Supercharge your Mental and Digestive Health via the Vagus Nerve
me&my health up podcast episode #36 – Transcript
Anthony Hartcher 0:00
Welcome to another insightful episode of me&my Health Up. The purpose of this podcast is to enhance and enlighten the well being of others. I’m your host Anthony Hartcher. I’m a clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist.
This episode is on supercharging mental and digestive health with one of Sydney’s most eligible bachelor’s, Samuel Minkin. How you doing, mate?
SAMUEL MINKIN 0:24
Yeah, really good. Real pleasure to come to the podcast today.
Anthony Hartcher 0:28
Great to have you on. Sam specialises in muscular-skeletal therapy. He’s one of very few practitioners who uses a non-invasive technique that stimulates the vagus nerve.
It’s a modern medicine technique, which he sees commonly treating signs and symptoms of depression, anxiety, neuroplasticity, inflammatory disorders, irregular heartbeat, PTSD, reflux, and much more. So we’re going to chat a lot more about this and what work he does around the vagus nerve.
Samuel is also one of the very few experts in his field that is trained in photo bio modulation, an exciting field of modern medicine that can regenerate tissue. So Sam’s cutting edge therapist in the muscular-skeletal space. So Sam and tell us a little bit more about yourself.
SAMUEL MINKIN 1:27
So basically, I’m a musculoskeletal therapist, I first started, I first started as a personal trainer. I did a Diploma of fitness where I was working with clients with moderate risk, whether it be cardiorespiratory diseases, neurological diseases, and musculoskeletal conditions. And through that, I found it very interesting, I really liked the musculoskeletal side and somewhere along the way, I just, I ended up working in sports medicine.
So I was the person who would run out into the field and I’d be holding people’s legs together, they’d snap their leg in half, I’d be holding their neck trying to control bleeding, I did this for about eight years. About halfway through my sports medicine career, I met another sports medicine practitioner who was telling me about musculoskeletal therapy degree, ultimate interesting, and he sort of explained how it not only looks at the musculoskeletal system, but also assesses things like biochemistry in the body, you know, like lifestyle, how the sleep affects pain.
That’s, that sounds great. I went to the open day and when I went to the open, I was just blown away by how in depth it was. It was very evidence based, and it just made sense. So I decided to do that. It wasn’t until my very last year, the degree that it just clicked and I was like, this is what I want to do and I fully fell in love with the profession, and what I was able to do and the information I had learned.
So if you fast forward a bit are working in clinical practice as a musculoskeletal therapist, I started to notice that a lot of people with chronic pain had other comorbidities, you know, things like major depressive disorder. I knew from neuroscience was that people’s chronic pain causes their depression, but their depression increases their pain, and then their pain increases their depression. And this has big snowball effect.
That made sense to me as the clinician, that if I’m, if I’m there to help treat someone’s chronic pain, and I know that their depression is also increasing their pain, and it’s probably something I need to look into and try and address. So this is how I found out about the vagus nerve. So, for those of you who don’t know, the vagus nerve is a nerve that essentially gets turned off by stress. And when people are in stressful situations, a lot of the time, this plays a large role in the exacerbation of the signs and symptoms.
Anthony Hartcher 4:03
And so what does what function does the vagus nerve facilitate within us.
SAMUEL MINKIN 4:10
So basically, the vagus nerve is the 10th cranial nerve, and it actually exits the cranium, so it comes outside of the skull. Now the word vagus comes from the Latin word Wandering, and it’s because this nerve quite literally wanders down and throughout our body, particularly to all our vital organs. So 80% of the vagus nerve is sensory. So what it’s doing is it’s perceiving information, it’s informing the brain, then the brain is then making an appropriate change, so that the body can stay in a state of equilibrium.
Now, what is a major and grow the vagus nerve is regulating your stomach acid? So if you’ve got too much stomach acid, it’s going to pick that up to inform the brain and then what we’re going to have is a reduction stop acid because it’s the appropriate outcome. But it’s also doing is it’s regulating peristalsis.
So, I mean, you’ve got a byproduct or still in, in the intestines to regulate the speed of peristalsis. So, you know, if it’s too fast, well, we’re going to have diarrhea, it’s too slow, we’re going to have constipation, but what I think is quite interesting is it’s, it’s actually mediating histamine. So, if you think about when you have a high fever, and you take an antihistamine that alleviates the symptoms of that sensitivity, the vagus nerve is mediating histamine within the body, particularly in the duodenal.
It just makes sense that when this thing isn’t working, and the vagus isn’t working, now we can have issues with our histamine regulation, we have issues with our our digestive system, whether it be reflux or low stomach acid, or maybe we’re constipated. And it’s just, it’s just a fascinating nerve, particularly for its ability to regulate the inflammation in our bodies systemically. So it’s just it’s got so many profound effects, and we’ll get into a lot today.
Anthony Hartcher 6:12
Absoloutly I’m very excited, because chronic stress is something I see commonly with my clientele. And I’m sure you do, too, you know, with the society we live in. And plus, given the situation, you know, we’re still currently in but you know, the whole COVID situation is only exacerbated stress for some people.
So, yeah, that fight or flight response is certainly amped and, yeah, I’m really fascinated with this, in terms of, you know, you obviously work with it from a sort of the mechanical point of view, whether that’s the right terminology on the show, but you can correct me, how can listeners help switch on or activate their vagus nerve?
Like, what can listeners do in order to, you know, you mentioned it proves digestion, it helps reduce inflammation helps mediate histamine. So are there any tips you can provide in terms of what they can do, in order to keep it well toned, or active?
SAMUEL MINKIN 7:20
One of the I suppose the first thing that comes to mind is stress management. Why many just stress now, if there’s something that we know is going to be stressful, working out ways for that not to be as daunting, so it’s not so confronting, that doesn’t really stress us out.That’s mainly because the vagus nerve is the main power sympathetic nerve in the body and what you’ll know is that you’ve got your sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight and flight, nervous system. And this is when we’re feeling quite stressed, quite anxious.
It’s because the sympathetic nervous system is a system that is there in place in the event that we are getting chased by a tiger and we need to run away from this tiger to basically conserve our life. Or it’s also there, if we feel like we can’t want to lay we need to defend ourselves need to somehow wrestle the tiger, it’s there to help us with this, it’s, it’s a really great system, it’s important, but it’s only needed in those sort of life threatening moments.
The problem is, there are people and a lot of people who aren’t necessarily in those situations, but their body feels like it’s appropriate to have that response. And this isn’t good. This is where we we get really rundown, you know, we have chronic stress, we know just falls into like chronic fatigue, and our body just starts to fall apart because it can’t stay in that system forever. It’s only there for short bursts.
Now, what all that means is your sympathetic nervous system turns off your parasympathetic nervous system. It’s kind of like a seesaw. So you’re feeling stressed, you’re feeling relaxed, you can’t do both at the same time. So sympathetic nervous systems turning off parasympathetic.
The parasympathetic quite literally is your vagus nerve. So things like stress, turning the vagus nerve off. And what’s interesting is, they found clinically at three weeks or more of stress, something occurs in the body called gene transcription, the body starts inserting what’s called inhibitory receptors along the vagus nerve and all these inhibitory receptors can see messages of inhibition because the way receptors sort of work is like a lock and key.
So if you’ve got a triangular shaped receptor, it’s only going to accept triangular shaped shapes. So if you’ve got a whole bunch of off receptors, it’s only going to perceive of signals and what this whole process that occurs due to the chronic stress means is that we get stuck in a sympathetic state and even when we’re not in that running from a tiger situation, maybe we’re at the beach with our family, maybe we’re just taking a nice drive to work, we feel quite overwhelmed, we’re quite stressed, we’re very reactive. We also can, we can just respond, we just respond in ways that are really our true selves that can really stress us out as well.
Anthony Hartcher 10:30
Yeah, I’m fascinated with how you said it’s chronically, you know, switched on or chronically activated. And, you know, you need the right shape in order to turn it off, so to speak. It like and you mentioned that, you know, stress management is key, you know, to help the vagus nerve in its function.
So, if someone has been chronically stressed for three weeks, and, you know, it’s that vagus nerve is switched off, is there any way stress management can help them get it active again? Or is it something where you do need a bit of support? And we’ll get into what you do with the vagus nerve? But is what are you seeing with your clients, if it’s, you know, if they have very low vagal tone.
SAMUEL MINKIN 11:25
With regards to that. So you primarily, you’re trying to reduce your stresses, but there’s other exercises we can do to actually utilise the motor output to the vagus nerve. So, as I said, previously, the 80% of the vagus nerve is sensory. Then there’s the rest of the percentage, which is motor, so it has the ability to do contract all things. So the vagus nerve actually supplies the uvula. So it’s the dangly thing in your throat, and the soft palate, and the actual elevating of that.
You might have been to the doctor before and they put up like sticking them out their tongue, tongue depressor, they get you to go, ah, now what they’re actually looking for is the lifting of the uvula. Now, that’s something I also assess clinically, to get an idea of where someone’s based and status is. So what that means is, if you can voluntarily contract it, you can exercise it and the way we do it is our goggling. So just gargling water, and trying to accumulate two minutes of a morning, two minutes at lunch, in two minutes in the afternoon or night. You don’t have to do two minutes in one go. It’s quite hard.
A lot of my patients are who don’t realise that they’ve got issues with gargling can only go for five or six seconds, and have to spit it out. Like, it’s really hard. They might even find that they don’t have the strength to gargle. They never realised. And they, they get the water travelling down their throat, they can’t actually occlude the back of their throat because they’ve got so such low vagal tone is such low strength, that when they do try and goggle, it doesn’t stay there it goes in their throat, they’re coughing, and that’s actually quite a severe symptom.
Other symptoms are things like they drink water, if it starts coming up their nose, they it just kind of cluded correctly. I had another patient who I asked him that, you know, does water come in? He knows if you vagal nerve test, I was like, I’m a bit unsure. Like, it’s definitely a vagus nerve issue.
Then he said, Oh, we can’t swim. Why can’t you swim? He said, Well, as soon as I go on the water, the water pushes straight through my nostrils down my throat, I can’t include that. And I’m like, well, they go and he had quite severe digestive issues, but mainly exercises like gardening. That’s pretty good for digestive complaints.
But there’s another exercise that is a bit better for now if you’re feeling stressed, or bringing you into more of a parasympathetic state, and it’s called Emilian divers reflex. So Emilian divers reflex, the reflex they first noted in dolphins, as they breach the water as they come back into the water, the cold water pressure longness snout and face, what happens is it drops their heart rate quite low so they can conserve their oxygen, the sound of water longer. Scientists then realise Well, you know, us as humans are also mammals and we also have the same reflex.
So the way we would do it is we would get a bowl of ice water would submerge your face in it and just for 20 seconds, and come out have a bit of a breather. When you’re ready. Do that again. And you want to do that four to six times. And what you’ll notice is that your heart rate will go up by about 10 beats a minute initially, which will drop by a beat every second, and to it comes down to about 42.
If you’re feeling quite anxious or you’re feeling like you may be on the verge of having a panic attack. If you can bring your heart rate down to 42 beats a minute. You’re feeling Quiet relax, you’re feeling a lot more in control and this works via the vagus nerve, of course.
Anthony Hartcher 15:06
So be a great tip for public speakers to have an ice bath handy and to do a few dunks and you know, really calm themselves and get them in the zone. Yeah, so a lot of great tips like the gargling the ice, the cold water on your face, and that cold water on the face is, you know, something that people have. It’s like a bit of like an old wives tale in order to wake you up. But, you know, I guess that more severe way of doing with ice, for example, then takes you into that more relaxed state.
Yeah, great. I really enjoyed those tips. Now, in terms of the work you do with the vagus nerve, obviously, you shared some tips that the clients can do and, you know, in terms of, well, first of all, how you assess it to see whether they have good vagal tone. And then secondly, some take home exercises, what they can do at home, what do you do in clinic to support people with low vagal tone?
SAMUEL MINKIN 16:08
Okay, so after they come in for a consult, and I do my assessment, I actually ascertain in the consultation, whether it’s the left or right vagus nerve issue, you’ve got two vagus nerves, one either side of your neck, your left side is controlling digestion, your right side is more the rhythm of the heart and more correlated with mental health stuff, like issues with sleep issues with anxiety.
Through the assessment, I’ll work out which side needs more help. And then dependent on that I use something called a transcutaneous, auricular, vagus nerve stimulating machine that I’ve actually built and programmed, it actually looks like this. So this machine I’ve got here, I’ve got these clips and I put these clips on the ears, and I put them in a particular part of the ear, where the skin supply is innovated by the vagus nerve. Now once I’ve done that, I’ll select a particular frequency or treatment protocol that’s appropriate to their condition.
With vagus nerve stimulation, non-invasively, there is a variety of different frequencies, and they do completely different things. For instance, let’s say I’ve got a patient with, let’s say, they’ve got really low peristaltic activity, and they’re feeling quite constipated. Oh, I’ll get my stethoscope and I’ll have a listen to that lafc Call valve. So I listened to the quality of sound, the frequency of sounds, and then I’ll put the stimulation on and I’ll put it on a particular frequency that I know works for digestion, particularly peristalsis. I’ll give them a couple of minutes and I’ll just start to monitor it. And what I begin to notice usually around the eight to 10 minute mark, is that there’s an increase in sounds.
It really does depend on the condition to what frequency I use, but that’s primarily what I’m doing. I’m also assessing whether mechanically the vagus nerve has been irritated or damaged. A lot of the time this happens from things like a whiplash injury. So people involved in whiplash injury or anything in the sort of Upper Cervical.
Now nerves, you should be able to touch and palpate nerves without it being painful and if you do touch nerves, and palpate nerves may feel bruised and very sensitive. This is a no, this isn’t a normal finding and it indicates that that nerve itself is irritated.
So palpate, the vagus nerve on both sides and a lot of the time if they’ve been involved in whiplash injury throughout the vagus nerve, and I’m palpating, it feels quite tender. It might just be one side that’s tender and more often than not, the side that’s tender matches up to the symptoms that they’re reporting. So palpating, the left side, they’re reporting things like reflux, they’re reporting things like bloating, a lot of you know, food sensitivities.
But if it’s their right side, it’s more tender they explained to me that they’re having issues, getting to sleep staying asleep, they’ve got issues with anxiety, issues with depression.
Anthony Hartcher 19:16
Okay, so once you ascertain whether it’s left or right, how does it change the course of how you work with the client?
SAMUEL MINKIN 19:25
Okay, so whether it’s left or right, I’ll still do, I’ll still do our summation on both ears, just because it’s better to one of the time one side of the vagus nerve needs more support than the other, but that other side still needs a bit of support. So what happens is when I’m doing the stimulation with the machine, I’ve got some numbers on here. As I’m turning it up, those numbers represent the intensity and basically, the higher the intensity that I have to have the machine that indicates that the skin is less sensitive, and it’s not very, it’s not very good at picking up messages.
Now, if we remember that the skin supplies supply with the vagus nerve, then if the number is higher, it means that it’s it’s not perceiving sensation very well. So all the time I’ll find someone and their right ear, they’ll be suffering from anxiety, depression, their right ear will be a 12. And that’s just intensity, and their left ear will be something like 8. Well, 8 is still a very high number, and I should be expecting numbers around 4. So I still treat both sides. And it’s just to treat both sides. Really? Because you’ve got them there. You might as well treat both sides.
Anthony Hartcher 20:43
Yeah, totally understand. And I think listeners will be thinking and viewers at the moment is, you know, is this something that’s as much as it’s non-invasive? You know, but it’s electrical signal? Is it painful? Or is it does it create any tingling sensation? What would clients experience with the, with the Yeah,
SAMUEL MINKIN 21:05
So what they found is that when you’re doing the vagus nerve stimulation on the ears, it doesn’t have to be high. In fact, they did. They’ve done a few studies where they turn the machine up to where the person feels it and then they just turned down enough that they just can’t feel it and had the same effect. So it’s to get the same result.
However, when they were doing treatments for stroke, stroke, rehabilitation, FN, having a bit higher a higher intensity, and coupling that with a desired movement in which they may be having trouble with had better effects for motor recruitment. But treating things like anxiety, depression, treat things like digestive issues, no, it just, it feels like a mild buzz, you can always feel like the ears vibrating. Or a lot of people said it feels like the clips falling off. But it’s not. So it’s not a painful thing.
Research first began on Vega sim stimulation back in 1987. Since the research first began, there’s been no adverse effects, or basically side effects from the stimulation. The only thing they found in very rare cases was some people’s voice became a little bit more hoarse that day but it does dissipate by the end of the day, but with no negative outcome.
It’s a very safe therapy, it very easily sorts of administered onto a person. And there really isn’t any contraindications to use. Apart from if you do have a pacemaker, it’s recommended that you just run it past a cardiologist first. More often than not, there isn’t going to be an issue but it’s just always good to mention any new therapies, particularly anything like electrical to a cardiologist if you do your pacemaker.
Anthony Hartcher 23:03
Excellent point, just on the therapy, and I know, it’s going to be a bit of a case-by-case basis. But you mentioned that client that came to see you with constipation, and you’re able to improve their peristalsis, pretty much after, I think you mentioned was at eight seconds or, you know, applying the vagus nerve machine.
So you can get quite immediate effects in terms of, you know, whether it be digestive issues, some of these more chronic conditions, such as generalised anxiety disorder, you know, severe depression, PTSD, help, you know, roughly maybe share some client success stories in a while, sure answer.
SAMUEL MINKIN 23:54
Might be, might be quite surprising, but it’s pretty quick, the therapy works quite quick. So in regards to anxiety, I find that people feel less anxious and very relaxed, about 12 minutes into the therapy. Now, the duration of the benefit depends on the level of vagal tone.
Let’s say that you’ve got a very low vagal tone, I do vagus nerve stimulation to really bring you into parasympathetic. Know, during the treatment itself, you’ll feel you feel quite relaxed about 12 minutes in and onwards and, you know, made last rest of that day and then the next day, you might find that I’m starting to feel a little bit, a little bit anxious again. But then the next time you do the therapy, because you’re not starting from this level of vagal tone, you’re starting from here, it lasts longer. So then it’s like, oh, I’m actually getting two or three days relief.
Now in all honesty when I’m seeing patients with anxiety, general generally I it’s a whole week of relief the first time I treat them, the only variable cases that, you know, people who are very highly triggered know quite a lot about PTSD, where they’re only getting one to two days benefit, the first time they get the stimulation.
The second time, it’s increasing, because it’s just it the same effects carry over into digestive system. Now, we might find that someone who has had constipation for 25 years, and basically, you know, they’re on really high prescription laxatives, and they can’t really go further than what they are on, they’ll find that, you know, they’ll have increased bowel motions for about a day and a half the first time and then the next time they come in last a bit longer.
What we’re looking for in the therapy is that with every time I do the stimulation, is the duration increasing, or is the quality of the improvement increasing as well. So it usually takes about that. So there’s, it’s really just valuable time, it’s about getting the tone of the nerve up, because this isn’t the therapy that you need to do for the rest of your life.
What it is, is you’ve got a nerve that’s been inhibited and has very low function, and you’re doing a light electrical current on the skin, just to sort of boost its activity and once the activity the vagus nerve base increases to an adequate level, you know, it’s really about momentum, it’ll continue to go but you’re just essentially trying to jumpstart it and just get it working. Once it starts to perceive things, it gets stronger.
So just like chronic stress, which inhibits the vagus nerve causes inhibitory receptors to form and then the nerve gets sort of turned off more often than not, if you start to excite the nerve more, then you start to get more excitatory receptors in the vagus nerve find easier to turn on just needs sort of consistent level of tone, and then changes occur, and then it starts to work.
Anthony Hartcher 27:00
In the worst case, you know, like in terms of most severe damage, or most severe downregulated, Vegas time that you’ve come across, how long did that client, you know, waiting, like is how many, you know, treatments that they have per week, and roughly what duration were you working with them until you really got to that real consistent stage where they were off on their own, you know, being able to function without, you know, constant support.
SAMUEL MINKIN 27:29
All depends if we’re talking about vagus nerve trauma damage as a result of food poisoning. Or we’re talking about in relation to that, say, a thyroidectomy, where they removing the thyroid, and there’s a complication, whether it be the clip, the vagus nerve, or the dissected it accidentally. It really does depend, because you’ve got two legs as even if they do cut one of the nerves, there has to be across there, because we’re still seeing benefits of the opposing side.
Really a lot, of people I see it’s twice a week for the first two weeks and that’s just a really think that’s a really good way of so if you get the vagal tone up and if it does start to drop off, after two or three days, you’re there to meet again with some stimulation and once you do that for two weeks, it’s you’re already seeing the benefits and the effects of it within the two weeks and that’s what you want to do. We want to see that the therapy works first that we gain the benefits, and then we can spread out to once a week. But let’s say worst case scenario.
I had a patient who, for six months, she was only able to get an hour and a half of sleep a night. Now it she literally had psychosis. She she enlisted the help of a few other health practitioners. And they declined just because she was a very unstable person. It was difficult, you know, probably she had had such sleep deprivation that she couldn’t tell the difference between being awake and being asleep. I recommended to her that she come to see me every day for a week and I we did the simulation and at the end of that week, she was getting five hours of sleep a night and by sort of two and a half weeks in we’re hitting the seven hours a week of sleep.
Once she started sleeping, she started actually having all these she started sort of looking back on how she behaved and events that happen and she was quite shocked that she couldn’t see a problem with what had happened and how she’d got in a particular sort of state of mind and even on this particular patient, for instance, had she was involved in a sexual harassment case at work and it essentially was because she was so sleep deprived.
She was inviting one of our colleagues over for wine they were hanging out a lot and she didn’t see that as a problem and it might not have been a problem. But then she was also sort of the cuddle up on the couch. And she didn’t, she honestly couldn’t see how cuddling up and having wine with a colleague may have made him think that she might be interested in there might be relationship forming.
Nothing of any sexual assault occurred but he did, I did make a move and it was like, you know, he noticed when you’re going in for a kiss, and she declined, and she wasn’t sure how weeks of hanging out had evolved into that and just because she really couldn’t tell her appropriateness of situations was quite far gone. She was very high strung, extremely stressed and then when she started sleeping, she started realising like, ah, like, yeah, it’s it, this is what I could help people, because the other people who they honestly just need to be to help.
And you know, if they’re trying to get help, and people won’t help them, how they supposed to get that up. I think every patient’s got the right to health care, without judgement, and no, people, no one wants to be sick. Everyone wants to be well.
Anthony Hartcher 31:11
That’s a really great success story. So well done and, sure, the clients so happy, I was just thinking in relation, because you’ve worked with Olympians and you know, high performing athletes. So you’ve done a lot of work with them, you understand the training intensity, they’re under the workload, their aspirations, and their, you know, just do anything to achieve, I guess, their ultimate dream.
I was thinking from a physiological point of view, that their body would be in chronic stress, you know, from the training load and I’ve just thought how you work with athletes from this point of view to really help maximise their recovery, because at the start, you mentioned that, you know, by stimulating the vagus nerve helps with lowering inflammation, helps with digestion.
So, therefore, it helps with the simulation and nutrients, can lower heart rates, I can see it being really good for recovery. So just for those endurance athletes out there that are listening, watching, how do you work with them, in terms of enhancing, I guess, their recovery between sessions and ultimately helping them achieve their dream?
SAMUEL MINKIN 32:25
Well, what I tend to see with these professional athletes is that when they do come to me, they’ve got an injury, whether it be an ankle sprain, but they are not recovering from this ankle sprain. You know, it’s, it’s, you know, sort of a grade one sprain and that month and a half onwards, they’re still having quite a lot of pain, it’s not really healing. If we bring it back to the role of comparison, thickness, and all that resting, digesting it, also recovering and healing.
So when someone has an injury of a sporting nature, if they’re stuck in a sympathetic state, their body doesn’t try and repair the injury. They don’t, they don’t recover from things. And it comes back to the same situation where prioritise if you’re running from a tiger, your body won’t prioritise, trying to recover ligament in that particular instance, because it’s trying to get away from a target to save its life.
If your body is not prioritising a ligament sprain or Roquette, a rotator cuff tear, then it won’t, and you see these quite minor or even significant injuries that take much longer duration. And any sort of professional athlete can appreciate every day away from training really is it every day off is like three days off. So when you have two weeks off, you’ve actually had three weeks off.
You know you as fast as you can get back into back into training, it’s most important. That’s why I have had I’ve had, I had a gymnastics athlete who needed to compete in China, and they had to compete in three weeks and then they’re battling this ankle injury that they’ve had for ages and just talking to them taking case history. They’re highly stressed. They’ve been highly stressed.
It’s not just this sport that had had them stressed now they had had other family stuff going on that stressing them out says okay, well, first and foremost, we need to bring you into parasympathetic and then we’ll order reporting that they weren’t sleeping very well and think well, you know if you’re not sleeping, how is your body getting a chance to do anything?
So I did some bags of stimulation. I also use some other mechanical stuff like a laser in photo boy modulation, to the ligament to the nerve supply that supplies the ligament, but then also the lymphatic system trying to help with this swelling. It was still laying there.
Anthony Hartcher 34:54
And I’m thinking there’s athletes out there that thinking yeah, okay, I can come and see you if I’m injured. Have you come across any studies in relation to this? If athletes were to see you on that preventative and you know, seeking optimal recovery so that they can train more and get ahead of their competition? So is there any studies that you’ve seen in terms of accelerating recovery between training sessions?
SAMUEL MINKIN 35:21
Would only be in regards to regulating inflammation? Yeah, so um guys to regulate the inflammation, Vagus nerve, if we were carried over into photo bio modulation, which is otherwise known as laser, no, there are things you can do like leaving the bone marrow in the TV is in the sternum. They found that doing further bone modulation to the bone marrow, spikes, mesenchymal stem cell production by 500%.
So when you put these circulating stem cells and they’re finding things that need to recover, they sort of just like, Yep, there we go, and they start recovering things. That is cardiorespiratory endurance, they found that doing laser, or sublingually, under the tongue, increase cardiorespiratory endurance by 30%. So there’s a lot of sort of ways that we can sort of hack the body and support it to performance test.
Anthony Hartcher 36:18
Fantastic, I think he will have a separate episode on the photo bio modulation or the laser therapy, because, you know, you, you’ve got so much wealth of knowledge, and I’m sure there’s lots to share on that topic in itself. So we’ll certainly leave that for another time.
But yeah, I’m sure there’s listeners out there and people watching this video that are really keen to say, well, how can I connect with Sam, you know, like to use your services? How can people reach out and connect with you?
SAMUEL MINKIN 36:50
It is right here. I’ve got a website, which is www.recuperatehealthandwellbeing.com.
Anthony Hartcher 37:08
And I’ll, I’ll include it in the show notes. So yeah, a direct link so they can connect with you. Or just on a more lighter note, I know you have a real fun side. You know you love skateboarding. You love being near the beach swimming snorkelling. You recently competed in the channel 10s Bachelor episodes, and I’m sure there’s probably some listeners and viewers that saw you there.
Just give us some insight of what it’s like to be I guess, in a situation where you with others, your site a bit of a competition, so to speak, to, to win the heart of a lady. How was it? And was it because you know, people I’ve heard that have done things like the block and stuff like that find it exhausting, because of the load or stress, they put your hand out just because they want to bring out the emotion.
They want to actually get you into that fight or flight. And so that you become really emotional and, and that’s entertaining on TV. Supposedly, that’s a Yeah, tell us what it’s like.
SAMUEL MINKIN 38:13
Oh, luckily enough for myself actually brought Vaguss eMachine with me. So due to this year, there being a COVID 19. We had to do like isolation. So I didn’t see anyone who stuck in basically an apartment. And in that period, I was doing vagus nerve stimulation, I was meditating. You know, I was making sure that when I was cooking, I was getting good food because I wanted to make sure that I was a bit nervous.
I thought like, honestly, I haven’t hadn’t seen the show too much. So I know what to expect, I kind of went into it a bit blind. And what I didn’t know is that I was going to be getting out of the limousine walking down a red carpet, and then there’ll be a girl there who I would great and potentially form very strong bond with. So I wasn’t sure how I was gonna go. So it’s doing stimulation in preparation for that.
How was it? Well, I got out of the limousine there were two girls. So that was just that just spun me I wasn’t sure what to do. But how do I find it like it is it can be quite difficult because there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of energy now there was you know, 20 or so other guys fighting for these girls hearts and all different personalities.
So it did take a bit of energy and I can guarantee you aren’t you are quite tired at the end of each day and but I did I can attribute a lot of my emotional regulation and my preparation to doing the vagus nerve stimulation, but it was very fun. I had a really good time. The girls are really nice girls. And I wish them all the best. I’m so happy that they’ve since found love and are enjoying their life at the moment and I’ll even make a lot of fellows now. A lot of the fellows on this show.
You’re talking a lot about you know, I’m from Bondi Few of the other guys were from Bondi and we got talking, you know, a lot of them have actually moved over here, we’ve got two people moved over from Perth and now they’re now living in what’s called the, the bachelor pad, which is my street. So I see the guys all the time.
Anthony Hartcher 40:15
That’s great that you developed such great mateship out of really competitive situation that could have been, you know, sort of a dog ate bone sort of animosity, but yeah, it’s great that you’ve bonded and become friends afterward and, and you had that competitive edge in terms of downregulating that stress and really bringing out the best in yourself in terms of executive function and clarity of thinking and, and just being relaxed.
I heard that you’re probably one of the most funniest on the show. So if for those that haven’t seen Sam, and he’s in his own, or he can watch it, I’m sure it’s on the channel. Yeah. 10 play here. So get under 10 play and watch. What series was it that you were in? I was in season six, season, season six, okay.
Awesome mate I really appreciate your time, your wealth of knowledge, your top of your game in this area. And yeah, I’d love to have you on for another episode, we can talk about photo bio modulation and really get into the depths of that. But you know, I really appreciate the time you’ve put aside and your busy practice to really help the listeners and viewers.
So thank you so much. And for the listeners. If you liked this episode, please share it amongst others that could also benefit as Sam mentioned at the start of the episode. Now people are suffering anxiety, chronic anxiety, depression, PTSD, digestive issues, chronic constipation, chronic sleeping disorders. These are all the things that Sam is the expert at and come to him get a second opinion and I know he gets great results with his clients. So well done, Sam, and thank you again.
SAMUEL MINKIN 42:04
Thank you. It’s a pleasure.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai