At home laser treatment for arthritis and joint pain with the Kineon Move+
Reducing joint pain and inflammation with laser therapy
New things are possible for your joint health, as the next generation of ‘at home’ light therapy devices hits the market.
Could the Move+ from Kineon heal your knee/joint pain? Yes, it certainly could. Read on for more…
Laser therapy for chronic joint pain - does it work?
The answer hasn’t always been yes. Amazon and eBay are awash with low quality imitators and ‘cold laser’ clinics have popped up around the globe with very mixed reviews.
We’ll spare you too many details, as we know you’re in search of something that actually works (hang tight - we won’t disappoint!)
In short - there are many pitfalls facing new users of laser therapy devices.
Three issues with at home laser treatment devices
Firstly, most at home treatment options claiming to be ‘lasers’ (watch out for 'low level’ or ‘low intensity’ or ‘cold’ terminology) are simply using LEDs and are not truly a laser therapy device. One ‘tell’ is that light power will be rated in the milliwatts (mW) rather than watts. These devices will never get light deep into your joint (necessary for stimulating stem cell activity and oxygenating blood!).
Secondly, nearly all of the lower cost devices are not effectively calibrated to penetrate joint tissues at depth. This is related to the first point (power), but there’s more to consider - light needs to be focused in a column not a spray to penetrate into the joint. LEDs cannot do this - you need an authentic laser emitter (with true light amplification).
Third, price point. We’ve reviewed all of the at home laser treatment devices we could find. Most of them do not have enough power, nor do they focus light in a column appropriately. The few that do cost several thousand to tens of thousands of dollars. This is why the laser treatment options that actually work have historically only been used on athletes or available at expensive clinics.
Choosing effective at home laser therapy for joint pain and arthritis
These three issues do not mean that at home laser treatment for joint pain is a bust! They simply mean that you need assistance in choosing an at home laser therapy for arthritis pain - and that is why the team at Longevity Blog have done the hard work for you!
The aches and pains of arthritis and joint pain in general are usually driven by one key factor - inflammation.
We review the basics on how to keep your cartilage healthy and your joints pain free in part one of our interview series with Kineon.
We highly recommend you check it out!
We are always tracking the latest developments in longevity technology (which is why you should subscribe to our monthly updates!).
A key trend we discovered in this process is that the proliferation of laser devices in aircraft, cars, robotics means the price point for high quality lasers has recently begun to fall very quickly.
Kineon, led by pioneering CEO Forrest Smith, were very quick to realise the opportunity to bring low cost, high quality laser treatment for joint pain to the market. With the Move+ launching just months ago, we knew we’d found a game changing device for at home treatment of joint pain. They have cracked the trifecta of problems in laser quality, device calibration and price point.
And as their devices have begun shipping to users worldwide, self-experimenters everywhere are validating the effectiveness of this device. Today, we’re going to discuss how you can get your hands on one and hear from Forrest directly on how to self-experiment at home to know if laser treatment for joint pain will work for you.
Kineon’s Move+ - a light therapy device which relieves joint pain safely and quickly by stimulating factors which support healthy joint cartilage.
PARTNER Discount Code!
A part of our mission is to make your longevity budget stretch further.
Through our collaboration with Kineon, we are please to offer a 10% off coupon code for the Move+, exclusive to our readership
Use the code “longevitymove+“
This interview was conducted in June 2022 over Zoom and is an audio transcript with minor edits for clarity, brevity and correctness.
Be Sure to Read Part One of the Interview with Kineon Here!
Laser treatment for arthritis in hands, knees, joints
Longevity Blog (LB):
Coming back to the beta testers you mentioned - using the Move+ on yourself and testing how it might work for you is what this audience loves to do. It's one of the things that we focus on.
Often our Founder Nick is the guinea pig, but increasingly our audience are participating and sharing the results with us.
The Move+ seems to offer great opportunities for self experimentation. Let’s consider a reader who has, say, a shoulder or a knee issue and is interested to try the Move+
Let's talk about how they would do a self-experiment. Let’s hear some details - how long they should run it for, how often they should treat the joint and what they could effectively measure before and after?
Self-Experimenting with the Kineon Move+ for joint pain
Forrest Smith (FS): We've run a number of different tests and found a couple that are really interesting. I’ll share the most accessible one.
One way to check if the device is working through all of the mechanisms that we've discussed is using a blood flow restriction cuff where you can reduce the blood flow to the affected limb to essentially zero. Then, you remove the cuff and let the blood reperfuse.
You measure how long this takes, first recording a baseline measurement. Then you test again after several weeks of treatment. This is an extremely powerful test in a couple of ways.
One - the faster your tissue reperfuses, the healthier you are from a cardiovascular standpoint. Second - in most instances, any previous injury (such as an old ACL tear) will result in slower reperfusion of the blood into the affected leg.
You should be able to see a difference after just one month of treatment. Then you can retest the numbers. We’ve done this across many beta testers and what we're seeing is that the microvasculature is improving extremely well.
We might see a 20% differential between left and right leg and pull it up to within a 5% differential after only a month of treatment.
At home laser treatment for joint pain - how long does it take?
LB: You mentioned one month of treatment. Tell us about what the treatment protocol during that one month period.
FS: The protocol that has been most effective for testers to date is five minutes of treatment on the actual joint, and then five minutes upstream and five minutes downstream. You can then increase that treatment period over time to a maximum of around 10 to 12 minutes for each.
LB: Would you do this every day? And you just mentioned the reader should do this for a month? What happens if you go longer?
“five minutes of treatment on the actual joint, and then five minutes upstream and five minutes downstream”
FS: Yes, everyday, and you can absolutely treat for longer. One month is just the starting point.
LB: It also sounds like you can perform this treatment while sitting still. You can use the Move+ while watching Netflix or playing a video game. It sounds like it's pretty easy to use and it doesn't take a lot of time?
FS: That was one of our core goals as a company, and I harp on it quite a bit with our team. We wanted to build a device that is making the most substantial change possible in the quality of life of the highest number of people we can.
To achieve that, we need to remove inconvenience and make the device as functional as possible so customers can use it on a daily basis. I typically use my Move+ during a breathing and meditation session in the morning.
If you can find something that you do habitually, whether it's a cup of coffee in the morning, or whether it's a routine that you have before going to bed - use the Move+ then. You can use it when you’re moving or sitting down and even when you’re completely focused on something else. It's battery powered, it's wearable, and it's quite comfortable relative to anything else on the market.
The cost of laser treatment for knee pain
LB: We are looking forward to trying the Move+ out!
Tell us about how we can get our hands on a device. How much does it cost to get an at home laster therapy device for knee pain and arthritis? And where can you find it?
FS: Right now we are selling for $397. We are also going to offer your readers a discount, in the spirit of self-experimentation!
Get 10% off the Move+
Use the code “longevitymove+“
LB: We are very excited about this 10% discount, which brings the price down to $357USD.
Let’s discuss the price point you just mentioned, for some $400-$500 USD might feel quite expensive. However, there is a story here, and that price point actually represents a real technological advancement.
Similar devices which have been used in a clinical setting cost $15,000 or more. The $400-$500 price point Kineon is offering reflects how you’ve really innovated to deliver this device at such a low price.
FS: Absolutely. It really reflects back to our core mission. We knew we were going to have to get the cost way down. This has to be a device that people can afford to have in their homes, and that they can use conveniently and frequently, or is not going to impact their life the way that it should.
LB: We love that mission!
Where laser therapy for joint pain is headed next
LB: As we move forward and wrap up this interview - we want to end with two things in mind. A forward looking view of where the longevity industry is headed and secondly, what you're doing for your own health and longevity
Let’s start with looking into the longevity future and let's narrow it down in terms of the scope of photobiomodulation light therapy. Where is that going in the next decades specific to health and longevity? What are we going to see?
“with the application of cheaper lasers...we are soon going to be able to track specific molecules in your blood”
FS: We've thought long and hard about this and we see some really good ways to be able to impact people's lives and quality of life in the next 3 to 5 years that haven't been available up until now
We think optical sensors paired with light therapy emitters is going to create many new opportunities. This is the next generation of what you might see on a Garmin watch right now. The green LEDs on the back of your Garmin watch which make for a not so accurate heart rate monitor.
With the application of cheaper lasers and better sensors with some machine learning will be a very powerful combination. We're going to be able to track many new physiological characteristics and even specific molecules in your blood.
We have this capability at the research/hospital level and they will be in your home in the next 3 to 5 years. Kineon plans to be in that space as well, so hopefully we can talk more about this soon!
The surprising connection between lasers and gut health
LB: Brilliant, that's really exciting. You’ve mentioned a few areas where light therapy is producing impressive and unexpected outcomes for cardiovascular health, brain health, but one other you mentioned in the lead up to the interview was gut health.
Tell us, briefly, how there could be a relationship between lasers and gut health?
FS: There's fundamental clinical research into this now using machine learning and mapping bacterial populations in your gut, and even determining the health of that bacterial population.
When you apply photobiomodulation positive outcomes result. For example, different bacterial populations generate different waste materials based on what they are consuming. Early testing in clinical trials with photobiomodulation appears to support healthier gut bacteria.
With our dosing models along with a digital signal processing and machine learning team, we are exploring applications for our light therapy devices in the gut. Watch this space!
LB: That's exciting. If you need a guinea pig, we are all ears.
Forrest Smith CEO at Kineon’s longevity strategy
LB: Onto our second question. Share a few of the top things you do when looking out for your own longevity. Tell us about your longevity strategy. Give us one or two things that you're doing each day to look after yourself.
FS: I would say carb cycling and fasting are what I’ve been onto for the longest. I've seen ongoing great results and it's very simple. Fasting and carb cycling has been amazing from a health standpoint.
The Kineon Move+ in action, tipping the balance back in favour of cartilage regrowth & join healing.
Obviously, the light therapy treatments have been helpful for getting myself back into training after injuries. And then there’s daily meditation. I have been doing this for the last five or six years. Pairing that with breathing has been super powerful.
LB: And with that daily meditation, we can now think about adding lasers to the mix! This is a great illustration of what's possible in the longevity feature.
Thank you for joining us today Forrest. There's a lot more to talk about, but for now we're going to head off and play around with the Move+. Our thanks to your team for making it possible to have such a power device in the homes!
FS: Fantastic. Thanks so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to be interviewed on Longevity Blog.
FDA & TGA DISCLAIMER
This information is intended for educational purposes only and is not meant to substitute for medical care or to prescribe treatment for any specific health condition. These blog posts are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and only may become actionable through consultation with a medical professional.
Regrowing knee cartilage and restoring joint health naturally. An interview with Kineon CEO Forrest Smith - Part 1
Can you regrow cartilage?
New things are possible for your joint health, as the next generation of ‘at home’ light therapy devices hits the market.
Could the Move+ from Kineon heal your knee/joint pain? Yes, it certainly could. Read on for more…
Can you regrow cartilage in the knee without surgery? Can you regrow cartilage at all?
This is a very popular question on Google, but unfortunately, if you’re searching for this answer - you don’t get many promising solutions.
Some will tell you - No, you cannot regrow cartilage, full stop. Others list some promising prescription drugs that might work, some day maybe.
Well, that doesn’t lead to much hope for sufferers of osteoarthritis, or those who are asking - Can you regrow cartilage in the knee without surgery?
People looking for answers to questions like these might feel like they are chasing a medical miracle. They might even experience feelings of hopelessness or despair.
Well, guess what, it’s 2022 and longevity technology development is moving faster than ever. Rejuvenating technologies that make living a younger, healthier life for longer are rapidly emerging.
So you’ll have to excuse Google for being a bit behind the times - but there’s a new kid on the block, and it just may mean that it is now possible to regrow cartilage in the knee naturally.
And it doesn’t stop there - but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. We need to cover a few basics, up front.
Can you reverse cartilage damage?
At left, a healthy knee joint. At right, an arthritic joint with cartilage degradation. Note the widespread inflammation. Image source: Wikipedia
Let’s start off with some important details about cartilage, beginning with several common myths about cartilage.
Osteoarthritis myths
Arthritis is simple “wear & tear”
Arthritis doesn’t heal.
Cartilage doesn’t regrow
Exercise makes it worse
None of the above are true, yet most people believe them.
This does not take away from the pain that many millions of people around the world experience due to joint degradation. That is 100% real.
In fact, joint health is a major longevity issue, and looking after your joints is an essential part of your longevity strategy.
Patients with severe pain due to osteoarthritis stop walking and moving regularly. They often suffer from accompanying illnesses such as depression and cardiovascular disease.
And when it comes to longevity, being able to move your body is absolutely essential to your quality of life. Walking speed, calf strength, aerobic fitness - the list of ‘longevity metrics’ related to joint health goes on - you need to be looking after you body’s ability to move to stay healthy and live long.
Cartilage regeneration is about balance
To better understand cartilage regrowth, we need to stop thinking about cartilage as a finite resource that you use up, and instead see it as part of a balancing act.
In our interview today, we’re introducing you to a new partner company Kineon and their CEO and Co-Founder Forrest Smith, who had this to say:
As you age cartilage may grow more slowly, but it never really stops. What happens instead is an imbalance, typically in joints, of growth of new cartilage versus cartilage degradation. Especially if you have long term chronic inflammation, or osteoarthritis. It’s this osteoarthritis that causes the degradation of the cartilage.
By reducing inflammation, you're reducing the degradation rate of the cartilage. And that means your body can build that cartilage back faster. So it is actually on both sides of the equation, it is a balancing act.
So if you are suffering from a lack of cartilage in the knee or another joint (like the hip or shoulder), you need to reconsider your own cartilage balancing act.
And here is where it gets exciting - and where new technology is now available to help you with both sides of the equation.
Kineon’s Move+ is a brand new product which leverages decades of research on light therapy, recent advancements in the cost and quality of lasers and a new, very driven team of experts who have created a device designed to help you reduce inflammation and boost cartilage regrowth.
If you’re keeping track, that means you’re seeing improvements on, as Forrest said above, “both sides of the equation”.
Kineon MOVE+, does it work?
To date, early testers of this device have been completely ‘wowed’ by the effects they’ve seen (scroll down on the Kineon homepage to see testimonial videos) on their levels of pain and restoration of function in joints which have plagued them for years and even decades.
Kineon’s Move+ - a light therapy device which relieves joint pain safely and quickly by stimulating factors which support healthy joint cartilage.
They are a very promising sign that it may be time to re-think the answer to the question - Can you regrow cartilage in the knee? It’s simply not a hard “No” anymore.
And for those who have long suffered from joint pain, there may at last be hope again.
But, as is our usual preamble - at Longevity Blog, our job is to put such claims to the test! We’re here to help you get your hands on a device at a discount and guide you through testing before & after to quantify the results yourself.
We also ask the tough questions of the founders and lead scientists at longevity tech companies, to help you cut through the marketing and onto the results.
So, our fellow joint health enthusiasts, let’s hear more from Forrest, CEO at Kineon…
PARTNER Discount Code!
A part of our mission is to make your longevity budget stretch further.
Through our collaboration with Kineon, we are please to offer a 10% off coupon code for the Move+, exclusive to our readership
Use the code “longevitymove+” at checkout to save 10%!
This interview was conducted in June 2022 over Zoom and is an audio transcript with minor edits for clarity, brevity and correctness.
Longevity Blog (LB):
Forrest, welcome to Longevity Blog! It's one of the most common health questions on Google, full stop.
So I'd like to start by asking - can you regrow cartilage? The answer to this question is a very important one for our longevity. In particular, people are interested in regrowing cartilage in the knee without surgery.
What's your answer to this question?
Forrest Smith (FS):
Thanks for having me! As you age cartilage may grow more slowly, but it never really stops. What happens instead is an imbalance, typically in joints, of growth of new cartilage versus cartilage degradation. Especially if you have long term chronic inflammation, or osteoarthritis. It’s this osteoarthritis that causes the degradation of the cartilage.
By reducing inflammation, you're reducing the degradation rate of the cartilage. And that means your body can build that cartilage back faster. So it is actually on both sides of the equation, it is a balancing act.
There are two primary ways to improve cartilage growth, which are well established in the medical literature. The first is increasing the rate of collagen type 2, which is a building block for the extracellular matrix that is the framework or the infrastructure for the cartilage to regrow.
The second is by boosting mesenchymal stem cells activity, which differentiate into building blocks for cartilage.
Interestingly, when you apply light therapy, these stem cells are encouraged to create the infrastructure for building cartilage.
Yes, you can regrow cartilage
LB: Thank you for the detailed answer there. What we are hearing is a “yes” to this question - can you regrow cartilage. But the answer, as with many things in biology, is not that simple. The key concept here is that of balance.
By minimising the degrading your cartilage in your joints, and boosting the things that rebuild the cartilage in those joint, we can have positive cartilage growth.
Your company Kineon is has built some very interesting technology for improving this balance in the favour of cartilage growth. But to understand it, we’re goint to need to introduce a few new terms to the audience.
One of them is photobiomodulation, which we'll jump into in some detail coming up. The other one you just mentioned is mesenchymal stem cells. A lot of our readership knows about stem cells, stem cell therapy is popular in longevity.
Let's talk in a little bit more detail about mesenchymal stem cells. Tell us about them and how they are involved in cartilage growth and repair.
Light therapy for joint repair
FS: Mesenchymal stem cells can turn into almost any other other type of cell. They're a very useful building block for your body. You generate them primarily from your bone marrow, deep within the bone.
What we are seeing in the medical literature is that by using light therapy, mesenchymal stem cells are more likely to differentiate into cell types which support cartilage and bone growth.
“when you apply light therapy, these stem cells are encouraged to create the infrastructure for building cartilage”
LB: Great, thank you. And so what we're hearing to summarise, is that in terms of answering the question, Can we regrow cartilage in the joints? Or can we regrow cartilage in the knee? - we need to think about the balance.
So we should focus on reducing the amount of factors that are tearing down cartilage and increasing the number of factors that are building it back up.
Mesenchymal stem cells, which are produced in the bone marrow that differentiate into bone and into the cartilage are important to support and boost cartilage regrowth and repair.
The Kineon Move+ in action, tipping the balance back in favour of cartilage regrowth & join healing.
Let’s now come back to the research that you're mentioning and our next new terms - light therapy or photobiomodulation. Tell us a little bit about what this term means?
FS: Photobiomodulation is a bit of a blanket term. Originally, when light therapy was being researched, there were a couple of terms that were used by the scientific community.
The medical and scientific research community can get a little bit divisive about terms. It sounds extraordinarily technical, relatively what it actually is, but it's basically putting the lasers, LEDs and everything using light to interact with biology under one roof.
Photobiomodulation - How does it work?
LB: Okay, so it's an all encompassing term photobiomodulation. What we find most interesting about the term is the ‘bio’ part. The medical literature you are referring to has shown in various ways that the application of light to the body is impacting how it works at a cellular level.
Can you comment on this? In particular, the interaction between stem cells and joint cartilage?
Image credit: quitemindfm
FS: This is a really good segue into some of the fundamental mechanisms behind how light therapy works.
The research up until recently had indicated that the primary mechanism of function for the photobiomodulation was the light impacting molecules in the phospholipid bilayer of your mitochondria.
Effectively light therapy promotes a more effective and more efficient use of energy in your mitochondria. This is one of the primary drivers of the outcomes
But it's not the only one, and more recently there’s been a few more mechanisms of action discovered…
LB: We are excited to hear about these Forrest, but before we do, it is important to emphasise that it is very well established that light interacts with our biology.
One of the primary mechanisms for doing so is by stimulating mitochondrial energy production, as you’ve just mentioned.
The Move+ from Kineon uses both lasers and LEDs to direct light therapy into the joint safely and effectively.
This is why there have been many ‘red-light therapy’ products entering the longevity and wellness marketplace over the past decade. Most of our audience will be familiar with these.
LED light type therapies that their favourite biohacker on instagram might stand in front of, or perhaps shining red light on your face to boost collagen production, or maybe even using red light therapy on your shoulder or back to relieve aches or pains.
Kineon’s Move+ - A next generation light therapy device
What we want to emphasise is that the light therapy product Kineon has brought to market - the Move+ - stands out from these types of light therapy for several key reasons.
Not only is it a therapeutic device modelled after units used in the clinical setting, but it is also using both lasers and LEDs at the same time, to stimulate these ‘multiple mechanisms’ of action, not just mitochondria.
Let’s look deeper into the differentiators here. Firstly, talk to us about how you're using two types of light therapy in the device.
Our Founder Nick is self-experimenting with the Move+ over the next two months, to see if it can help him recovery from a triathlon over-training injury. Be sure to subscribe to hear about the results!
FS: One of the problems in the literature, which is only recently improving (over the last 3-5 years), is that medical researchers didn't really understand the technical side of the equation (e.g. light coherence, wavelength, intensity) and at the same time, the technical side didn't understand the medical physiology.
What you ended up with was a number of papers that were reporting the data that was easiest for them to report and so you had inconsistent metrics measuring the optical parameters of the light.
We've spent a lot of time dialling into what the technical and physiological terminology and metrics mean. Essentially the Rosetta Stone for all of these earlier meta medical trials. This has allowed us to interpret the many different medical research trials and know the ‘dosage’ of light for a given application.
What is dual therapy? Laser and LEDs
LB: Bringing it back to the Move+ product, you’ve incorporated a dual therapy including both LEDs and lasers in the same device. You’ve implemented this unique design after comprehensively reviewing and translating results from across widespread research literature, which support this ‘dual therapy’ approach.
FS: That's exactly right. The most important part of the problem is getting the dosage of light correct. For this, you have to know the amount of photons that you're putting out and how they're being put out.
LEDs emit light in essentially a spray, just an open spray in all directions, it's called a lambertian emission pattern. They're typically packaged, or bonded, into a cup, which contains them to a 120 degree emission pattern. But what we've done is we've actually pulled those LEDs even tighter with our own proprietary optics down to 30 degrees. This ensures the right level of penetration.
We're using LEDs for our deep red at 650 nanometers and our lasers are a near infrared wavelength at 808nm, which is the most proven and the optimal balance the photobiomodulation impacts we are targeting
“we know exactly how deep we’re dosing and how much light is going into the tissue, targeting microvascular level effects”
LB: This is a great opportunity to mention a few more of these mechanisms of action, specific to these wavelengths and the LED therapy.
Light therapy boost circulation
FS: There's also impacts for haemoglobin. When this red and infrared light hits haemoglobin, it strips out nitric oxide. Nitric oxide has some really powerful impacts on your physiology. It dilates blood vessels, providing more blood to tissue in areas where it's become stagnant. Here it is important to target a certain depth into the tissue.
With the Move+ we know exactly how deep we're dosing and how much light is going into the tissue, targeting these kind of microvascular level effects. The LEDs spread of light opens up the microvasculature. Then the penetration from the lasers and the infrared deep into the internal tissues provide a really powerful combination.
LB: That's the dual therapy combination right there. We really want to talk more about the lasers but before we do, first let’s cover one more topic on the LEDs and red light. Explain to us a bit more about how this specific LED wavelength is opening up microvasculature and improving blood flow and therefore tissue repair.
FS: Having the right wavelengths of red and infrared light at the right depth where your microvascular sits around your joints brings fresh blood because stripping out nitric oxide dilates those blood vessels. This means blood flow increases in the area.
LB: Can you give us an example of this effect? Some evidence as to why this is important for healing?
Injury can drive cartilage loss
FS: One of the things that you see with chronic tissue damage in joints happens typically after some kind of traumatic joint tissue damage, like an ACL tear, or meniscal tear, or even sprains. The inflammation from this injury doesn't just stay contained to the joint, it actually also damages the microvasculature around the joint as well.
Are you an athlete? Looking for other ways to recover more effectively. You might really like what we have discovered about a new longevity supplement - Urolithin A. Read about it here!
There was a study of 3000 NFL players where 50% had an ACL tear and 50% did not (control). In the group with the ACL tear, the tissue temperature in their damaged leg quadricep was two degrees lower than the tissue damage in the healthy quad. Surprisingly they also had a 50% increased risk of severe cardiovascular disease afterwards!
What this data is showing us is that, not only is the tissue damaged in the joint, there is also long term inflammation generated throughout your body and even into your cardiovascular system. This means damage from an endothelial standpoint, stiffer veins and arteries and long term negative impacts in overall health.
So, when you're treating joints with light therapy, you're not just treating the joints, you’re also improving the upstream and downstream microvascular. So that you can actually stop having that trickle of inflammation that adds up over time.
LB: In our background research on cartilage degradation, we found that previous injury was one of the major causes of cartilage degradation. The development of lesions (areas of acute damage) in the cartilage or even damage to a ligament often sets up the degradation of cartilage years later. Severe loss of cartilage can limit mobility, and this is where we really get into the longevity part of the picture
What we're hearing about the right type of red light LED treatment is that this opening up of the microvasculature is getting fresh blood flow into these areas and reducing inflammation. But we’ve not yet heard about cartilage or internal joint repair, is that where the lasers come in?
Laser light therapy penetrates deep into the joint
FS: The laser allows treatment of the synovial fluid and the tissue inside the joint directly, which is not something that you're really going to be able to do with the LEDs. If you have an LED only device, it's definitely better than nothing. But it's not penetrating the internal tissues.
Lasers emit as a column of light and work really well for dosing internal tissues. Our light propagation models have shown us that with the Move+ laser, the internal tissue is receiving the correct levels of dosage. It would take an unthinkable amount of LEDs to reach that level of penetration.
LB: The laser allows for deeper penetration into the joint as a whole, but it is both of these light emitting technologies (LEDs and lasers) together that help rebuild healthy cartilage.
But there's a key aspect of this that you've just touched on - biphasic dose response. That term sounds a little bit complicated and might be intimidating to the reader, but essentially what it means is that there's too much of a good thing and there's too little of a good thing.
There's something in the middle that we want to hit with the Move+ treatment protocol. Can you first tell us what a biphasic dose response is, and then, secondly, how you've used that information to get the right amount of light into the joint for healing/repair?
FS: I think you've done a great job of explaining it. There is essentially a curve where the amount of dosage delivered is on one axis the results are on the other axis.
As the amount of dose increases, it's going up a hill until there's an optimal point at the top. Then it goes back down that hill. We've spent a lot of time on our light propagation models so that we can justify the correct dosage from the Move+ device.
Early testers of the Move+ are making impressive claims
LB: What your team is doing differently is that you’re thinking specifically about joints and merging multiple types of light therapy technology with very specific calibration to have very specific healing effects in that joint. With the right dosage, you’re increasing blood flow, improving synovial fluid health and increasing the activity of the mesenchymal stem cells.
Ed says knee pain was greatly limiting his life, but the Move+ gave him his life back. “It just transformed my knees”
You've had some pretty interesting success with early testers of this device and have some very convincing testimonial videos. Do we have enough information to know you've gotten these dosage models right?
FS: We have enough information to know that we've done better than any of the other light therapy offerings out there. But I think we still have work to do.
One of the things we've seen from our early testing with beta users, that I think will speak to your audience from a longevity standpoint very well, is that when we're treating large tissue masses (e.g. the leg), we're not just seeing the nitric oxide rise in that area, we're seeing it all over the body.
This means your serum levels of nitric oxide are getting much higher and the benefits of that stay in your system for you 24 to 72 hours. This has a really positive effect on your endothelial tissue and keeping that healthy is one of the best things you can do from a cardiovascular standpoint. That's also particularly true with your brain.
We're seeing very high levels of nitric oxide crossing over to the brain, which improves vascular health in your brain.
Would the Move+ work for you? There’s only one way to find out…
LB: These are some very interesting systemic results! We’ll be following up on them.
Coming back to the beta testers - using the Move+ on yourself and testing how it might work for you is what this audience loves to do. It's one of the things that we focus on.
Often I'm the guinea pig, but increasingly others are doing the same and sharing the results with us. The Move+ seems to offer great opportunities for self experimentation. Let’s consider a reader who has, say, a shoulder or a knee issue and is interested to try the Move+. …
INTERVIEW Part 2 AVAILABLE HERE!
Get 10% off the Move+
Use the code “longevitymove+" to save 10%!
FDA & TGA DISCLAIMER
This information is intended for educational purposes only and is not meant to substitute for medical care or to prescribe treatment for any specific health condition. These blog posts are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and only may become actionable through consultation with a medical professional.
Exercise and longevity are inseparable
Aerobic exercise is must have for longevity
Nick shares a personal story from his Health Nucleus journey in 2018
“Before I came into work to meet you here today, I got in a 40 minute run along the oceanfront”, Dr. Sanders said “I have made it a priority to get in at least four workouts per week, aiming for five or more.”
I sat and listened attentively, as she reviewed my intake questionnaire - noticing my history of high-ish blood pressures and LDL cholesterol values. Dr. Sanders was in her 40s, blonde and super fit - totally unlike any other doctor I’d met along my health journey. Simply put - she clearly walked the talk.
“I recommend you aim for 30 minutes of vigorous physical activity a few times a week. There is hardly a better preventative medicine in our toolbox than that.” she explained. “It can be hard to make a change, but trust me, it will help you with your blood pressure, blood lipids and insulin sensitivity.”
As I took this instruction in, sitting the Health Nucleus guest room (in my awesome socks), I realized I had a bit of reckoning coming my way - I’d come all this way for the latest in all things ‘proactive healthcare’ (full body MRI, genomic sequencing, full blood tests) only to be told, once again, I needed to get more ‘cardio’ exercise. Ugh.
Gasping, sweating, tiring - I’d never really ‘connected’ with the practice of this genre of fitness. I’d had a long-time love for weightlifting, and had dabbled in amateur sports such as flag football and softball.
I’d even enjoyed the occasional cardio-class after an arm-twist from a friend. But that’s not what she was suggesting - this was an overhaul of my life.
To be honest - it didn’t feel immediately doable.
Want longevity? Exercise delivers
As I hopped on my plane flight back to Australia from that amazing visit to San Diego, Dr. Sanders’ instruction really stuck with me.
I’d travelled half-way across the world, driven by my ever-growing interest in the fast moving world of longevity and healthspan, enthusiastic about gathering data and personalised guidance for living my best life.
And while many exciting longevity boosting technologies are indeed on their way quite soon (senolytics, gene therapy, stem cell treatments and more!), Dr. Sanders has made it very clear - you can’t avoid nailing the BASICS, which are tried and true, available here and now.
Exercise and a healthy diet form the foundation of wellness, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
All of my research into the topic of longevity, continued to demonstrate this.
There are many different ‘types’ of exercise out there, many wide-reaching definitions and specific examples. But two aspects of it emerged as particularly important for longevity and healthspan during my research on the topic:
1) Resistance exercise (strength training) to build and maintain lean muscle mass; this fights ‘sarcopenia’, which is the loss of muscle mass with age
and
2) Aerobic (i.e. ‘Cardio’) exercise (i.e. training for your cardiovascular system), to strengthen the heart, lungs and circulatory system; this is unequivocally shown to prevent/delay the onset of cardiovascular disease, as well as activate a wide spectrum of protective benefits
Starting a regular exercise habit for longevity’s sake!
There are certainly many details that I could share from the past 18 months of my creating a new and enduring habit of regular cardio exercise, and I do hope to share that with you in the future. But I’d like to jump straight to the finish line, literally. Here is a post on my Instagram from last week, after winning a 5k race in Sydney:
I ran that 5K in 20:58! If I had even tried to run 5K back in May 2018, I wouldn’t have been able to complete the race.
So, how did I manage that? What did I do to get in shape?
I’m going to say that’s out of scope for this post, and may decide to share that information with you in the future. That’s not really the point here.
Your healthspan is YOUR responsibility
What is the point is this - one of the major themes of this blog is the power of proactive healthcare.
I’ve provided a bit of a definition on this concept in my opening post, but we’ll need to keep discussing the concept to make it clear what we mean by that term.
Let’s continue that process of elaboration! Proactive healthcare has two major components.
The first and most important part of proactive healthcare is intentionally owning the responsibility we have to our health. Simply put - it is your responsibility to stay healthy.
“The first and most important part of ‘proactive healthcare’ is intentionally owning the responsibility we have to our health. It is our (YOUR) responsibility to stay healthy”
This is an important difference from what has been engendered in our society - that this responsibility is that of your doctor.
Play that game if you want, but it will not necessarily lead you to the long and healthy life you deserve.
Don’t get me wrong - your doctor may be a fundamental part of the journey, but it starts with YOU.
So let me also ‘walk the talk’, as Dr. Sanders does. One of the key outcomes of my visit to the Health Nucleus was this realisation.
That living a long, healthy and happy life is MY responsibility - no one is going to do it for me!
And exercise (Strength and aerobic training) is inseparable from any longevity strategy. We’ll write more on this topic in the future.
Exercise comes first, sexy longevity technologies second
It’s only after we’ve begun to take the first part of the proactive healthcare concept seriously, that the second aspect truly becomes powerful.
This second aspect of proactive healthcare is demanding access to the best longevity technologies available.
If you want to be healthy and stay that way for as long as possible, visiting a preventative healthcare facility like the Health Nucleus is a great part of the overall strategy.
But if you decide to join me in this journey of biohacking our way through a long and healthy life, you will not escape making lifestyle changes.
How do I know? Because I had to drag my ‘cardio hating’ lazy ass out of bed and whip my butt into shape like my longevity depends on it! Because it does.
I took ownerships and established a ‘cardio’ routine
”That’s absolutely wonderful!” Dr. Sanders said, beaming. “I am just so impressed you were able to make that positive change so quickly and with such determination!”, she remarked.
5K races are my new jam
Staying motivated, staying healthy, staying young!
I’d just dropped the info that I’d actually taken my doctors advice.
We were on a ‘comprehensive return of results’ web video call, after our first ‘preliminary return of results call about 6 weeks earlier.
After the preliminary results call, my Health Nucleus blood results indicated that I was likely a good candidate for improving my results through - you guessed it, cardio exercise.
So, in the spirit of intentionally taking ownership of my health, I said to Dr. Sanders at the end of that first call, “Hey, I’m going to ask you to do something for me.”
“Sure” she volunteered willingly, “What might that be?”
“Please check in on how much cardio exercise I did between now and then!” I asked.
Well, she’d agreed, so I knew my ass was on the line!
That’s just one of the ‘mental hacks’ I used to get myself there. But it is a powerful one.
Is there someone in your life who can provide you with that accountability? If you know you need to ‘get fitter’, then I suggest you start that conversation.
Editorial Note: We have purposefully changed the name of the Health Nucleus Doctor in this story :)