TrueLife - Peter Adams - Give Light & the Darkness Will Disappear

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://www.vielight.com/http://www.mediclights.com/http://linkedin.com/in/lewlimhttp://linkedin.com/in/peterxadamsMeet Peter, With a passion for fostering positive global impact, Peter is at the helm of supporting over 1,400 Canadian science and tech companies. These innovators, under Peter’s guidance, tackle society’s greatest challenges, contributing to MaRS-supported companies raising $10.6B in capital, employing 22,800 people, and generating $7.1B in revenue since 2008. Join us as we explore Peter’s pivotal role in MaRS and the thriving community of startups, researchers, and innovators he guides to create a better world. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, happy Thanksgiving. I hope the sun is shining. I hope the birds are singing. I hope the wind is at your back. I hope that you can sit down for a moment of

quiet contemplation and find something to be thankful for because I guarantee you it's there. And when you start becoming thankful, it begins to get momentum and you find more things to be thankful for. I got a wonderful conversation for you today that I'm thankful for. And I'm hopeful that everyone listening to this will also be thankful for. I'm about to take a moment to introduce Peter Adams. He's a senior executive manager who's been building technology and developing strategies throughout the world. He's been in the game for a long time, and we're going to get into one of the new strategies and one of these new technologies called Vaila. But before we even get into there, I should just dish it off to you, Peter, and give you a moment to explain to

everybody a little bit more about who you are. Sure. Well, thanks, thanks first of all for having us on the show, Georgia. This is very cool. And, you know, there are so many. There are so many many things that we can talk about, I will try to stay focused. I'll try to give you my history in a short, a shorter time as possible. Give me the long version. Well, the long version is very long. But essentially, I'll just try and make it relevant. I mean, I grew up in the country, I, in England, in the cost wells. And obviously, I sort of grew up and ran around in nature a lot. I was very fortunate. I became a musician,

had moderate success as a professional musician, bummed out of college to do that. When I left that, I got serious and was very fortunate to get hired to do a job of bioengineering at the Radcliffe in Oxford. I'm actually academically, I'm a complete flake because I would never have got into Oxford with my academic record.

However, I was fortunate that while I was working there, I was able to actually complete a degree, which has Oxford on it. And anyway, just so you know, that was in applied physics. But the early work I did there in healthcare, I really loved it. I was both looking after technology that was monitoring patients. And at the same time, looking after technology was doing early signal processing analysis in cardiovascular medicine. So, you know, I did do a computer science degree for the first year

and was able to bring up one of the first mini-computers to do real-time ECG analysis back in those days. Anyway, fast forward after five years of doing that and feeling like I wanted to spread my wings and probably put more food on the table and maybe an extra beer at the end of the month. I ended up getting a job in Canada, working for Canada Systems Group as an engineer. Very shortly after that, I became very attracted to sales and was lucky enough to get, hired by Intel and was working for Intel in the early days. They moved me to California to do some strategic work there. And that's when my career started to expand into sales and marketing.

I moved into being a principal consultant, started the semiconductor practice at Regis McKenna, which is a boutique consulting firm. And then went independent from them. And then fast forward to more recently, I got drag back. back to England, I guess, with a startup called People PC. So I cut my teeth on building a startup from zero to 35 million over there. But that was the UK portion of People PC. It exited.

And then Intel asked me to come back and run their relationship with the NHS. The NHS is the largest healthcare system in terms of employees, the richest on the planet with a million employees. And so it was a very big strategic relationship with Intel. And working with Intel and the NHS, I really had engineers, marketing people, working with me to really pull apart all of the mechanics of healthcare and how technology can, you know, make people better, make healthcare more efficient, monitor better, predict better, et cetera, et cetera. And then came back to Canada. I did at some early work with McKesson. here in Canada for a year and a half

introducing another transformative technology. And at that point, I was really fortunate, serendipitously, I was introduced to Mars Discovery District, which is the largest incubator in North America and a million square foot incubator with $3 billion of research on the corner going into healthcare.

And so I learned about and saw literally 200 startups as a mentor during that time. And when I was there, this chap called Dr. Lou Lim showed up with this device in his hand. This little device, which is powered by a double A battery, and it just, you know, activates this intranasal light on the front. And then Lou, actually, he had a friend who was not very well. and he said, I want to show you what's being discovered with this light in terms of the blood. And typically, if you're not healthy, your blood, the platelets tend to clump together. They're not very efficient in terms of viscosity or in terms of absorbing nutrients or dispersing toxins.

And we took a prick of her blood then before and after, and I could see the platelets digs. segregate in half an hour, just using this in her nose. And so when I met Lou, I knew there was really something there and learned the history of this. So aside from Pash, I've worked as a fractional VP with him, and I've been working with him now, I think it's like nine years, but he'd been working three years before that to develop this technology. So that's kind of how we got from here to there. I guess my skills are I'm pretty much being a, you know, a jack of all trades and master of none, but maybe master of being able to see big pictures in business and just know what's going to happen downstream and how technology affects it and how human beings interact with

it. That's what I love. I love those two connections of how those two things work together. That was a pretty long story. I didn't put you to sleep with that one. Not at all. I think it's fascinating. So what I'm hearing in there is you like to clash. I'm just kidding. Flash.

So let me ask you this. When thinking about health care, like the macro and the micro, do you see those two things as interpersonal relationships are the same as business relationships? Like when you drill down on like looking at interpersonal relationships, because it seems like you have to know that in order to thoroughly understand how to work in areas like that. Is it the same on a grand scale? Is it like fractal in that nature? That's a great question because this is one of my beefs. So the world is driving towards replacing human relationships.

relationships with text and emails and just not physically being together or speaking to each other. And, you know, in certain circumstances, that kind of communication can be very valuable because it's recordable and you can learn from it, etc. But to my mind, in business, actually, at the end of the day, when the big place come and you're not in front of the person that's using, it or the person that's managing the channel that might be using it or the person that's running the research that might be using it if you don't have a personal relationship with them you you're you're missing i think 80 percent of the important interactions that need to happen and and i guess what people do stuff when they're happy they might and if you don't know that they're happy if you're not checking in that they're happy you're going to lose in the long term it might

feel it might be easier in the short term just to go with emails but I find that it's one of the really sad things about business today is that people are trying to replace communication with texts and emails they don't want to talk to each other anymore but I think you know I do believe that that will have its day I think the pin the pendulum swung in that direction and I think I think it'll come back to the middle eventually because people will learn now the difference to me between personal relationships and business relationships. In business relationships, there are things that we're involved with. One is safety, which is very important in healthcare.

You can't take risks in healthcare. We can take business risks in terms of which technical paths we pursue, which conditions we look at, what we measure, how many patients and how much we spend, and how long before we give up and try something. else so those are the risks you can take but you can't you at V-like that's one of the things that I think we're really strong on we're we're stronger than anybody actually is that we are very much into safety and evidence now photo biomodulation

which we can describe later is something that one of the challenges I had when I joined Lou was actually convincing the health care system that there was a there there. There was actually something happening because the results just seemed too magical and that that was an issue. So we really had to spend a lot of energy proving that out. So that's some of the differences that I see between personal and business. But with your friends and it's always, I think it's always important to be listening rather than speaking most of the time. It's well said. I, I actually, I guess I'm curious a little bit, and I tend to jump around, so forgive me, but when we look at light,

is the way photobiomodulation, is it the light or is it a vibration? Because it's waves, right? Light is light is waves. Like, how is it transforming these cells to move in a different way? Is it through the vibration? Is it through the light? Or maybe we could talk about that. Sure. I'll tell you, let's just talk about what we know. Yes, please. The facts. So I, I, I don't know if you or your audience are familiar with mitochondria. So those are the little energy packs that build cells, give strength to muscles, convert energy in, or convert not only nutrients, but they can also convert light into energy that can be used by the body. And they contain something called cytochrome C oxidase, which is actually able to absorb the light and then produce cell building energy. So those are the facts we know from FeltiBio modulation.

Now, there are certain frequencies that have been observed to do that better than others. Sorry, I should say wavelengths. And the original wavelengths that were discovered were discovered a while back when a study was going on looking at how does light affect positive. or negatively the skin and looking at all the different colors. And they were basically shaving fur off of mice and rats and shining different lights on them if they were cancerous or whatever. And then they actually noticed that when they used 633 nanometer,

which it's plain red, that within a couple of weeks, the fur had grown back really fast, much faster than ever before, which was then they realized there was some kind of regenerative process going on. And that's where the whole thing kicked off. But in terms of wavelengths, we've been very fortunate to know and work with Professor Michael Hamlin, who really is kind of the godfather of photobiomodulation. He was really studying all of the various wavelengths and effects on the human book.

And he published 400 papers on it. And the other kinds of wavelengths, just anecdotally, which seem to be very powerful that we know about, is blue. So blue doesn't penetrate deep, but it does kill bacteria. And that's why it's really great to have blue in the nose. The red seems to give a great systemic effect. And that's why Lou, that was found years ago. And that's why Lou built the intranasal device

because it's cheap, non-invasive, easy to use, safe. And, you know, there's a biggest profusion of blood cells at the surface in the nose. So that's where that came from. Now, we're going to have to continue on this wavelength discussion. I just need to pause for once. Of course. Take your time. Yeah.

Just want to make sure I've got power going in here. You're going to have to, you may have to edit this. I'm sorry about that. No, no problem. We're live. We're doing it live. Oh, we are? Oh, cool.

Hello, everybody. Just one sec. I just want to make sure I don't die on you during the middle of this. Oh, here we go. Now, we move from the nose and getting that systemic effect where people were feeling, first of all, they have much better sleep. They were waking up, feeling more energized using just the basic infrared. Now, later on, they were looking at, okay, how can you get light into the neurons?

How can you get it through the skull? How does it penetrate? And what's the right frequency? And they found that near infrared was able to penetrate. the skull and going deep enough to create the same regenerative effect with the neurons that the red does. The blue does not penetrate. It really is a surface kind of light because it's a, you know, it's a shorter wavelength. So those are some of the things that really the different wavelengths do and are considerations for using. for using now specifically this uh so this civil device is a recent sort of device that we

come it's called the mip the mip we've got you can plug in four different intranasals in that device so you can get your blue you're near infrared laser red and regular red so that you can do all of those with that device that's not designed for the skull. This device is the device. This is one of the earlier devices, actually, is rev number one. I wish I could show you what we're coming out with literally in a month, but unfortunately I can't. It's going to be very similar to this. You can see in this device, there are little diodes in there in those lenses. This was designed with a number of things in mind. What's the minimum amount of energy you can deliver to the brain and proximal to the head with a minimum amount of

power where it can be powered by a rechargeable battery. We always wanted it to be portable and, you know, for easy home use, press a button, turns it on, turns it off. So that device has had quite a famous journey, I have to say. Would you like me to continue the story of Please. I would... Please. I want to go on the journey. Let's hear about the device and the story behind it. Fortunately, in Harvard, because of Michael Hamlin,

Michael called a neuroscientist. She's professor of neuroscience of Boston University Hospital, Professor Margaret Nazer. And he said, Margaret, we want you to try shining this light into people's heads. Can you do an experiment for us? So she said, oh, okay. And she's pretty open-minded because she was actually trained in acupuncture in China. So she was very familiar with meridians and alternative health care,

though, you know, a real crack scientist, very, very well respected in the field. So she started off looking at essentially using a big helmet, which is it, it was completely cumbersome before this thing was built. I think it had hundreds of LEDs in it. And she essentially decided to try and, well, she did some work with aphasia. But a very pivotal study she did was with four ex-athletes who'd been in with a repetitive engine injury, footballers.

One of which was Dr. Larry Carr. Now, Dr. Larry Carr, he was a Brigham Young Hall of Famer player. and he later played in the CFL, but he also had a career after that as a lecturer, as a teacher. He has his PhD in exercise physiology and exercise psychology. But his life gradually decayed from the head injuries that he had to the extent where he was almost in a CTE status, where his brain was literally shrinking.

He had terrible mood disorders, he couldn't work. And he was on a journey, and he went to Boston and he actually found Margaret who put him in the trial. And after a couple of months, he started to normalize. He started to get his life back. It was absolutely transformational.

By the way, as did the others. So Margaret, at the end of the study, Margaret said, you know, that's it. I mean, you have to go help me. He's going, what are you saying? I can't continue the treatment. He said, no, we don't have anything else. said, however, you know, she said, however, we do have this device from V-Lyline.

So Larry took that device. He was very skeptical. And by the way, she was monitoring his cognitive ability, his memory, his mood. And he went home and started to use this device. And he was going downhill, you know, clinically as missing that treatment. But when he got home, he started using the V-Lyla. device and he came right up the other side within a month. And since then he got his life back.

He became inspired to actually work with this technology to help people recover. And he's devoting his life now to really promoting the research. And he went to the University of Utah, went to his old university, Brigham Young, and the University of Utah. And he convinced them to do a study, which you can see. We have videos about it with, we were very fortunate that we had. Professor Elizabeth Wilde and Dr. David Tate. They are both, you know, world-class neuropsychologists who did a study with a larger

cohort of patients, 40, in fact, ex-athletes and vets who have repetitive head injury. Now, the results are literally in review right now, but they're off the charts too, and they've never seen anything like it. And his work there now, we literally have seven new studies going on there. They've done studies with healthy athletes, with female football players, with kids, so they're doing an age range, and really accelerating this. So if there are any philanthropist looking, Larry has a foundation for that study or for those studies, too, because those researchers did all that early work in their own time.

They were not paid. But they were able to use the FMRI scanners because it's a Veterans Hospital as well there. They were able to use that to actually do it. And they showed with FMRI, they showed the increase in the blood flow in the brain. They showed an increase in cognitive ability, strength. Now, some of the collateral benefits that they showed

that came out of that were basically performance benefits because they're ex-athletes saying, hey, you know, one I think that she was a triathlet and he said that his in-season cycling ability accelerated about 10% faster than it would normally. So then we started to get into looking at sport with this whole thing. And it's sort of amped up from there.

Now we have elite athletes all over the world and I'm talking world champions. I wish they tell everybody, but they won't want to tell anybody what they're using. They use our devices. So it's very exciting. It really is quite a story. It's as we're talking, you know,

when I think about light being transmitted to the brain through the cranium, if it's just a frequency, why can't it be, why can't you just listen to music? Why can't you tune a song to 633 degrees and have that wavelength just enter through your ears versus having the light stimulated? I mean, is that too crazy?

So, well, there are companies that do a combination of lights, sound. I see. Sound does have an effect. We can absolutely on the mood. It can be positive or negative to be frank. Sure. In fact, you know, I remember, I forget it was a dictator, I think, in South America that he was hauled up in some house and they just played horrible music to him. So he couldn't, he couldn't stand it in. morning, it just came out, you know. Yeah. So sound can have a positive

and negative effect. But sound does not appear. I haven't seen any evidence. We haven't seen any evidence of regenerative ability. That we have seen there is proven evidence out of UCSF in San Francisco of showing neural networks actually

building the light is present. It actually does accelerate those connections. Now, Most recently, Larry is the only person that has been using this device for five years. They did an MRI of his brain then, and they've just done MRIs of his brain now, arguably using different software. But it looks like his brain has grown, physically grown. So there's neurogenesis going on.

So you're right. Sounds great, but I haven't seen any research showing. regenesis with sound nor with you know the other modalities they they're using clinically is you know transcranial direct current stimulus and magnetic stimulation now those things do seem to sort of wake up abilities but I haven't seen anything about regeneresis with those light seems to be the secret but I mean you know you can play play sound to plants, but if they're not in the sun, you know what's going to happen.

Yeah, it's fascinating to think about. Here's an interesting one. How do you think advancements in photomodulation technology, as described by Bylight, might challenge or shape our understanding of the mind-body connection? Yeah, so we are looking at the different fun. that we know that different functions of the brain interact with the mind in different ways, whether it's intuitive, rational, cognitive, memory, etc. And we are seeing when we shine the light in those different areas,

improvements or changes in those areas which relate, I mean, the cells are the body and the mind is the mind. is the mind, which really is another energy field that operates around and within the body, probably within the universe, but that's a different topic. It's above my favorite. Though I must say, I do believe that that's the cool thing about light technology is that it's such a small interaction with such a big effect. and a lot of the early effects are cognitive. We're only just, it's funny because we're coming back to physical effects at the same time.

Now, there are some things that we are noticing. I say we. I should recognize the people who are doing this, but there are universities, and until their stuff is published, I can't say who they are, unfortunately. But for example, when you're playing football, your mental ability, the way you process, the way you see something,

identify it, do something about it, organize your body into dealing with it, just like catching a ball, that's where the mind and the body interacts. And they are inseparable in that way. And I think that we're showing that the light is actually affecting those things dramatically. We are looking at some very big breakthroughs in sport, which are going to be mind-boggling, to be honest with you. Yeah, so I think you're right. I mean, when you think about, when I was working at the Radcliffe in the 70s, the, you know, psychology was just really kind of in its infancy.

Any relationship between the mind and the body was not known. but now we see, you know, the prescriptions of mindful deaths for people with all sorts of sickness. So people are recognizing the relationship between the mind and the body, I believe. Yeah. Clinically. There's some fascinating books like the body keeps the score. And in some ways it sounds to me like this particular device and light has an incredibly

effective role in neural plasticity, which would be a way in which we can change. It's a way we can model reality. start thinking about it from that, from a big aspect, neural plasticity is a way in which we model reality. And that has a lot of implications, right? Yes, it does. Now, actually, one of the largest or larger cohorts of users of light therapy now are neurofeedback specialists.

And for your audience who have never come across them, they are people that are treating things like anxiety, trauma, et cetera. And what they do is they do a brain map. They do a 36 lead EEG, and they use software to see the power spectrum of each EEG wave band, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta. And then they use software to enable, well, they're like games, actually, for their patients, to enable them to retrain the brain. The retraining is neuroplasticity. Usually the retraining is 20 to 40 sessions to deal with some of these issues, one hour, two hour sessions. They have found that they can do retraining in less than 60% of the time, less. It really does accelerate neuroplasticity. There is no

question. And do you think that that has to do with bypassing the default mode network? In a lot of ways this particular therapy seems a lot, it seems to dovetail nicely with the research being done with psychedelics. Like the turning off of the default mode network allows you to process information in different parts of the brain, create new connectivity. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit. Well, yeah, Margaret Nazo recommended designing the device to go with Dr. Lou Lim to actually be focused on the default mode network, which is, you know, the kind of network when you're daydreaming. And I think it's really the network, which has that kind of function of getting us out of the way of the natural processes, getting our, as conscious, trying to interrupt

our consciousness. It's the daydreaming state, right? So I think that plays a big part, as of course meditation does. Sure. And by the way, we've been, there's meditation study ongoing right now, which I can talk about later. So, yeah, I think that's one part. The other interesting part is the power of, we use two pulse frequencies in our early devices. One is 10 hertz, which is like around the alpha band pulse frequency. The other is 40 hertz.

Now, the 40 hertz, the gamma frequency, is the frequency band, which is most active when you're asleep. And when you're in gamma, it wakes up the microclear and they go around clearing up all the toxins and and also the the cerebral fluid starts to flow to to flush the brain it seems that that that particular frequency if you can get people into gamma it really helps with a lot of healing particularly with things like beta amyloid plaques and tau with Alzheimer's and dementia so so yeah you're right you know those

the default mode network is one, but I think that we're finding that the pulse frequencies are equally important. It's not just the position. Are those pulse frequencies on the device? Are they located to interact with certain parts of the brain? Potentially if someone had a speech impediment, could you target like Broca's area? I mean, I'm sure that they're put in certain spots for certain reasons,

but maybe you can talk about the alignment. Well, yeah, we couldn't do everything all at once. So we initially did no excuses. I mean, it's, I wish we put it. But we came out with those two pulse frequencies over the default mode network with the intranasal. Which, by the way, the intranasal is really important because when you're using near infrared, it actually penetrates through to the hippocampus. So it gets into the memory and deep brain, which is really important.

Sorry, where was I? That's my train of thought. Yeah, we were. We were talking about the importance of pulse frequencies. We started out with those two frequencies, and we did the early study with those two frequencies, and they seemed to be effective in terms of two areas. Like the 10 hertz seems to help people with calming,

just generally calming you, getting in that alpha state. The 40 hertz seems to be really great for cognitive function. I myself, I was really great. rear-ended by a car, a pretty severe concussion. And those of you who have had that, know that there's this kind of clash between you're feeling really tired but revved up inside. So you've got two competing things going on. I used the 10 hertz that actually calm that down right away, calm the revving down.

And then when I got back to work and I wanted to focus on things, I'm still having, you know, light sensitivity with screens and being able to, my executive function was really slow. But when I use the gamma, it seemed to really speed that up. And that's what we found with those two frequencies. Now, something we've been working on recently is we've now developed a device, which is more, I would say it's a research device or for serious hackers, which has a lot more modules on it.

Each module, you can change the pulse frequency, So you can switch it on and off from zero to 10 kilohertz. And you can actually do phasing programs and so forth. So we have like this kind of skunk works group of people that's bought them around the world. And we have these meetings with them, with their discoveries of what they're discovering. The bottom line is we're very recently discovering

that, you know, you put, For example, if you put 40 hertz into somebody, it doesn't mean their Nesco are going to jump into gamma state or have amplified gamma in their power spectrum of their EG. People have their own personal favorite frequencies, and we're just measuring that right now, and we're going to publish something about that. So the, I mean, the brain is so complex.

I can't say, you know, put A in and you're going to get B out. it's there's more to it than that. But we're, like I said, we're choosing our, we're risking our past very judiciously of how we proceed with this. But we're kind of fortunate because we're, we're kind of leading the field in the world, which is really exciting right now. We have researchers all over the world that are using our devices. It's just a blessing.

It really is. I mean, people are so excited and generous about this. another aspect i think too is the way in which it's developing when you have that sort of network of people willing to contribute their own ideas like hey i'm using this device this way here's how i feel that is a wealth of knowledge and evidence and even though is it a problem that it's not in a clinical setting like i kind of see the world changing and moving away from these closed conditions of clinical settings and moving and broadening out to a to a direction where more people can experience it and give their knowledge, even though it's subjective,

it's still worthwhile, right? Yeah. So the good news is the good news is the actual power of the LEDs when they're sub 100 kilowatts, the FDA in the States classifies that as a wellness device. So in terms of the FDA is concerned about safety and efficacy. And on the safety side, they're not really well. worried about clinical trials. Plus, the historical evidence, we've got over 100,000 devices around the world with no

contraindications. Every now again, people will get a little headache and so forth, but you're not going to get, you know, I hate to say it, but you're not going to get the kind of farmer-style side effects that you get with, you know, farmer drugs. you're not. So the good news is they can be safely researched. Now, though you have to be careful, especially in Canada, about how you represent this technology in terms of disease. In Canada, until you've done a clinical trial, you cannot say anything to do with, for example, Alzheimer's, even if you're doing a clinical trial publicly because you're relating the technology

disease. In the States, it's a little more relaxed than that, thank goodness. And you're able to say what studies you're running. So for us, that's been kind of a half blessing, half challenge. To actually bring these through to a medical device style is a lot of work. And we've actually done that with one. During COVID, we used a single module near infrared on the thymus and the intranasal and we did a study with 200 COVID patients. We got clinical, we got approved as a medical device for post-COVID. And, you know, we're now our medical device manufacturer.

So we've invested in that in advance, ready for it. But in terms of, you know, going back to your question about, is this a good thing? I guess the good news is that, you know, it seems like this power of, of light is very safe. But I think it has to be used, has to be sold responsibly.

For example, and I can tell you, something I can say publicly, we've seen miracles with Alzheimer's. We've seen nothing happen with Alzheimer's. So the question is why. And, you know, to actually determine how you apply the light

where you're going to get the best outcome, It's my belief, for example, if you have patients, for example, who have, say, heavy metal poisoning or heliobacters or, you know, Lyme disease, I don't think the light's going to help so powerfully with those people. I think there's other modalities that have to remove those things worse before the repair can out. So I think we have to be careful how we actually represent this technology, but at the same time, we have to. to test more widely where it works really well and where it's probably not going to work. Unfortunately, it's hard to go to a doctor and say, hey, can you test me for Lyme disease and can you do a heavy metal test and can you do a reverse thyroid test? I mean, it's just that's just not available. It's definitely not available in Canada, off the shelf. You have to pay for it.

so does that sort of answer your question jones i kind of ramble off in no it's good yeah i think it's a i think it's a wonderful answer it's for me it's fascinating to see the way in which science is beginning science and and medicine is beginning to take a more holistic approach and i think for so long it's been this real top-down you know heavy view of and i get it like how can you manage what you can't measure. But it seems to me one of the problem is when you throw out some things that seem to be subjective, you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Like sometimes one of the best ideas to know if something's working is to ask the family

of the person who's been affected. Is this person less of an asshole? Is this person less of this? Like that information is fantastic information. And I think it should be incorporated into a lot of the studies. And unfortunately, those kind of subjective ideas are sometimes throwing out. So I think the question was awesome. I was just trying to get at the idea of maybe going forward,

do you see more of this holistic approach with medicine is kind of branching outwards on the bottom and taking the information from the bottom up? Yeah, I do. I do. I mean, I've seen changes, for example, in terms of doing trials. Yeah. Patient reported outcomes have in the last 10 years become significant. There was never, you know, being able to, you know, do surveys online and randomly do patient reported outcomes.

So the healthcare system is trying to leverage technology. And then, of course, or fortunately, I mean, there's a supply and demand issue. I mean, this is supply and demand of nurses, supply and demand of equipment. Just overall cost of healthcare is huge. and so that forcing function does, it forces some clinicians, you know, they give up being clinicians and start to try alternative methods and develop, etc. So I think some of that's happening, it's happening naturally. I wish it could happen faster.

I think everybody's frustrated. But I think the healthcare system has kind of got itself in a stranglehold of, you know, especially when, you know, when the MBA came in and the spreadsheet and then, you know, IT, electronic medical records, all of those things, I mean, have electronic medical records has been a blessing in terms of informing data and then informing AI, which will be a big benefit. But they've also made people afraid of doing anything, you know, your family doctor might have said, you know, I remember my card, my cardiologist. professor used to tell his patients, hey, have a half a pint of beer before you go to bed at night.

He would actually tell people to do that. You couldn't do that today. So things, I think things, things are evolving. I don't have any magic solution to get them to evolve faster. But I think we are being driven by crisis. Unfortunately, I do believe, one of the, I do believe, which is kind of controversial perhaps, I do believe we spend too much money on pure research versus applied research in terms of research institutions. And I mean, the disproportionate amount is huge. And it kind of holds us back. And, you know, there are things that we could accelerate to test.

Alternative medicine is still, you know, in terms of things like herbs and home you pathics, et cetera, et cetera. They're still living a life and people are still buying them. So they must be doing something. They're living. That's a kind of a Darwinian process. Unfortunately, I do believe, unfortunately, in the States, it's difficult.

You know, it's so litigious environment for physicians. They can't play games and be too creative. They're a struggleholder. As someone who has developed different technologies and different strategies, is it, how is it to develop a technology like this and have it play in different markets around the world? It seems like there's a lot of moving parts there and you're trying to navigate different cultures and different, you know, different systems and how do you deal with that from a strategic point of view? Well, just to say, no, I mean, all of the, technology that V-Light has was developed by Loo and his his brother who runs the

manufacturing in Malaysia so we have our own pretty tight-knit group I stopped developing technology in 1979 and became oh I beg your pardon no 1981 and at that time most of the stuff I was working on was was pure hardware and in a research environment and then software in a oil and gas environment so not health care at all in the second phase so and technology's capability and software development tools are so much more advanced now it's just a whole different world so you know however I think in terms of developing technology today and what we're doing,

we as a company are moving out of a pure startup mode into a very what's called like a continuous feedback loop of customer to research results to variations on the product. And so to do that, you have to run market requirements processes and product requirements processes and start to bring them in. We're still a small company. We only have 20 people here in North America and, you know, the manufacturing plant in Malaysia. So most of the input to the equation we're getting from researchers, like I said,

we've got Harvard, UCSF, Utah, now in Atlanta. We just had research coming in from Spain on creativity, a creativity stuff. You believe it or not. So all those inputs are feeding in. And one of our, I guess, one of our greatest researchers who works with us is one of Canada's leading EEG experts, Reza Zomeroldi, Dr. Reza-Zal-Morodi, who works at a place called CAMA, this Canadian mental health, um,

click, an addictions hospital, arguably the top mental health hospital in Canada. And so having him connected to health care and then us connected to the market, the combination of those two is, is really powerful. Now the other, um,

great relationships we have that guide the technology and really accelerate what we're able to do is our relationship with values, Veterans Affairs in the States. They've been very, very helpful with us, guiding us. And really, because they have some dire needs that they need to fix. And you probably, you may have seen there are studies done in UCSF with post-war syndrome, post-bop-war syndrome, obviously concussions, many TBIs, PTSD, etc. All of those are informing what we do. But, you know, going forward, we've been really focused on fit, form, and function. And I'm sorry, it looks like I have some network trouble.

Are you guys seeing me okay still? Yeah, we can see it perfectly. Good stuff. Okay. So most recently, the devices you see, they're not the prettiest devices, as you can see. and we but they were really focused on just delivering light and what what we're doing now has been more focused on usability comfort aesthetic because now we have elite athletes using them aesthetic is very important to them so that's kind of forced us into bringing

some new ways of thinking we used to there are people that used to say this device is like bucklers. It looks awful. But so now we would, the new device, which actually I'm hoping we can show to the public in the next month is really a classy looking device. It's beautiful. It's very comfortable. And I think, you know, a footballer player wouldn't feel embarrassed wearing it on the bench,

to be honestly. It's certainly not on the field. So in an interesting twist of events, if a device can be used to help creativity, to help with PTSD, are there any worries about using it in an unethical way? So we have, actually, we have some really good neuropsychologists who have been working with PTSD. And so with PTSD that comes from remembered events, it seems to be, I'm telling you, I'm very clear, it seems to be fine. Where things have to be managed carefully is people with dissociative disorder and post-memory syndrome. Right.

And of course, they would be, hopefully they'd be using it when they're in therapy. Great. But it, and you know with therapy, there's a cadence and the body and the mind brings up things and kind of saves them for the therapy session and brings them up. And so the memories come back at a rate that the body can and the minds can deal with them. So you have to be careful with, you know, plugging in near infrared pulsed into the hippocampus and accelerating memory because it can accelerate some of the memory recall. That can be challenging.

And I'm not saying how, when, but people are using it in therapy as an adjunct therapy. Now, some of the positive news that we're getting out of the American College of psychotherapy is that you have patients that may come in, they may have brain trauma-induced PTSD or something. kind of PTSD that's they come into therapy and they're so angry they have this massive rusty iron armor on that you know they you can't start the therapy until you get past it so they've been very excited about using this just to soften that using 10 hertz pulsed their infrared to actually calm the anxiety or the anger down where that and then the dialogue and the therapeutic process can start so that's what that's what's going on as we speak and there's

some excitement around that i'm i don't want to i don't want to sell this i want them to sell it right but they are the american college of psychotherapy wayne hewlin is they are they are developing a training that they're going to roll out to them and to the International Association of Neurofeedback ISNR to train them to use photobiomodulation properly in their practice and how to do that. So that's kind of cool. Yeah, I think what an incredible tool to be able to see the biofeedback in real time as you're thinking something. It almost gives you a whole other perspective.

If I can see what's happening in my brain in real time while I'm thinking about something, it really gives you the wherewithal to change your thoughts in real time and see it happen. Like in some ways you can train your mind that way. Like if you can see it, it's pretty impressive. Definitely. No, definitely. I mean, so real time, real time, e.g, and the quantification of it real time is a challenge because just picking up the signals

while you're firing the light in is a little difficult because there is electricity going in it. And there are, there's noise from the actual power that's going to the device. But you can do it, you can do it before the treatment so that you have a map and you know where you're going to affect it. I have, actually I saw recently there's a very interesting technology

out of Georgia where they're using guided journeys, using virtual reality through the brain and educating people when you're thinking this way, when you're feeling that, they're showing the parts of the brain, they're involved. I think that's really, really helpful. And I know some psychologists over here are very excited about using that technology

to guide people to interact with their brain and imagine those because you know as well as i do i can tell you're a meditated too you know where you where you focus your mind stuff happens it does yeah i sometimes i think inner space is maybe even greater than outer space you know the the ability to go inwards might be the final frontier yeah i mean we're getting into a more esoteric space but i don't know i can't um you know, I have to be very honest. I totally believe you. That's how I feel.

Me too. I'm sorry. It's the truth. It's the truth. I've seen the evidence in my own life. Yeah, I agree to. The thing about photobiomodulation, I feel like it's not, you know,

most of the pharmaceutical approaches to medicine are about inhibition. Yeah. Photobion modulation is more like some hands just lifting you up a bit. It's giving you more energy to do what you do naturally. And I used it in meditation with just completed meditation studies and with some very experienced meditators. And they all believe, they're all saying that the meditative experience is better. So in that regard, I'm really happy that this technology isn't messing up the formula

of, you know, experiencing your inner space. I think it's probably helping it, Ashley. You know, you had mentioned prior in the conversation about the light and the internazal reaching up to the hippocampus. What, maybe you could speak more of that relationship. Like, what is happening when we're able to use a certain frequency of light to shine up into the hippocampus?

What's going on there? Well, all I can tell you is what I can't really tell you any more than I've already told you, George, because it's fascinating. You know, it's, first of all, any kind of dead neural connections have a better chance of reconnecting, coming back to life. It appears that the cytochrome Copsidase that's in damaged cells, absorb the light better and attracted in. So any damage that's there, appears to start to repair. That's really, I can't say much more than that.

Well, I guess I can't say a little more. And so blood flow is increased in the area. It's a huge part of it. We've shown that with fMRIs. There's no question. You know, blood flow, blood viscosity, microcirculation. Yeah. And on a systemic level, photobiomodulation, of course,

also improves, you know, like it works like an antioxidant. It increases nitric oxide. So it increases oxygen absorption in the lungs. I mean, there's a bunch of things going on that just really help. That's all I can say. I can't tell you what's happening at atomic level. I can report. So the only thing I can report,

and I'm really not scientifically, qualified at this level. But we're now talking the level of quantum physics. So our researchers here have been working at the University of Calgary with George Kaczynski, and they've been looking at the microtubules, which are like the energy exoskeleton of everything in the structures of the body.

And the light is actually different pulse frequencies are able to bring the exoskeletons together, the microtubials or take them up. part. So where we know now the light can influence the energy to build things properly or to dismantle things that are improper. This is very early stage stuff. So it's important. It's important. It's so fascinating to me to see the way in which we can interrupt patterns of thinking and fundamentally change our lives. And sometimes it makes me feel maybe it's a lifetime of negative feedback loops of negative things that cause parts of our brain to die. You know, if you're constantly

thinking about how horrible you are at being a father or, you know, on some level, that could cause that part of your brain to atrophy. And why wouldn't the right frequency interrupt that pattern and allow the blood flow to get back in there and, hey, this is not a healthy thought. And then all of a sudden your whole life changes. It's all about interrupting the pattern. It's fascinating to me. I know that's kind of a tangent, but what do you think? Well, I've, I personally have witnessed and have done work on myself in psychotherapy. And I hate to say, everybody knows. I don't care what you say. Everything comes from your childhood. It really does. I mean, there's your genetics, your ancestry, but then there's also your parental experience, whatever that is.

Actually, my wife's very big on kids that have been brought up in childcare, how they just don't seem to know how to cross the road. Because they haven't been modeled by mum and dad, walking around with mum and dad and walking them for that. Fortunately, probably yourself and me, I did spend a lot of time with mom and dad. I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I would say that most definitely they do have an impact now. when you're doing therapy, it's really well recognized with somatic therapy that the, the experiences aren't all stored in the brain. They're actually the traumatic experiences are stored in various parts of the body, including the brain.

And I think that there are natural mechanisms that just shuts things down just so you can function. That's natural. But I guess when the requirements of life gets such that you're shutting so much down, you can't function and and the steam valve blows that's when you have to go and take a look at those things and i agree they they do things do shut down you stop functioning and and in ways in ways that are quite can be quite remarkable actually and yeah with the experiences that you have um to actually mirror what's not working they're all there they're all there i mean life is

There, if you start to watch life that way as a reflection, it's surprising how things change. I haven't figured out how to be incredibly wealthy yet, but... That makes two of us. But the conversation, I think, is a wealth of knowledge. And I think that there's... I've been playing with this new idea that relationships are the new currency. And the more relationships you build with people, the richer you are, it may not translate into world in a world of abundant dollar bills raining down on you but to be able to speak with someone

with whom you admire and have an engaging conversation and share that conversation might be the truest formal well i like that i do agree i totally agree peter i love this conversation i love speaking to people i love learning new things um i have i got a thanksgiving turkey to cook and some lovely lovely young lady to go and hug and tell them I love them. But I really appreciate your conversation. I appreciate your time today. And I look forward to future conversations.

And my special thanks to Violet and Lou and yourself. And I think everyone should go check out the notes below. And also the Mars Discovery unit that you have. That magazine, that startup coalition is really just a wealth of knowledge over there. And I've been zooking out on it for like the last day. Like there's so much cool stuff in there. But maybe you can share a little bit about where people can find you and whatnot before I let you go.

Oh, sure. Well, obviously you can find me at a V-Lite, and I think even my phone number's on the website, but I can't guarantee I'm going to answer it. I've got some good cool screen going on. But, yeah, no, I'm not working with Mars Discovery District anymore, though I'm very connected to the folks. It is a family that goes on forever.

It's kind of like working for Intel, I worked for Intel for 10 years. It's one of those very cool families of people who are just trying to make a difference. I mean, I'm talking a difference with the climate, with our environment, with our health, with our communication, with technology. It's just an absolute blessing that I was able to work there. I never regret it. But now I do work with other startups, you know, helping other startups who, are like Mars clients, but, you know, they can be anywhere from Israel.

I was actually literally working with an Israeli client quite recently and was very close to that. It's very, very sad. But yeah, Mars, I encourage people to go to the Mars Discovery District website, MarsD.com. And you'll find a lot of stuff there. But, you know, there are accelerators like Mars in various shapes and forms across North America. I mean, there are awesome that there's ones in Hawaii. They're on the West Coast, East Coast. I mean, I think any of you that are interested in innovation, just look for the words innovation hubs near you or accelerators, those kind of words.

And you might, if you're interested, you can probably plug into what's going on and people that are trying to make a difference, whether they're innovators, doctors, financiers, lawyers. I mean, everybody's, there's whole teams of people working together. And it's just a beautiful experience. That's what I can say. So, yeah, and, you know, you can always reach me at V-Light if you have any questions. if you have technologies that you think will work with us that may be complementary, we're always open to discussions

about how we might work together. We're actively doing that now. We are still a small company, but our ears are always open, and we'd be happy, very happy to, always happy to talk, no matter where you are. Yeah, for everybody that's listening, I have a lot of listeners that,

that work with mental illness and mental wellness. And I think that this particular technology could be an incredible additive to a lot of different therapies that people are trying. You know, I know that Moxha Journey is an organ is working with people that have addiction and the vital program for psychedelics today is working some. And there's just so many great programs out there. And I have tons of cool listeners that I think would find this technology to be

is incredible and is something well worth of investigation. So I would point everyone listening to this to reach out to Peter and see if this could be something that could help shine a light on therapy. Please, that's great, George. I said that because, okay, so in autism, we have a study that's happened in Italy, and I can connect you with what's going on. Please, I would love that. And then obviously in terms of PTSD, the researchers that are part of the VA obviously can't tell you what they're doing, unfortunately, and neither can I.

But to the University of Utah and Larry Carr, they are working with head injuries, with performance, memory, cognition, with children. So obviously we had the COVID-19. Now we're going to do respiratory. with that and other kinds of we have a depression study going on yeah there's there's a lot I can't even remember there's so many connections but if you come to me I'm happy to point you in the direction to make make those connections the the American College of psychotherapy there the group there on on addictions actually there's dr. Susan blank. She's a very famous psychiatrist in Georgia. She's done a whole study using photobiomodulation incorporation with her integrated approach to addictions, which is pre-publication right now.

And I don't want to swamp them with inquiries, but we'll try and find an efficient way of doing it. The other thing that we can do, if you just, if you've got in touch with me, so we've got your names and addresses. We're also having expert series webinars. hopefully every month on going now on each of these subjects and we're going to get them to share so people can start sharing what they're doing and get it get the voice get the word out there do you need someone to host those webinars you should do them with me yeah if you if if if you want it's for sure yeah yeah I would love to I I'm fascinated by it and I this is this is what I do all day and I love learning and I have a really I think I have the best audience out of course I'm biased you

know, but I think that it goes to, you know, a lot of the people with whom I speak, which is a lot of the veterans associations, a lot of the mental, mental awareness association. So, but yeah, we can, maybe we can talk about it afterwards. So, but ladies and gentlemen, go down to the show notes. Check out Peter. Check out the technology. Check out Lou. Check out Vilight. And I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. And I hope you all know that there's a miracle right around the corner waiting to happen to you. And I hope you have the courage to seize your dreams and live your best life and be the most authentic version of yourself. That's all we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. Aloha. Thank you, George. Thank you so much. Happy Thanksgiving.