Anxiety, the Vagus Nerve & the Mental Health Revolution

Natalie Niddam interviews John Hacker, CEO of ZenBud, on the Longevity podcast.

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Natalie Niddam: 00:00Welcome to Longevity. I'm your host, Natalie Niddam. I'm a nutritionist, a human potential and epigenetic coach, and I created this podcast to bring you the latest ways to take control of your health and longevity. We cover it all, from new technology and ancestral health practices to personalized interventions and a very special interest of mine, peptides and bioregulators. Enjoy the show.

Natalie Niddam: 00:20Welcome back to the show everybody. Natalie Niddam, your host here. My guest today has the best last name to be in this industry: John Hacker. I mean... yeah, it's real. Now while his dad and brother hacked computers, John decided to hack something a little messier: the human mind. After growing up with severe OCD and watching anxiety rates explode worldwide, he became obsessed with one question: Why are we all stuck in fight or flight all the time, and what can we do about it? Find out how he managed to develop a tool that in studies resulted in 78% remission in moderate to severe anxiety. Now, you can check out the website also if you guys decide that this is something you simply must own, you can go to zenbud.health/nat and receive 15% off your purchase.

Natalie Niddam: 01:03Now, one more thing. I've created an amazing holiday gift guide for listeners, so you can get the best holiday deals on biohacking tools, supplements, and more. There are gifts in different price ranges and once-a-year price drops on your dream biohacks. You can always shop for yourself, right? So all you've got to do is go to natniddam.com/giftguide for my list of holiday deals and gift ideas.

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Natalie Niddam: 03:18John Hacker, welcome to the show! I'm just thrilled to have you here today.

John Hacker: 03:22Well, I'm thrilled to be here, to be honest Nat. It's been really great especially after we've had a lot of great conversations, I'm excited to do something in this format.

Natalie Niddam: 03:32Yeah, no 100%. Now I want to know, is that your actual last name?

John Hacker: 03:36Yes. Oh, born and raised a Hacker. And I'll share a little bit tidbit here. Ironically enough, both my brother and my father are computer scientists, I just took more of the bio angle as opposed to the computer angle.

Natalie Niddam: 03:49Wow, so it's like a family trait. At this point, you're all hackers. That's so cool. I mean, you couldn't have had a better handle. I mean, I guess John Vegas could have helped, but whatever. John Hacker's pretty good. So let's jump in. I mean, we're going to talk today, we're going to talk a lot about, you know, the state of stress and anxiety in the world right now and how it's affecting people. And so, you know, just to, you know, one of the things that you've said is that the mind is one of the few places left in medicine that has real potential for innovation. And that we're all pretty bad at managing our mental health. What got you there? Like, what personal experiences and insights kind of led you to dedicate your career to solving this problem?

John Hacker: 04:34Well, I'll say this, pretty much, and this is a pretty common thing for anyone that gets into the mental health space, is that we've all struggled with mental health at some point. In my particular case, I had severe OCD when I was a kid. And that honestly, it got me pretty close to the brink a number of times. And so one of the founding principles that I really worked towards is ensuring that no one else has to go through that. But right now, a lot of people, majority of people are going through things similar, they're going through anxiety, they have OCD, they're going through depression. And I just am completely flabbergasted by the lack of options that are really out there. And that's something that's really been a core principle to everything that I personally do and everything that we do at Zenbud as well. It's really liberating human consciousness wherever we can.

Natalie Niddam: 05:23I love it. I love it. So I mean, you know, as you just said, like anxiety levels today are literally off the charts. Like so, global anxiety and depression jumped 25% during the pandemic. And I would say that the state of the nation we're living in today is probably pretty close to that, if not, you know, certainly not going down.

John Hacker: 05:43Oh, it's going up. I mean like, it's consistently going up. Even post-pandemic. And I mean like the quarantine definitely didn't help with things and the health crisis and everyone's concerned with everything definitely makes this worse. Um, but there's also a lot of societal trends. This pandemic really sped up what was already happening to our mental health. Uh, there's a not nearly enough focus on rebalancing some of our systems. And when those get out of balance, which there's a lot of technology that does that, this is the kind of thing that it leads to.

Natalie Niddam: 06:14Yeah. So let's talk about what are what are the drivers? I mean, we can we can put the news into one batch, you know, politics, the news, state of the world, but what else is really driving like, you know, like I think 43% of Americans said that they are experiencing more anxiety today than they did a year ago. So what what do you think is contributing to this rise?

John Hacker: 06:36Attention is money to companies right now. Uh, that is the biggest thing. People want eyes on content for advertising purposes and for dollars. And when that happens, there's a couple ways you can get eyes on content, but all of them have to do with sympathetic activation in some fact form or format. This is in social media. This is also in the news and politics, which a lot of that is really trying to get eyes on things. This is in how we interact with pretty much all of our technology. Uh, and so you have these really, and let me explain what I mean when I say sympathetic. You really have these two systems. You have rest and digest, which is where you meant to be 99% of the time. And this is actually where the problem happens because it's far less than that for most people nowadays. And then you have fight or flight, which is meant to be really quick bursts. You need that energy, typically like imagine running away from a bear, or you almost wreck the car like 'oh!', you fight or flight, you get back in line. But the thing is is that the best way to get people's attention and consistently get that attention is activating that sympathetic response. So everyone has been, there's been billions and trillions of dollars spent in media type companies to figure out how to best increase sympathetic activation. And if and so it's not really surprising that we now have a lot of people with overactive sympathetic systems. That's the base core definition of what anxiety is. Um, so it's no real surprise that that's on the rise. And if you're anxious, you're more likely to be depressed. It really all comes back to that overactive sympathetic system. And there are other factors, but that's a really core one.

Natalie Niddam: 08:15Yeah. Well, and you know, I think what's what's also interesting is when you're constantly in a sympathetic state, which is you're in this fight or flight or you're or even if you're just hyper-vigilant, right? Like you're just, I think that the physiological downstream effects of that are are huge, right? And so you have people where cortisol levels are too high for too long, sometimes all the time. And that essentially, from a physiological perspective, puts you in what we would call a catabolic state, which is where your body can't build, it has to break down, because that's what cortisol does. And you know, and when we're in this world of how do we live longer and better, we're full on at cross purposes.

John Hacker: 08:55Oh, and we're living shorter and worse lives because of this sympathetic constant activation. Um, and like you're completely right. It breaks your body down over time. Because again, sympathetic is meant for short burst activation. You need it when you need to get to that highest performance round, but if you're in it all the time, your top end of what you can do in that sympathetic state goes down, and your ability to rest goes down as well. And that means you're just slowly breaking down. If you're gaining weight faster, part of that's probably that overactive sympathetic state because that cortisol will put on pounds. And if you're unable to lose weight, again, it may be time to start looking at mental health as one of the main factors that's causing that. And there's been plenty of studies talking about and looking at cortisol levels and sympathetic activation with regards to weight, with regards to quality of life, with regards to just simply ability to function. Um, and like there's there's more factors there, especially when it it's a very interesting correlation with weight gain, but there's a lot more factors there of just like it literally breaks down your body. And that's not something anyone really wants. Quite apart from anything else, it cranks up your blood sugar levels.

John Hacker: 10:04Yeah.

Natalie Niddam: 10:05Right? So your blood sugar levels are higher, that puts a higher oxidative stress on the system, that means that, and to your point, you're going to put on more weight, you're going to have more cravings, you're going to eat more. Like, you know, all of those tech and which is technically a way that we would turn to as a way to self-soothe. But it doesn't work. And then you try to go at it again. And the point that you made of not being able to rest. Not being able to ultimately switch off that sympathetic state so that we can get back into a parasympathetic state, which is where you need to be so you can sleep.

John Hacker: 10:43Yeah, so you can sleep and so you can exist. And more than just or rather so you can live as opposed to just exist. Um, and it it's really there's a lot of really interesting science behind this, but I suppose like the core thing for people to take away is that if you're constantly in a sympathetic state, you are going to be constantly in decline. It's like one day in a sympathetic state isn't going to kill you. But it's like a one percent decline every day. Eventually that that's just going to bring you into a worse and worse state. And it's really hard to get out of that because once you're in a sympathetic state based on and you encounter certain um, stimuli in your environment, your body will start to associate those stimuli with that sympathetic state. And so over time it becomes easier and easier to always be in sympathetic and harder and harder to go back into parasympathetic. And this is the reason why chronically anxious people become chronically anxious. Your body learns that that is great for survival. Because wow, you were able to find this resource that keeps you alive, food, water, shelter, etc. And you were in a sympathetic state. Clearly there was a reason for you to go into that sympathetic state. But in reality, there wasn't. Your body is just not used to how we interact with this tech environment, and there's a lot of companies trying to take advantage of people uh when it comes to attention. And so when you combine these things, you end up with a rather dystopian uh society we have at the present where people are, it's more profitable for large corporations to have people be constantly anxious. Um, and you end up having individuals that aren't able to escape this constant loop. It's it's really, really, uh, it's really sad actually.

Natalie Niddam: 12:23Yeah. Do you think we'll ever adapt? Like do you think I think that there's no doubt that at this stage of the game, the delivery of the news, social media, everything's coming in through electronics right now. Nobody has the, you know you don't sit and read a paper. And I and I'm old enough to say, I remember when I read a paper. Which is a different experience. You know, there's there's a tactile experience, there's turning of the page, there's there's a different pace to physically reading something off a sheet of paper than there is something with a blue light backing it up.

John Hacker: 12:57You have more time too. To encounter information and you encounter it on your own terms. You really don't do that with most digital media because that's not great for keeping your attention.

Natalie Niddam: 13:07Yeah.

John Hacker: 13:08I don't think that it is going to be very feasible for us to adapt biologically on this short of a timeframe. Realistically, if we just take a look at the scientific backing of how a species evolve, it's going to take us a much longer time to adapt our systems to this modern environment, more than we may actually really have if this problem continues to grow, which it by all things it's really looking like it's going to. Uh, and that's I will admit this up front, I'm a tech positive kind of guy. I think that technology is where the solution is uh in all of this. And it's a capability for us to adapt faster. Technology is the problem, it can also be the solution. Regardless though, I we do need to start taking a look at ways that we can in the now adapt to these stimuli. And there's a lot of habits that you can implement that are going to help with that. Um, but it's a lot of this attention grabbing things are addictive on purpose. Uh, and you have multi billions of dollars being spent to grab your attention and to have you fall into bad habits. So it's the incentives aren't really aligned for society to build out that way. Uh, but you know, there's definitely people that are working on it because, you know, wherever there's a problem, people will try to find a solution.

Natalie Niddam: 14:24What you're talking about, this the billions of dollars that have been spent towards keeping people in that sympathetic state so they're always reactive. It's it's actually similar, but it's newer, but it's similar to the big food industry creating hyper-palatable foods to keep us snacking.

John Hacker: 14:39Oh, yeah. Well, that's and that's the crazy thing. Our incentives are not for solving problems in a lot of our businesses. Our incentives are for growing by at least a six to 12% year over year so that your stockholders are happy. That system is built. Now, the problem is is that incentives don't always align with making shareholders happy and making society a better place. Uh, and that happens a lot. Now, you will have disruptors that come in and eventually unseat the types of companies that are no longer providing value, which hyper addictive substances don't provide real societal value. And eventually they're going to get unseated or you're going to have churn, which is exactly what's happening to big food a little bit right now. Um, but it takes a long time. And in the meantime, people are stuck in a format where they're constantly being drained and their attention is being bought by these different companies. Uh, and it's the same thing with food. People's palettes were being bought by these different companies. Bright colors on the packaging. Just try it once, trust me, you're missing out. You try it, and then suddenly your taste buds are like 'well I must have more of this. It has all the exact right ingredients and the exact right combination to tell me that this is a superfood'. When in reality it's it's the cheapest thing they can make which is literally nothing nutritional wise.

Natalie Niddam: 15:56Yeah.

John Hacker: 15:57Uh no, it's it's again like we live in a bit of a dystopian society when you really take a look at it. There are ways out of that personally, but as a society as a whole, it's going to take a really strong movement to shift a lot of these things. Uh, because it's this is the kind of thing where when profit is aligned so heavily with a certain direction, it's really difficult to change that direction. Not impossible, but difficult.

Natalie Niddam: 16:23But difficult. Okay, so what can we do? Like how can we train our bodies like to spend more time in rest and digest. Like what are some of the things that people can do to break the cycle? Or at least create breaks in the day to get little moments of calm. Like are there things that people can actually do to to try and retrain themselves to spend a bit more time in rest and digest?

John Hacker: 16:47There are two answers here. I'll give you the first answer first, and I'll talk about the second answer second. Because I think that the second answer is a more realistic one for folks. First answer is, you go to any um, very frankly any lifestyle, meditation, type product or podcast or informational environment, they're going to give you much better tips than I'm going to be able to give you on things that you can do on a moment by moment basis. Because there have been, again, just just like there's billions of dollars put into grabbing your attention, they're grabbing your attention by trying to provide value, which is a little bit better, it's a better aligned incentive. And the value and these things work for people. Like habits like ensuring that you have no screen time after 5 PM, maybe wearing blue light blocking glasses when you're interacting with a laptop or digital technology all day. There's a lot of things that can really help with keeping you stable. But, they're all decently high friction to implement. And I'm in addition to a tech positive kind of guy, also a realist, and we kind of have to be here. You're going to find it really difficult to implement some of these things until you're already out of the cycle. These are a win more, not win.

Natalie Niddam: 17:59I think that's a little bit that's a little bit on the baby steps. You know, if you can take a one-minute breath work break. That's better than no minutes. It's not a lot, and it may not be enough, but in the short term, if that's all you've got, that's better than you were before.

John Hacker: 18:17Oh, and there's there's the whole guilt factor that you add to this too, that if you try to set out a goal and you don't hit it suddenly you feel guilty and you don't want to experience that so you don't do it anyway. Uh, and anxious individuals, which is now becoming more and more of the population, I think we're over 50% at this point. Um, have a harder time with that and they have a larger propensity to have a higher anxious response and guilt response which makes it much more difficult to plan out those wins unless they're very diligent in restructuring how they view them. But we also have seen that cognitive restructuring doesn't work well. CBT is cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the most successful therapeutic approaches out there, largely because of how easy it is to train and to implement. But one of the biggest problems with it is that people don't like ignoring problems. We like identifying problems and focusing on them to solve them. That's how we are built as humans, that's how we survive. CBT's basic premise is no longer see that as a problem, which for some people, and a lot of people, is really hard to do and it takes a very long time to get to that point. It even once you get to that point, if the problem is still there, it's very easy to relapse. That's an opinion that I have on that therapy space, I do want to make that clear, there's a lot of great studies out there that show that CBT can do good. Um, but I know a lot of people that I have talked with that have been in CBT typically dislike it quite immensely because of that core... it's they feel like it's trying to make them ignore as opposed to solve the basic problems that they're experiencing.

Natalie Niddam: 19:57Right.

John Hacker: 19:57So I want to talk about a second type of approach at this point. Um, and this is something that I'm extremely passionate about, it's something I've been working for for a very long time and we have been working for at Zenbud. Um, is something to get people out of this really downward spiraling loop. It's not going to get you all the way to where you really are going to want to go in the long term, you're still going to need to implement good habits and lifestyle. It's just not going to be a crutch for you, but rather just getting you out of that downward groove is really what we can do.

Natalie Niddam: 20:34Let's talk about the vagus nerve. Many people, many more people now have heard of it than in the past, but nevertheless, a lot of people may not be aware of it. So let's talk about it and the role that it plays in this whole loopy business.

John Hacker: 20:49You may remember before that I said sympathetic versus parasympathetic. Those are scientific terms. Easier way to think about is fight or flight and rest and digest. Your vagus nerve is your 10th cranial nerve. Vagus means wandering in Latin because it wanders the body. Fun tidbit, but realistically what you care about is it's actually primarily responsible for your rest and digest response. And it connects to some really interesting areas of the brain in particular which it can be really nice for helping counteract some of this hyperactivity sympathetic state. What we do is we actually stimulate the vagus nerve with ultrasound. Zenbud is a company where you wear a pair of headphones, five minutes a day. We've published some pilot uh studies already that have been peer reviewed. And we see incredible results for getting people out of that downward spiral. And actually seeing remission from anxiety. I think it was 78% in that study in particular. Um, and this type of approach in stimulating the system really is, and I I like to emphasize this again, it's getting you out of a completely unbalanced state. It's just like all these attention grabbers out there that are spending billions of dollars to grab your attention and keep you focused and keep you in that sympathetic state, this is kind of doing that to your parasympathetic state. It is forcing you into that state to counter balance the money being spent to put you into the other state.

Natalie Niddam: 22:07Right. Yeah, so let's talk a bit more about the vagus nerve. Like 'cause you made a couple of interesting points here. Number one, it there's it connects to specific parts of the brain. Yes. It travels the body. It also connects to the gut. And I think, you know, I'd love you to talk a little bit about that whole gut-brain connection. I mean, you know, and and the fact that the vagus nerve, it used to be thought way back in the day that it was a one-way route, turns out it's a two-way communication. So...

John Hacker: 22:38Which nerd terms means it has both afferents and efferents. It means it communicates back to the brain and out to the body. Um, and it it's a really fascinating thing. Especially the brain gut axis connection. Um, but it's actually not just a brain gut axis connection. There's actually a uh vagus nerve inflammatory connection, which wasn't known until very recently by the Feinstein Institute and their research. And I think it was actually the last couple of weeks um, as of this recording, that there was a company that actually was approved for arthritis uh that does vagus nerve stimulation. Because this was FDA approved, for that company was approved for arthritis. Because of that connection and showing such strong results with it. Again, like, your body, and like that gets into a whole another topic, inflammation is massive. There's a lot of research around it. There's a lot of reasons why chronic inflammation is not great for you. But your vagus nerve actually connects to your inflammatory system and it it gets kind of complicated so maybe take a look at the Feinstein Institute if you want to get into the real details or ask an AI. I mean like it's great at distilling information like this. Um, but there's really good evidence for both helping with inflammation, for helping keep a strong gut and gut-brain connection uh, which there's a lot of stuff around that gut-brain axis connection, which some of it I think is more validated than others, but there's there's definitely some good base evidence there. Um, and I think in general keeping a strong limbic system, which a limbic system is responsible for your emotional response. Uh, which is really what gets out of whack with over sympathetic activation. Uh, and so it's it's you can really think of the vagus nerve as this all-tying connecting system for the body. You have other cranial nerves, but a lot of them are focused more on like muscle movement or sensations from the body, but this nerve is really responsible for keeping your body alive. So it it is something that you should be aware of and you should be taking care of. Um, and there's a lot of different ways that people can do that. Some there's a lot of breathing exercises out there that are very popular, there's ice baths. Um, I think there's I've even heard of some different other vagus approaches, but a lot of them indirectly stimulate the nerve.

Natalie Niddam: 24:49What do you think of humming?

John Hacker: 24:51A lot of indirect ways have a lot of value for folks, especially getting started. Um, but there is a clinically speaking um, and scientifically speaking, there is a very big difference from getting a moving forcing state changes uh through external factors to try to train that parasympathetic response, which is what ice baths do, it's what humming does to a certain level, it's what a lot of the breathing exercise does to a level. And actually directly strengthening that nerve through stimulating it consistently. Mhm. Uh one is going to try is is a ton it's same thing as kind of like meditation. One requires a lot longer period to start seeing results. And again, in a perfect world, that wouldn't matter. Um, but realistically, the more I talk with folks, especially folks that in and honestly in my own experience with anxiety and OCD, uh, it is very clear to me that it's exceedingly difficult to be consistent with a routine unless you're already out of that downward spiral. If you're still in that downward spiral, it's very, very difficult to get into a throat humming routine or to continuously do ice baths or to do any of the other different tips and tricks that people are doing to try to get from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state back to sympathetic, which is what most of these training routines do. A lot of value in it, but again, it requires a high user friction is I think the best way to say it. And anything that has a high user friction is really hard to get into.

Natalie Niddam: 26:16Well, it's a little bit like meditation. It takes a long time to get good enough at meditation for meditation to really bring you the benefits. And and I'm a big fan, but you know, that's why we call it a meditation practice, not actual meditating. But and and I think that's where breath work kind of takes it away 'cause you can be good at breath work pretty quickly. But meditation to get that real benefit of meditation, you really it takes years of applied, and I mean look, and the journey is part of the win, of course. I don't want to diss meditation at all, but it's, but but again, that this is that's a different process. So when we get back to the vagus nerve, so we've established that the vagus nerve really and, you know, it's interesting that I'm looking forward to looking at that study out of the Feinstein Institute on inflammation and arthritis because it makes sense. And it even ties in to our earlier conversation about how being in a constant sympathetic state actually drives up cortisol which is going to contribute to inflammation. It's also going to suppress your immune system which is going to allow inflammation to run unchecked. So it it all none of this is none of this kind of makes sense. One of the crazy things...

John Hacker: 27:28One of the crazy things that people are learning about the vagus nerve for the first time especially. Um, and I actually I do blame some of the marketing hype around the vagus nerve for this, but there is this feeling that it's doing anything and everything. Realistically, it's doing one thing. It's keeping you alive. Uh, and there's a lot of things involved in that one thing, but it's really doing one thing. And that involves everything from cortisol and inflammation to keeping making sure that your brain and gut are communicating properly, to ensuring that your limbic system is functioning properly, to ensuring that you're able to recover and rest properly. All these are really all in the one core category of keeping you alive, which is, you know, something that should be considered and really, really paid attention to. Uh 'cause people usually want to stay alive. And that's something that we really want to help promote.

Natalie Niddam: 28:18This whole vagus nerve conversation has been going around for a while. You know, so people are basically, as you said, the ice baths, the humming, all those things as at a ground level are great. And if we want to take it up a notch for people who are not going to be able to stick to those types of routines, there's now a plethora of tools out there. And typically what I've seen until I came across you, most of what I was seeing was electrical stimulation. Which I personally didn't love. It didn't resonate for me. I mean, the first, the first time I put an electrical stim on my vagus nerve, I ended up with like I had this weird muscular contraction going. I immediately turned it off.

John Hacker: 28:59Yeah, I'm not... I'm not surprised. I'm assuming that was the Pulsetto or the Truvaga.

Natalie Niddam: 29:04Yeah.

John Hacker: 29:04Yeah. But people love it, you know? And and I'm going to say, like, you know, different there's different strategies that work for different people, but for me, the electrical stim didn't, it just didn't feel good.

John Hacker: 29:16Well, so there's actually um, there is a long story in this space and how it started. Do you want me to give like the highlights of that journey? I think it might be interesting.

Natalie Niddam: 29:27Let's start with the highlights and we'll dig in if we need to.

John Hacker: 29:31Okay, okay, awesome. Vagus nerve stimulation started back with LivaNova devices, um, which are an implantable device. And those were eventually approved for epilepsy and treatment resistant depression. A lot of great clinical data around those. Then gammaCore came into the space. They currently sell the Truvaga for the wellness device. They, you hold it to your neck and it shocks you, it looks kind of like a taser to be honest with you. Kind of feels like a taser too. Um, and what they were trying to do, their argument, which was a good argument, is that we're going to take this invasive technology and make it non-invasive. Amazing. I love the progression there. And they did a lot of great research and they demonstrated that they could do it to not the same level of efficacy, actually decently lower, but they could do some of the effects that you were seeing for the implantable devices. Um, and they got FDA approval for a number of indications, and they went to market. Uh, there's a problem with reimbursement on their products so they're not as big as they could have been, um, but they're still growing over time, and they're still around. Pulsetto was actually a distributor for gammaCore. Um, and they saw, okay, people don't like holding this up to your neck for 30 minutes, let's take that and put it on a neckband.

Natalie Niddam: 30:45Yep.

John Hacker: 30:45Okay, cool, makes sense. The problem with the Pulsetto is that they actually decreased the intensity significantly over where the gammaCore device was. The gammaCore device already had problems with efficacy, largely because your vagus nerve is decently deep on the neck, there's a lot of muscle and fat in between. And depending on how much muscle and fat is in between that, you're going to have a really hard time stimulating that nerve properly. When you decrease the intensity, you have an even harder time. And realistically, there's also the other factor that we're not talking about here, that a lot of people aren't comfortable with shocking themselves and putting gel on their neck. Uh, 'cause Pulsetto, where the gammaCore is kind of like a taser, the Pulsetto is kind of like a shock collar, to be honest with you. As far as, and this, these are opinions that I hold, obviously, I'm playing in this space. I do think that they've done, it all makes logical progression what they've been doing over time. Um... So, and then we come to, there's a number of other companies that have been copying both of them. Some of them try electricity on the ear, some of them try electricity on the neck. And we honestly, if we wanted to, we could do a whole another two-hour podcast on every company in this space and what they've been doing, 'cause it's massive. But the problem is, is that all of the direct vagus nerve stimulators out there right now are using electricity. Um, I I am being very particular with direct vagus nerve stimulators. There's some things that like try to do a wristband or vibrating rock on your chest, and they're not actually directly stimulating the vagus nerve. They're trying to modulate closer to like the humming and these different exercises. And there's different data on efficacy for that. Um, but anyways, what we did is we saw that the options out there aren't amazing and people don't like getting shocked. So we did took something called ultrasound neuromodulation, which is a decently new technology, but allows us to neuromodulate non-invasively, um, without requiring extremely high intensities of electricity, which is what the gammaCore required. Um, and we implement it into a headset. And we started seeing amazing results. Again, I think I mentioned this before, um, but around a 78.6% remission rate for anxiety in our first study in comparison to like 10% for the gammaCore Truvaga device, which was enough for approval for them. And we're going to move be moving through that process over time, so we can also make some more heavier claims around things. Uh, 'cause we are starting to see some really incredible data. Um, and some of this will be published over time as well. Um, but that study has already been published in peer reviewed.

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Natalie Niddam: 34:08So let's talk a little bit because number one, there's nothing on the neck. Like you've you figured out there's there's a way to the vagus nerve through the ear. Yes. Um, and there's no electrical current, so let's talk a little bit about what that how this all looks and how it feels. I've put it on, I mean, it feels like nothing honestly, but let's talk about that.

John Hacker: 34:30Yeah, no, and that that was the point. Uh, so you have the auricular branch of the vagus nerve in the ear, uh, versus the cervical branch, which is what it means for the neck. Now, a lot of the technology in this space started in cervical stimulation, but auricular stimulation has also been around for probably 10 years less than cervical stimulation has been around for like 40 or 50 years at this point. So both technologies have been around for a while. Uh, the problem with auricular stimulation is that it's all been electrical to this point, and I don't know how deeply we touched on this, but electrical stimulation requires a really high intensity to stimulate the nerve non-invasively, and that high intensity is usually very uncomfortable, so users won't be compliant with it, so you end up getting bad data. So either you have a study, and you have the right intensity, uh, which the uh human performance wing of the military actually did some studies around this, uh, with some of the gammaCore's technology, and they forced them to up their minimum stimulation because it was way too low to get activation.

Natalie Niddam: 35:32Wouldn't you just get anxiety about shocking yourself?

John Hacker: 35:35There's a lot of that as well. Um, like it definitely hurts it definitely hurts the remission rates. Uh for a lot of the electrical devices that are non-implantable 'cause implantable as you don't feel. Um...

Natalie Niddam: 35:46Right.

John Hacker: 35:46But they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and there's a surgery and there's high complication rate and there's its own, and I say high, that's getting subjective. Well, you've got it, you've got an implanted thing, which, you know, it's fine. If you need, if you need a pacemaker, but you know, it's...

John Hacker: 36:03Yes.

Natalie Niddam: 36:03There are certain use cases where the implantables make a lot of sense like epilepsy. Um, well epilepsy, yeah, I would think. Yeah, there there's some use cases and then anxiety is just it's never been really it's never been approved for anxiety for the implantables because they consider the risk too high to give someone even with severe treatment resistant anxiety an implantable device. Fair enough. There's a very high risk in all surgeries, especially surgeries dealing with such crucial nerves to your body. Um, so yeah. And leaving something behind in the body, I mean you're, you know, you have you're leaving a foreign object in the body, so anyway, but but you know, that's not accessible to most people. So let's go back to this, the idea of hitting the auricular branch of the nerve, so that means it's in the ear. Yes. And what you're using is ultrasound instead of electrical. So who figured out that you you could use ultrasound instead of...

John Hacker: 36:56In the 1940s, the Fry brothers, the ones that kind of really did some of the initial work with ultrasound. Another good name, the Fry brothers. I know, right, I love it. Um, they figured out that you can use ultrasound for neuromodulation. The problem was the technology was so early and they had no idea how to apply it. It was really out of the Institute of Arizona, um, actually sorry, I believe it's Arizona University, my apologies. There was a lab run by Dr. Jamie Tyler that brought the technology back onto the scene, because they were found that you were able to do very specific non-invasive stimulation in brain matter. And so there's been a lot of companies, some of these companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars, to do very specific brain stimulation. And we started as a brain stimulation company, believe it or not. We were on that same train. But we figured out that the efficacy of brain stimulation, in our opinion, the efficacy of brain stimulation is actually decently low even with precise non-invasive application because of how much variation it has from person to person. That's the problem. Uh, so we were like, okay, let's use a pre-established pathway that can interact with the brain in a different way for each person to help rebalance them. And that's why we focused on the vagus nerve. Originally when we had started this company, part of it was with anxiety, we were really focusing on PTSD, because that's a very strong indication space for this tech. Um, but that's that's how we got started. Um...

Natalie Niddam: 38:21Interesting. Well, and messing with the brain is complicated, right? There's so much Highly complicated. Yes. You know, like everybody's going to be a little bit different as you said. What I'm seeing in in that brain space is I'm seeing red and near infrared light starting to really emerge as a modality, which feels number one, less scary. Yes. Not less scary than a surgery. Uh, and that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah, no but it's it's less scary than trying to than imagining that you know you're trying to like affect the brain through waves of any kind. So so when you go to ultrasound though, you're really you know, it first of all, doesn't have to go that deep, does it? Like how No, no, no. Auricular branch of vagus nerve is rather superficial in the ear. Again, the biggest reason why electricity had problems stimulating it is how electricity likes to interact with the skin. Right. Ultrasound is a wave that you can direct, we ensure that we attenuate before we even get near the skull, that's on purpose. We're not doing brain stimulation with this device line. Um, but yeah, no, it's it's less than a it's less than a millimeter deep.

Natalie Niddam: 39:25Wow, yeah. Well, and the thing with brain stimulation also, like, you also have like a whole a whole plethora of other issues that could be coming into play. Like people with TBIs, or The brain is a black box. I'll be honest with you. Um, I'm a biomedical engineer by training. I've been studying neuroscience since honestly, I could walk, it feels like, and the brain has always been a black box. We don't understand it at all. Uh we think we do on a couple of things, but everything we really understand was from opening someone's head up and poking a region and shocking it and seeing what happens. Which is not exactly refined, to be honest with you. Uh and so thinking that we can go from there to very precisely modulating different areas of the brain without having a good understanding of the brain, it's a great research tool, but it's not going to see real adoption for probably another 10, 15 years. Yeah. Uh and we can get a whole neurotech discussion, which I'd love to do at some point. Uh there's there's a lot of players to speak about in this space. I know everyone knows about Neuralink, and it's stuff which they actually have done some good work with iterating off the Utah array, which was terrible. Um, so but there's still has its own problems with that as well. Um and I already can see a couple ways of that going very poorly unless they have a very strong safety team. But we'll see.

Natalie Niddam: 40:48All right, well, let's stick to let's stick to ultrasound of the auricular branch of the vagus nerve, which is number one, I want to I've had a headset on my head a few times now, and it's crazy gentle, like to the point where you don't realize or you don't you don't feel tangibly that there's anything really going on here.

John Hacker: 41:07Takes around three to five minutes for people to really start to notice the effects of the vagus nerve stimulation. That's what we usually see. Um, and it's it's really interesting because we are able to do a lot more with a lot less physical discomfort. Um, when it comes to an electrical device of any sort, um, first off, a lot of the data is not amazing in the electrical space because there's no good way to do a sham device. Uh, which means a control device essentially. Oh, right. You can't, right. You can't you can't really do a good control, so what people do is they will shock you a lot at the start and then they'll tone it down. But that that has a shock in it, which means that it's not a good sham or placebo, uh, which you really need to have placebo-controlled studies that have good placebos. We have found that we can do a perfect placebo, uh, with the ultrasound device. We still see strong differences between the placebo and the experimental groups, 'cause doing the actual stimulation matters, but we can build devices that people can't tell the difference. And that's because it is as gentle as it is. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to do that.

Natalie Niddam: 42:15Yeah, no, 100%. Okay, so so you call the phase we're entering is the mental health revolution. Yes. Right? Driven by wearable tech, and I think, you know, I think that that Zenbud is just the first, or one of... and you mentioned a bunch of different devices. Some people love their Apollos, they love their Sensates, they love their and and I think that's important for people to understand is it's it's different technologies seem to hit the mark for different people in different ways, probably because people have different things going on and are wired, even though we're wired the same, we're all wired a little differently, right? We are. But but but with with the Zenbud, I think what's remarkable is the the response that you got in that study, like I think it was 78 or 80% success rate, and people I will actually uh, I do want to make something clear with that rate. Um, so a lot of companies will report percentage of people that have improved. I'm making quotation marks if you can't see me right now. 'Cause and that is a really bad metric. 'Cause you can improve by one point and still have severe anxiety. You haven't improved at all in realistic terms. Uh, so in for that site was like 95% improved, of people improved for us. Great. It doesn't mean anything. Remission means that people were in moderate to severe anxiety at the start of the study, had minimal to none. They no longer present anxiety symptoms. And if they were to go into a psychiatrist, they would no longer be prescribed an anti-anxiety med. That's crazy.

Natalie Niddam: 43:42So how often typically did the like can people use this can people practice ultrasound stimulation of the or nerve of the vagus nerve through the ear, can they do it as many times a day as they want, or should they be doing it once, like what's the We suggest minimum is five minutes a day. We suggest upwards of 30. You can do more than that. Uh we did durability testing of upwards of three hours a day. Um but it's anything past 30 minutes is really unnecessary for the training of the nerve. 'Cause what you're what you're really doing, there's there's a heavy learning effect going on here, which is it's a basic concept of neuroscience where you fire together, it wires together. You are firing together that system so that it interacts with the limbic system more strongly, and you're able to have a more regulated day by day. That's how it works. Uh, you only really need five minutes a day to do that, that's what our studies are around, but people can use it upwards of 30 minutes with no problem. And that's where our device actually automatically turns off. Uh we try to make this as simple as possible. It literally is a headset that has a cord that you plug into a battery pack, it'll turn on automatically, it'll turn off after 30 minutes, you don't have to deal with an app, you don't have an unneeded subscription. Yeah. Everything is like 'cause there's just so much complexity in technology nowadays, which I which serves no purpose realistically, like it it seems very silly to me. Um, and it seems very silly for a lot of people to add needless complexity to these technologies. And so we just eliminated all needless complexities.

Natalie Niddam: 45:16Yeah, no and and you know it's funny I think that some people will be like 'oh it's a wired device, now there's' and I actually think that when you take Bluetooth out of play and you take the app out of play, to your point, you're not worrying 'oh it's not connecting today', or I don't, you know, whatever the case may be. But let me ask you a question that will come up in the biohacking space because people are very tuned into the non-native EMF emission of their electronic devices. Is that a factor that needs to be considered with something like Zenbud?

John Hacker: 45:50Well, we've already considered it. Um, so that's something that we included into our development process. You're not going to see significant EMF levels from this technology. Also nice 'cause partly 'cause it's wired. Um, if we were emitting Bluetooth, that would be different. Um, and there is always a push to do that sort of thing in any startup company, but we really want to keep the core technology easy to use for people and to keep those levels down if we at all can, which we have been doing.

Natalie Niddam: 46:18That's amazing. And it's very simple, right, in many I mean it's brilliant in its simplicity in the sense that you got your power pack, you've got your headset, the headset is powered by the power pack, there's one speed, one one there's not like you don't have 27 different programs. You just have this one modality. If you can walk around with a headset around the house for five minutes. And and that's the other thing actually that's really interesting, that I it took me a while to get my head around it, like you don't have to be sitting and doing anything, you don't have to be you don't have to stop what you're doing. You could be driving, you could be, you could be doing literally anything and just practice this intervention for 5 to 30 minutes in in a day.

John Hacker: 47:03Yeah, and I mean like and that's the thing, 'cause it it's acting on your body, you don't have to act with it, as long as it has you have it on and you're using it, you're fine. And I would say typically for driving, I respect, people should use it at least once before operating heavy machinery, 'cause for some people it has a stronger onset effect. Legal disclaimer, you should use it once. At least to see how you respond. But after that usually you're fine. Um, just make sure you have at least one ear unplugged so that you're legally compliant with driving laws in your local area. Um, but yeah, usually that's not a problem. And you really can do whatever you want while wearing the Zenbud, which is we want to make this as frictionless as a process as possible. One of the reasons why vagus nerve stimulation devices haven't become as big as they could have is there's an awareness issue, but that's quickly not becoming an issue. It really is a friction issue. People don't like the thought of shocking themselves on the neck or the ear for that matter. Um, and people don't like the applying goopy gel to the neck either. No. No, there's no, no. And connecting to an app that charges you 100 a year and auto-subscribes you, and like a ton of nonsense in the space. But that's part of what we came in here to disrupt, and that's what we're doing.

Natalie Niddam: 48:23So you know, I think we can circle back to this whole concept of chronic stress as a silent killer. Because of all the things we discussed earlier, and let's not forget that, you know, in with this podcast called Longevity with Natalie Niddam where we're trying to look for solutions to help people live longer, more vital lives, that chronic stress left unchecked actually accelerates aging. At the end of the day, Zenbud was was put out into the world to solve very specific problems, right? Around anxiety, OCD, PTSD, like these are named problems. But at the same time, if we expand our our attention to people who are just wanting to live longer, healthier, more vital lives, I think that one of the things that people can do is check in with themselves to say how much time do I spend in this in this mind in this state of rest and digest where I'm truly calm, and could I benefit from an aid that will help me to get into that state which to your point what you meant you mentioned something nerves that fire together wire together is trying to break down these kind of stress pathways that have been trained and retrain ourselves towards a more parasympathetic state.

John Hacker: 49:30And train yourself so that you may not need to use the Zenbud for all time. Now, maintenance is good and especially if you're one that's more prone to getting to those states, I would highly encourage you not to stop using it if it's helping you. Um, but it it really is about building up that resilience to stress. And like just as you were speaking, like a great example came to me, especially when it comes to longevity. It's kind of like your body is a car, right? Yeah. And when you're in the sympathetic state when you don't need to drive somewhere, it's kind of like pushing down on the gas pedal while you're parked and just revving that engine constantly, you're going to wear down that engine faster. Yeah. Yeah. What technology like this does and what the Zenbud can do for you is it takes your foot off the darn gas pedal when you don't need to be on the darn gas pedal.

Natalie Niddam: 50:23Yeah, I love that. That's that's a great, great way to put it. Okay, so beyond vagus nerve stimulation, right? Can you offer the audience any other interventions or daily practices that you personally find helpful in this quest for spending more time in parasympathetic and less time in sympathetic?

John Hacker: 50:38Well, I will I'll say a couple of different things here. First off, from a very easy perspective, these orange light blue light glasses, these are the TrueDarks from Dave Asprey. Um, but been amazing for me ever since I found them. I used to get migraines all the time, and I wasn't understanding why, but it turned out to be a blue light sensitivity. Uh so that's one thing. But on a more kind of like on a more direct like mindset note, something and like this is not something that everyone's going to affiliate with. But I think one of the reasons why we have yet another one of the reasons why anxiety is on such a rise is because there is a lack of purposefulness in a lot of people's lives nowadays. There is an existential crisis that's happening on a societal scale. And there's a lot of different answers to existentialism. Some of them are very morbid, in my opinion, and those will lead to depression and it can put people into a further downward spiral. Some of them lead to hedonism, which is very enabled in our society today. Um, but as far as I'm concerned, it's people's purpose and duty to find make their own purpose what they choose it to be. Yeah. And having that sort of direction and choosing something, choosing something that you care about to pursue, to change, and doing that relentlessly, that's what originally got me out of the most severe symptoms of my OCD personally. And it's something that I've seen individuals typically that are that driven, they have that history. They experienced an existential crisis and they found something that they cared about and they pushed for it regardless of what other people said and regardless of what happens. Um, and that sort of that sort of approach I think can help a lot of people out there and it's easy to adopt someone else's purpose, it's not as easy to build your own sometimes, but doing that even if it's within a larger purpose that you're pointing towards can make all the difference for helping you get out of that pit.

Natalie Niddam: 52:33Yeah. So finding purpose, having purpose and a direction so that you're not just navel gazing day after day.

John Hacker: 52:39Yes.

Natalie Niddam: 52:39Great. Any other practices like breath work or meditation? Like do you meditate? Do you have any breath work?

John Hacker: 52:45I do some meditation. Um, I typically, so a lot of and a lot of our users do this as well, is they use the Zenbud while meditating to help them get deeper. Uh, which is it's a very interesting pathway connection between the vagus nerve and what a lot of meditation does. Uh, very, very interesting actually. Uh, there's some good research around that as well. Um, and I would say it's centering yourself on where you actually exist. Everyone is trying to buy your attention. Always. Realistically, you don't care about 90% of what they're trying to buy your attention to care about. Mhm. If you allow yourself to move into that sympathetic state and respond as opposed to think and act, you will get into that downward spiral very easily. It's not difficult to start getting into that downward spiral and it's really easy to stay there once you're there. Yeah. So it's there's there's a practice of choosing what matters to you, creating your circle, uh, what matters to you is inside of it, that's what you focus on, what doesn't matter is outside of it. You don't care about flashy colors at the department store, be honest with yourself. It's not something that really matters to you, so why are you giving it attention? Well, your body's response. But you don't have to choose to keep giving it attention once you realize that.

Natalie Niddam: 54:00Be conscious and aware and intentional.

John Hacker: 54:02Yes.

Natalie Niddam: 54:02Intention. Okay, great. All right. So we're going to start to wrap up here. So a couple of quick fire questions, and we're going to start with one less quick fire is, so what excites you most about the future of biohacking and longevity tech? Like where do you see us going here in the next 5 to 10 years? How do you think this develops?

John Hacker: 54:23I will paint a vision here for you, and this might be a longer question than you signed up for Nat, I'll be honest with you. Uh, I'll paint a vision here. Um, AI and artificial intelligence right now is accelerating at an exponential rate. Period. Yeah. If we want to as humans remain relevant, we need to also advance. I see the longevity space, the biohacking space, and the ability for us to change and improve ourselves as core to our ability to compete with the machines that we create. Yeah. Yeah. So it's incredibly relevant. Very way to put it, but that's true, very true, yes. It should be the main focus of even a lot more research dollars than it is. There's some factors to reason why it isn't right now, but that's changing very quickly 'cause people realize that. This is, I'm not going to say this is the human versus the machine, it's the machine plus human versus machine alone, if you must say it that way. And I think that we have a strong capability to stay relevant, if we're smart on how we approach this. If we're not, then there's going to be some issues down the line.

Natalie Niddam: 55:27So where does technology like like Zenbud fit into all this? Like it's...

John Hacker: 55:31I see the Zenbud... I see the Zenbud as enabling more of humanity to be really conscious. My everything I do is to liberate human consciousness at all stages of my life. I see the Zenbud as a way to free more people from the chains that we have built in a profit, highly profit-motivated society. Yeah. And once more people are free, I'm an optimist. I love humanity. I think that we will have a higher chance of succeeding and growing faster. That's my today contribution to this larger vision. Um, I see technology of mood modulation and the capability to have exceedingly strong self-control being core critical for us to continue development at an exponential rate alongside our machines that we create.

Natalie Niddam: 56:10Yeah, yeah. It's uh it's entering the era of the machine, for sure. Okay, so let's do a couple of quick fire questions for the audience. What do you think is the biggest misconception people have around anxiety?

John Hacker: 56:22I think a lot of people think that anxiety is more of a choice than it really is. People will point towards choices that people make that will put them in bad decisions or bad areas. But when you're in a constant sympathetic state, you are more likely to make bad decisions. It is a self-reinforcing cycle. And if you especially if you're not an anxious individual, which is becoming a smaller and smaller part of the population, for better or for worse. Um, then you're it's going to be really hard for you to understand that. Uh, so I think it's really just being conscious that a lot of this isn't a choice and a lot of times this is a self-reinforcing thing.

Natalie Niddam: 57:01I think that'll be a tough one for people to hear because I think people with anxiety will be sitting there yelling at their whatever they're listening to this podcast on going 'I am not choosing to be anxious! I can't help it!' And and and I think there's truth to that, right? But I think what what you're saying is there's there's ways to break through, and you have to be willing to take action and ownership of that and and and step through the doorway.

John Hacker: 57:28It's important and if you are a loved one you have is anxious, um, especially if a loved one that you have is anxious, uh, supporting them is critically important. Um, that support network is one of the few ways that I've consistently seen people get out of this state without some sort of outside intervention. Love it. Um, so yes.

Natalie Niddam: 57:47All right. So what's the most surprising thing you've learned about the vagus nerve that made you just kind of go, 'huh'?

John Hacker: 57:54I learned that it was a lot more effective than we originally thought, to be honest with you. We did not think that stimulating the auricular branch of the vagus nerve would have seen nearly as good outcomes as we saw in our studies, or as we're currently seeing. 'Cause frankly, the space had seen much worse rates consistently with electricity. So that was hella surprising to me. Learning that it's directly connected to the immune response and inflammatory response, very surprising. And talking to Dr. Tracy about it was highly enlightening. And I would say it's just how much, like how how it really is responsible for you being alive. Like if you don't have a vagus nerve, you're probably dead to be honest with you. Uh you still need that pathway to survive. Just learning how critical that was when we were getting started was very interesting.

Natalie Niddam: 58:41I love it. And what's the biggest challenge in getting people to adopt new tech like Zenbud?

John Hacker: 58:46Well, I think the biggest challenge is always awareness in any tech space. For any technology. When it comes to things like this, I would have usually said usability, but that's the factor that we've improved upon. It's highly usable and highly efficacious. The biggest thing is making people aware that this technology exists and that they can benefit from it.

Natalie Niddam: 59:05Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And that it'll actually work. I mean, I think that, you know, I think that the anxiety has become such a big issue that this is an audience that is targeted repeatedly and people become jaded over time, right? So...

John Hacker: 59:19I will be frank here. A lot of times, there is a lot of stuff out there that really doesn't work and has no good science behind it. They've never done a study. They sometimes have completely plagiarized studies that have actually been done. I've seen that before in the larger wellness space a number of times. Uh, and it really disgusts me. Um, I I just find it to take advantage of a population like this is just completely unethical. And I would say even more importantly, it's kind of like evil to be honest with you. Like that's that's one of the definitions of evil that I have. Um, and it's all over the place. So no wonder people are jaded because they are constantly being sold to and a lot of these products don't work. Look for good scientific data. And ask AI. It can do hours of research for you. If we were talking like 10 years ago, or if we were talking before AI really became an advent, I'd be like, you just have to do your own research, and yeah, it's going to take a really long time, and I know you don't have that time in your day, just still try to do it. But now it's like, spend five seconds, go into your AI, and say, 'does this have any research behind this? Behind it?' And what are the studies? Ask for the studies, it'll bring you the studies for sure. It will. And it does a really good job of analysis on a lot of things.

Natalie Niddam: 60:42So of the people that are suffer from OCD, anxiety, PTSD, these are all conditions that, you know, not that you're curing, but that can be assistive. A lot of these people are being on medication. Can Zenbud, have you done any research or is there any data around is Zenbud safe to use with medication?

John Hacker: 61:00There's no contraindication with taking another pharmaceutical drug. Um, and that's something that we've seen in our studies um, and elsewhere as well from self reports. Now, it's something that I will flag here a little bit is I wouldn't suggest stopping your medication when doing any sort of wellness approach. 'Cause I hate a lot of the medications in this space 'cause the science behind them was bad and there's a ton of side effects, and the biggest thing is they build a dependency. So if you're going to stop your medication and attempt a different approach, talk to your doctor, please, 'cause you need to titrate off that stuff. Or it can actually kill you in some cases. You have to be really careful around this type of stuff. Uh, and this, again, like this, this gets into uh what we define as really evil in the world here. It's like, it's again, like people peddling things to people that don't have good data and that have been highly manipulated on the data side, always really gets me boiling. It's something it's after looking at that type of thing, that's when I need my Zenbud to be honest with you. Uh, 'cause it's very frustrating. But regardless, you can use it with your current treatment regime whatever that is, we have not seen any problems with that in all of our user base. And I would also say, don't go off your medication without talking to your doctor. There's a lot of medications, there's a lot of medication interactions out there on the pharma side, so if you're taking multiple drugs and you go off one of them, that's going to throw everything else out of whack. Talk to your doctor, please.

Natalie Niddam: 62:32Good advice. Good advice. But they play nicely together. All right, last question. And I'm sure you get asked this all the time, maybe. In one sentence, how would you describe Zenbud to a newbie? If you had... what's your short, shortest little elevator response there?

John Hacker: 62:46The Zenbud is an off switch for your stress.

Natalie Niddam: 62:49I love it. Oh my god, that's great. Our friend Mark would be proud. Uh, John Hacker, thank you. This has been a great conversation and hopefully people learned as much, I learned lots. Um, and I love what you're doing and the motivation and the energy behind it. Uh, folks, if you're interested in trying out the Zenbud for yourself, we have a special offer for you, for the listeners, and you can get that at zenbud.health/nat. And um, do you offer people any kind of a trial period or?

John Hacker: 63:18We do. 30 days money-back guarantee. Uh and that's 30 days from when you receive the device, to make it clear. So if you're somewhere where it takes longer to ship, we when you receive it, you have 30 days to contact us anyway and say, it's not working for me. It's important.

Natalie Niddam: 63:34Perfect. And you offer some support there as well?

John Hacker: 63:37Yeah, of course. I mean like if folks are having problems with usage, we have a strong customer support team.

Natalie Niddam: 63:43Tremendous. John Hacker, the man with the perfect handle for what he does. Thank you so much for your time and thank you for what you do. I knew this was going to be a good conversation and you absolutely delivered. Thank you so much.

John Hacker: 63:58Well, thank you so much for having me, Nat.

Natalie Niddam: 64:01Hey folks, just a quick reminder that all of the information presented in this podcast is for information purposes only. No medical advice, no diagnosing, no treatments suggested here. Before you try anything that you hear about or learn about here, make sure that you check with your medical provider.