The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #228 - Moha Bensofia

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon: Friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I'm about to have. So here is the backstory on today's conversation. Something that is talked about a lot and explored a lot in the biohacking sphere is the concept of neurofeedback.

Melanie Avalon: And this might come as a surprise to the audience, but I actually had never done anything personally related to neurofeedback despite hearing about it all the time in this sphere. So I was very excited when I was approached by a company called Mendi for their neurofeedback device.

Melanie Avalon: And it's actually a, we'll talk about this in the episode, but it actually uses FNIRS, which is Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy Neurofeedback. I hope I said that right. So it's really, really intrigued because they make an at home device that you put on your head and can engage in this protocol to do this neurofeedback training.

Melanie Avalon: My concern with the device was, as you guys know, I am very much aware of the potential issues with EMFs and launching an EMF blocking line. So I was a little bit unsure about the EMF exposure from the device.

Melanie Avalon: I actually reached out, I believe we have a mutual friend, Dave Asprey. I reached out to him, I was like, what do you think about this Mendi device? Because he talks about it in his book, I think in his most recent book, he actually talks about it.

Melanie Avalon: And so he said that it was completely 100% worth it, that it was minimal EMF exposure and the cost benefit was just really up there with what you could experience. And I asked some other people as well and did my own research and decided I thought that there was a lot of value here.

Melanie Avalon: I actually got the device myself and I've been using it. So I'm really excited to share my experience and ask questions about it. And at the very least, I've been definitely needing to do a deep dive into neurofeedback and what that all is.

Melanie Avalon: So I am so honored to be here today with Moha Bensofia. He just told me how to say his last name. He is the CEO of Mendi. I've been listening to a lot of conversations that he's had with other people and he seems to have a very interesting backstory.

Melanie Avalon: So Moha, and I'll let listeners know right now he's in Dubai at midnight doing this interview. So I'm just so, so grateful. I have so many questions. Moha, thank you so much for being here.

Moha Bensofia: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Melanie Avalon: So to get things started, your personal story, could you share listeners and with me a little bit about that? So you're a really active angel investor. I'm dying to know how do you, well, first of all, I'm just dying to know about your personal story and what led you to being involved with Mendi.

Melanie Avalon: But what makes you decide what to invest in? I know you did something really big with like a phishing app in the past. Like how do you decide what to pursue with your projects?

Moha Bensofia: Well, I think a lot of that has actually changed with time. It says, when you're not broke completely, you can make better decisions and kind of like have a criteria that's a little bit more holistic and a little bit more thought out than when you're just trying to pay the bills, right?

Moha Bensofia: So the fishing app was actually right after I'd gotten to Sweden from Libya, my time there. It was basically I needed a job and needed some money, and I didn't really give a shit about fishing or did I have any background in software.

Moha Bensofia: And I basically just confidently said, hey, I think I can use my analog people skills and the basics that a normal Costa Rican would have in order to those survival instincts to be able to scale this.

Moha Bensofia: And it worked out pretty well. And that turned out to be my first exit. There's a fishing app that we scaled out of Old Tampa Bay, Florida called Fishbring.

Melanie Avalon: I just find that so incredibly interesting, especially the concept, because you mentioned it briefly, like the concept of money involved with everything, because I think money gets painted kind of with a negative light in our world.

Melanie Avalon: You shouldn't want money or money doesn't buy happiness, but it is so helpful to support what you actually want to do in life. And so I'm just really intrigued by the concept of money. Do you have thoughts on money?

Moha Bensofia: Well, I mean, it's very hard to be a good father if you can't, you know, if you're struggling to pay rent. And if you're like, it's very hard to be a, you know, a loving mother that is listening to, you know, her son's problems or her, you know, daughter's problems if you're thinking about, you know, getting food to the table, right?

Moha Bensofia: So it's money is a huge thing and money gets demonized, but money in the right hands is really the way that we change the world and make the world better, right? It's basically how those resources get used.

Moha Bensofia: It's not basically, yeah, there is this trend to just demonize money. And there's this trend of people that haven't understood that struggle or haven't lived through the struggle of not having any money.

Moha Bensofia: Just, you know, people that are, you know, very, very wealthy and then it turns into, oh, we don't care about money, you know, we're gonna just move to India and just live off the, you know, these trees.

Moha Bensofia: It's bullshit. Basically, money is a very important way, is a very important tool in giving you the freedom to be the best version of yourself.

Melanie Avalon: That's exactly how I feel and anticipate this conversation going this way, but I am so enjoying this. Have you ever thought about how sometimes I'll just sit and think about money. And how it literally is, it's everybody just agreeing to something.

Melanie Avalon: Like it's not real. Like it's, it's basically everybody, everybody decided that something is worth some sort of value. Do you know what I'm saying? Like it's not like an actual real thing. And that's just fascinating to me.

Melanie Avalon: Like if we all just had a different idea, that would all change actually. So do you identify as an investor? Is that like, what would you call yourself?

Moha Bensofia: I think what I am is I'm a Costa Rican guy that's very fortunate to meet a lot of great people from all over the world that are much smarter than I am, that are very passionate about things. And if I assess that I believe in them and I like what they stand for, then I'll get involved in their projects.

Moha Bensofia: And to me, it just becomes this kind of, you know, I grew up with not much family being a son of Libyan immigrants in Costa Rica. It was just like I've kind of had to build a life where the projects that I get involved in kind of become my family.

Moha Bensofia: So I have a lot of family members that happen to be the founders and the people that work in these companies and it's just these magical journeys. Imagine if you could be, you know, when you have one project that you're really, really excited about and you're like, you know, you want to start whatever, you want to start a bike repair shop and you're really excited about, you're really into bikes.

Moha Bensofia: Now imagine if you could magnify that and multiply it by a hundred because you're getting involved with a hundred founders and they all have their own bike repair shop that they want to turn into the biggest thing in the world.

Moha Bensofia: Like I literally have the most exciting life in the world, you know, where I get to listen to people's ideas and how they're going to bring them to fruition and how they're going to change the world and how they're going to solve something.

Moha Bensofia: And some of them are like more, you know, things that don't save the world, but I'll still, you know, I'll invest in them if I like the team and I like what they stand for and I'll invest in anything.

Moha Bensofia: I'm very agnostic. I invest in people, not in companies, not in projects, not in verticals, not in concepts. I invest in people that I want to go, that I want to bring into my family and I want to travel with and I want to have dinners with and I want to help and I want to be, you know, in touch with.

Melanie Avalon: I completely understand. I just know for me, when I made my first product personally, it sparked this magical entrepreneurship type drive and I just wanted to make all the things. And so hearing what you're saying, it sounds like a similar thing, except not you specifically making your products, but you know, having that vibe and creating it through all these people, which is so expansive beyond just you.

Melanie Avalon: That's amazing. So Mendi, how did you first get connected with the company?

Moha Bensofia: So, well, you brought up the fishing app, right, which I don't think about that often. That was almost a decade ago. That was 2014. I had that exit 2015, that's eight years ago. During that time, I was part of the startup ecosystem, which was starting to boom in Stockholm, Sweden, which is the unicorn factory of Europe.

Moha Bensofia: It's the number two birthplace of unicorns after Silicon Valley. It's just so many great companies come out of there. Everybody knows Spotify, but there's actually a lot of great companies that come out of there.

Moha Bensofia: So, when Fishbrain was one of the cool kids back then, the up -and -coming company, word got out that there's this Costa Rican guy that's doing this crazy stuff and helping scale it through some creative things.

Moha Bensofia: And I actually had this kid come up to me at an after work and just apparently have a beer with me. I don't remember this, but he does. His name is Sammy and he eventually reached out to me years after and he started calling me and messaging me on Facebook Messenger saying, hey, I need to show you this thing.

Moha Bensofia: We're building. I need to show you this thing. Me and my partner are building. You got to see this thing. Me and Rick are building. And I eventually gave in and I was like, all right, you have 15 minutes to pitch me this thing.

Moha Bensofia: And yeah, so I can't take credit for that. I've never started anything myself. I don't think I'm smart enough to see something through from beginning to end. I'm not the most creative person in the world.

Moha Bensofia: I'm fairly, I'm not great with colors. I have so many limitations, but I have a couple of decent qualities, I guess, that attract amazing people that do fantastic things that are super capable. And Mendi's just another case, you know, where they came to me, they showed it to me.

Moha Bensofia: And I think it was a blessing that I'm so messed up in that, you know, I've got so many issues myself where it was like, obviously, I was a little suspicious about it. And I was like, all right, well, if this guy is saying that it helps with this and it helps with that and it helps with ADHD and depression and anxiety and insomnia and headaches and migraines and focus.

Moha Bensofia: And I was like, well, you know what, if 90% of what this guy is saying is bullshit, this is definitely worth investing in. Like, off that 10%, I'll take that bet any day of the week. But the real magic happened when I started, I did a session and I started using it.

Moha Bensofia: And I, you know, my PTSD, which is very bad for my time in Libya, nightmares every night, it literally went from waking up four or five times a night, literally just, you know, just constant nightmares, there get a lot of alcohol at the time, it turned into shit, I had one nightmare this week.

Moha Bensofia: So it was, for me, it was life changing, it was dramatic. And I always joke, and I'm not a scientist, even though Mendi is very science heavy, like we're a very science heavy company, it was a neuropsych...

Moha Bensofia: Our head of content is a neuroscientist, like everybody is like, there's so many scientists at Mendi's. I am not one of them, I barely graduated high school. But what I, you know, what I like to joke and say is that the the more messed up you are, the more things you have to fix, the more dramatic the, kind of like the effects are.

Moha Bensofia: That's a very non scientific way of explaining it. But it makes a lot of sense for me, having ADHD, bad PTSD from my time in Libya, you know, having emotional regulation issues, my whole life, you know, where, which is one of the reasons why I've always done fasting, for example, it's because of, you know, I'm compulsive.

Moha Bensofia: And it's easier to eat nothing and then binge then to, you know, than to just have three giant meals and, you know, I'd weigh 300 pounds. So for me, it was one of those things where I'm like, shit, I'm feeling a lot better, you know, I'm feeling really calm and, you know, I had an ex -girlfriend of mine, I'm still very, very close to her, she came up to me, she's like, why are you so nice?

Moha Bensofia: We're talking about within a matter three weeks or so. And I'm like, that is so insulting to ask me why I am so nice. Like, it's really making me analyze because everybody's saying that to me. It's like, why are you so nice?

Moha Bensofia: I'm like, shit, how bad am I, you know, and, and that's when you realize that, you know, if you feel better. you know, you're nicer. And if you're not in pain, or if you're not stressed, or if you're not underslept, you're gonna be nicer to your kids, and you're gonna be nicer to your wife, and you're gonna be nicer to your employees, and so on and so forth.

Moha Bensofia: It's no different than the money example. You know, if you've got more money, you're gonna be compelled to not obsess about it, and it will actually open up a venue for you to be a more complete person.

Moha Bensofia: And obviously there's exceptions to every rule, but for me it was, I came into it as a user, yeah, as somebody that needed the help, and it turned into an obsession, because I'm thinking, how is it that I have to find this at age 40 while I'm living in the first world in Sweden, which is one of the most advanced countries in the world.

Moha Bensofia: I'm a multi -millionaire. I have the smartest people in the world around me, and I just found out about this right now. That tells me that a 40 -year -old in Costa Rica, which is where I'm from, doesn't have a chance.

Moha Bensofia: I guess it's not gonna happen, or somebody in a remote part of the world just doesn't have a chance, right? And that's when the whole mission to democratize this, and eventually it will be to give it to everybody without them having to pay out of pocket, which we intend to make happen within the next two and a half years.

Moha Bensofia: And it's the reason why I've been called a communist a few times, that is, I'm definitely not. You know, that's where we're going with this, because people should not have to make a choice between feeding their kids and giving them a mendee.

Moha Bensofia: So for us, we wanna play our role, and we wanna make it available to everybody, regardless of how little or how much money they have.

Melanie Avalon: so many things. One, I'm the same way with the fasting, like, because people will say that fasting requires, people who haven't done it will say it requires so much self -control. But for me, the idea of controlling my eating while eating constantly throughout the day is so taxing on self -control.

Melanie Avalon: Like, I'd rather just not eat and then eat all the things. How long ago was it that you first tried Mendi and how long had it been out on the market when you connected with them? Or was it not out yet?

Moha Bensofia: So these guys, yeah, so I had a prototype. They hadn't launched yet, but they had working prototypes. I mean, the first working prototype that they had was, when was it? It was beginning of 2018, which is a couple years before I found out about them almost.

Moha Bensofia: And there's a lot of funny stories about like kind of like the screw ups that they had because what you have to understand is that these two kids, I mean, they're way younger than I am, way smarter than I am, Sammy and Rickard, engineer from KTH, who's like the MIT of Sweden.

Moha Bensofia: You know, these guys had to figure it out because nobody had done this. You know, the neurofeedback is something that they had personally benefited from. Sammy in particular, who's one of the founders, this is a guy that had crippling anxiety, like just horrifying anxiety.

Moha Bensofia: And like many people do, what he did is he went down the meditation rabbit hole and he got really deep into the meditation. Then he's one of those types of personalities where he'll start finding, he's always asking, what's next?

Moha Bensofia: What's the next level, that kind of person? Super curious and super like inquisitive personality. And what he did is then he discovered neurofeedback. So he went to the US, he lives in Sweden, obviously.

Moha Bensofia: The whole team is based in Stockholm, Sweden, Northern Europe. What he did is he went to the US, he started, you know, he paid for these courses, he did all these programs, all this stuff. At this point, I haven't heard of the term neurofeedback, nor did I have any interest, even in neuroscience, to be honest.

Moha Bensofia: So he goes there, he starts doing this. He's so into it, his change, like he's really improved, like he feels so much better and all this. He ends up buying a machine and eventually he gets to the point where he sets up a clinic because he's like, okay, now I need to share this with people.

Moha Bensofia: And you know, his whole thing was like, I can only help like five people a day. Like there's only one of me, I bought this machine worth, I don't know, 10, 20 ,000 and people come to my clinic and it's like, you know, this doesn't scale.

Moha Bensofia: Like how many people can I help? Yeah, of course, you know, he had some executives, some athletes, people with like anxiety or whatever it is. And they would get better, but he's like, well, there must be a way of helping people, you know, a million at a time and not one at a time.

Moha Bensofia: And then the other guy, Richard Eckloff, came in for a consultation and he just happened to be the guy that builds all the touch screens and the light technologies for Sony Ericsson and all these companies.

Moha Bensofia: And he's like one of the, like the most knowledgeable guys in the world at building this stuff. So he walks in, he looks at the machine, they start talking, you know, I mean, it's their indipitous moment.

Moha Bensofia: He's like, well, I can build this and we can get it to everybody in the world. And that's when Mendi started. And about 19, 20 months later, they tapped me and I came on board as their first angel investor.

Melanie Avalon: original technology he was using, was it EEG or was it the FNIRS that Mendi uses? Technology.

Moha Bensofia: So the fNIRS that they built, fNIRS has a lot of advantages. I don't know if you saw this, but Bloomberg about three weeks a month ago literally came out and they were talking about fNIRS and they literally had, you know, they were actually doing a Mendi session on this show.

Moha Bensofia: We were like surprised to see it and, you know, it's exciting because all these things are happening. fNIRS is very accurate. Our technology is comparable to it. You know, it's been validated against clinical great equipment.

Moha Bensofia: It's lab grade equipment. So it's a device that just because it's not very expensive does not mean that it's not very high tech and very, very, very high quality. Actually, the idea when Mendi launched was to sell the device for about four times more than it costs.

Moha Bensofia: That was me coming in and saying, we're not doing that because people can't afford it. And for me, it's never been about really about the margins. It's been about the access. I just hate the word exclusivity.

Moha Bensofia: Like I need this to be inclusive to everybody. The technology that he was using, I believe might have been EEG. I'm not completely familiar with it, but it was clear back then that that fNIRS had never been done in a way.

Moha Bensofia: Well, for fNIRS, if you know the difference between EEG and fNIRS, functional near and far spectroscopy, the technology that we use, what it does is there's light that comes in through the skull and measures the oxygenated blood flow to the prefrontal cortex and in response to neural activation. 

Moha Bensofia: And what that is going to do is in real time, you're going to be playing a game and it's going to show you what is happening in your brain as you increase the neural activity in your brain. What this is going to do is it's going to strengthen your prefrontal cortex.

Moha Bensofia: And what that's going to do is a stronger prefrontal cortex will have better agency. It will have better control over, for example, your emotions. So whatever it is, whether it's that you're one of those people that can't have a drink and put the bottle down, it will give you better decision making.

Moha Bensofia: It will make you not have the fifth bag of chips. It will also help you make better decisions. It will make it easier for you to get up and go to the gym in the morning. At the same time, it will make you feel less anxious.

Moha Bensofia: It will make you feel less jittery. It will help with things like panic attacks. It will help with things like anxiety, ADHD. You have to remember we have 33 ,000 users and we have thousands of people reporting improvements that range from everything from just feeling better to and conditions that we I just mentioned to everything like portion control.

Moha Bensofia: People being able and we're talking about dozens and dozens of people that are saying, hey, I can lose weight. This thing is helping me lose weight. And you'd say, well, it's ridiculous. Well, when you think about it as a stronger prefrontal cortex, better decision making is going to make it easier for you to have smaller portions or make whatever decision it is that you want to make, you know, the study for your exams or whatever.

Moha Bensofia: And that is why Fnears really came into it. And we believe that Fnears is the future, but that there's a combination of things. That's why we truly believe in integrating with everything, whether it's, you know, EEG to OroRang or WUPA or Apple Health or, you know, we are what we're building is an integrated device that integrates with everything that gives you, you know, a brain biomarker monitoring tool for precision diagnostics, for example.

Moha Bensofia: For example, long term behavior and health is very much determined by the brain activity in the morning. When you go to a psychologist, for example, like in psychiatry, for example, you will just go and you will see somebody on a specific day at a specific time.

Moha Bensofia: The assessment is not that accurate. But imagine if you were measuring every day at the same time, you would get a lot clearer and you're connecting the measurements from different devices. We're talking about it's a different level of understanding our bodies and our health and predicting and preventing and improving.

Melanie Avalon: I love this. And so now I'm learning in real time. So you pronounce it fNIRS. fNIRS. Okay. So that's the way to... I was like, how do we actually call this? Yeah. So I went down the rabbit hole reading all the studies about fNIRS versus EEG and it was really fascinating.

Melanie Avalon: And you guys did have a published study. I'll put links to all this in the show notes, but it was called Validation of a Consumer Grade Functional Near Infrared Spectro... I can't even say the word. Spectroxcopy Device for Measurement of Frontal Pole Brain Oxygenation and Interim Report.

Melanie Avalon: And it found that basically comparing Mendi to clinical devices, the one they compared it to was called Biopack. They found that it was comparable, correlated 0 .81 for I guess accuracy of the results.

Melanie Avalon: And the conclusion was that it is promising that the Mendi device provides valid measurements of brain activity at the group level and that the device may well be used for studies outside the laboratory.

Melanie Avalon: So that was super cool to read. So I do have some questions about the actual process because the majority of listeners listening right now will not have tried Mendi. So they don't really know what to expect or what the whole program looks like.

Melanie Avalon: So basically you put on this headset device, which I am holding in my hand right now. You have the app, which it syncs to via Bluetooth. And there's this little... It's so comforting and calming, but it's this ball that rolls and is moving forward.

Melanie Avalon: And you look at the ball and it rises up based on how you're, I guess, concentrating on it. And it gives you little star reward things, which we can talk about. One of my biggest questions just engaging in the program is...

Melanie Avalon: And maybe, and I'm wondering if I... Because I know when I first signed up for the app, a video came up, I think, an instructional video. But then I clicked out of it and then I didn't see it again. So I don't know if I missed an instructional video in the app.

Melanie Avalon: But I did find that they're... Like, I kind of just jumped in and I wasn't really sure what to do except look at the ball. And what was interesting was in one of the studies I was reading about fNIRS, it was talking about the role of instructions and whether or not those are actually even helpful to tell the user how to interact with the neurofeedback program.

Melanie Avalon: And it was saying that some people think that it's actually detrimental to have an overwhelming amount of instructions. So my question here is... Because when I'm engaging with the program, at first I was just like, what am I supposed to be doing?

Melanie Avalon: And I stare at the ball and it goes up and then I'm overanalyzing. I'm like, wait, what did I do to make that happen and how is this happening? So question is, for the user experiencing this program, what is the role of what they're actually trying to do at that moment in the program?

Moha Bensofia: That's a really good question. By the way, when you go into the Mendi app, there's a lot of content, a lot of stuff, a lot of videos that you can go in that will explain to you exactly how different parts of the brain work, exactly what you're doing.

Moha Bensofia: There's consistently content and stuff being added by some of the best scientists and a lot of really, really interesting stuff. But what you mentioned is actually a really good point. You have to understand that imagine that you've never done a pull -up in your life.

Moha Bensofia: Nobody's even shown you how to do a pull -up, and now you're trying to figure it out by yourself. This is basically what we're talking about here. You're going in there and you're trying to figure out how to train your brain, how to exercise your brain, how to control this ball, do the pull -up, if you will.

Moha Bensofia: And it's one of those things where it's counterintuitive to try too hard. You basically need to find that soft spot. You need to find that focus without trying too hard. It sounds hard, but once you get it, you get it.

Moha Bensofia: And once you get it, it translates into different parts of your life. But basically, the premise of the game, and there are five other games that we're going to release, we have 33 ,000 users now using that one game that you've played that you've been playing, but there are other games that we release.

Moha Bensofia: The thing is everything that we do gets done with a very scientific purpose. It's not like we're just launching Candy Crush and you're, you know, understand, it's not just games for the sake of games.

Moha Bensofia: Everything has a purpose. There's some assessment tests, obviously, that have been there that we're inputting now. There's a series. We're getting to the app that we want to build this brain super app.

Moha Bensofia: Basically, what you're doing with the game as it is presently right now is you want to relax and you want to control the ball. You want to make the ball rise and you want to hold it steady. So what you want to do is you want to be able to hold it for as long as you can and you want to be in control of the ball.

Moha Bensofia: You don't want to lose control of the ball. So what you'll notice is that if you, for example, if I tickle you, if I'm next to you, you're doing it, you know, whatever, if I talk to you, if I say something, I distract you, the ball is going to fall.

Moha Bensofia: What's normally going to happen is that you're going to get stressed. You're going to get like anxiety. You're going to be, you know, whatever it is and it's going to be harder to lift it up. So you need to teach yourself how to stay in that cool zone where you're just in the flow.

Moha Bensofia: You need to teach yourself to block out the noise and just be in the flow. And, you know, at first you're got that sense of, oh, the frustration, how is it that I can get in the zone? Well, that's what you're trying to do.

Moha Bensofia: You need to figure out how to not feel that frustration and just get into it. And once you get there, you get there. And some people are great at it from the beginning. People that meditate are a lot or way better.

Moha Bensofia: For example, I'm somebody that's never meditated. So I came into, Mendi was my first. experience in anything related to this space. To me, like meditating is lifting some weights. Like it's like I'm going for a run.

Moha Bensofia: Like I wouldn't know something else. Like it makes no sense to me to meditate. And then, Mendi kind of became the training wheels and it was this visualized more powerful, gamified with numbers. Like I can understand that, right?

Moha Bensofia: If you're just lifting things and you don't know how much they weigh, you can't really improve. You can't get stronger. If you're running on a treadmill and you have no idea if you're running at four or at 15, you know, that's probably not the best.

Moha Bensofia: I mean, better than not doing anything, but it's probably not the best way to improve your, you know, your health, your cardiovascular health or whatever. So having the measurements is very, very, very important.

Moha Bensofia: Having something that you can aim for and that you can push and that you can track over time is game changing. And the way that you learn how to beat these gains, how to clear up the images and the movies and how to, I think I'm giving you a little bit like some insights into the games that are gonna be released afterwards.

Moha Bensofia: But, you know, the way that you do all these things is that you just relax and you just get into that zone where everything is clicking. You know, when you're in the zone, you're just, you know, you're hitting those three pointers.

Moha Bensofia: You just can't miss. And that's kind of like what you want to become the default for when you're under stress or when you need to perform. You know, when you need to perform, when you're going into a test or when your kids are sick and you need to take them to the hospital and your partner is not available and you need to, you can't lose your shit and start screaming.

Moha Bensofia: You need to be cool and you need to pick them up and you say, get in the car, put on your seatbelt and take them, that is the difference between a great day and possibly a disaster. You know, I've mentioned this a few times, there's studies being done in Sweden with violent offenders with, you know, young criminals.

Moha Bensofia: And what they realize is that there is a lack of activation of oxygenated blood flow in the prefrontal cortex and that is something that they have across the board. And if you were to snap your fingers and put more oxygenated blood flow to their prefrontal cortex, they probably wouldn't stab each other or they wouldn't go and commit the crimes that they do because that is how, you know, that is the first thing that happens when somebody panics or somebody gets stressed, when somebody gets scared, when somebody gets angry, is that the oxygenated blood flow from the prefrontal cortex just goes away.

Moha Bensofia: You know, then the amygdala takes over. It's basically like, you know, the little kids are running the house. They're eating cookies and they're eating ice cream and they're drinking alcohol, you know, and it's a nightmare because there's nobody there to supervise, you know, and that's basically what happens and that's the reason why, you know, parents beat their kids and they can't control it, literally, or an alcoholic starts drinking and can't control it, can't stop themselves because it's literally, it's a physical thing, it's a biological thing, they just literally don't have the ability to.

Moha Bensofia: And Mendi gives them the ability.

Melanie Avalon: kind of reminds me of the matrix in the beginning when he's trying to bend the spoon and doesn't really know like how to bend the spoon doesn't really have instructions. And it's kind of the experience with this because you're just you know, are figuring it out with your mind.

Melanie Avalon: And that is the exercise and that is, you know, training the mind. So I was like reading the studies about the differences between EEG versus Phinears and talking about how some of the benefits of Phinears is that it's not as susceptible to issues with movement.

Melanie Avalon: And basically it could be more accurate in a lot of situations, but it was also saying how it was really independent on a person's physical features like their actual head and their hair and their scalp.

Melanie Avalon: So I noticed there wasn't, unless I like missed it, there wasn't a calibration track that I was aware of. Does does it calibrate to the person?

Moha Bensofia: Yeah, yeah. It calibrates. When you put it on, it's actually calibrating. When you get the brain, it's actually device calibrating. So you can use the same device, for example, for you and then for your little brother.

Moha Bensofia: And it's just, it calibrates automatically. And that's one of the big advantages. Like, Mendi's one of those things that I always do it like when I'm in a cab or when I'm on a flight, I'll do a Mendi session.

Moha Bensofia: With EEG, for example, and some of the other technologies is that they're very, it's like intrusive, it's like very hard, you've got to put gel and you've got to put like the little dry electrodes, you got to, there's a lot of assembly.

Moha Bensofia: With Mendi, you literally just press a button and you put it on. Another thing that you were talking about was that, it was the EMF or whatever, the, that you were speaking to Dave Asprey or Luke Story was also asking about it.

Moha Bensofia: Like, it was very interested in it. He's like, yeah, well, the levels are minimal. Think of it this way, it has the same amount, I believe, or less than headphones. And Mendi, you use for five, 10 minutes a day.

Moha Bensofia: Your headphones, you wear the whole day. So it's, if you think about it, it's such a minimal amount that you're getting that it's, it's completely negligible.

Melanie Avalon: compared to wired headphones or like AirPods.

Moha Bensofia: I think any. Like I'm wearing AirPods now and I believe it has a lot. It has probably the same amount, except I'm gonna wear these for two hours while we're doing this podcast, right? And I've been wearing them probably the whole day as opposed to a Mendi where you just put it on for five, 10 minutes and you get the benefits and it improves it and it's definitely, yeah, something that is, I think, and I'm trying to be as objective as possible, it's definitely worth it.

Moha Bensofia: You know, it's worth doing it. It's really not something that I, yeah, that I feel any of the people that are very concerned with it, even people that don't wear headphones and stuff, like they don't seem too concerned with it because it's like, it outweighs, you know, it outweighs that by so much, the benefits that you get, that they're all like, you know, even Luke's story, like a lot of these guys that are like very into this, like very, kind of like obsessive about it, they're like, oh yeah, this is definitely worth doing either way.

Moha Bensofia: I'll do this every day for five, 10 minutes and definitely not an issue at all.

Melanie Avalon: Gotcha. The reason I was asking was the first product we're launching with my EMF Blocking Product line is air tubes. So like completely EMF free headphones, essentially. I'm very excited. They're going to come in rose gold and black.

Moha Bensofia: That is awesome.

Melanie Avalon: Do you think there's probably not, do you think there's any potential of them making a wired version? Like I know BrainTap, like they, you can turn off the Bluetooth and then you can do it wired.

Moha Bensofia: I honestly wouldn't know, I think, Richard or Hawakon or one of the people on that side, on the hardware, firmware side, would know better than I would.

Melanie Avalon: Gotcha, cool. So I have a sunlight insana, which is the one where you, I have the one that you lay down inside of, so your head is still out of it. So I've been doing it in that, but then I was wondering, because that's increasing blood flow, like that's like speeding up my heart rate.

Melanie Avalon: Would that be an issue for doing the device? Like you could compare it to basically doing Mendi while exercising, but I'm just laying there.

Moha Bensofia: I was having a conversation about saunas last night, actually. A lot of late nights when I'm traveling, now that I'm in Dubai, for example, because everybody's in the US. And I was talking to Brian and Mila, a couple of great friends of mine that have a sauna company.

Moha Bensofia: We were talking about, like, we had a couple of people on the call with us. And the science says that, for example, in order to beat anxiety and depression, it would be a very powerful combination. What you might be talking about is that there are factors where you can basically hack the signal to put it that way.

Moha Bensofia: So if you're just lying down and you're letting gravity do the work or something like that, it's just think of it this way. It's like, if I'm doing bench presses in the water, and it's a lot easier to lift them, am I really making my chest that much stronger?

Moha Bensofia: So are there tons of benefits to sauna, 100 %? Are there tons of benefits to mend it? Yes. But the benefits to mend it come when you sit still and you do it right, basically, where you just let your brain do the work.

Moha Bensofia: There's people, and obviously we've got 33 ,000 users, maybe 34 by now. The number goes up quickly. Basically you'd have people that are always trying to get better scores and are trying to beat other scores and trying to beat their spouse or whatever.

Moha Bensofia: So you'll have people that'll be doing push -ups while they're doing their menu session and all that. What you're doing there is you're cheating the signal. It's like getting the squat rack. We take the fives and we draw four in front of them and it's the 45s.

Moha Bensofia: It's like you're not becoming stronger, you're just lying to yourself. You're just cheating. So I wouldn't know the technical answer, but what I will say is that in order to get the benefits from mend it's about learning how to control your brain.

Moha Bensofia: If you're just passively lying there and letting it happen, there may be benefits, but it's not the intended use.

Melanie Avalon: basically might, because I do my sauna session every night, and that's the time, that's like my hour where I am just laying there. So it's like the perfect time to do Mendi. But then I was thinking, oh no, if I'm speeding up my blood flow, it might be affecting, you know, the program.

Melanie Avalon: So what I did last night was I was like, I'll just turn on the sauna a tiny bit. So maybe it's like, maybe it's not like making me too hot.

Moha Bensofia: It's actually funny because yesterday one of the things that we were talking about is passing it on to the science team and getting our ASANA and MENDE protocol going. So I could have an answer about this for you within maybe a week or two.

Moha Bensofia: An actual scientific answer.

Melanie Avalon: Thank you. And then I can include it in the intro. And what you can clarify with them, like the sunlight and one that I'm using, my head is not in the sauna. So it's just my body. But like I said, it still has an effect on, you know, blood flow.

Melanie Avalon: Like I feel my heart speed up. Yeah. And then I made the mistake of turning on because the sunlight and has chroma therapy. So you can turn on these lights. So I turned that on and then the ball like shot through the roof.

Melanie Avalon: I was like, Oh, okay, we're not gonna, not gonna use these lights.

Moha Bensofia: I think that it's fair to say that that's hacking the signal. I mean, remember, it's based on light, right? So if you mess with too much light, then you're going to completely disturb the signal.

Melanie Avalon: It knows though, if listeners are curious, so it'll comment. It'll be like, are you moving too much? Or it'll be like, are you in direct sunlight? I'm like, oh, I know. Do you know if level of intelligence plays a role in this as far as like just like baseline, objective, intelligent number, IQ, if it correlates to people's performance?

Moha Bensofia: I really feel like you should have gotten one of the scientists on this now. I would know. I honestly would know. Honestly would know. I don't know. I don't think I'm any smarter, but I definitely feel better.

Moha Bensofia: I perform better, but I really don't know.

Melanie Avalon: Okay, bring it back. Bring it back to user experience. What about if people have like caffeine in them or are sleep deprived or, you know, their baseline state when they're doing it? Can they do it from any state?

Moha Bensofia: Well, again, regulating your brain, having more control over your brain and being able to regulate your emotions, what it's going to do is it's going to give you a better ability to sleep. So it's going to make it better for you, you know, across the board.

Moha Bensofia: Sleep would be one of those things. So it becomes like a chicken and egg type situation because using the mendee will actually train you to sleep better. It will train you to be less angry and less stressed and more focused.

Moha Bensofia: But increasing your focus is going to help you with things like sleep. So it's, yeah, I think it comes back around, if that makes sense.

Melanie Avalon: And what is, at the end, you get a commitment and a performance score. What is meant by the commitment score and the performance?

Moha Bensofia: So I've seen you, I follow you on Instagram. So you're an extremely fit person, right? You clearly train a lot. You're, you know, once you've got your six pack, you don't just say, all right, I'm taking my gym bag and I'm done.

Moha Bensofia: I've beaten, you know, physical exercise. Consistency is everything. You never really stop. Like you can't finish. You never really finished. And that's part of the whole thing. So basically what Mendi does is it rewards consistency, it rewards commitment.

Moha Bensofia: And it's got, you know, there's an algorithm where there's different scores that have different metrics. And those metrics come in so that you can end up having an accurate brain assessment score. Now when you've got, you know, the tests that, you know, the, you know, there's a series of tests that you get every, you know, a certain amount of time, then you can see those improvements in real time, your performance improvements.

Moha Bensofia: But yeah, the consistency and your streaks, all those things. And there's things that get edited, you know, that get changed and there's a lot of, you know, testing that we do. We're always testing, right?

Moha Bensofia: We're, you know, our dev team, our science team, like there's always conversations of what is better, what is more, you know, what is more conducive to making people do the actual work. But what Mendi comes down to is really working.

Moha Bensofia: If you think about it, it's not something passive. It's actually active training. If you think about it, the closest thing to Mendi would be probably a treadmill. Except this would be a treadmill for your brain or, you know, some dumbbells for your brain.

Moha Bensofia: That's really what it is. It's not something that you just put on and it just massages your skin and it just like, you know, massages your head and there's nothing wrong with that. These are all good things. These are valuable things, you know, like, getting a hug is a great thing. Getting a massage is a great thing. You know, having a sauna is a great thing. Having, using some EEG, like, is a great thing.

Moha Bensofia: These are, you know, I don't put down any of these things. And the combination of things is even more powerful than the individual elements. But what Mendi does is it's active training. You have to do the work.

Moha Bensofia: It's not for the lazy, basically. You have to go there. It's, you know, five, 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes a day is what we recommend. I many times do five minutes. What it will do is it will just set you up for success.

Moha Bensofia: You're just primed to have a great day and to perform whatever task, you know, task you have at hand. If you've got a big interview that you're doing tomorrow, if you've got something big, you do a Mendi session, you're basically just aligning everything, get yourself into the zone so that you can go out and you can perform it your best.

Moha Bensofia: There's a lot of athletes that do it. There's a lot of high performers that do it. But, you know, the average, you know, the average school kid, I mean, this is super powerful for the average school kid.

Moha Bensofia: I mean, you've got a classroom full of students. What it does is it measures their cognitive load. It measures their cognitive width. The neurofeedback can be integrated in the classroom to track how relaxed, how distracted, how focused the students are.

Moha Bensofia: Not kind of like in the way that China does it so that we're, you know, monitoring and, you know, big brothering everybody. It's more basically so that they can take control and they can basically be able to control their, you know, their focus and they can, you know, we can have kids that are performing better and that can basically be able to be more in control of their emotions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Moha Bensofia: So it's something they can take home, they can do. know, they can do the brain training at home. There's a lot of different implications for it. There's so many implications. Olaf Kregelsen of the Olaf Kregelsen Lab in the University of Victoria is doing some really interesting studies on this.

Moha Bensofia: Yeah, I mean, if you dig into the science and the stuff that's being done, one of the things when we had launched was people were like, oh, we're all the peer reviewed studies and all this stuff. I'm like, my goodness, such idiots, because if you think about it, if something is new, there aren't 10 ,000 things about it.

Moha Bensofia: That's basically what it is. It's like, we don't know until we build it. I'm very lucky and that I just came into a company where Richard and Sammy built something that was super, they were super daring, but they wanted to do it.

Moha Bensofia: It was just like, all right, we'll be the first to do it. That's when we started reaching out to the scientific community and being like, hey, guys, what's happening here? How do we get this into the hands of people without over -promising and praying on their desperation?

Moha Bensofia: Because somebody that can't sleep will pay anything for something that will help them sleep. So basically, how do we ethically put this into the hands of the person that needs it? How do we put this into the hands of the moha that is having nightmares without over -promising and without, and that was like the balance.

Moha Bensofia: And that's why we have incredible people and we have all these scientists that are super, super, super ethical, super morally sound. I could name a bunch of them. I'm afraid I'd miss one or two and then they'd be offended, but you can go into the website, you can go in to see some of the people that we work with and collaborate with.

Moha Bensofia: It's just great humans that really have the same interest in just learning and educating and not bullshitting and not over -promising. And we'd rather sell 33 ,000 devices being as factual as possible than 3 million by bullshitting and saying, this is going to make you your life perfect.

Moha Bensofia: So there's a lot, a lot to be gained from strengthening yourself. You know, it's all about optimizing yourself, but many people don't know that they can train their brain and that they can teach themselves to not overthink about their ex that left them and cheated on them and like whatever it is that's bothering them that they can actually do something about it.

Moha Bensofia: They can actually, you know, just decide not to think about it and not to obsess about it and get themselves to the gym. It's easier said than done, but it is a physical thing. If you have the strength to do it, that is huge.

Moha Bensofia: You know, people will look at an alcoholic on the street and they'll be like, why don't you get up and get a job? Like go take a shower and it's such an asshole thing to do. You don't think those people would get up and, you know, put on a, you know, some nice clothes and go sleep in a nice bed like we do.

Moha Bensofia: Of course, they just don't have the ability. Mendi is about giving the physical ability for people to be able to make better decisions and better choices and live better lives.

Melanie Avalon: I love that so much. And I actually had, you were talking about this, that exact thought about how active it is. I mentioned BrainTap earlier, which is another device I've used before and had on the show.

Melanie Avalon: And I was just thinking about how, like with BrainTap, I don't, have you used BrainTap before? I've not. It's like lights and sounds and things you listen to. But it's very passive, like it's lovely, but it's very, a passive experience compared to this, where it feels so active.

Melanie Avalon: Like I literally feel like I did a workout at the end. Like, wow.

Moha Bensofia: Because you did, because you did. I mean, and I'm sure BrainTap is great. And a lot of these things are great. Like I would have in the early days, I'd have people being like, oh, what do you think about muse or whatever?

Moha Bensofia: Like thinking I'm gonna shit on muse or something. I'm like, I think it's great. I think it's lovely. It's fantastic. I think it helps a lot of people. I think if somebody's stressed and needs that, I mean, there's a value in all these things.

Moha Bensofia: I'm not out there saying this sucks. This is like, no, I think I like to believe that everybody's trying to do their best and everybody's trying to help people. We're just all trying to achieve it in different ways.

Moha Bensofia: And for us, it's a very clear thing where we're just not very money -driven or sales -driven. And that's, for us, we're very mission -driven. Our KPIs are measured and life's changed. It's literally, we take our, and we're terrible at marketing, to be honest.

Moha Bensofia: Like we don't really push a lot of these messages. There's so many stories, so many incredible stories of lives that are improved. But for us internally, that's the KPI that we measure. And when we talk about changing 100 million lives, transforming 100 million lives, like for us, what that really entails is selling as few devices in order to help 100 million people, which is completely counter -intuitive, you would think, because you would think you're selling at least 100 million devices in order to help 100 million people, but we're like, well, if every device can be used by four or five people, I mean, they are super sturdy.

Moha Bensofia: They are great quality devices. We're not, other companies would charge a lot more and have some sort of weird way of monetizing you more for extra users and do all this stuff. And for us, it's about we want to charge as little as possible to give you as much benefit as possible.

Moha Bensofia: And it is a good business. We do make money and it needs to be a business to go back to what we started with that makes money because that's the only way that we actually can create an impact. Things that are charity and things that are money losers, they don't last.

Moha Bensofia: If you think about it, it's 2023, almost 2024. I don't know if you have like little siblings, if there's kids around you, if there's any, if you have any relationship to young kids, but it's really, really, really hard to be a kid today.

Moha Bensofia: Like I really feel bad for a fucking kid that is eight years old today. I have family members that are that age. And it's, when I grew up, it's like the biggest distraction that I had was, I don't know, watching Transformers and GI Joe at night.

Moha Bensofia: Well, I mean, it was just, it was so much slower, right? You're talking about a brain that's very similar. It's the same brain, but the technology curve is so high that these kids desperately need the tool so that they can cope.

Moha Bensofia: It was actually Dave that had sent me this study saying that a psychiatric ward kid in the 1950s had better brain health than a superbly, on top of their game, teenager in 2000. Basically this decade.

Moha Bensofia: It's crazy. So basically you're talking about a kid from a psychiatric ward in the 1950s had better brain health than just imagine the most polished, high achieving kid in school today. That kid has a worse mental health.

Moha Bensofia: So it's crazy. It's basically because we are just not built for so much noise and so much bullshit and so much technology and so many impressions. Impossible for a kid to sit still. Good luck telling a little kid to go meditate.

Moha Bensofia: It's just not gonna happen in a world where, you can't go five seconds without a TikTok and without some sort of entertainment. And it is time that we strengthen our brain so that we can catch up.

Melanie Avalon: So it's that, it's all the ticktocks and the likes and the distractions. And then it's that embedded into the social hierarchy aspects. Like I look, cause I think back on like middle school and how that was, you know, hard enough in just real life without social media.

Melanie Avalon: And now I'm like, man, if there was like social media on top of that with clicks, I can't even imagine I would die. I'm so grateful I'm not like a teenager today. So my heart goes out to them and actually just quick comment on monetizing it.

Melanie Avalon: It's funny. I, cause I had heard you talk about this on some other podcasts about your mission, about making it free and the role of monetizing and all of that. And so when I got, I got the Mendi and then I had to sign up for the app.

Melanie Avalon: And normally when I go through these, this program or just in general work with these products where there's an app, normally the app is like a, trying to upsell you or make you subscribe to things. So normally I have to go back to the people who sent me the product and get them to like set me up with the account and like do all that.

Melanie Avalon: And I called it. I was like, you know what? I bet when I sign up for this app, it's not going to do any of that. And that was the case. I just like installed the app and it was like good to go. Wasn't selling me anything.

Melanie Avalon: So it could be sustainable, making it free to everybody. Like where would the funding, would it be reimbursed by like insurance companies?

Moha Bensofia: Yeah, so that's a big play. So there's some big B2B plays that are coming in now. There's also, yeah, insurance is a big one. Conversations with people like the NHS in the UK. There is a six trillion dollar hole.

Moha Bensofia: Just this year alone, there's been more sick days in the UK than ever before in history. Like just think about it. Like it's more sick days than ever before in history. And back in the day, when people would take a day off, it was because they had back pain or because they had some, you know, some event, like something they had to go to.

Moha Bensofia: They had like, now across the board, people are taking... Is it mental? It's mental. It's completely mental. Everybody is burned out. Everybody has mental health issues. Everybody's, one out of two people will get a mental health condition, will develop a condition.

Moha Bensofia: If you think about the load that it has on our governments and on our companies, it's humongous. Imagine what having, I don't know if I was supposed to say this, but one of the big four is a company that I don't want to say the name.

Moha Bensofia: I don't know if I'm allowed to say the name, but they're just fantastic and purchased a bunch of mendies. They're doing this program, which I think is going to become the default. Bloomberg actually said all employers should give one of these devices to their employees because it's going to make them feel better and have a better mental health and be able to focus better.

Moha Bensofia: And, you know, basically one of these companies is already doing it. And if you think about it, if people in your company are happier and nicer to each other, and they're taking less sick days off, because they just fucking feel better and they want to show up at work and they want to see their colleagues instead of being depressed and hating their lives.

Moha Bensofia: And, you know, in the end, it's really good business to give that and gift to your employees. And by the way, for me, it's no different than giving a gym membership to your employees. I mean, to me, that's a great investment.

Moha Bensofia: Like, yeah, give them the gym membership. You know, if my employees or my colleagues or my bosses or whoever it is that I have to deal with, if they're in better shape, they're probably going to be better people because they're feeling better.

Moha Bensofia: And somebody that feels better, performs better, acts better, is just nicer to be around. When it comes to mental health, it's just been neglected. But there is a world in which this huge epidemic of just throwing pills at everything is going to have to change because the systems are about to collapse.

Moha Bensofia: It's just unsustainable. There's just absolutely no way. We give kids and, you know, so many kids have ADHD, that number is growing by the second. There's, you know, just to mention one condition that's like very easy to talk about, you just go there and they'll just throw pills.

Moha Bensofia: They're incentivized to throw pills at you. So imagine if you give the kid the tools to be able to take control. And if you do it early on, I mean, what a great thing. But of course, if you do it in your 70s, it's still super valid.

Moha Bensofia: You know, you want to fight that cognitive decline. You want to improve it. You know, it's you start when you start, but you just have to start. And for me, it's just a terrible thing. You know, it's like you can't focus, you take riddle and you take Adderall, whatever, you know, try getting off of that shit.

Moha Bensofia: I don't know if you've got an experience getting off of one of these things, but it's not fun. Like try to get off of anything. It's not good. You're out in antidepressants. I mean, you're living a half's lives.

Moha Bensofia: You just, you know, you're not crying as much because you're not laughing as much basically. So that's what it is. Imagine if you could just self -regulate. If you could give people the power and the autonomy to be able to decide over their emotions, to be able to decide over how they feel, to decide over how they respond to certain situations, to respond to better decision -making, to not be victims of their environment, that's a completely different world.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, no, it's so incredible. I actually have an episode coming up about coming off of Benzo's Melissa Bond, who wrote a memoir and that I was like, oh my goodness. I mean, it's crazy what happens with these pharmaceuticals.

Melanie Avalon: And so I'm so grateful that there's this avenue with something like Mendi, just as a quick brief side note. So there's the Mendi session, but prior to that, there's two other little things I like that are really helpful.

Melanie Avalon: One, it asks you what emotions you're feeling and the list of emotions is so long. And it's made me realize I've just been really fascinated to think about like sitting down and labeling my emotions and my mental, my state.

Melanie Avalon: And it makes me aware of how I can have these seemingly conflicting emotions at the same time. So that's just a really nice little moment that I like. I'm assuming Mendi's like holding onto that data and seeing how it's correlating to the performance, I'm guessing.

Moha Bensofia: There's a purpose to everything. Yes, like nothing is in there in vain. Yes.

Melanie Avalon: I figured. And you do like a smiley face. And then there's also an optional breathwork session as well, which is super cool. I heard you say on a podcast, is NASA experimenting with it as well?

Moha Bensofia: It's funny, I was actually getting messages right now, so I need to get on a call. The time difference is making it different. But yeah, so NASA's doing a lot of different cool things with it. So basically, they do cognitive load tests.

Moha Bensofia: They do long duration space flights. They need to get the resilience of those pilots. They need to be able to focus just on the drop of a dime. They need them to be completely focused. They need to hold their focus.

Moha Bensofia: They do a lot of stuff. For example, at the habitat where they'll be doing these tasks, like just very tedious tasks where you would basically get bored and lose your focus. It's like somebody is telling you a joke that's really long.

Moha Bensofia: You just start dozing off and you start thinking about something else. It's basically how do you fucking keep it locked in? So basically, they'll make them take the drone and just fly in straight lines over and over and over and over and just make sure that they hold that from the first one to the last one.

Moha Bensofia: And they're just building resilience. They're just building that strength. Actually, a really cool thing that should be coming across at around, this should be probably somewhere around Q2 2024 is, and you never know about these things because, I've learned not to promise release dates because they can get delayed.

Moha Bensofia: But so basically think of it this way. So you are somebody, you were talking about your emotions and all that. Let's say that you're somebody that has a lot of anxiety, you're somebody that has, let's say panic attacks, whatever it is.

Moha Bensofia: All right, I'm just giving an example. You are about to jump on the train to go somewhere and your breath is really, you're breathing fast. We pick up some biomarkers, kind of like the correlation between Apple Health, your ordering, whatever it is that is tracking, active and passive tracking together.

Moha Bensofia: Your Mendi would talk to you, could be for example, through your Apple Watch, saying your heart is beating very, very quickly. Can you please do step one, two, three? So basically think about having a guide that is the closest thing to having, say a life coach and neuroscientist, a doctor next to you.

Moha Bensofia: That's the beauty of neurofeedback in clinics is that you have somebody holding your hand. So basically how do we build a technology where the technology holds your hand? And the way that we do it is that what's going to happen, people will see this very, very soon and you'll see the evolution of the product is that it's gonna tell you, I need you to breathe two breaths out, two breaths in, one breath out, this, that, whatever.

Moha Bensofia: Let's remember this, these are the steps for you. It's gonna be personalized. So the whole thing about Mendi is that it's extremely personalized because we have all that data and we integrate all that data from everybody else.

Moha Bensofia: So what that does is we can predict that you're going to have some sort of issue or we can predict and we can help you from having something. I can give you another kind of like made up use case. Let's say that you're somebody that has a history of addiction or something and we get some biomarkers that will tell us, you'll get a notification on your phone, on your watch, whatever, saying like, have you been drinking?

Moha Bensofia: Perhaps it's time to stop because we know how your body biologically reacts to certain things and imagine the power of that of just, because sometimes all it takes is somebody saying, hey Melanie, do you really wanna eat that last cookie?

Moha Bensofia: And you're like, ah, no, I'm gonna, fuck it, I'm actually not gonna eat that cookie, thank you. You understand, it's those things really do make a big difference in people's lives. The path that we have going forward is really just deep personalization and deep understanding of the person that we are trying to help.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. It's so incredible. Well, so I bet listeners are super eager to try Mendi. So thank you so much for this. You're so generous listeners can actually go to Mendi.io and you can use the coupon code MELANIE20 and that will get you 20% off a Mendi device.

Melanie Avalon: So I definitely recommend checking it out. Like we talked about all throughout this episode. There's so many use cases. It can it can basically just potentially help. I don't want to say everything. But potentially everything.

Melanie Avalon: Well, thank you so much for your time. Again, I know it's super late there. I'm so grateful to have met you. I'm really excited about the future. I wish I realized you were at the biohacking conference, I think.

Melanie Avalon: I think you meant I saw you mention it somewhere. Are you going next year to the one in Dallas?

Moha Bensofia: 100%.

Melanie Avalon: Okay, because I was at the one in Orlando. We'll have to meet up in Dallas. That'd be super fun.

Moha Bensofia: 100%. I'll be there with the whole team actually. Well, a good part of it.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. I'm really excited about the updates. So maybe we can bring you back on the future when that launches so we can tell listeners about that because I'm sure they'll be very excited.

Moha Bensofia: I would love that. Thank you, Manny.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. And sorry, I swear this is the last one. The last, it's, I just asked every single guest at the end of the show, and it's just because I realized more and more each day, how important mindset is.

Melanie Avalon: So what is something that you're grateful for?

Moha Bensofia: The fact that I get to, there's many of things, but the one that I can think of right now at 1 .15 in the morning here in Dubai is the fact that I have access to somebody like you that can magnify this message.

Moha Bensofia: And maybe this is how that 15 year old having panic attacks or that 60 year old that can't sleep because of the nightmares that they have from war, this is how the message gets to them and that's how we improve another life.

Moha Bensofia: So for me, I'm very grateful for you for the microphone that is allowed for us to speak about what we do.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I am so grateful as well. I'm so excited to see the future of everything. I appreciate everything you're doing so much and have a good night in Dubai.

Moha Bensofia: I appreciate you, Melanie. Thank you so much.

Melanie Avalon: Thanks, Mo Ha. Bye.