In this episode, Cheryl McColgan interviews Vitalijus, co-founder of Pulsetto, discussing the importance of sleep, stress resilience, and the role of the vagus nerve in health optimization. Vitalijus shares his personal journey into biohacking, including a 200-night sleep experiment that revealed key insights into improving sleep quality. The conversation delves into the science behind stress resilience, the vagus nerve’s function, and how devices like Pulsetto can aid in relaxation and recovery. Vitalijus emphasizes the significance of personal experimentation in health and the growing importance of mental health in today’s world.
Read more about Pulsetto and purchase with our 15% off discount here or use code HEALNOURISHGROW15.
Takeaways
- Vitalijus conducted a 200-night sleep experiment to improve his sleep.
- Key factors for better sleep include darkness, temperature, and minimizing disturbances.
- Stress is a major factor affecting sleep quality and melatonin production.
- The vagus nerve plays a crucial role in connecting the brain to internal organs.
- HRV (Heart Rate Variability) is a key metric for measuring stress resilience.
- Biohacking allows for personal experimentation to find what works best for individual health.
- Mental health is increasingly important in managing stress and overall well-being.
- Using devices like Pulsetto can help activate the vagus nerve for relaxation.
- Athletes can benefit from vagus nerve stimulation for recovery and performance.
- Small changes in sleep habits can lead to significant improvements over time.
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Episode transcript
Cheryl McColgan (00:01.07)
Hi everyone. Welcome to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. Today I’m joined by Vitalius and I got the first name going pretty good. I’m not even going to attempt the last name, so I’ll let him share that. And of course you will have heard it in the bio here prior to the recording. But welcome to the show today. We’re going to talk about all things kind of Vegas nerve, what that even is, why it’s relevant to you as a person out there listening to this. And Vitalius has a big interest in sleep and kind of a past with some
things where he was super into biohacking. this is really pretty interesting. So, Vitalius, all that being said, we start by you just sharing a little bit about yourself and your background in the biohacking? And I would love to really chat about that sleep experiment you did, because that was quite impressive what you did with that.
Vitalijus (00:45.603)
Yeah, so before I created Pulsetto, am one of the co-founders of this company. I was working in corporate world and basically in the sleep industry. I was working in different countries, in different locations and I was responsible for sleep products.
So naturally, sleep topic was always somewhere near, you know, but you know, one day I decided to go deeper to this topic. I had some issues with sleep also. So it was like, I was working in sleep industry, but at the same time I was sleeping bad, you know, I was working like a crazy for 16 hours and etc. And then when I was 29, I got panic attacks and Xanax and it was terrible experience.
Cheryl McColgan (01:10.178)
Yeah.
Vitalijus (01:34.605)
that I remember that I said, okay, I need to change something. And the starting point was sleep, yeah, because I was near this field and topic and etc. So what I did basically at that moment, I just took around 70 factors, which has some kind of scientific
publications, know, and etc. 70 things. I will explain what those things mean. And I took those things I just listed. And then, you know, I started this kind of 100 night experiment, which means that I took one thing from those 70 lists. Yeah. And then three evenings in a row, I consume this thing. And I was imagining my aura at that moment, was like, what users
It was not like a scientific study, but you know I saw some trends and how it’s affecting my trends and etc So the first thing what I tested it was kiwi as a fruit Don’t ask me why but there are some scientific studies which show that if you will eat kiwi before sleep You will sleep better
Cheryl McColgan (02:22.83)
It wasn’t bad.
Vitalijus (02:39.855)
Yeah, so I ate kiwi for three evenings in a row and I just wanted to understand is it really somehow improving my like sleep, friends and etc. So this was like a starting point. So this kind of things like a 70 things I tested during 200 nights basically. It was a lot of bullshit, sort of to say a lot of
To some point my wife in the beginning looked at me very crazy, for example because I turned the bulbs to the red light bulbs in the bedroom. Then I was surrounded by some specific flowers because there are some studies about some specific flowers that are cleaning the air etc. I was consuming
caffeine, three evenings in row, huge amount of caffeine. I just wanted to see how badly it’s affecting my sleep. I was consuming alcohol for three nights in a row. I was doing a lot of supplements, a lot of food things, a lot of bedroom changes, a lot of body changes, know, and et cetera. So from those 70 things, some of them was really nonsense, but some of them was really big game changers, you know, and…
And after this experiment, I realized that, you know, how better I can sleep. You know, because before I thought that, you know, okay, my sleep is like normal, something like that, you know, I have some issues. In general, I am sleeping better. But only when I started to test, you know, myself and I saw what kind of changes can make a big difference, you know, then I realized that it’s a big gap between normal and good. From good to great, you know.
And after those 200 nights, I really understand that you can improve your sleep very much and then it’s completely affecting your productivity. It’s completely affecting your energy levels, your sharper mind, etc. So this is how I went to biohacking. After sleep, was more topics. It was stress topics, was food topics, was physical activities. But sleep was the starting point of my journey to the biohacking.
Cheryl McColgan (04:45.166)
I absolutely love that you did. That sounds like something I would do. I haven’t done it yet, but that’s very interesting. When you were doing the 200 nights of the different things and doing three nights in a row, was there any specific thing that you tried that you could see like on your aura ring that it had a really big impact on either your HRV or your REM or your deep sleep? What was the thing that you found that was like, of like, whoa, this might be the thing?
Vitalijus (05:08.059)
So it was something like five big conclusions from my side. The first, I mean, let’s start from that there are game changes and there are nice to have things. A very good example of this is that, for example, you can read on Google somewhere that, for example, you need to eat pistachios, yeah, as a nut, because in pistachios you can find melatonin and melatonin is good for the sleep and et cetera. But I calculated.
You need to eat 400 grams of Piscata, 400 grams, which is already seems impossible in order that you will accumulate around 25 % of melatonin. What you can do naturally. So for example, two hours before sleep to reduce the light.
Cheryl McColgan (05:38.766)
Cheers.
Vitalijus (05:54.477)
makes the bigger difference on melatonin than 400 grams of pistachios. So this was one of the first conclusions that there are game changers like those two hours before sleep to maintain the darkness and etc. And there are nice things like
I don’t know, flowers, kiwi and etc. but they are not changing your sleep area. And basically I’m always saying to my friends or those people who are asking about sleep, so there are five things. First of all, the bedroom must be…
Good. So it means the darkness and the cooling effect is very important. Temperature around 18, 19 degrees and I saw a lot on my data. So whenever I dropped the temperature or whenever I was sleeping in the cooler room, know, automatically let’s say the level of deep sleep was increasing, you know. The darkness of the bedroom is also very, very important. So if you have some kind of light coming from the outside, you need to, I mean…
to cover completely the first is bedroom the second is the disturbances you need to minimize the bad things or maybe you don’t need to create new things but you just need to minimize bad things so one bad thing is the light very big game changer huge game changer even now for example in winter time with my wife we have tradition one day per week we are completely dark mode completely dark mode I mean
We have candles and then some kind of this real light, I mean, no lads, no nothing. Once per week, it’s a perfect, perfect, let’s say, day for the relaxation, for the switching off your mind completely and et cetera. So this is the one disturbance, caffeine and alcohol are two other disturbance. So you can reach a lot of improvement of sleep just…
Cheryl McColgan (07:27.342)
that.
Vitalijus (07:46.587)
Yes, cutting those disturbance just if you will do just this, know, it will be huge. The third point is is stress. Because it’s a huge antagonist of melatonin, which means that if you have higher level of stress, the evening you will not produce enough melatonin and then you know, you will have issues with stress. So stress is huge topic. There are a bunch of ways to reduce the stress.
Cheryl McColgan (08:04.878)
I don’t want to stress.
Cheryl McColgan (08:12.354)
without what makes a power.
Vitalijus (08:15.291)
Baby-stir stimulation is one of the ways, you but it’s not only one way, know, you have you can meditation, can breathe, can do cold showers, you can go to sauna, there are routines, know, what you can do. The fourth, you need to have routine. You’re like a three, two, four things what you’re doing before sleep. I have my own routine, it’s like a 10, three, two, one. It means that 10 hours before sleep, three hours, two hours, and one hour before sleep.
Cheryl McColgan (08:18.702)
Bye.
Cheryl McColgan (08:22.796)
Get out!
Cheryl McColgan (08:37.442)
Thank you.
Vitalijus (08:43.099)
So for example, 10 hours before sleep, I’m not consuming alcohol, caffeine. Three hours before sleep, I’m doing some physical activity, like just no need to run a marathon, but just walking and something. Two hours before sleep, I’m trying to be in the dark mode and then cooling the temperature of the room. In my case, I have climat, so I’m just decreasing the temperature of the room to 18, 19 degrees. And then one hour before sleep, some sleep.
Cheryl McColgan (08:57.152)
Cheryl McColgan (09:06.721)
Vitalijus (09:08.411)
doesn’t matter, or you will be able sit for five minutes or you will meditate for 20 minutes. mean, something that is related to the stress reduction. So this is the fourth, you need to have a routine and the fifth, the morning, basically routine, but basically it means that you need to get the sun light. I mean, this is one of the most important things in order to, to let’s say, maintain a good balance of the circadian rhythm, etc. So those five.
Cheryl McColgan (09:22.018)
you
Vitalijus (09:35.387)
are like game changes I saw in a lot of my data because after those during those two hundred nights I started to make stacks you know I just started to combine things and I saw huge improvements in sleep quality and sleep quantity you know for example if you’re combining let’s say the dark mode with let’s say some stress management you know exercises so but at least something from this five list if you will do
Cheryl McColgan (09:42.254)
you
Vitalijus (10:05.083)
you really can improve little bit, little bit, know, and etc. Because with sleep the most important thing that you don’t need to think that you need to improve drastically. For example, if you add 15 minutes every day to your duration of sleep, just 15 minutes longer you will sleep or 15 minutes earlier you will go to sleep. In one week, it’s more than two hours. So, I mean, this is the point that you don’t need to…
Cheryl McColgan (10:10.798)
.
Vitalijus (10:31.811)
make a revolution in your life and start to do those all five things. Just one thing from this five list, what I mentioned previously, can make this kind of small change and then this small change can accumulate to the big differences.
Cheryl McColgan (10:37.774)
you
Cheryl McColgan (10:44.814)
Yeah, those are some really amazing suggestions for sleep. I think that, you know, the fact that when people do it is interesting, like having the aura or a tool like that, where you can kind of see what changes you make really affect things. agree with you. One of the biggest things for me was, and I’m at the age where I was starting to, you know, get a lot of hot flashes and be sleeping really hot. And I got the cooling mattress, like the Oolar. There’s a couple of them. There’s like eight sleep. I have an affiliation with one of them, but man, getting that coolness.
in the room, like on the bed, that improved mine amazingly. So that one I think is one of the most important.
Vitalijus (11:18.511)
But this is the big happiness of being this biohacker, which means that you will test on yourself. Now, for example, in the last year, I test a lot with CGM, with the continuous glucose monitor. mean, also, you cannot imagine how many things you can test on yourself because this is very personal. I will eat banana and you will eat banana. Our glucose spice will be totally different because it depends on our genetic, on our gut brain, know, gut microflora, you know, and etc. So,
Cheryl McColgan (11:31.118)
Mm-hmm.
Vitalijus (11:49.091)
I mean, you can test a lot of things, you know, for example, I was consuming different carbohydrates on my empty stomach. I just wanted to see how, let’s say, how it’s affecting me in the long term of the glucose. I was eating like, I don’t know, this bread.
For me personally, example, is spiking glucose to such a huge amount of level and even after two hours the spice still exists at a very high level. So for me the rice is not good and this I know only from this biohacking.
testing and experimenting with myself, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not good for you. Yeah, because maybe it’s you are totally different, you know, and etc. So this is the greatness of the biohacking that you can use the tool like a CGM or like, I don’t know, or whatever, and to see the changes in the data, you know, on your personal data. So I think this is the most, you know, amazing thing.
Cheryl McColgan (12:45.804)
Yeah, totally agree. you so you mentioned that you were working at a very stressful corporate job and you mentioned stress is one of the things for sleep. And I think before we before I hit record, we were talking about something recently that you got into more release related to stress and also, you know, with using the pulsed set of how that can affect it. So I’d love it you could share a little bit more about what you’ve been learning about the stress part. And you have a specific name for it, I think.
Vitalijus (13:11.387)
Yeah, I mean the last three and a half years I’m quite deep in this topic is a stress resilience basically. For me the stress was always like this kind of mysterious thing, you know, because everybody blames stress. Yeah, everybody. I mean you’re bad at work, it’s stress. You have illness, it’s stress, you know. Everybody blames stress, yeah, but not so many can track it, can measure it, you know, can…
Cheryl McColgan (13:18.062)
Stress resilience.
Vitalijus (13:39.803)
somehow feel it, know, and etc. And for me, I am always this kind of person, you know, that what you cannot measure, cannot improve, you know, and you cannot control, you know, so I want to somehow to, so this is my big passion, you know, I want to somehow structure this distress and etc. And it’s quite a deep topic, it’s quite a young topic, you know, if you’re going
Because for example in case of sleep you have a lot of data a lot of studies right now and etc in case of stress resilience Basically, it’s a quite a new science for us. Basically what it means that you have like us like a muscle you can build it, you know Because you can’t avoid stressful situations. It’s impossible. Yeah, it will be more and more stressful situations But if you will have stronger the stress resilience, you will recover faster. Yeah
Because as a human being we are switching on between parasympathetic nervous system, means rest and digest, and this sympathetic nervous system, means flight and flight, and we are always switching, you know. Now the problem is that we are too many times per day. If previously, let’s say, we were in majority of time in those parasympathetic rest and digest, now we know 50 times we are going from those parasympathetic to sympathetic.
I know every bad message, every bad WhatsApp message, every Instagram story, every bad driver creates some kind of let’s say urgency, some kind of bad feelings for us and etc. And then it’s a big probability that we will be in this loop and then it will become the chronic stress. And the chronic stress is very bad for us because it’s creating like inflammation.
Cheryl McColgan (15:04.663)
I love it.
Cheryl McColgan (15:20.48)
Thanks for watching!
Vitalijus (15:22.221)
oxidative damage for our body and etc. So, if you have this strong stress muscle, then you will recover, then you will switch faster to the parasympathetic nervous system. So this is very important and you can measure the stress muscle. One of the metrics of the stress muscle is HRV. So the higher the HRV, basically the stronger muscle you have. So for example, if now, let’s say very roughly,
Cheryl McColgan (15:40.504)
Thank you.
Vitalijus (15:51.611)
If you have 50 HRV as a metric, you have like an average HRV. If you have like from 50 to 70, it’s already you have like a stronger muscle than every person. If you have above 70, you’re already, let’s say on the very good level, more than 90 elite. So it means, and also very important thing that you can train. So it means that you can improve by doing some specific exercises, some specific routines, techniques.
Cheryl McColgan (16:19.406)
you
Vitalijus (16:21.177)
you can improve the HRV, you know, and by improving HRV you will build the muscle. So it means that if you will have more stress, will respond faster, you will respond, you know, and you will recover faster. So this is the science in, I don’t know, in five minutes, but it’s much deeper, you know, of course, let me just try to simplify it.
Cheryl McColgan (16:27.798)
Awesome,
Cheryl McColgan (16:43.246)
Yeah, and in relation to stress, I think one of the nice things about tools like the Pulsado, for example, and for those of you that are just listening and we’re not watching on YouTube, if you can go to the video, you could actually see what it looks like. It’s kind of just a device with some electrodes on it it’s got a button where you turn it on. So it’s very simple, but it just goes around your neck and rests on the vagus nerve. And I guess what I love about tools like this is it can be very challenging to get somebody to meditate, for example, you know, to take the time to do that.
But what you do with this device, you just turn on the app, you put it on and it kind of does it for you. So to me, it’s kind of like a no brainer for people to try this and see if it has a good effect. And so I’ll just share with you that I only recently got it. And I did notice on my aura ring that the day that I did it, I can’t remember if it was the first or the second time, but I had some really amazing sleep stats that night, like much more REM and deep sleep than normal. And also just
more solid sleep. I can’t say for 100 % certainty that it was the full set because you never know, there’s always so many factors. I really think that something like this, if you have stats from yourself previously, and then if you got really consistent with it, did it for say like 30 days, something like that, you might be able to more accurately see if this is something that’s helping you. all that being said, I would love it if you would share a little bit about what the Vegas Nervous
Vitalijus (17:47.034)
Yeah, yeah.
Cheryl McColgan (18:08.64)
nerve is and why it’s related to stress and then how does a device like this, you know, help people affect the, you know, different outcomes.
Vitalijus (18:19.343)
Yeah, I will answer this question and then I will add that for example right now we have like a new feature on our app that you can connect your Aura or Apple Watch or whatever with our device and you can get the data.
of your heart rate, your heart rate variability, of your sleep, of your stress. And then you will see in the, this is our future. You will see that, for example, after the stimulation, how the heart rate is changing, you know, et cetera. And we will play with this data to create like a very personalized protocols that, for example, if you want to improve HRV, you need to do this specific protocol of Pulse Oto Plus, some behavior changes in case of, I don’t know, sleep or other behavioral things. And now, for example, we are working
with Aura because we see from our current customers who are connected to Aura with Rosetto that sleep latency is improving. It means that how fast you’re going to sleep. And this is one the problems of the people who have like issues with sleep because they are so stressful, know, can’t, they’re racing mind, not allowing them to go fast to sleep and then they’re like a
Cheryl McColgan (19:17.23)
Mm.
Vitalijus (19:31.343)
you know, challenges or they are waking up in the middle of the night and they cannot go to sleep anymore. So, but back to the vagus nerve topic. So the vagus nerve is like one of the longest, one of the unique nerves in our body. It connects basically the brain with internal organs. The uniqueness of this nerve that it has branches in every organ. Yeah. So every organ has some kind of branch of the vagus nerve. Basically it’s not like one cable. It’s not
Cheryl McColgan (19:59.98)
Okay.
Vitalijus (20:00.699)
You need to imagine the nerve is like a cable, yeah? It’s like a network with more than 200,000 fibers that has connections to the different organs and all that. And the brain communicates with the gut, with the organs, the vagus nerve. So for example, for the brain to understand our liver is producing good, you know, and performing good, let’s say.
Cheryl McColgan (20:16.02)
you
Vitalijus (20:29.967)
the liver sends a signal via vagus nerve that let’s say all those arcs of liver is okay and then the brain sends the signal that okay if it’s okay then for example you can reduce the heart rate you know please be blood pressure please be reducing etc so it’s always communicating if you have issues with the vagus nerve or it’s not so strong let’s say or the tone is very low then you have this kind of
Cheryl McColgan (20:32.302)
you
Vitalijus (20:58.619)
brain, then you have brain fog, then you have tiredness, you have miscommunication between those brain and organs, and then you have these kinds of blood issues, IBS, and etc. So this is basically damage or dysfunctional vagus nerve. One more time, HRV is one of the metrics which represents the strength of the vagus nerve, how fast you basically can switch the parasympathetic nervous system. So vagus nerve, when you’re activating it, basically
It’s switching on this parasympathetic nervous system, is for relaxation, for digestion, for cooling down yourself and etc. We’re targeting neck because on the neck side, on both sides of the neck, you have approximately 60 % of total fibers. You remember I said that vagus nerve is around 200,000 fibers of network, yeah, of those branches and etc. 60 % of them are on the neck area. That’s why we created this kind of…
Cheryl McColgan (21:29.87)
you
Cheryl McColgan (21:35.488)
you
Cheryl McColgan (21:55.086)
I don’t know if you can hear me, but that’s why I’m in the video. Bye.
Vitalijus (21:57.381)
device, which you need to put on the neck, you need to switch on the button, it’s connected to the app, and then we creating quite deep electric signal, which goes under the muscle to the nerve level. And basically in five to seven minutes, we are activating this nerve. And when this nerve is activated, you’re switching on this parasympathetic nervous system and then all the parameters are going down. So let’s say blood pressure is decreasing a little bit, heart rate is decreasing a little bit.
Cheryl McColgan (22:04.846)
you
Cheryl McColgan (22:15.864)
Yeah.
Cheryl McColgan (22:21.038)
you
Cheryl McColgan (22:26.498)
Thank you.
Vitalijus (22:27.675)
HRV is increasing because it’s also one of the metrics of the relaxation of those stress resilience and etc. It seems simple, yeah, electricity goes under the muscle to the nerve. Where is the biggest, let’s say, now our work and laboratory work that if you are activating different, different vagus nerve fibers are responsible for different things.
Cheryl McColgan (22:35.596)
you
Cheryl McColgan (22:44.622)
Oh, I was walking. Walking? Yeah.
you
Vitalijus (22:56.175)
from those 200,000, you know, some of the fibers are responsible for parasympathetic nervous system. Yeah, this heart rate drop and et cetera. Some of the fibers when you are switching on, they’re increasing the level of acetylcholine, very important neurotransmitter who is participating in inflammation management, you know, and migraine, for example, acetylcholine improves the level of nitric oxide, which is like a, you know, very important factor for the migraine. And that’s why
Cheryl McColgan (22:57.71)
you
Cheryl McColgan (23:15.916)
Thank you.
you
Vitalijus (23:25.093)
There are lot of studies about vagus nerve stimulation on migraines, vagus nerve stimulation and inflammation. Some of the fibers that are responsible for gut brain access and those kinds of things like IBS and etc. So different fibers have different role on your body. Now, scientifically, this is the point that with specific electric signal like a voltage, amplitude, pulse wave and pulse width, we are trying to activate different levels of the vagus nerve fiber. So this…
Cheryl McColgan (23:32.071)
Bye.
Vitalijus (23:52.827)
seems simple product, but in reality, I mean, where we want to go, we want to have like 20 different programs on the product. And whenever you have issues with IBS, you’re just switching one product. If you have issues with migraine, you’re switching other product. I mean, you don’t need to wear like 20 devices. It will be one device, but with the different signals, who will tackle different fibers for the different benefits of health.
Cheryl McColgan (24:17.838)
you
Vitalijus (24:21.243)
So this is where we are going, know, and this is our like the biggest challenges and biggest issues right now and like experiments, tests, scientific studies, you know, and et cetera.
Cheryl McColgan (24:24.738)
Thank you.
Cheryl McColgan (24:31.886)
Yeah, when I was first exploring the device, I actually went on PubMed and was looking at vagus nerve stimulation and kind of what things that they were addressing with it. I definitely saw migraine come up in some of the gut things that you mentioned. But when you were doing the research for this device and now you’ve been so immersed in it now for years, what are some other than what you’ve already mentioned, what are some other conditions besides stress, migraine, and IBS that there’s good
data for or that you even have anecdotal evidence for helping a different situation.
Vitalijus (25:04.315)
Cognitive performance, a lot of data about cognitive performance, memory especially. a lot of studies with army, military guys in this topic. For example, if you have sleepless night, so no sleep and it’s like very typical situation in combat situation in army, then you have a lot of mistakes because of those cognitive issues. But then if you are doing
after sleepless nights, vagus nerve stimulation, you’re reducing mystic level very much. So this is a lot of studies in this case, blood pressure, but not in all cases, but it’s also part of the parasympathetic nervous system, because when you are in this parasympathetic, everything goes down, blood pressure goes down, the muscles are relaxing, the heart rate goes down, etc.
quite a lot of studies of blood pressure that you can really regulate the blood pressure. Now there is one device, vagus nerve stimulator, which basically can treat arthritis, inflammation-related disease. Still it’s implantable device, it’s not like we have like a not implantable device, but they already have FDA approval for arthritis, which is, I mean,
Cheryl McColgan (26:12.185)
Bye.
Thanks.
Vitalijus (26:31.141)
huge problem and etc. Migraine and cluster head pains, cluster head pains like a 10x migraine is even stronger, know, and etc. My wife, she has cluster head pains and this was the reason why I dig deeper in this topic five, six years ago, you know. So this is the topic. Now, for example, Lithuania, we are running a huge clinical study about
Cheryl McColgan (26:48.238)
you
Vitalijus (26:59.003)
the thoracic nervous system activation, we are even measuring the cortisol level of the hair, because it’s one of the best metrics to know, because there is a cortisol in the hair and you can measure before and after the hair levels of cortisol and etc. But here, still on the main topic of the thoracic nervous system. But for example, PTSD, also a lot of studies also with military, especially ex-veterans.
Cheryl McColgan (27:02.178)
you
Cheryl McColgan (27:07.862)
and then we support.
Cheryl McColgan (27:18.21)
Facebook.
Vitalijus (27:28.667)
and the people who have PTSD in general. It’s related for a sympathetic nervous system, but it’s a little bit different topic. So PTSD and vagus nerve also quite a big amount right now coming on public field.
Cheryl McColgan (27:32.782)
you
Cheryl McColgan (27:39.598)
you
Cheryl McColgan (27:46.862)
Well, that’s pretty exciting. I think, you know, on the underlying part of all of that is if you get better sleep, pretty much any condition that you have will be improved. So I think just that in and of itself is pretty amazing. When you are sharing this device with family, friends, and I know that there’s like a specific protocol and on the app, you can choose stress or pain relief or whatever. And you said there’s some other features coming, but what are your recommendations for people to use this? Like, is there,
Is there anything like, don’t use it more than three times a day, or using it once a day is optimal, or does it depend on the condition? How would you suggest that people most effectively use the device?
Vitalijus (28:24.027)
At least once per day, perfectly would be twice per day, five to seven minutes per stimulation. There are different timing things for the stimulation, but like I said, five to seven minutes is enough to activate the vagus nerve based on our studies. So you can do it, for example, before sleep, just one hour, 30 minutes before sleep, just to put like a first five, seven, and then…
or in the morning or even you have this kind of stressful before the stressful event. Yeah, we have, I don’t know, stressful meeting or you’re going on stage or you’re going to the dentistry, you know, to, to, I mean, I’m just saying my customer cases, yeah, where they are.
Cheryl McColgan (29:06.381)
Yeah.
Cheryl McColgan (29:11.523)
Yeah, right.
Vitalijus (29:12.475)
the pool set and there are a lot of cases that for example one professional poker player is using before the game because he is full of stress so I mean in the morning and in the evening five to seven minutes the good part that it’s hands-free so you can multitask I mean
Cheryl McColgan (29:19.65)
Nice.
Vitalijus (29:32.963)
You can do whatever you want, can watch TV, can scroll the telephone, you can… I mean, at this moment I’m personally working with lot of sport players, so usually they are doing also before sleep, because they have big issues with sleep after especially games and etc. So they are using when they are in the… know, doing some procedures like…
stretching or putting the legs in the cold, they’re just using it as a tool and then scrolling and just relaxing and etc. So the same with you, before sleep, whenever you watch TV, just can five minutes to put the device and just try to wind down and relax.
Cheryl McColgan (30:18.476)
I’m glad you mentioned the sports performance because I actually was on the website prior to meeting me. did this just before our meeting, not because I thought this was going to be a stressful meeting, because I saw you say that you should be using it one to two hours after training, which I did today. And so can you share a little bit about why for athletes this is useful? So for example, you do a weight training session and then I came home and I ate my protein, ate my lunch, whatever. And then I used this, I pressed the pain.
setting on the thing because that’s what you recommended. And can you explain like why that’s useful after training, how it helps recovery?
Vitalijus (30:53.733)
So basically what now we are looking at, there are three situations when the sport people are using the Pulsator. Basically two and the third is 50-50. So before sleep, especially after the games, they have big issues. Typical sleep time is 3 a.m. After the games, it’s like a typical professional sport.
Cheryl McColgan (31:09.326)
Mmm.
Vitalijus (31:12.891)
a player due to many reasons they are going to sleep 3 a.m. So for them it’s a big factor, especially if the next day is the training already and they have just five hours of sleep or four hours of sleep. Then before the competition, but not always because they are very superstitious and they have their own routines. But especially those who have very stressful things, but it’s 50-50. Some trainers don’t want that they will
Cheryl McColgan (31:33.112)
Yeah.
Vitalijus (31:42.827)
relax so much because there’s some trainers want that they will go to the fight and flight you know
Cheryl McColgan (31:46.894)
Mm-hmm.
Vitalijus (31:48.175)
They need accelerator, they don’t need to So some trainers don’t want that they will use it for before the game or competition because they want this kind of adrenaline mode, etc. So it’s like I said, 50-50. And then the next is in the morning after very hard training because usually what we see from the sport people that HRV, one of the metrics of this recovery and etc. drops around 40%.
percent after very hard like if you have benchmark I don’t know you’re
Average base RV is like a 100. Let’s imagine that after a very hard training or competition, it drops minimum to 60, like a 40, percentage, which is huge, which means that you are not fully recovered, which means that you are not super stress resilient. It means that you are very sensitive, you know, which means that you can be affected with a lot of those mini stressors and etc. So with varying pull set up, they’re trying to decrease the level of drop. It’s not like a, it’s not a magic stick, you know, you cannot
expect that after hard training you will remain on 100 HRV. But from our data you can decrease the droplets from 40 to 20, something like that, which is still quite significant. So basically the main idea is to control the HRV because it’s really decreasing after hard physical activity.
Cheryl McColgan (33:18.988)
Yeah, that’s amazing. I love so many good use cases for this. And I love that you were able to like really share with people kind of your personal experience, because I think often when people create a device like this, it’s often out of some kind of personal thing that happened to them, right? Like you said, your wife has migraines, so that was very helpful. And you’d been under a lot of stress of not sleeping well. So I love that you were able to find something and then bring it to market that can really help everyone.
So all that being said, would love it if there are any final thoughts that you have or anything that you’d like to share that we haven’t already addressed, either in relation to biohacking or the device.
Vitalijus (33:56.685)
I’m always saying, probably I want to say two things. First of all, really experiment with yourself. I think this is the uniqueness of biohacking that you can do on yourself. You’re very personal, very unique human being. You have your own, I don’t know, glucose spike, your own sleep metrics and et cetera. So I think this is the important that you experiment.
which means that you will take care of yourself. And this is the second point that you really need to take care of yourself, especially of your mental health. For example, me personally, it was a period of time last month, my typical average week, like a working hour a week was 70 hours per week. It’s huge. So, I mean, with this kind of huge…
know, workload, it’s very, it’s very, it’s it’s very possible that you will burn out. Yeah. So I understand this, and I’m taking care of myself a lot about the stress resilience, mental health, and et cetera. Pulsetto is the part of their routine, but it’s not like a, like I said, it’s not a magic still. I’m really spending a lot of time on my mental health, you know, just to recover, to have good sleep.
good nutrition, know, I’m taking care a lot about high intensive interval training. I am doing like a, like a self awareness, know, with thoughts, you know, kind of activity is decreasing my energy levels, what kind of activity is increasing my level, energy levels. I’m doing some parasympathetic nervous system. It means I’m taking care of myself, you know? So I think this is the very, very important, doesn’t matter if you are like a mom, you know.
Cheryl McColgan (35:37.225)
Bye.
Vitalijus (35:46.519)
or you are just a random person, need to take care of your mental health because nowadays, you know, it will be more and more stressors, more epidemic, wars, other, other health situations. So mental health is becoming, you know, more and more important. So take care of your mental
Cheryl McColgan (36:06.05)
Yes, amazing advice. Thank you so much again for joining us today and sharing all your knowledge and your passion for biohacking and for creating this device. hopefully we will see more from the future about this, the studies that you’re doing. for the final thing, if anybody wants to check this out, I created a link and it’s heelnorshgrow.com forage slash pulseto. So super easy to find and
said, you go to the website. There’s a special section for athletes where Vitalius speaks about some of the benefits. Then you can also just find out all the information there. Thanks again. I really appreciate it.
Vitalijus (36:42.757)
Thanks, thank you very much.