Thomas Wilkinson of NeuroNova: The Dopamine Trap No One Warned You About | DSH #1808

I mean, everything happens for a reason, but like...

Well, that's our mission, and we want to be able to help people in that same situation,

and be able to not have to be dependent on those sorts of things.

But how I feel, because so when I used to take my Benzo, which I think was the Xanax,

if I was like having a panic attack, and it was like a rescue one for me,

and, you know, thoughts racing, and just all the things,

and that's what I take as an X, and then the whole next day's worthless,

because it was just the side effects of that stuff.

All right, guys, we got Thomas here from Nura Nova.

It's a revolutionary chair, to say the least.

Yeah, it is.

We'll have one in like 10 minutes.

We'll do a demo, but in the meantime, nice to meet you, man.

Happy to be here.

What's the story with this company?

Well, so actually, it was 10 years ago.

This is kind of where this all started.

What we were looking for was an alternative to methadone

or benzodiazepines in Adderall.

And there was a neuroscientist at the university nearby where I live in Utah.

And he had a brother go through addiction recovery, and some of you guys might know this,

but if you go through an addiction recovery process,

your dopamine levels in your brain plummet, and it's dangerous and really painful.

And so, a lot of times, you're given methadone to come off of those withdrawals.

What happens is you can become dependent on methadone as you come off the withdrawals,

and his brother overdosed some methadone.

Wow, you can deal on it.

You can.

Yeah, and coincidentally, that same thing happened to my brother.

So obviously, this is something that was really important to me when I got involved with it.

And it turns out this neuroscientist was smart enough, and he's just like, dude, my whole

life mission now is to find an alternative to this.

Like, how do we help people produce dopamine in an non-invasive and non-pharmacological way?

And, you know, it was a slow roll for a long time.

It, you know, thousands of experiments on rodents, and they, you know, dead end after dead end.

And it was like a penicillin moment.

I don't know if you know how penicillin was discovered.

I actually don't.

Okay, so it was one of the scientists in the lab working on the project

brought his sandwich that had molds on it.

The mold got into the petri dish.

It was just his lunch.

It's in the petri dish, and they noticed it started killing the bacteria.

What?

And that's how the penicillin was discovered.

Wow.

So similar to that, a group of these neuroscientists were trying all these different experiments on rats.

And one of the guys was like, hey, you know, why don't we try vibration?

We know that there's these nerve endings in the spine called mechanoreceptors that are sensitive

to mechanical stimulation.

Let's just try it.

And all the other guys just laughed at it.

I'm like, dude, that's not going to work.

Like you kidding me?

Vibration, that's strange, that's weird.

But they just went for it.

And the very first vibration frequency that they tried was 80 hertz.

And they cut the rats brain open.

They looked at it, had 200 percent of baseline dopamine.

It lasted for three hours.

Wow.

What's crazier is how they tried any other frequency.

They could have tried 100 in a row.

And it wasn't 80 hertz.

It would have done nothing.

And they would have thought it was another dead end.

So really, really cool.

How they discovered this.

And then in 2019, they published their first paper.

And the NIH picked it up.

And we got grant funding to do our human trials.

Of course, the human trials were amazing.

We saw a 60 percent decrease in generalizing anxiety versus placebo.

And when coming off of hope, it withdrawals.

And then kind of the rest is history.

That's crazy.

That's so crazy.

What a good alternative to.

You don't have to swallow anything toxic or shoot yourself with a needle.

Yep.

You know, he could just sit in a chair for 10 minutes a day.

Yeah, it's just a 10 minute session.

Every day.

I do it every day.

And in our trials, we saw a 60 percent decrease after just 10 sessions.

Oh, come on.

It was incredible.

But there's benefits using it every single day.

And you're just being vibrated while you sit?

Yeah, it just feels like a general vibration going up your spine.

It's just fine like attuning fork.

It's just really pleasant.

It's almost like too good to be true.

Just hearing you say it.

Well, dude, how I experience it.

And, you know, I don't know if it's too personal,

but I just had a rough childhood.

That's kind of like my brother got into drugs.

I dealt with intense anxiety for a long time.

And of course, my therapist was like,

okay, dude, I know you're struggling.

We're just going to get you on Adderall and Benzo's and Klonopin

and you got you dialed.

All of them, like, yeah.

And I was like, I'm 20, something and just in a lot of pain.

Okay, I'll try this.

I try to get off that at least a dozen times.

Can't do it.

Damn.

With this, I tried it.

And after two days, I was off in.

No way.

Just two days.

Two and a half years.

So a great experience for me.

And I should caveat to that, you know, I'm the CEO of the company.

So maybe I can't share that.

A particular story.

But really, really cool.

And that's that's how I got involved with with the technology.

That's awesome, man.

I was on Xanax for a few months.

And then I didn't really know about withdrawal.

They don't tell you that when they give you it.

You know what I mean?

They just give it to you like it's candy.

Yeah.

Actually, the same damn at the doctor, I caught Xanax.

That's how easy it was.

No questions.

Yeah, no questions.

Think about Adderall, too.

That's one thing I want to talk about.

It's just like, it is insane.

Literally, we are, we're microdosing meth

to adolescent kids on the first visit.

Oh, he has ADD.

Okay, we're going to give him Adderall.

You've created an addict for life.

There has to be an alternative.

And we've seen really great results

with people becoming more focused and able to cope

with the symptoms of ADHD by using it.

I bet, I bet, man.

One out of two teenagers is diagnosed

with a mental health condition these days.

Isn't that crazy?

It's wild.

Like you said, they're going to be on medication

for a long time when that happens.

Yep.

Because they just get out of her all they get.

For me, it was Xanax.

And back to my story, like I almost died

because the withdrawal was crazy.

So yeah, when I ran out though,

I got how to seizure.

And it was really tough to get off that shit.

It's terrible.

Yeah, I'm so sorry you went through that.

I mean, everything happens for a reason.

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Well, that's our mission.

And we want to be able to help people in that same situation

and be able to not have to be dependent on those sorts of things.

But how I feel, because so when I used to take my Benzo,

which I think it was Zanix,

is if I was like having a panic attack

and it was like a rescue one for me,

and thoughts racing and just all the things.

And so I take his effects and then the whole next day's worthless

because it was just the side effects and all that stuff.

So when I sat on the chair for the first time,

this was my experience.

About five minutes in,

I felt like a cool sensation in my brain and just calm.

It's similar to what I would feel

after taking the Zanix,

but I didn't have all the side effects.

And I was like, this is incredible.

So I'm going to film the next episode and one of those.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Yeah, that's so nuts, man.

I can't wait to try it out.

How much is it?

So when we got started,

we production was really low and demand was very high.

So we were selling them for 15,000.

We've gotten production up now.

So it's just 6,000 to get one at your home.

But also we created an amazing model

where you can subscribe to have it in your home

for 250 a month.

Okay.

Yeah, if you subscribe for a year, it's just 200 a month.

And then, but if it's month to month, it's 250.

And just go to our website and scan it.

We'll ship it to you and then ship it back.

It's really easy.

That's great.

That's pretty manageable, I feel like.

Yeah, anybody can afford it.

And by the way, when we talk about value,

just there was a family in Arizona recently just got one.

Three kids, anxiety, husband, anxiety.

All four of them can use it every single day.

For 250, it's an incredible amount.

Yeah, like 50 each business.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Wow, I'm sure you're getting some amazing testimonials

these days, too.

Yeah, every day.

That must feel amazing.

That's one of my favorite parts about this.

As a founder, like, so I was in venture capital before this

and still have my own fund.

Yeah.

And we invest a lot of tech and things which is great.

And you always are trying to solve a big problem.

This is my favorite company and it's not even close

because of all the people that are texting us,

having their lives changed.

Like, you know, a kid in Southern Utah

was having suicide ideation, his provider said,

hey, this is brand new, you should try this.

He does after one session comes back and says,

I don't know what that was.

But I don't want to kill myself anymore.

After one session.

After one session, it does a total neurological reset.

And it allows you to kind of take a step back

because when you're in a heightened emotional distress,

your dopamine levels are so low

and you just don't have any clarity.

If you can get that up and just help somebody calm down,

the clarity comes back and you can make better decisions.

That's awesome.

Any studies on stress yet?

This helping with stress?

Yeah, yeah.

And that was linked to the anxiety.

So 60% decrease in stress.

Oh, got it.

If you relate that to stress.

Okay, yeah, because they're very similar, right?

Yeah.

I feel like they're pretty, like, you can intermingle them.

That's right.

Yeah, because you can be anxious

without some stress on your body.

Yeah.

Damn, that's not 60%.

That's pretty good.

Yeah.

And so dopamine has evolved in a lot of things.

There's addiction, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, pain,

insomnia, and Parkinson's.

And so the opportunities for this are really exciting.

We're seeing a lot of testimonials on sleep

that are pretty impressive.

Like, people doubling their deep sleep.

We had a gal in Salt Lake City.

It was getting about 30 minutes of deep sleep a night.

She's now averaging over an hour of sleep.

And why that's important?

People believe that deep sleep is the number one contributor

to cognitive decline.

If you're not getting enough, like,

that's a number one contributor to Alzheimer's or dementia.

And that's because that's the time during your sleep

where your brain is washing itself with toxins.

Yeah.

And as you get older, naturally, you're

getting less and less deep sleep.

We're reversing that.

We're seeing that happen.

People are measuring with their worries.

So cool.

That's incredible.

I have a whoop at home.

So I'll actually test you.

Yeah, you should.

And again, if you're not getting enough sleep,

that's also going to contribute to your anxiety, right?

And so if you can get that figured out,

there's, yeah, so many benefits.

Well, we've got to share here now.

So let's test the thing out.

You want to?

Let's do it.

Yeah, could you explain what's going on here?

OK, yeah.

So actually, we didn't get into that, do we?

So 80 hurts is very, very fast.

It's 80 times a second.

It's very, very difficult to get that deep enough in this

mind to get to the nerve ending.

Yeah, trust it on us.

Yeah, go ahead.

So team back into the brain.

OK.

So what you're actually getting is 25 hurts on one side

and 25 and a half.

Those two wave forms combined in your spine.

And a third wave is formed.

And that's the 80 hurt wave that's

embedded within those two waves.

So a picture, kind of like on a lake, two boats,

wakes, each other, a third wave is formed.

That's kind of what's happening.

And you can feel it pulsating up and down in your spine.

Yeah, I definitely feel it.

It doesn't feel like it hurts, so it feels pretty chill.

Yeah, it's super chill.

Yeah, this is super laid back.

For the results, I just think it's an albino personally.

100%.

Yeah, I don't hear it.

Yeah.

You just turn it on and off.

Yeah, it just goes for 10 minutes.

OK, so what's real important dopamine context

is that it's dependent, right?

And so I use it in the morning and at night, 10 minutes.

And right after I'm doing gratitude,

I'm doing my goal setting for the day

and then I go into my workout, because I

want to cement those habits, right?

And dopamine is the chemical that helps you

cement and change behaviors.

And then right before bed, I do it.

And then I do my gratitude for the day,

and I talk about my three wins I have that day,

and the three wins I'm going to have the next day.

So I'm prepped to ready to go for the next day.

And what we're seeing people do is, again,

they're deep sleep's getting better.

Also, they're falling asleep much faster.

It used to take me an hour and a half to fall asleep.

I'd ruminate, I'd roll around 17 minutes to fall asleep now.

Dude, hour and a half is nuts.

That's like borderline insomnia, I'd be like,

yeah, it was rough.

It was rough, dude.

And then to counteract that, I was like,

OK, I got to take a benzo now, right?

And that's horrible.

So I use that to sleep either with DanX or wheat.

OK, yeah.

And we're seeing the drawbacks to that, right?

And so this is the message of your sleep.

It does.

You don't actually get deep sleep.

Nope.

Yeah, whenever I went to bed high,

I didn't remember a single dream.

Yep.

It was just like nothing happened.

My body didn't even recover.

Yeah.

And that compounds over time.

Yeah.

Do you feel like there's a dopamine addiction right now

with technology and social media?

Yeah, absolutely.

If you guys have read the book, the ancient generation,

and that, I believe, is like, contributed

to the majority of the mental health crisis

is the addiction that we have to our devices, to our phones.

Like, the human brain was not designed

to get thousands of alerts and notifications a day.

That has really damaged our brains.

And so then we were addicted to an artificial source

of dopamine and that's linked to bad behaviors

where you're comparing yourself to other people

and all those things.

Yeah.

What we're getting, what we're seeing in our studies

with our chair, because there's a misconception,

it's like, wait, I think I have too much dopamine.

Do I want more?

That's not the debate.

You're getting a physiological release of dopamine.

So that means after 10 sessions,

you're getting a stacking effect.

And we're able to have people climb out of a dopamine deficit.

When you're getting an artificial, like,

outside source of dopamine, whether it's pornography,

whether it's social media, whether it's drugs,

you need actually more of the same steps

and to get the same level of dopamine each time you try it, right?

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And then after you use it,

then you get the dopamine drop

and you're under baseline.

You're not in homeostasis.

With this, you get the increase in dopamine

each time you're climbing out of that

and you're getting back to normal and healthy.

Wow.

So that's why you use it at night too

to kind of get back.

Yeah.

That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

I don't want to get off this thing, man.

No, it's sweet.

No, it's sweet.

This is so easy.

I could easily just, you could go on your phone,

like, this is a no-brainer.

Yeah.

I love them, man.

You got to get these in retail locations too.

Yeah, so we're working on all that.

My personal goal, my mission is that everybody

can have one in their home.

And we can help the human race kind of get off of some of the habits

that are causing us to have a lot of mental health issues.

Yeah, because I don't think this is going away.

No, it's not.

No, it's not.

And so you have to have a tool that can help you regulate.

So thanks for doing this, man.

We'll do a link in the video with the code.

OK, yeah.

We'll just count.

And anything else you want to close off with?

No, that's great.

We'll reach out to us for any questions.

And we just want to help.

Awesome.

Stay tuned, guys.

And check them out.

Peace.

I hope you guys are enjoying the show.

Please don't forget to like and subscribe.

It helps the show a lot with the algorithm.

Thank you.

Thank you.