRV is essentially an indicator. It's not the be all and end all.

When I say this, there's lots of other things that will give you information in terms of how your nervous system is respondable and how adaptable it is. So, essentially, HRV is heart rate variability. So, it's the difference between the beats of your heartbeat. So, it is essentially telling you whether you've got that autonomic flexibility or not, whether or not you have the capacity to shift between gears. So, if you think about low HRV as being that foot stuck on the accelerator and having poor capacity to shift between gears and then high HRV giving you that adaptability, flexibility capacity to shift gears on demand. So, essentially, we can react or respond to stress. When we have high HRV, we have the capacity to respond. When we have low HRV, it's a reaction. We don't have many options.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, and question about the HRV numbers because this is something that I've wondered and then I asked listeners for questions about HRV and I got so many questions and a lot of people had a really similar question, which was about basically what the numbers mean, like what to aim for. So like, for example, Teresa said, are there good ranges based on age? She says like mine is usually 45 to 55, but if she drinks a glass of wine, it's 20 to 30. But then she said she sees people in Aura who have scores of over 100. And then Nikki said she'd really like to know what kind of numbers to shoot for. Christina said she's recently been experiencing higher rates and she's so curious. So I think people are really curious about what the actual number means.

And then I've heard, this could be wrong, but I remember reading somewhere that it wasn't even about the actual number, it was more about your own baseline. So the numbers, what do they mean?

Jo Brown
It is so funny, because we live in such a data-driven world right now. And I come from a world of science. I have five degrees. And I get sometimes a little bit frustrated, because we're so caught up on the numbers without truly understanding what the numbers mean.

And we see this in sport all the time. And everyone's measuring HIV. Everyone's got to work for an oral ring, but no one really understands what it means. And to me, if we don't have purpose for the data we're collecting, don't collect it, because it can just be a nuance that confuses us. When it comes to HIV, it is all about trends rather than about the exact number. So when I start working with someone, I will get them to track the HIV for a minimum of two weeks. And what that does is has me understand what is the baseline for them. So your HIV is gonna be quite dependent on so many things. So, like I said, the nervous system essentially has a memory. So on experience, on the level of your chronic stress. So if you've had a partner with cancer for the last two years, you've been nursing, or you're going through a divorce, your HIV is gonna be impacted by that chronic type of stress versus someone who might have a chronic health condition or a viral condition that they're battling as opposed to someone who's traveling all the time. So there's so many things that are gonna impact your HIV from what is happening in your life, either acutely or chronically. But then the other thing is we tend to see, in athletes particularly, so bigger people will tend to have lower HIV than smaller people. Quite often, I'll find petite women will have a higher HIV than a big, huge NFL player, so to speak. So, and that's because we are still talking about a measure of the heart rate variability. So how is your heart changing and responding to stress? So there's lots of different factors. So I would be doing a disservice if I told everyone there's exact numbers depending on your age. What we do know is that as we age, our nervous system is one of the things that tends to be less responsible and less adaptable unless we train it, much like everything else in our body, but the nervous system more so than anything else. So as we age, those, our HIV will generally become a little bit lower. In terms of the numbers that you were mentoring before, and I think someone said, my HIV is normally 40 to 55, and then it drops to 20 when you have a glass of wine. So I would say that that 40 to 55 is probably that person's baseline, and then we wanna try and obviously keep them at that baseline or above for them. And obviously then knowing the things that maybe wine's not the best person thing, we know wine is generally not good for HIV. Any alcohol normally is gonna give us a drop somewhere between eight and 10%. So it just depends on how each individual person wants to manage their nervous system. So, and we can make choices, right?

Jo Brown
We always have choices.

So if you really want that glass of wine, you need to know that that is gonna have an impact probably on your HIV, probably on your sleep, but then potentially you could use your Nuropod or another way to monitor and modulate your nervous system in order to have that change.

Melanie Avalon
And this kind of relates to what, just while we're still talking about HRV, it kind of relates to what I was asking earlier about how intuitive is your experience of the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system. Because Katie had a question about HRV.

She said basically, she said, my HRV goes down when I meditate using deep breathing that I've practiced for many years using a technique to relax the entire body. It's highest when I'm dreaming and also when I get upset. I'd like to understand why my HRV is low when I feel positively connected to my heart, which is during meditation. And I know that's a really specific question, but I guess a broader question beyond it is, should HRV kind of like I was asking about the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system, should it kind of intuitively relate to how you're feeling in your body at that moment or can it sometimes seem to be a mismatch?

Jo Brown
I think the thing that people need to understand is that your HRV can fluctuate within seconds. So for example, I was recently doing a talk and had someone wearing a heart rate monitor and measuring the HRV and we were doing an exercise which is basically trying to relax the nervous system where it's a type of movement and meditation essentially. So HRV went up to like 110 and then I got that person to stand up and then explain what they were feeling when they were doing the movement and the meditation work and then as soon as they stood up obviously they were nervous to speak and then the HRV dropped back down to 25 within a minute and we had this you know on the screen. So what people need to realise is that it's not about what it's doing moment to moment but it's the overall trend that's the most important.

So what we don't want is to have our HRV stuck or our stuck and like I said put on the accelerator to use that analogy again. So as long as we can come in and out of those states and we have that flexibility to do that our nervous system is healthy. I would say the example that you're using there's probably some kind of generally there's a consistent so when your HRV is high you're feeling a certain way and it's normally positive but sometimes there can be a delay in that or things like trauma major trauma can actually change the way the nervous system reacts to certain situations. So essentially when we think about the role of the nervous system it's always asking am I safe and so its reaction and response is relative to what it perceives as safe. To give you an example a personal example my sister drowned a few years ago and the ocean had always been the place where I went to relax where I went to do breath work make decisions all those kind of things and then all of a sudden the ocean was a place that had taken my sister so it no longer was a place of calm for me it was a place of threat and so in an instant after 20 plus years of having the ocean be a place of calm my nervous system the ocean hadn't changed my nervous system changed and now it was a place of threat and so our nervous system is responding every moment to that am I safe.

Melanie Avalon
Oh wow, first of all, I am so sorry. That is so horrible and sad. Have you tried to use like Nuropod, for example, to work on your relationship with the ocean?

Jo Brown
Yes. So basically I use Nuropod is that access to that calm to be able to take on whatever challenge or threat that is coming into my life moment to moment day to day. So I use it in quite probably a different way to the everyday person.

But I understand and know my nervous system so much better now because I've been on that journey to help others and help myself through nervous system modulation for a number of years.

Melanie Avalon
Wow. Okay. And again, and thank you for sharing. And again, I am so sorry. That is so, so horrible to hear.

So a question about all of this, a broader question. So the vagus nerve, you mentioned it. We've been mentioning it a lot. So what actually is it? Like if you dissected a person, can you see it? Is it like a physical

Jo Brown
Yeah, so the vagus nerves are actually interesting when you dissect, and I have dissected people, not their vagus nerves particularly, but when you dissect people, the nerves are actually really easy to see. They're kind of these almost like white, yellowy kind of colored cords that are quite springing in elastic that you can follow through tissue throughout the body. So the thing about the vagus nerve, one of the biggest nerves in the body, and it goes from the brainstem down through heart, lungs, into the gut, and then throughout the body, and it has different branches. So that is why it has so much power because it has so many attachments and goes through so many different parts in the body.

Yeah, so in terms of dissecting it, if we went looking for it 100%, we would find it. It wouldn't be a hard nerve to find a cure. It's a very big nerve.

Melanie Avalon
Because it means wandering, right? Or wandering nerve, I think.

Jo Brown
And that's, it goes to so many different places.

Melanie Avalon
Wow, okay. And so stimulating it, people also will use the word like tone it.

So what does that mean? So okay, so it's this nerve going throughout the body that's having this massive effect on the nervous state that we're in. Is it making the decisions?

Jo Brown
So basically we have a thing called vagal tone, an easy way to think of vagal tone to use the muscle analogy again. Our vagal tone is essentially about capacity of the system. So it's about the capacity of the vagus nerve, the capacity of the parasympathetic system and how ready it is to respond. So what we want our tone to be like in a muscle, we want that to have the appropriate amount of tone to be able to respond on demand. So if a muscle doesn't have enough tone, it's going to be kind of flaccid. We can't generate enough force quickly enough to be effective to movement.

The same happens essentially when we think about vagal tone. And then on the opposite side, if the muscle has too much tone and it's too rigid, then we don't have that flexibility and capacity to have the muscle move through range. So we want to have enough tone to be able to have an appropriate response, but we don't want too much tone either. So once again, it comes down to that balance.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, so we often think about and like you open this conversation with people being stuck in that sympathetic state, which I'm assuming from what you're saying is no way would that be too much tone or too little tone? Or does that not does it not correlate exactly that way?

Jo Brown
It doesn't correlate exactly, but if you've got low vagal tone, it means that you're more stuck. So it still comes down to that flexibility and capacity to move between the states.

Melanie Avalon
So what I was thinking about was like, and you're, because you're talking about it as like a muscle in a way. So like monks and monastery who might be perpetually in a state, I mean, I don't know, but I'm assuming like doing breathwork, like all the time and being in a parasympathetic state the majority of the time, like, could you like lose your ability to appropriately get into the sympathetic state if needed?

Jo Brown
Oh, I've never thought about it in that way before. It's funny because I have had this question from athletes as well.

So they get concerned that if we have too much time in parasympathetic and we get too relaxed, they can't get back into that sympathetic state. I would say the general rule is a whole lot easier to get into the sympathetic state because that's that biological as soon as there's a threat of any or challenge of any description, we're going to get into that sympathetic state. So I would say for the most part, it's always going to be easier to get into sympathetic than parasympathetic in terms of monks. I've never really thought about how that would be when they're consistently. Yeah, but I don't think they were we would call that they would be stuck and parasympathetic, pathetic, they're choosing to be in parasympathetic. So that would be a little bit different because it's not about that because there's no stress coming in to it's not the same. It's not the opposite, if you know what I mean.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, it's really interesting to think about because what you're talking about how it's so hardwired. I think that becomes really evident when a person has an experience where you think you see a snake or something and you just completely jump and it's not a snake usually. Whenever that happens to me, it's so fascinating to me just how powerful that state is and how quickly it can come on even when you have no anticipation that it's going to happen. It seems just very powerful.

And then on the flip side, I'm trying to find out if I should talk about this or not. I don't personally support medication use for people and finding what works for them and everything. I don't personally take medication like Xanax or Valium or something like that unless I do take one when I go on a flight because I have found that it makes me seemingly not react to stress stuff. If I take one, I'm just like, okay, the plane could go down and I don't care. My question here is does that mean that I'm taking an external substance that makes my body not react to stress threats? So is that encouraging a parasympathetic state or a non-sympathetic state?

Jo Brown
Yeah, so the thing about a lot of medication and I ended up solving problems with athletes, and part of the reason I started using Nuropod was athletes were taking medications such as what you're saying or other illicit drugs to try and down regulate their system to try and sleep post before being, you know, NBA game late at night, all those kind of things. And there's quite a difference between inducing the parasympathetic state quite naturally by stimulating the nerve, stimulating the body's natural response to basically putting a band-aid on it and covering it up with medication. So the problem with medication is you then have to still, so if you think about it, you're smothering or putting a band-aid over the problem, you still need to pull that band-aid off. And then that's also time and takes adaptation as well.

So for instance, from the sporting world, if an athlete is taking a medication to help them relax and sleep after a game the next day and that their nervous system is not fully recovered from taking that medication. So then their perceived exertion or how hard the training feels is a whole lot higher. When they use something like Nuropod instead, what happens is then they don't have that band-aid effect. They just go into that parasympathetic state more naturally. It's inducing a natural response. So then the next day they're able to perform better.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, okay. I'm really glad I asked that question then.

So basically, people can be taking these medications, like you said, like a Band-Aid, and it's not really sustainable. And I will do a shout out. I did an interview with Melissa Bond called Blood Orange Night. And it was about how she got addicted to benzodiazepines. And that book really changed my life about reading or my thoughts about medication and like what it can actually do as far as like an addiction potential and what it does to the body. But in any case, yeah, it's amazing to know that these effects that you're looking for with things like medications that you could get there in a holistic foundational way and address the root problem with supporting the vagus nerve. So speaking of, so there are a lot of ways that people will talk about to stimulate the vagus nerve. So I've heard like, you know, humming and singing and laughing. And so the way that Aeropod works, were you with the company when it like from the beginning when it got developed?

Jo Brown
No, I haven't been with the company through the development stage, but basically the company, so Parasym is a model company, the science behind the device, essentially the company spent 10 years developing doing R&D, spent over $10 million US dollars in developing the device, making sure the science was correct and accurate, developing the exact required frequency to deliver the appropriate stimulus and to know that we're actually directly stimulating those afferent auricular fibres of the vagus nerve. So that didn't happen overnight, it took 10 years and now we have this amazing device that is out there in the world for people to use.

And I've come on very much late in the picture to help the company share this with the world essentially, because it is a conversation we all need to be having. And I think there's so many issues in today's society that we can really change with understanding the nervous system and that is essentially all the athletes that I've worked with and even corporate at the most elite level, they know and understand their own nervous system and how to get it up and firing and then how to get out and rest as soon as possible. And that is high performance, being able to do things over and over again.

Melanie Avalon
because there's like physical stress, mental stress, emotional stress. Have you found with the athletes that you work with, like, are some just fine?

Like, can some just like do all the physical stuff, the physical stress aspect of it, and because of their personal mindset, they don't, it's like fine. Like they can just adapt and then do some because of their personal, mental, emotional health, it is not fine. Like, like how do those correlate? Like the physical stress aspect and the perspective and the mental and the emotional and all of that.

Jo Brown
There's so many components to that question. But the first part, I guess, is every athlete essentially is trained for the physical side. So, and that is the thing that we train strength, we train skill, we train tactics. But how crazy it is that we don't actually train the nervous system, the thing controlling it all. And that's what I started doing in my practice. And that's probably the major reason that I've been able to be so successful across so many sports is that actually thinking of the nervous system is something we can train and modulate. And it's different for each and every athlete. And yes, there are components where some athletes are far better, mentally, emotionally prepared for stress. And that can be a personality trait that can be relative to the amount of stress and trauma that they previously had in their life and how they've learned to cope or not cope with that. And then other athletes definitely 100% struggle a whole lot more because of, you know, whether it be past trauma or, you know, different emotional responses, they tend to get angry or frustrated when things don't go their way and they don't necessarily have the coping strategies to deal with that.

But it doesn't matter who you are as an athlete, you're always going to have physical stresses. Yes, you're always going to have, you know, the emotional stresses and the challenge of performing at the highest level over and over again. And then they also have the challenge of, as I mentioned earlier, been able to try and sleep and rest and down regulate after pushing the nervous system to their height of performance. And then the other component is then they're getting on a plane as well. So, you know, flying and traveling all the time, which also is a huge, big sympathetic spike in stress on the nervous system. So, whoever the athlete is and who each of their, each and every person listening right now is being able to know and understand your nervous system and know the triggers, know the things that put your body, your nervous system under greater stress, and then learning the tools and the tricks to modulate that for yourself. And it might be breathing, it might be using your part, it might be humming, it might be cold, cold, or a shower, but it's very individual.

Melanie Avalon
The reason I'm really excited about Nuropod in particular, and I'll go back to what I was going to ask before about it, is because, you know, we just mentioned a lot of things that can, you know, like you said, like reading or singing or cold showers or what it may or whatever it may be in, or people might think of like breath work and meditation. And so there are a lot of avenues into this. And at the same time, I think it can be a little bit, especially if you're really stuck in the stress state, it can be intimidating to people. I know it is to me to like to think, okay, I have to do this whole, not that it's, it's a good thing, I support it, but some people might think like, you know, I have to do this meditation practice or this breath work, like it can just seem, it can seem like a lot to ask of somebody sometimes, especially in our busy world.

And so what I really like about a device like Nuropod is that, I mean, I was thinking about this, you can just have it stack it and you know, like, and we'll talk about it, but you know, you put it in your ear, you like turn it on, and then it does the work, presumably for you, I'm guessing, I guess that's a question to start with is, do you need to be in a certain state while using it? Or can you use it at any time? Like when should you use it?

Jo Brown
This is the best thing about Nuropod, and this is why I love it, why my clients love it, is that you don't need to be in that relaxed state. You don't need to be in a quiet room, you can be anywhere.

So in terms of the athletes, they can be after a match, they can be having a massage, they can be on the phone, they can be eating dinner, they can be in a nice spot that doesn't matter where you are, you can still use the device. Essentially, the device is going to stimulate the vagus nerve directly at the most superficial fibres at the air on the tragus, and we are going to get stimulation of that parasympathetic response within five minutes, and we've done plenty of studies to prove that. So how I think of it from an athlete perspective is we're opening that parasympathetic pathway, and that's going to happen within five minutes, and we can use the device for a longer period or a less period depending on what response we're trying to get.

Melanie Avalon
Okay. And here's why I'm really excited to ask all my questions because when I first met you, you know, I had not tried the device yet. Like I said, I tried it at the conference, but I had not tried it at home, like doing sessions, which I have now done.

So is this like the main way or the only way where there's a physical part of the body that you directly can stimulate and go to the vagus nerve? Like why is it the ear? Like why is that the placement?

Jo Brown
So previously, before now, the only way to, before the parasympathy developed the device that we now call Nuropod, before then, the only way to actually stimulate the vagus nerve directly was by surgically implanting device and tucking it at the cervical spine, so in your neck. And with 10 years of R&D, parasymp and Nuropod were able to develop this device that we now know is directly stimulating those afferent fibers so it goes up to the brain and back down to the body. So that's why we know we can have an effect on what's happening at the brain in terms of cognitive control and cognitive clarity, memory, as well as the responses throughout the body and what we associate with relaxation.

There are other devices on the market and I'm not gonna name names, but they don't have the capacity so they don't stimulate directly at the ears. So there are some devices and I don't know how they think that they're doing this, but I've seen things that at the wrist, I've seen things hanging around the neck and I've also seen devices that actually have electrodes that are targeted to the neck itself. What we know from a scientific point of view and from the anatomy is it is not possible to externally stimulate those fibers into cervical spine or the neck. The only place we can stimulate through the skin and have a direct impact and stimulate the vagus nerve is at the ear and that's why Nuropod has developed the device to clip onto your ear to get that direct stimulation.

Melanie Avalon
I have some questions about when actually using it. So like I mentioned the word habit stacking, but I realized the best time for me to do it because I do at least like an hour session in my sunlight and sauna every day, but it's the one where it's the solo unit so my head is outside of it. So it's the perfect time.

It's like when I do like work on my phone and stuff. So it's a perfect time where I'm like laying there and I can just like set up my Nuropod and now I can turn my sauna session into a vagus nerve stimulation session as well. So the experience of it, it says to get your ear like wash your ear a little bit to make it wet and then you clip it onto your ear super easy to use. You turn it on and then you press the button to increase the intensity until you start feeling this like tingly feeling. So I get, I tend to overanalyze things and I always wanna do things correctly. The sensation that you feel, does it matter the, going back to like what we were talking about with the numbers on HRV, does it matter the number that you're at? Does that indicate anything about effectiveness? Is it more intense, better? Like what are you looking to feel when you're doing a session?

Jo Brown
So what we're trying to feel is a sensory threshold of the nerve. So to stimulate the nerve, it wants to be at the lower level of what you're feeling of that tingling sensation. Sometimes it feels a little bit prickly. There is no gain to be had by pushing it higher and higher and higher. So we don't want to push it to a point that that prickling becomes uncomfortable. So your sensory threshold is when you first start to feel, you know, a consistent prickling tingling sensation and then you leave it there and there's no need to, you know, push it any higher.

Typical athletes, you know, they want to turn it up as high as you can, but at the highest level, you know, for some people that can be quite comfortable, there's no need to do that. And I think the overall message if you're probably, you know, picking up when I'm putting down here is it's very individual to the individual person and the numbers don't necessarily matter when it comes to HIV. It's about the trend and it's relative to you specifically and your body type and your chronic stresses all lack of and the same when it comes to the number on the device.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, okay, and if just because I overanalyze everything because I'm I'm I put it on like what if I'm like I'm like, what if I'm clipping it's like the wrong part of my ear if I am if I'm feeling that tingling Is there any way I can feel that tingling and have it like in the wrong place?

Jo Brown
No, you're not going to feel it in the wrong place.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, good. Should I adjust the intensity at all while doing it?

So like, I noticed sometimes that like, I'll start at one level and then as the session progresses, I'll feel like it feels a little bit more or less intense. Should I like adjust it or let it just keep doing its thing?

Jo Brown
You can adjust it so that you constantly feel that sensory threshold. I'd say you still want to feel the awareness. So if you feel like you lose the awareness throughout the session, you can increase it.

Melanie Avalon
Okay. Because you said it takes at about five minutes, you're turning on that parasympathetic state.

As far as the effects that people are looking for, whatever they may be, so their stress, their sleep, their hormones, like your experience, their recovery or recovering from an illness, how much, how many sessions, like how long do you need to be doing it before you'll get systemic effects from it?

Jo Brown
So general rule is somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes each day for a minimum of two weeks. But in saying that, most people will report feeling a difference after one session, even after five minutes. But to have that effect maintained is generally going to be consistent use over two weeks.

It's like anything. If you think about like a diet, obviously you eat one healthy meal. It's not really going to change things long term. You continue to eat healthy and be aware of your diet over time. So yes, we can have an impact with one session and the science tells us that. But we want to basically change the trend in terms of your HIV, in terms of your nervous system regulation. So the overall goal is having your capacity to move between those states on demand seamlessly and not having to think about it. And the Nuropod will help you do that, but it's not going to be able to do that consistently with one session.

Melanie Avalon
Amazing. I'm just thinking about how this just seems like a non-negotiable, like, I need to do this every day for the rest of my life. When do you do it in your daily practice?

Jo Brown
So generally I will use it when I'm not traveling before I go to bed every night and then I'll also have it like I literally keep it beside my bed and if I wake up in the morning and I'm feeling like I just need a little bit more of a stimulus a little bit more almost like a kickstart to the day I just might feel wake up feeling a little bit anxious because I've got to talk to Melanie in our podcast no just kidding I might use it for five or 15 minutes first thing in the morning as but like I said generally the suggestion is 30 to 60 minutes within a 24-hour period when I travel I will use it before I get on the plane so I'll have it in the airport either lining up to check in because you know those things that are horrible in our lives that we don't want to be at so I'll use near apart checking in I'll use it on the plane and then I'll also use it when I get off the plane again I recently I've had a couple of lots of long-haul flights but recently I've had two times where I was really specific in monitoring my HRV after flying so and I've used Europe I like I said at the airport on the plane and when I got back again and I'd flown from Australia to New Zealand New Zealand to Canada and then been on a bus for a couple hours got to my friend's house woke up the next morning and my HRV was 95% of my normal resting HRV so within 12 hours of landing my HRV was right back up there which normally that would take two to three days and I've been seeing that consistently with my travel

Melanie Avalon
Wow, okay. Can you overuse it? Like, is there a max?

Jo Brown
You can overuse it from a perspective of if we're putting electrical stimulation through the skin at the ear and we, obviously there's that pulse going through the skin. So if we use it for longer than kind of 90 minutes a day would be my maximum suggested dose.

And that's what from the scientific point of view we've found. So we don't want people necessarily going to sleep in it and things like that because the only thing that possibly could happen that's a negative thing is would be that the skin would get irritated from too much use.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, okay. And I just had the funniest thing pop into my head because you're talking about all the different ways to use it. How might it affect libido? Have they studied that?

Jo Brown
don't think so. I don't think they directly have. But what I'd say is when your nervous system is regulated, your hormones are more likely to be in balance. And you're generally going to be a happier, more attractive, authentic person.

So I would say that as a result of that, libido is probably going to be influenced. I interviewed an athlete, a basketball player, recently. And his response to how the device would be impacting him was really quite profound. And he basically just said that the devices enabled him to just stay in the middle zone. So whatever happens in his life, as an athlete, or he's a dad, or as a dad, or in the corporate space, he can cope with that stress and come straight back to baseline. So there's no, you know, reacting to situations and having crazy emotional responses. And essentially, he said he gets to show up as the best version of himself every single day because of this device.

Melanie Avalon
I love that. Yeah, that was the kind of what I was thinking.

It's kind of like it helps you become like your true, you know, your true self not being influenced and driven by a reactive nervous system state. You're more yourself.

Jo Brown
Yeah, you can show up authentically as the best person of you 100% of the time. And it's funny, because a couple of days recently, I'd been traveling and I hadn't taken my Nuropod out of my travel bag and my travel bag ended up in my car.

And my husband said to me, babe, I'm like, well, he's like, have you use your Nuropod today? Not like why? And he's like, you're not being a nice person. So it's impacting relationships as well.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I just the thing that made me laugh, I'm thinking, I can just see like being on a date with somebody being like, wait a second, I just got to put this in really quick before we don't mind me as I attach this to my ear.

Jo Brown
Just give me five minutes, I'll be good. Oh, you know, sometimes people need to freshen up. Sometimes they need to use a neuro-pad, you know?

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I'm all about it. Oh my goodness. Well, okay, so now I'm sure listeners are very very eager to get their hands on this device and I cannot recommend it enough again. It's so approachable.

So easy to use. It's become a non negotiable for me. I will be doing it every night in the sauna and maybe when I if I do this double travel thing, I will use it to tackle that.

Jo Brown
I can help you out with some protocols about how to use it.

Melanie Avalon
that would be really helpful. And now I'm gonna have something else for TSA to give me grief about. Every time I go through, they're like not about it.

Jo Brown
Every time they look at it and they just pick it up and put it back down in its case and carry on.

Melanie Avalon
Are you ever like wearing it? Well, I guess you can't wear it through the, cause I always opt out of, I always ask for a pat down so they're already suspicious.

So then when I have like devices on me, they're like, who is this person?

Jo Brown
Sometimes I forget that I got it on, like the other day I was actually going through an airport and they told me you have to put that, and I'm like, put what? And they're like, oh yeah, I've got it on my, because I just use it so regularly.

Melanie Avalon
That's amazing. That's amazing. So yeah, so like I was saying, listeners are probably super eager to get their hands on a device. So Nuropod is being so kind. They have a discount for for you guys.

So if you go to Nuropod.com slash Melanie, so N-U-R-O-P-O-D dot com slash M-E-L-A-N-I-E, that should auto apply a five percent discount to the product. You can also use the code Melanie as well. We're not sure if that code is going to expire though or not. So if the code Melanie doesn't work on its own, definitely go to Nuropod.com slash Melanie to get five percent off. Again, I cannot recommend this enough. And like I was saying before, I what I really, really appreciate about it is it's something that is so out of like there's so many like, you know, biohacking things out there and things to do to like optimize your life. And this is something that is so foundational effects, as you can now understand after listening to this. So many things in your life and it's so easy to integrate. Like you can just, you know, it's easy to wear, it's easy to do and you don't even have to think about it. You just put it on and then you do your things.

Jo Brown
And I think, Melanie, the thing that I love about it is it gives you back time. So we're all so time poor.

We've got so many things going on in our lives, all the notifications, emails, texts, like all the things we need to respond to. We can be doing that, responding to those things and wearing your iPod at the same time and are still having.

Melanie Avalon
I love it. Don't ever tempt me with like, ultimate multitasking that's actually beneficial for you.

That's like the ultimate carrot. I mean, because they're always like, don't multitask. Well, I'm gonna multitask with this. Watch me.

Jo Brown
Yeah, it's different.

Melanie Avalon
It's different, I know. Well, this has been absolutely amazing.

So again, listeners, go to Nuropod.com slash Melanie, use the code Melanie to get 5% off a Nuropod cannot recommend it enough. And I do have one last really easy question for you. But was there anything else you wanted to share with our listeners before before you go?

Jo Brown
All I can say is you have to realize the nervous system is impacting your performance and daily life, your relationships with every person with yourself. And the moment you start becoming aware and then taking action to modulate your nervous system, you're going to get closer to that authentic best version of yourself.

Melanie Avalon
I love that. And I actually, I think about that a lot. I tend to really get along well with people and I tend to like energetically mesh well with people. And then sometimes I'll be in a state where I like, I don't want to talk to people. And when that happens, I like reflect on it. I'm like, what is that? And now with this lens, it makes so much sense. Like if you're not in that state where you're, you know, your true regulated self, it doesn't just affect you. It affects like how you feel about everything, like the world, how you show up, how you interact with people. So I love that.

And you answered actually the first question we got for you, which I hadn't read, but you, you like perfectly answered it because it was from Maris. And she said, I was asking her about, you know, the HRB and all of that stuff and the nervous system. And she said, what is it? And she said, she said, why is it so important in holistic medicine, yet traditional allopathic doctors rarely reference it. And just to that point, it's so true that I just feel like people aren't talking about this as much as they should be. So thank you for what you're doing. Thank you to neuro pod friends, go get a device now. And on that note, the last question that I actually ask every single guest on this show. And it's just because every day I appreciate more and more the importance of mindset surrounding everything. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Jo Brown
I'm grateful for the opportunity to share my knowledge and have the chance to change the world every day by having conversations like this. And saying that, I'm also doing a TED Talk on this topic called Calm to Conquer Master Your Nerve System for Best Performance in Dallas in May.

So if you're really interested in this topic and want to hear more, that TED Talk will be out in May.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness. Congratulations. Have you have you done a TED talk before?

Jo Brown
Nora is the first one so I'm pumped for it and I get to talk about my favorite topic so it's going to be amazing.

Melanie Avalon
Will you be wearing a device during the talk?

Jo Brown
I think I'll probably take one on stage, yes. I thought you were going to ask me what I'm wearing for the TED Talk and I was still trying to figure that one out.

Melanie Avalon
Well, that's you that's you that's an important question Oh, man, I have heard I have I have quite a few friends who've done TED talks. I've heard it's I've heard it's a lot Prepping for it. Are you like deep in prep work right now?

Jo Brown
Yeah, like I've written what I want to say and basically, and I'm just currently cleaning up the edges and prepping for it.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness, well congrats in advance. I'm sure you'll be fabulous, especially with Nuropod in your arsenal. And speaking of how can people best follow your work, all the things.

Jo Brown
so probably instagram so performance state dr joe so performance state dr joe

Melanie Avalon
Awesome, awesome. Well, we will put that in the show notes. Again, it was so, so fabulous to meet you at the Unimonia. Can't wait to see you at Biohacking and thank you so much for all that you do.

I'm just so, so grateful. Like from the moment I met you, I was like, I can't wait to have you on the show, so. So great, so great. So you are the best and we will talk soon. Thanks, Melanie. Thank you, Jo, bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast. For more information and resources, you can check out my book, What, Win, Wine, as well as my supplement line, Avalon X. Please visit MelanieAvalon.com to learn more about today's guests and always feel free to contact me at contact at MelanieAvalon.com and always remember, you got this.