Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast where Dr. Steven Gundry shares his groundbreaking research from over 25 years of treating patients with diet and lifestyle changes alone. Dr. Gundry and other wellness experts offer inspiring stories, the latest scientific advancements, and practical tips to empower you to take control of your health and live a long, happy life.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Over 60 million Americans suffer from joint pain, often feeling trapped by limited mobility and constant discomfort. And while we often focus on building muscle and flexibility, there’s something else that plays a key role; our bones themselves.
Today, I’m speaking with Peter Simonson. He got his mechanical engineering degree from Georgia Tech in my old hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, and he began his career at Medtronic Spine where he invented the number one implant system used in over 1 million patients. He holds five patents in the field. And now as president of Juvent, he’s leading in micro impact therapy. Now, that may be a strange word for you because you probably have never heard of it. And I want you to stick around because by the time we’re done, micro impact therapy is going to be way up there on the top of your mind for what we’re going to talk about.
In just a bit, we’re going to explain how this technology works to exercise your bones, helping to improve joint health, relieve discomfort and, get this, even improve stem cell production. From chronic pain sufferers to pro athletes, Juvent is changing lives, including for astronauts. Stick around. And while you’re at it, make sure to follow the Dr. Gundry Podcast so you don’t miss a thing. We’ll be right back. Peter, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you on. I’ve been excited about talking about this ever since I’ve been using it for a while.
Peter Simonson:
Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m a big fan of yours. And your diet changes has helped my allergies quite a bit, so I’m one of your success stories.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Well, that’s great. Well, speaking of Medtronic, Medtronic actually manufactures all my heart surgery devices, so we have something very much in common. Let’s talk about the skeletal system. All the skeletal system that is designed to do is hold us up and, from my standpoint, it just stands in the way of me getting to the heart because there’s this dumb bone right here. Why is it so crucial as a metabolic organ?
Peter Simonson:
Well, it’s really interesting, and this is one of these obvious elephants in the room that gets overlooked by even the smartest spine surgeons in the world. And I know thousands of them. I’ve met them, so I’m telling you this firsthand. The skeleton is an organ system, so we have 11 or 12 depending on how you want to categorize it. And each bone is an organ, but it’s a full organ system. And it’s an organ system that doesn’t have a medical specialty, and so so much of the science gets overlooked and doesn’t get used clinically. Most people don’t realize is that we think of bones as holding us up. That’s its primary job. That’s actually about third on the list. Believe it or not, bones’ primary functions are metabolic, not structural. Let me talk about that for a minute.
I have a great chart on this. Every one of the little items we’ve heard independently, when you put it together, it starts to paint a very different picture. Bones’ primary function is to produce stem cells and it produces really two classifications. I call them liquids and solids. You have haemopoietics which are blood. It produces all of our red blood cells for oxygen transport, it produces all of our white blood cells for our immune system, and it also produces platelets. This is all from the bone. And those are all very, very important.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Very important.
Peter Simonson:
Then there’s another classification of stem cells called mesenchymals, or we call them solids. These cells can become one of about five to eight things that we know of: Bone, muscle, fat, cartilage, connective tissue, which sounds a lot like a joint, doesn’t it?
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Yep.
Peter Simonson:
But we’ve also recently found out these become endothelial cells, liver cells, and sensory nerve cells. And so that’s just one function, that’s just the stem cell production of bone, but it gets even more. Bone regulates our calcium rates in our blood to keep our heart pumping at the proper speeds and minerals, but it’s also a full member of the endocrine system in all but name.
And this is where it starts to get interesting. Bone chemically talks to every other organ in the body with a first or second hand conversation. And so what we see is when people get proper skeletal health, it’s a systemic effects. It goes way beyond just what we think of just holding us up. And so the way I tell the world is if you want to be healthy and you don’t take care of your skeleton, good luck because you’re chasing the deficiency of a major organ system. I call it the second most important organ system in the body. Now, I’ve backed that up. Every specialist thinks they’re number two. We’re all fighting for number two. The brain’s number one. But I think-
Dr. Steven Gundry:
No, the heart’s number one. Come on.
Peter Simonson:
Exactly. That’s what I thought. No, but I think as you learn more, as we all do, we’ll realize it really is number two. That’s an opinion, but I’ll defend it.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Well, I see a lot of particularly women patients, but more and more male patients who when they think about bone, they’re not necessarily thinking about arthritis or joint health, they’re thinking about osteopenia and osteoporosis. And that happened to the astronauts, right?
Peter Simonson:
Absolutely.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Can we talk about that? That’s where all this started, right?
Peter Simonson:
Absolutely. One of the prime motivations for this was they’d send astronauts in space. And in this zero-gravity environment, an astronaut who is in top physical condition will lose more bone in one month than severe osteoporosis patient will in a year. It’s severe. When they come back, they have a substantial rehabilitation process. That’s the first indicator that bone without the proper loading as a metabolic, really dormancy; just shuts it down.
And that becomes applicable to people on earth when you really dig down into it because a lot of people on earth live in an isolated environment. We don’t exercise properly, we don’t do the proper exercise, and we get what I call mechanical scurvy. And you’ll see that this scurvy was a disease that killed sailors for 300 years. It limited world superpowers, projection of their navies, so there was a huge motivation to find a, quote, “cure.” And it was James Lind, a Scottish surgeon who found a reference 300 years earlier and took a group of sailors and gave them fruit and another group didn’t give them fruit. And it was a very small group.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Citrus fruit.
Peter Simonson:
That’s correct. Didn’t know why, but he found the ones with citrus didn’t get scurvy. That’s now known as the world’s first clinical trial. Now, it confounded the conventional wisdom at the time because they were looking for the four rumors and the contagion and this and that, so it took over 20 years before the British Navy added that to the sailors’ diet, which is where we get name Limeys.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Hence the name Limeys. Yep.
Peter Simonson:
Exactly. But see, that’s an example. History repeats itself, or at least rhymes, as Mark Twain said, where the science led ahead of the medicine. And so there’s 20 or 30 years where sailors were needlessly suffering when the solution was right there. And what I’ve seen today, and I’ve devoted my career to now is taking science and getting it over to the medical side. They’re two different worlds. And I call it the Grand Canyon, one side of the canyon and the other. And those bridges across are very expensive to build. They’re called double-blind perspective multi-center randomized studies. And there’s a place for those, but there’s a lot of good things on one side of the canyon that aren’t over here. And it’s my goal in life is to find those and get those to the people. And many of them aren’t profitable, but it doesn’t mean they’re not useful. We see history of repeats itself, and that’s why in some respects I call Juvent a vitamin of exercise.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Gotcha. I’ve seen pictures of this being used in space.
Peter Simonson:
Absolutely.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
And that’s literally where this device started out.
Peter Simonson:
Yeah, NASA funded the original research. And they were trying to find a way to mechanically the bones. And then part of that was doing this, and they did it in a simulated Zero-G environment and found out that it works. However, they also found that there’s a natural equivalent which is walking. And so is this on the space station? No. But does it mean the science can’t be useful down here? It still can.
And so what we find is that walking is nature’s perfect form of impact exercise, but it’s not the only form and it’s not the most efficient form. And that’s why Juvent can be used to mimic what we find in nature. Again, very similar to a vitamin. I can take a vitamin C pill if I don’t have a perfect diet of fruit and that sort of thing. And so similarly, we can address a deficiency with people who can’t walk or don’t walk. But that’s just one group. We’ll talk more about that later, I’m sure.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
I mentioned in the lead-in to the program micro-impact. Probably walking is a good example of micro-impact. In fact, I’ve got a very good friend, Mark Sisson, who wrote the Primal Blueprint. He designed Primal Kitchen. He was a great triathlete in his day. And Mark will be coming out with a book soon called Walk, Don’t Run. And he actually now believes that the farthest distance a human being should run is 100 yards and that humans, like you say, were actually designed to walk. Most of the super old people in the, quote, “blue zones” are walkers. They live in hilly communities and they walk. It’s actually the walking micro-impact process that is really good for you.
Peter Simonson:
Yeah. Let’s put a little finer point on that because it’s a very good point. I’ll call walking as impact as a baseline. And then running is too much of a good thing. And what Juvent is doing is we’ll call micro-impact in that context because what we’re doing is exploiting a property of bone. Bone is extremely mechano-resilient, meaning it can take a beating and take it. When you run, bones love it, but it’s the rest of the body not so much starting at cartilage, which is right next door neighbor. It’s got a much more narrow window of desirable mechanical stimulation. It can get too much of a good thing. That’s why running is a mixed bag. Walking is a safe level, but walking is fairly low frequency. We’re looking maybe one, two, three hertz.
What the scientists found is that bone is not only also mechano-resilient, it’s also mechano-sensitive, meaning it can get its work done with small loads if given enough of them. And that’s where the micro-impact is a bio-hack, if that makes sense. We work a lot in that field, and this fits. But what it’s doing is the person’s standing on the platform and it’s applying a very gentle force, but it’s doing it at about 32 to 37 hertz. And the frequency is important because the rest of the body is sensitive to that. What we’re doing is we’re finding an area where the bone can respond and the rest of the body says, “Yeah, that’s great. I’m fine with that.” And so when you get beyond those parameters, you can start getting into where the bone’s fine, but the rest of the body starts getting in trouble. And so that’s a very key component. When a person stands on a Juvant, they’re very underwhelmed. You know. You’ve been using it.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Yeah.. Yeah, I’ve been using it.
Peter Simonson:
And the movement is incredibly small. It’s 5% of one millimeter.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
That’s it.
Peter Simonson:
That’s it. And you know why? That’s safe and it’s effective. See, safe, effective, and convenient is the triad. It’s very difficult to get all three of those. And so that’s what Juvent is. And there’s $40 million of research and 90-plus papers in the clinical side, the scientific side and the clinical side that came to those parameters.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Well, let’s dive into that part because the plate that vibrates, okay, there’s lots of plates that vibrate. Maybe we’ll get into that towards the end. But what does the research say about micro-impact therapy? Why would I be interested in that?
Peter Simonson:
Okay, it’s interesting. Let’s go back with 100 years. Julius Wolff is an orthopedic surgeon in Germany, came up with now what’s called Wolff’s law. And it says bone grows where bone is loaded. And this has been a cornerstone of orthopedics for years. We’ve known this. But in the past 20 years we know that it’s not quite so simple. Bone distinguishes between static loading, which would be like a weightlifting, it’s the force that just stays there for a long time, and impact loading, which would be everything from walking, running, and in this case micro-impact.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Jumping.
Peter Simonson:
That’s correct. And that impact load provides a function; it’s called mechanotransduction if you want to look it up. And in this case, what it does is it’s providing one of the parameters required for a cell transfer function. Cell transfer is a complete body of science on its own. It’s over my head. I’m an engineer, I’m not a biologist. But what it is a cell controls very greatly what it lets in and what it lets out. And those transfers are various. There’s a catalog of them, there’s a whole field of that. One of them requires an impact wave. And that’s one of the mechanisms of action that Juvent is engaging. It’s really like a metabolic catalyst or exercise for your bones. And if we see and we know how many metabolic functions are happening, my God, you can see the impact.
And we have patients that tell us independently that don’t know each other so many things that start to just get better. We don’t have studies on them, we don’t make the claims, but Dr. Corey had a great quote, I’m going to use it. He said, “What’s the plural of anecdotal? It’s called data.” And so over a while, you start to see. And I’ve spent 10 years digging into listening to these patient after patient after patient saying, “My blood pressure, my diabetes management, my ED issues, my RLS, restless legs syndrome.” And you go, “Wow, this can’t be coincidental. We didn’t even talk about it.”
Well, when you go into the literature, you start to see reasonable mechanisms of action. And you sent me an article the other day that opened my eyes to things I haven’t even seen before. And so to that, this is a very broad topic. It’s an entire organ system. And we will study this for another 100 years.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Where did the idea that three megahertz or moving three millimeters, that was the magic number or most effective number? Why don’t we just jump on a trampoline or get in a paint mixer?
Peter Simonson:
Well, that’s a pretty complicated topic. You really have two parameters that it distills down to: Intensity, which would be like the volume knob, sound, you can make it louder, and frequency, which would be equivalent of pitch. And so what they did, they found out that what you want to do is stimulate bone without disproportionately stimulating other organ systems. And so 32 to 37 is a nice mixture between transmissibility and non-interference with other organ systems. And so within that range, a PhD, as part of the program, he got three or four patents on choosing within that safe range the optimum frequency for each person at each time.
See, because part of the safety is magnitude or the volume. You’ve got to use low-level energy because you don’t want to beat the body up. The body can handle fairly high loads of impact way beyond 0.3 G, which is Juvent. Why does Juvent have to be 0.3 G to be safe? Because the body never sees high loads at high frequency. It always sees them at low frequency. Running is even low frequency. That’s one or two hertz.
And the body, each impact wave has time to dissipate before the next one comes along. When you increase the frequency, it’s a totally different mechanical system. And you’ve got to lower the level. And so that’s why that combination, if you’re going to get all those cycles in, you’ve really got to go down. And that’s what keeps it safe. But if you’re going to use low energy for safety, you’ve got to make it efficient.
And there’s a physics phenomenon that’s true in all fields called resonance. And resonance is how a small amount of energy at the proper frequency can do a lot of work. That’s the singer breaking the opera glass. Makes sense?
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Yep.
Peter Simonson:
And so the PhD, and controls engineering, which you engineers know this is really hard math. When the person gets on a Juvent, it will go through the safe range and find the optimal range for that person at that time. And that can change. If we lose weight with proper diet, that frequency might be different, if we have a different floor surface, different size and shape. That’s why when you get on it, it does all the math. It looks simple, but it’s not.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Yeah, you get on it and there’s a countdown of 12.
Peter Simonson:
That’s right.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
And I’m going, “Yeah, okay.” It’s counting down to 12. What is it doing during that 12 seconds?
Peter Simonson:
Sure. What it’s doing is it’s observing resonance. It’s sweeping through a range of-
Dr. Steven Gundry:
I’m a tuning fork?
Peter Simonson:
Absolutely. You’re absolutely. That’s a very accurate thing. It’s listening for the perfect pitch. And in the bottom, there’s an accelerometer which measures motion. It talks to the computer and it starts to go, “Wait a minute. Got it.” And what’s really interesting is you can get on it, plug your ears, and you’ll feel the frequencies go up. And there’ll be one that’ll be louder than others. Then when it locks in, that’s the frequency it’s going to be. And if it can’t find it, it’ll error out. It’s very specific. It’s very fail-safe.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Interesting. Literally it’s not humbug that I’m just standing there, it’s literally choosing my frequency that’s going to work for me?
Peter Simonson:
Absolutely. And if your wife or your child or your friend-
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Yeah, my wife. Yep.
Peter Simonson:
Yeah. Or in-laws or anybody gets on it, it’ll do the same math. And it’s observing and not calculating, if that makes sense. And so it’s knocking it. And it’s a very important tool. And Juvent goes way beyond its… Its energy input is minimal. It’s about nine or 10 watts, but it swings way above its pay grade in terms of energy because it’s finding resonance. Frequency is everything. Just ask Tesla. But that’s a whole nother can of worms.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
That’s right, that’s right. That’s just not a silly sales point that it’s learning about me in those 12 seconds. It literally is.
Peter Simonson:
Oh, absolutely. It adjusts. And it’s extremely effective. And it has so many things that we could talk two or three podcasts on that. But everybody gets on a Juvent for a reason, and they’ll stay on it for three or four. They wouldn’t even dream were related. And our policy, we can’t make claims, and we don’t try to, we’ll give observations, but we let everybody try it for six weeks, and if they don’t think it’s worth the money, we buy it back 100%. Our success rate with that metric is 98%.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
That’s pretty good.
Peter Simonson:
That’s right. And that’s why we’re pretty cocky about it. It’s funny because a lot of disbelievers and doctors, it’s fun, I get it. I just say, “How many procedures have that policy?” We’re pretty cocky on it. Just it’s our experience.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Well, let’s put it two ways. Number one, you probably think that every human being should be on a Juvent. Who usually is most interested in a Juvent?
Peter Simonson:
Well, as I alluded to, they get on it for a reason. And one of the most common reasons we see is bone density, we do have clinical studies on that, and bone health, but also could be joint pain. Those are big motivations. But they get on it and they see things they wouldn’t even dream of, everything from, heck, even constipation, lower limb edema. And these are things that they wouldn’t even think of. And then their whole family’s on it.
The other group we see are pro athletes. When they get on it for performance enhancement, there’s three or four things they’ve told us over the years. I’m also sure. But if you look at it, who should be on a Juvent? Let bring up a reference because it explains so many things. It’s a vitamin. And that’s when it hit me one day. And let me explain that if you don’t mind.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Yeah, that’d be great.
Peter Simonson:
I’ve actually invented a new word. If you don’t mind, but I’d like to explain it to you. But I want to give you the background. A vitamin in the chemical sense has three characteristics that are really relevant. It’s found in nature, it’s required for normal metabolism, and it’s always a sub-component. For example, vitamin C is my favorite analogy. It’s fits all of those. But there aren’t vitamin C trees. There’s orange trees, grapefruit, fruit trees. But we’ve learned the active ingredient, how to synthesize it and make it more convenient.
If I look at mechanical loading for the body, I know I need impact loading as well as I need static loading. And the analogy I use is in the chemical side we have fat, protein, carbs, and micronutrients. Fats and proteins, those are fundamental daily requirements. They’re nonnegotiable, non-interchangeable, and we deal with it. But mechanically, we have impact and non-impact; non-negotiable, non-interchangeable, fundamental daily requirements. That’s rare territory. The last vitamin discovery was actually in the ’40s, vitamin K. But this analogy of a vitamin just keeps getting more and more relevant. It’s the same dosing, it’s the same response, the same retention, and the same indication. Let me elaborate. Dosing. I can’t do my vitamin dose on January 1st and be done for the year; I need it regularly.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Darn.
Peter Simonson:
Response. If I have a vitamin one day, do I notice everything magically different? No. I’m giving the body what it needs to get what it needs done, and that’s a process, not an event. It’s the same response, same retention. If I miss a vitamin for a day, it’s not the end of the world. It’s going to be fine. But if I go deficient long enough, I’m going to present. Same indication from pediatric to geriatric.
Interestingly, one of the groups studied from the original Juvent team was pediatrics who couldn’t get normal impact loading for development. For example, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, spinal bifida, those guys, they have terrible issues. But I’ve talked to the parents and worked with them. They say, “Listen, we got to be careful. He’s like an eggshell. His bones haven’t developed.” And so that’s a group that at a young age could get on a Juvent and metabolically it’s relevant.
Same thing with St. Jude did a study on young adults doing post-chemo bone marrow transplants; young adults at a young age, poor bone health. And this study’s amazing, actually. It was perspective, randomized blinded study. And they managed these patients nutritionally and endocrinologically to eliminate those things. And the outcome was so dramatic that the JAMA, Journal of American Medical Association, before they would publish it required two separate groups to look at the data because their bone growth was a delta of 10% to 11%. The control group was down one, which is normal, and the active group was up by 10, so a delta of 11.
See, the age doesn’t matter. Anything that keeps you from getting normal physiological loading means, guess what; Juvent’s a requirement. And what happens when we get older? We start to slow down and people’s skeletal system starts to go into dormancy. And so what we do as a culture, we ignore it. The way I look at it, I say, “Can you imagine a culture that said, ‘Well, you’re older now; you can’t run after animals. No protein for you. You can’t climb trees and go in the field; no fruit and veggies for you. You can’t walk to the well; no water for you.'” We call that aging. Come on. We don’t do that. But that’s exactly what we do for impact loading. Slowing down, a little joint pain? Here’s a cane. That still hurts? Here’s a walker. Why don’t you just give up all that walking and get in a wheelchair? We call that aging. Well, their skeletal system is shutting down. You’ve got the second most important organ system going into dormancy. Doesn’t end well.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
No.
Peter Simonson:
Now, the first person I noticed this was when we were doing due diligence on Juvent, my brother and I were starting a functional medicine clinic before that term was even invented. And part of that was investigating different treatments… And again, science that wasn’t being applied clinically. Well, Juvent had a pretty strong pedigree, and the founder of the company died and the company went dormancy. A colleague brought it to us, and we were very familiar with this other bone healing successes, which were used in post-surgical site-specific non-fusions. But this was the holy ground water at Juvent.
Well, we were doing the due diligence. By coincidence, my mother at 78 years old was suffering from a non-union pelvic fracture; two years preexisting. Now, this is a pain that is on the scale of one to 10, it’s probably at 9.9. Pain meds can’t touch it. My mom went from a vibrant, vertical person to a horizontal pain addict. And so we said, “Mom, we borrowed one of these platforms, try it out.” She gets on it, and about two weeks she’s up with no cane and no pain. Do you understand? She was bedridden for 22 hours a day. And we were like, “Whoa.” And so you would think is this is placebo? We don’t know. But my mom’s pretty tough cookie.
This goes on for two weeks, and then we have to give this platform back because it was borrowed from an osteoporosis patient. My mom went right back down. And I got a call from her, and she said, “Peter, I don’t know what you’re going to do with that company, but I need one of those platforms.” And I could just hear it. It was sad, actually. I was just like, “Mom, I’ll get one. I’ll find something.” I scoured eBay. I found one. It took me about two weeks of daily searching to find one in Canada on Craigslist. Guy’s mom died and he had no idea what it did. I said, “I’ll take it.” We put her on it and the rest is history. My mom is 92 years old. She’s living in a three-bedroom, two-bath house with a guest house and a swimming pool by herself. And it’s my opinion that she would be in a nursing home. That I’ve seen hundreds of similar cases since then where people’s activity level just goes back. Pete Simonson’s guess on this, the way I look at it is I just realized we could probably add five years to every 300 million people’s vertical lifespan.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Yeah. Health span.
Peter Simonson:
Yeah, health span. And I’m not going to say I can make your life longer, that’s a bigger claim, but, well, maybe it does. The point is it’s like if this thing keeps you out of a nursing home for a month, it’s paid for itself. Back to your question of who should be on a Juvent? The answer is yes. And everyone’s got a different motivation, and that’s all fun subtopics, but that’s a long answer to a great question.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
I keep coming back to micro-impact because one of the things when I first started using this is there’s not a lot happening. And are you sure about this? There’s not a lot happening because what I was doing was checking my emails and things like that or looking out the window. We have a lovely view where this is set up. And it’s like, are you sure? Because there’s not a lot happening.
Now, I’ll bring it up… I think we have a question later, but I used to have a power plate and recommended it. But quite frankly, I didn’t use it very much. It was a pain in the neck. And if you even put your jaw together and put your teeth, it actually didn’t feel very good on your teeth. And any kind of movement was not a lot of fun. And this, it doesn’t feel like a power plate. But at least with the power plate, man, you knew something was happening, right?
Peter Simonson:
More must be better, right?
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Yeah, exactly. Because not much is happening, people write in and say, “Not much is happening,” or-
Peter Simonson:
It’s interesting. There’s a couple of fun points you brought up here. Remember, a vitamin. We’re not a painkiller, we’re not a treatment that I get, oh, instant relief. We’re letting the body do what it does. And so what we do is we send out a simple pain inventory sheet for everyone and say, “Day one, you’re the only one that’s ever going to see this; just circle where you have pain and put a number on it.” And over time, they’ll go back and look at that, and they’ll go, “Oh, wow, I’d forgot about that.” Or their friends will notice it before they do. They’re, “You’re walking upstairs normally. You’re not really using your cane,” and that sort of thing.
Now, back to the high energy plates, it’s really interesting. One of the groups I’ve worked with over the years, pro athletes, NFL players, golf players and baseball players. These are people who are super in tune with their health. And I’ve learned to listen to them. They may not have the scientific words, but if you listen to them carefully, the way they describe something, they’re usually telling you something that’s gold. Almost without exception, they’ve been on a power plate. I’ve never met one that uses it more than, I guess, twice. They get off it and say, “That, I don’t know. I don’t feel good on that.” And they know. I’ve learned to really pay attention to that.
And when we first started with Juvent and the pro athletes, I didn’t have a lot to go on. And I don’t BS. I said, “Look, I don’t know. You tell me.” Without exception, they came back with very similar usage patterns and descriptions. And so if they use it pre-performance, they feel they have better balance and better range of motion. And those are big things for an athlete, especially a swing or a skate… I mean skaters, hockey players, that sort of thing. If they use it post-workout, they get a significant reduction of what they call DOMS. It’s not in medical term, it’s a subculture called delayed onset muscle soreness. And for a pro athlete, that tends to be the limit of the training because it’s not about motivation and money and time, they’ve got all that, it’s their DOMS. They’ll know that, they’ll schedule. And they’ll go, “Couldn’t usually do that many workouts, but I could fit another one in.” It was supplement to that.
And then the final thing that they did was most pro athletes, especially football players for example, they all have an injury they have to learn to play around. It’s there. And it’s not going to stop their career, but it affects them. And after about three to six weeks, they’re like, “I don’t have that pain anymore.” And then that’s the big eureka moment. It’s very interesting. Each group’s got its different things. Remember, there’s so many physiological things going on here, there’s no one thing that applies to all if that makes sense.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
The thing I noticed after a few weeks was my flexibility was better. And I’ll actually describe the moment I knew that there was something happening. We have an area in our home where our dogs defecate, and once a day I have to go around with my doggy bag and pick it up and bend down. I don’t use a shovel or anything like that, and bend down and do it. And I’m in my mid-70s now and a little creakiness when I’m bending down. And I’m going, “This is interesting. I am effortlessly bending down to pick up my dog’s poop now.” Now, that’s an interesting observation. I haven’t done anything different. My exercise program hasn’t changed. I’m still hiking a lot and walking the dogs two and a half miles every day. But I said, “Isn’t that interesting?” That’s one thing I noticed.
Peter Simonson:
Absolutely. And probably a month of Sundays, you would not have intuitively predicted that.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
No, no. That would not have been what I would be looking for. But you’re right. And again, I think the most exciting thing about this from particularly my viewers’ standpoint is there’s actually really cool papers written about how this technology changes the microbiome for the better. It makes more diverse microbiome, it makes more friendly microbiome. And I’ve written about before how, for instance, yoga changes the microbiome for the better and walking changes the microbiome. This plays right into where my head gets is we know that bacteria actually enjoy vibration.
Peter Simonson:
Yeah. I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but I wanted to thank you for the paper you sent because I’m going to toot your horn here for a minute because I have met trained or introduced technology to literally thousands of doctors around the world. That’s what I did. I worked with neurosurgeons, spine surgeons, that sort of thing. And I really enjoyed when we first met and chatted your level of questions and depth and follow up. And I applaud you on that because I could almost have predicted it, but yes, I see it firsthand.
Paper you sent me was on a mouse study, and they were putting mice on vibration and looking at the changes. And I’ll try to go from memory, but some of them were actually pretty remarkable. Now, your first one is microbiome. Let me try to address that in my engineer terms. I am not a biologist, but this is the way it goes. Cells don’t really have a lot of mobility on their own. They have to go with the flow, so to speak. When they come in contact with other cells, they communicate chemically and electronically and that sort of thing. That’s how they get a lot of their work done. And so a micro-impact or environment, one of the benefits of exercise is it’s an impact loading to shuffle the deck a little bit and they can get their homework done. And it’s called stochastic encounters. Basically it shakes them up. We can’t predict everything, but we know the outcome. They get their interchanges done, bam.
The second thing is constubation. I have a great interview on one of our channels from a doctorate of physical therapy, and she was treating elderly patients on extreme constipation measures. I’m talking the meds and literally having to get enemas once a week. And she’s putting them on Juvents, they’re coming in going, “Oh my God, I had a complete elimination.” From a microbiome standpoint, again, keep it moving, the dynamic portion of it.
One of the other things that paper brought out, which I just found jaw-dropping, is reduction of inflammation. But it was based off the haemopoietics. Haemopoietics, just for our audience, it’s basically the stem cells the bone makes are call liquids and solids. Let’s call it blood and bones and guts if that makes sense. But we’ve known for a long time the mesenchymal cells that are structural down-regulate inflammation. And that’s one of the reasons we think people with joint pain generally see a relief over a period of time. You look at all the itises, arthritis. There’s five types, and they all have an itis, and itis means inflammation.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Correct.
Peter Simonson:
If the body can down-regulate the inflammation, then you’ve got a win. I didn’t realize that the haemopoietics or the blood cells were doing the same thing. And that is very interesting. And that could explain some patients reporting a huge improvement in blood pressure management. And I don’t know. That’ll be a fun one to look at. It’s way beyond my pay grade. But your paper was the first one I saw that really opened that up. And that’s fascinating. And that’s where it starts, the animal studies.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
What usually happens in mice or even flatworms is reproducible in higher mammals like rhesus monkeys and usually translates pretty doggone good to humans. There are exceptions, but it’s a great place to start.
Peter Simonson:
Absolutely.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
I think the take-home message from me is even though it doesn’t seem like much is happening, there’s a lot happening. And again, the research papers and the technology on this is, it’s not just the thing that just shaking you a little bit. Now, one of the things when we talked, I said, “I am just standing there. Can I be doing something?” And you guys were nice enough to send me a cable to stretch and pull on, and I’m actually having a good time with that. You can adapt this to do exercises while standing on it.
Peter Simonson:
Yes. Ironically, or interestingly enough, we want people to, while they’re on a Juvent, take advantage of how mild it is and do something. And when I say we have a 98% success rate, we do take unit platforms back. A lot of drama there, we take them back. Most of those have no usage. And one of the things we found is where you put it in the house, because 20 minutes is a lot. That’s two and a half hours a week. We suggest you put it in the kitchen and do something: read, exercise, surf the web, talk on the phone. But if I’m on the phone in my office, I’m on my Juvent. No one knows I’m on it; it’s that mild. And that way you kind of make use of that. You don’t need to put it in the gym or the middle of the room. The units GE white fits into most kitchens. It’s great.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Instead of walking treadmill desk, which quite frankly I can’t stand, but this sounds like a much better idea.
Peter Simonson:
Absolutely. Walking is magic. And a vitamin is a supplement, it’s not a replacement. I call this a vitamin exercise. And I actually coined a term that I’ve talked to many PhDs, MDs, they all agree with me. And it’s like vitakin. What does that mean? Well, vitamin was originally a vital amino. It turned out not to be an amino, but the name stuck. I realized new science needs new words, and this is a vital kinetic. Let’s call it what it is, a vitakin. And you know what? It won’t be the first. That term, I don’t want to call it a specific the vitakin, it’s a vitakin. Because as we learn more about mechanotherapy, we’re going to find… An MD PhD from Harvard… I’m quoting him. I can’t remember his name. I apologize. But he said, “When we understand mechanotherapy, it will be as significant as surgery was 100 years ago.” And we need to name it what it is. It’s a vitakin. Let’s call it what it is. And that’s something we need… It’s the same dosing traits as a chemical vitamin, it’s just mechanical.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
I warned you that we always have an audience question. This one comes from @WonderLushDiary from X, asks, “I have a power plate, which I love. Why on earth would I switch to Juvent?” There’s a good lead in.
Peter Simonson:
There you go. In a word, safety. A high energy plate [inaudible 00:42:03].
Dr. Steven Gundry:
There are many.
Peter Simonson:
They can be effective, they can be convenient, but that doesn’t mean they’re safe. There’s a chart, maybe we’ll pull it up on the screen, of there’s an entire body of science of vibration safety. Doctors don’t look at it. That doesn’t mean it’s not a sophisticated body of science. And in this chart, they’ve given engineers a quick, handy chart to find out what’s safe. On this chart, I put a line that shows Juvent. And if you look at the safety range, let’s call this safe about here, that’s right where Juvent is. These high energy plates are literally off the chart. The chart doesn’t even consider it a topic.
I’ve consulted, and I’m working with some of the world experts in occupational safety hazard. When I describe to them what we need to demonstrate, these high energy plates, they literally universally say, “You’ve got to be kidding. People stand on that? I wouldn’t allow any factory setting to even allow that for a minute.” And it’s interesting, you see on these high energy plates, they’re CYA-ing, in my opinion, these dangers. Actually in the fine print say, “Don’t stand on it.” That high energy system would really have an application of extremities where you’re putting this on it and not putting your brain or head or spinal cord. Because in the literature, as we predicted, and unfortunately it’s coming true, there’s already cases of a white paper. A white paper for the audience, it’s basically a study of one. It’s where a doctor will just document one patient and for the others to see. It’s not conclusive, but it’s a white paper. And for every white paper, there’s probably 1,000 patients that didn’t get a white paper.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Right, right. Case report.
Peter Simonson:
And so yeah. But there’s cases of detached retinas and vascular injury in the brain. Now, most brain injuries, TBIs, traumatic brain injuries are not symptomatic at the time of the injury. This is why football players have symptoms way late. The levels of energy on these high energy plates are well within TBI parameters. When I’m saying they’re not safe, I mean it. And there’s going to be studies coming out on this. And so what we tell people is when they get a Juvent, they’ll get on it and see Juvent is effective. It’s not quite as remarkable, but it’s all three” safe, convenient, and effective. Does that make sense?
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Well, yeah. Yeah.
Peter Simonson:
That’s right. That’s really the difference. Now, to say is the high-energy plate not effective? No, it is. Actually, the bone loves it. The bone can take that. And I equate it to drinking polluted water. Listen, if I drink pond water, it will cure my thirst. I can say this cures thirst. But I’m not really telling the full story. The body has to deal with the toxic effects of the water. Well, same thing with high-energy vibration. The bone loves it, the rest of the body hates it. That would be the key difference.
Dr. Steven Gundry:
Great way to summarize it. Thank you very much. And is that why there used to be… There was a trend early 2000s where these… And I’ll just use the name since they mentioned it, all these power plate centers sprung up where you pretty much all gone out of business as far as I can tell.
Peter Simonson:
Yeah. What’s interesting is we in a lot of physical therapy clinics. And what happens there is patients who come in for physical therapy, they’ll augment their normal treatment with Juvent. We don’t tell people to do this or that, we say, “This and that.” That make sense? And then reevaluate it. But they’ll use it for eight weeks, which is the typical PT visit. And after the eight weeks, they’ll go, “I came in here for my knee, but all these other things are doing better.” And then they’ll regularly doing it, so the PT clinics have adopted Juvents for that model.
Speaker 1:
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast. If you did, please share this with family and friends. You never know how one of these health tips can completely transform someone’s life when you take the time to share it with them. There’s also the Dr. Gundry Podcast YouTube channel where we have tens of thousands of free health insights that can help you and your loved ones live a long, vital life. Let’s do this together.
