THE ACCRESCENT™ PODCAST EPISODE 216

Leigh Ann Lindsey (00:01.304)
Well, Nick, welcome to the Accrescent Podcast.

Nicholas Hool (00:03.766)
Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to share a little bit about my background stuff we’re working on and just see what people think. So thanks for the platform.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (00:14.496)
Yeah, I followed you guys on social media for a while now, but I don’t actually know the origin story of how you came to want to create this, found this brand. So give us a little bit of the background of the origin story that led you to where you’re at today.

Nicholas Hool (00:31.052)
Yeah, I we build vagus nerve stimulators to help people calm down when they’re stressed or anxious. So most people have no clue what the heck a vagus nerve stimulator is or even what the vagus nerve is. And I had no idea what it was until, you know, I started going through and studying the nervous system. But the reason I wanted to study the nervous system was, you know, I grew up a competitive golfer from Arizona, lived in Arizona my whole life and

growing up playing golf, you know, I was pretty good. I won a tournament when I was 14 and then that, you know, for whatever reason, just sparked me to want to play golf like as, you know, every day and maybe go pro one day. from coming from Arizona, my dream school was to play at Arizona State University. A lot of PGA Tour legends played there. So it was like, man, that’d be so cool if I could go play there. And

You know, did really well for, you know, a few years between 14 to 16, won a few tournaments, traveled the country, you know, competed with the best of the best. And actually got a spot, or I got a committed spot to go kind of walk on the Arizona State team. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is like dream come true. You know, I wasn’t going to be a starter my freshman year, but just the fact that I could even be on the team was like amazing. And when I turned 17, that coach got fired.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:54.71)
Yeah, totally.

Nicholas Hool (01:59.44)
and the new coach came in and he wiped everybody off the team, including all the prospects that were being recruited. So because it was late in the game at that time, like all the other coaches I had been talking to filled up their rosters and I just didn’t have a spot to go play at. And it was like, OK, if I’m going to go play in college somewhere, like a good school, I have to be like the best I’ve ever been for this last year as a teenager. And that just.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (02:06.015)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hool (02:27.288)
Caused a lot of anxiety inside of my mind like start overthinking about everything You know, I’d always been kind of a headcase to begin with but this was like, you know Just overwhelmed with every time I’d step out on the golf course It was like obviously I was thinking about it, but it wasn’t really the anxiety or the worry It was actually the physical symptoms that would manifest when I’d step on to the first tee So I would have these like little mini panic attacks

Leigh Ann Lindsey (02:53.228)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hool (02:56.088)
where like heart goes right into my throat. Suddenly like breathing is super fast and shallow. Muscles are tense. I’m like jittery and shaking. There are a couple of times where I like I would say I blacked out but I was like not. Yeah, I was just like where the heck am I right now? I was like what’s going on? And it was miserable. Like in that state you just cannot function. It’s like the worst thing ever. And that happened like so frequently. It just wrecked my ability to perform.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (03:11.138)
disassociating.

Nicholas Hool (03:26.064)
And just, you my performance suffered. And, you know, I tried all the things, right? Like the first thing you do is you tell your coach, you’re like, yeah, I’m just like struggling here. And the most annoying part about it is these coaches don’t fully understand what that feels like. So they just tell you, just breathe, just breathe, calm down, relax, go play your game. And it’s like, you

Leigh Ann Lindsey (03:46.602)
Yeah, by the way, just so you know, I played soccer and got recruited to play soccer in college and then played professionally a year after. So I know exactly what you’re talking about in a very intimate way.

Nicholas Hool (03:53.338)
nice.

Yeah, a lot of people experience it. And I thought, you know, what was kind of unfortunate is like, no one really knows what to do when that’s happening. literally, most people are just like, just breathe, like, just relax, you know, just go out and play your game. Don’t worry about it. I’m like, it’s not a mental thing. I mean, it is, it starts there, but the real problem is I can’t control my physical symptoms. And that’s what’s messing up my ability to perform.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (04:15.052)
Right. Exactly.

Nicholas Hool (04:26.832)
so I, you know, I started looking more into it and of course did like meditation visualization. I tried all the breathing stuff, but, just did not, didn’t work in the moment, right? When you’re short of breath, you can’t breathe. Like that’s, that’s why that doesn’t work. Right. And that’s why meditation doesn’t work when you’re having like a full blown fight or flight response. Cause your brain is racing. can’t, you can’t just quiet it when you want.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (04:42.499)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (04:55.072)
So I actually got a prescription for benzodiazepines. I went to a sports psychiatrist and looking back on it, was kind of, it seems kind of ridiculous that he didn’t even diagnose anything. He just heard me talk and he’s like, sounds like classic performance anxiety. Here’s a prescription for benzodiazepines. I’m like, at the time, know, teenager, like, I don’t know what this is, but sure, I’ll take it. and the way you take these is you take it about an hour before you

Leigh Ann Lindsey (05:19.137)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (05:24.258)
perform because it takes time to kick in. It’s not like an instant calm. So I’ve taken about an hour before I teed off and it totally worked. Like I was so calm. I didn’t notice any symptoms and I was like, wow, that’s amazing. Problem was it sedated me for the rest of the round. So it created a new problem of fatigue and being tired and not feeling motivated and focused. So, you know, it didn’t actually solve my problem.

And not to mention, you know, I started looking more into it and it’s like yeah You can’t really take benzos beyond two weeks without risking severe side effects and addiction and dependency and I was like, whoa, like no way I don’t want to become dependent and I already know of course not and I already felt some of those side effects of that like drowsiness and sedation. I’m like, yeah don’t want to I don’t want to Become dependent on this and experience that for the rest of my life. So I’m like,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (05:53.442)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (06:07.468)
Right, which they probably didn’t tell you when they put you on them.

Nicholas Hool (06:22.232)
There’s no way I’m doing that. you know, end of my, you know, high school golf career, I guess, you know, I decided like I could have gone and played at like some smaller schools, but I just kind of evaluated my position and I was like, are it’s going to be really hard to make it to, you know, PGA Tour if I don’t like solve this issue. So instead I decided I’m just going to go study the nervous system as a biomedical engineer and see if I can just figure out this problem because nobody’s

seemed to have figured it out. You know, the drugs don’t work, the standard relaxation techniques don’t work in those moments. So I went to school at ASU, got my bachelor’s in biomedical engineering, where I learned kind of the foundation of the human body, the nervous system and all that. And then I went straight into the PhD program. So I also got my PhD in biomedical engineering. But that’s where I got really specific with projects to try to solve this problem.

learned about what a stress response is and what happens, why it happens, what mechanisms are involved in it happening. And took a really engineered precision approach, not like a psychology approach of let’s just think our way through it, more like, I don’t know, what’s physically going on? What brain regions are involved? What nerves are involved? What neurotransmitters are involved?

because if I could select and start manipulating different mechanisms, maybe we could solve the problem. So, you I learned about all kinds of crazy technologies. My favorite one that I still think is awesome, but it’s not practical, it’s called transcranial magnetic stimulation. So it’s just like a coil that you put close to your head from the outside and it sends these pulses of magnet, like magnetic energy into your brain. And what that does,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (08:05.933)
yeah, TMS, uh-huh.

Nicholas Hool (08:17.684)
is the magnetic energy triggers action potentials inside your brain. So I can activate certain parts of my brain on command. In the same way I can manipulate the magnetic energy, I can also deactivate certain parts of my brain. And, you know, it’s used in depression, it’s used in certain parts of people with anxiety, OCD. So, you know, really promising treatment, but big giant machine, right? It’s like you got to…

Like people don’t own these, doctors own these and you have to go to a clinic to get this treatment. I’m like, that’s not, it doesn’t work for a golfer or someone who’s out there performing.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (08:49.546)
No, no. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (08:55.996)
yeah, and it’s very, the protocol is very intense. You have to go every single day for like 40, 40 business days in a row. It’s very intense. Okay, so if you like that, you should look up, I’ll send it to you in an email after, something called Saraset. I prefer patients do Saraset. It’s a similar concept, different mode of mechanism.

Nicholas Hool (09:02.381)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (09:17.75)
where they’re recording the sound of the brain waves and then playing it back to you through these tones and just the brain hearing itself, it’s able to like course correct the areas where it’s stuck.

So I actually refer patients out to Saraset all the time, but TMS is like a great second best because it’s covered by insurance and Saraset isn’t. But I totally hear you that even these great modalities, they’re not at home things that we can access in our day-to-day life throughout the day, really easily and accessibly.

Nicholas Hool (09:35.884)
Thanks.

Nicholas Hool (09:51.938)
Yeah. And that was my criteria for anything I was going to design was it has to be easily accessible, portable, right? Cause I’m out there. I need something with me when I’m out there. I’m not at home. I’m on the golf course. And you know, I just kept looking and learned about this technology called vagus nerve stimulation. You know, I knew what the vagus nerve was just from studying, didn’t, I wasn’t really familiar with vagal nerve stimulation technologies, but

The first study I came across was, you some researchers put a little earbud inside your ear and they’re targeting what’s called the auricular branch of the vagus nerve. And again, before I really knew fully what the vagus nerve was, I just saw the results of this study and the results were that heart rate came down within about 15 seconds, breathing rate, muscle tension, and a lot of the physical symptoms of being in a fight or flight state came down within about 15 seconds.

when you apply electricity in your ear. And, you know, I think there’s always debate around mechanisms of action versus outcomes. A lot of people are super stuck on, the mechanism of action has to be perfectly understood, perfectly proven before I go out and promote this thing. But to me, was like, I didn’t know anything about the mechanism of action, but I saw the outcomes and I’m like, that’s what I want.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (11:08.98)
Uh-huh. Totally.

Nicholas Hool (11:18.902)
I don’t care if I don’t understand what’s going on. I want those outcomes. so that triggered me obviously to go study what is going on. Why is this happening? But the first thing I did was I bought one of these and I’m like, let’s try it. And went out, played golf. I bought one of these earbud devices, used it. And it was, I could notice a slight calming response, but it wasn’t that like potent, like, wow, I’m super relaxed. Like I was hoping for. And

Leigh Ann Lindsey (11:48.204)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (11:48.78)
My kind of conclusion around that was in the studies that they run, they recruit patients to come and sit in an office environment. It’s very calm, it’s quiet, there’s no distractions. So it’s like, you’re not really in a high stress environment when you’re doing this. And my thought was, okay, maybe that’s why it’s not as potent is because when you’re out there, you know, there’s more stimulants triggering your nervous system to be fired up. So then my next thought was, what if I just cranked it up? What if I just…

put so much energy to this nerve, would it calm me down even more? Maybe that’s all I need. I just need a stronger stimulation. So I cranked it up and it shocked the heck out of me. First of all, the device I bought, they limit the output so you can’t crank it up. had to like build a unique one. And I cranked it up and I’m like, my gosh, that was so uncomfortable. Like that didn’t work. But I kept doing research and I saw another study that did demonstrate that when you put

Leigh Ann Lindsey (12:28.247)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (12:46.004)
output currents of an earbud device about five times higher than what was currently being used, you do get faster results. And I was like, how did they do that without shocking people? And basically they use like a certain type of electrode with like a hydrogen material that uniformly distributes the electricity in your ear so it doesn’t shock you as bad. And I thought that was really cool. And, you know, I built one of those

Leigh Ann Lindsey (13:07.001)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hool (13:14.904)
And again, it worked better than the device I bought, but it still wasn’t that hard hitting, like calm that I was, I wanted to feel. And again, I don’t actually care. Like just my perspective, I was trying to solve a problem that I had and I wanted an outcome. didn’t actually care what the data said. I wanted to feel better. Like, like big deal if my HRV goes up by triple. If I don’t feel more relaxed, I don’t really care. Like.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (13:34.074)
huh. Yes, yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (13:43.983)
100%.

Nicholas Hool (13:44.748)
Now that might be different if you are trying to optimize for HRV, but I wasn’t. I was like, I just want to feel better. So I kept searching. like, there’s gotta be a way to like crank up the power and actually feel something. And at the time there were other vagal nerve stimulators targeting the front side of the neck, which is a different branch of the nerve. It’s called the cervical vagus nerve, which is both ascending and descending. So it has more projections to the heart and body. And I’m like, maybe that’s more effective.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (13:50.083)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (14:13.484)
But the problem with that nerve is it’s deep in the neck. It’s about 30 millimeters or three centimeters below the skin. And there’s a lot of stuff in the way. You’ve got muscle, you’ve got nerve tissue, you’ve got, it’s sitting behind the carotid artery. So it’s like, you got blood to get through. So in order to get electrical energy that deep, you have to apply a massive amount of energy. And it can be done and it is being done. There’s products that do it. But what…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (14:13.604)
Hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (14:24.023)
Yeah, a suff again.

Nicholas Hool (14:42.892)
when you apply that much energy, your neck like contracts like this and it contorts and you’re like, and I was like, that’s not comfortable or fun. and I also didn’t feel that feeling I was hoping for. And the insight I had, I was just curious, but I read a study where they dissected the auricular Vegas nerve and they traced it. And the part of this nerve, the auricular in the ear does not go to the body. It goes to the brain.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (14:47.759)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (14:51.98)
you

Leigh Ann Lindsey (15:10.492)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hool (15:11.436)
and it synapses in the brain stem, which is where the anxiety response originates. So it actually gets straight to the source. And on its path to the brain, it travels through this little junction right under the ear in that soft spot behind your jawbone called the tympanomastoid fissure. And I thought, wonder if you can access it from that spot. And so I put some electrodes right there that I made, cranked it up. And the first thing I noticed was it was way more comfortable than inside the ear.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (15:17.314)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (15:40.79)
My entire ear lit up instead of just inside the ear. And after like about a minute of doing it, I felt this like warmth across my face. And I just wanted to sit back and like close my eyes. I was like, like that’s the spot. like I don’t just, again, I’m not, I wasn’t like trying to find the perfect mechanism of action. was trying to find an outcome. And that was the outcome that I was looking for. I was like instantly calmed me down.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (15:41.369)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (15:50.989)
Wow.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (16:07.47)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hool (16:09.866)
And I felt great. And then I was like, okay, now that I think I have the spot, let’s do some studies and make sure that it’s doing what it should be doing. So during my PhD, you know, we ran three different placebo controlled studies on healthy patients and people with, you know, diagnosed PTSD and performance anxiety. And every single time we saw an increase of heart rate variability, whereas placebo, there was no change. So that just indicates it’s.

likely activating the vagus nerve. And subjective results were always like we had in our first study, we had a hundred percent success rate of people reporting relaxation in a PTSD study. We did a 1300 first responder study. We had a 94 % relaxation rate. We did a school teacher study. We had a 99 % relaxation rate. So the outcomes were really good. Like people were feeling it and they were like, my gosh, that feels so good.

and they were relaxing. the thing is, the objective physiological data was not any better or worse than all the other vagal nerve stimulators out there. It was about the same. But the subjective feeling was way higher. And to me, it was like, this is the best there is. decided, all right, now that it’s safe, there’s no side effects. We have proof that it’s actually

Leigh Ann Lindsey (17:09.612)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (17:24.109)
Right, right.

Nicholas Hool (17:38.152)
activating the vagus nerve and calming the sympathetic fight or flight response. Now let’s go build something and make it real. And in 2018, right in the middle of my PhD, I won a national business competition. We won $100,000 and that gave us the money to go build our first prototypes. And I guess, it took us probably three years to build.

and then do all the foundational research behind it to get a product ready to go to market. But that was the idea behind this portable Verileaf Prime device is again portable. We want it to be small enough you could take it with you. So this thing fits in your pocket. We wanted to make it as easy to use as possible so there’s no setup time. Most of these electrical stimulators either have wires you have to connect to and connect yourself to which could

Leigh Ann Lindsey (18:30.37)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hool (18:35.584)
in the way sometimes, or they use these electrodes that you have to put a messy gel paste on. So you get all messy on your skin, you have to clean yourself, clean the device when you’re done, and you have to carry a tube of gel with you every time you use it. And was like, that’s uncomfortable and a little annoying. So we made ours wireless, there’s no wires, and we eliminated the need for that messy gel. And we did that by inventing this new type of electrode.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (18:42.571)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (19:02.84)
that just sits in the device and it’s pre-gelled. It’s like naturally hydrated, but it’s dry. So there’s no mess with it. And because you don’t need to use it for very long, it kicks in at about 15 seconds. You don’t have to put something on and wear it and then take it off. So we thought there’s no reason to make it wearable. Just press it here for a few minutes, let it do its job, and then when you’re done,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (19:09.934)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (19:22.435)
Right, right.

Nicholas Hool (19:31.266)
put the cap back on and put it away and you’re back to doing what you’re doing. It’s like it saves you so much time, saves you so much effort and it works really fast. And I guess that’s kind of the foundational story, the technical discovery to how we got to an actual usable product for people. And now, you know, we’re just kind of in a marketing phase trying to get people aware of this technology and how it’s so much better.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (19:35.38)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hool (20:00.812)
than medications. like I just, some people need medications. We’re never going to not, you know, need meds for certain people, but you definitely should try other things first. and especially, you know, one thing I try to tell people is, know, consider the risks of anything you buy and some of the risks you might think like, okay, safety risks, but, think financial risk. Like if I go buy this thing,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (20:01.687)
Now.

Nicholas Hool (20:28.856)
and it doesn’t work, can I get my money back or not? Am I stuck and like I’m out of money? And with medications, there’s no money back to you you try medications. If you go buy this big expensive package of some massage therapy or acupuncture, or you work one-on-one with a coach and it doesn’t work, you’re not getting your money back. But with ours, it’s 2.99, which is a little bit on the pricey side upfront, but when you think about it, it’s way less than

Leigh Ann Lindsey (20:38.168)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (20:58.476)
being on drugs for a year. But if you don’t like it, or if it doesn’t work for you, send it back and you get a refund. So it’s like, it should be the first line of defense, in my opinion, for people with severe, know, fight or flight who just want to calm down. You know, it’s safe, it’s relatively low cost, and if it doesn’t work, you can get a refund. It’s about as risk-free as it gets.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (21:14.283)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (21:23.649)
I’m completely on board. And by the way, I’m pretty hip to most of the products out there because I have clients ask me about them so often. And so I love to just keep a pulse on what’s coming out, whether they’re at home, consumer products, or they’re things like TMS or Saraset that people go out and do. And I love to do the research of like, what is it? How’s it working? How is it different from other things out on the market? And so I chose you guys very, very specifically to have on the podcast.

You’re the only Vegas nerve stimulator we’ve had on. actually, think Kelly, my assistant, might have hounded you guys for quite some time. Because I was like, there’s no one else I want on. They are the brand I want on because I’m so impressed with the intention and the design that’s gone into the product. think of all the Vegas nerve stimulators out there, it’s the most accessible, which is a really, really big thing. I’m working with individuals who…

Nicholas Hool (22:02.412)
nice

Leigh Ann Lindsey (22:23.053)
You know, we’re working through really severe trauma at times, especially in the cancer world. There’s very high stress things they are going through present day.

test results, chemotherapy, lots and lots of treatments. And I love to hold the nuance. This is something I really want to point out. I’m very much for, you I love to send my patients EFT tapping meditations and breath work and other guided meditations, somatic exercises, vagus nerve exercises they can do on themselves. And that’s amazing because I want them to have a really well-versed toolkit that they can use outside of sessions. But

The reality of it is, and I totally empathize with this, sometimes we are so at capacity that the energy it would take to do a tapping meditation or do a 10 minute somatic exercise really is just too much for them. And so to be able to just grab this device, place it on the vagus nerve, there is nothing required of you other than just to hold this device there and to have such quick results. That’s a huge, huge thing.

Nicholas Hool (23:32.076)
Yeah, 100%. Like people, you know, people who don’t fully understand a lot of this stuff or maybe haven’t experienced it, don’t realize the amount of effort and energy it takes to do a lot of these free self-regulation techniques. it takes a lot of mental effort and focus to do it well. And you can’t just do it. You have to do it well. like if I’m going to do, you know, any kind of meditation at all, like

Leigh Ann Lindsey (23:46.799)
Exactly.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (23:52.175)
100%.

Nicholas Hool (24:01.804)
You have to do it well. You have to focus on the right things and stay focused. If you lose focus, then you’re not really meditating. You’re just like sitting still. Same with breath work. Like, you know, if you want to maximize your breath work, like that’s a high effort practice. Like to do 10 minutes of like deep breathing and stuff. Like you have to be doing it all the time. And it’s funny, like…

There always comes a point for me when I do breath work where I’m like tired of breathing. I’m like, I don’t want to keep taking these giant breaths. Like it’s hard. Another one, here we go. Another one. I’m like, dude, another one. And I know it’s kind of dumb. It sounds like it’s not that that effortful, but like it is, it’s like, is kind of a lot. One thing I experienced too was I did, I did a lot of visualization practices when I was a competitive golfer and not

That’s not intended to like help you relax. It’s intended to help you perform better. But I noticed that to do visualization, you have to do it really well. You can’t just close your eyes and start visualizing. I mean, you can, but it’s not going to like be very effective. And the reason is because in order to visualize, the goal is to activate all the parts of your brain that are responsible for whatever the thing is you’re visualizing. So if it’s hitting a golf shot, the goal is I want to be

perfectly dialed in to all the parts of my brain that are involved in swinging a golf club. Which means if I’m distracted at all, I’m not putting all my energy into focusing on just those parts of my brain to swing a golf club. So in order to get into that perfectly, you know, dialed in visualization state, you have to first relax. You have to slow down, stop your brain from overthinking so you can just be still and focused.

And for me, it would take me at least 10 to 15 minutes of just doing relaxation exercises before I could start visualizing. Otherwise, it just didn’t work. I would get distracted and I just wouldn’t be an effective experience. But the times where I could relax, mean, I don’t know, like there’s not a lot of people who have actually, in my opinion, been in an actual visualization state because when you’re there,

Nicholas Hool (26:22.744)
Like nothing else exists. It’s crazy. It’s like your body, like you don’t even notice that it exists. It’s like you’re just, you’re just in a place that you’re visualizing and you could see it really clearly. You could smell what you’re smelling, hear what you’re hearing, see everything. And it’s really powerful for performance if you can get into that state. But you can’t just get into that state. You have to relax before you get there. And there were so many times where I wanted to visualize, but I couldn’t.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (26:25.433)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hool (26:51.064)
because I was stressed out and so many things are happening. But this thing is like an accelerant to get into that state, right? It does all the work for you. It calms down the mind and the body, and then it helps you visualize. like, I never practice golf anymore, like ever. I probably play four or five times a year. I just go warm up and play. I’m still shooting the same scores that I was when I was competing. I think it’s because…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (27:05.303)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (27:18.189)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (27:19.764)
Every time I go do it, I use this and I visualize before I go play. Like the talent is still in there, but now that I know how to visualize and relax my body, I can tap into that, you know, muscle memory that’s that I’ve ingrained over the years and it’s still there. It works. So it’s like, you know, having the ability to just calm yourself down fast. One, it’s good to help you feel better, but it’s also good for people that want to perform better when you use the right way.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (27:25.977)
Mm-hmm

Leigh Ann Lindsey (27:47.203)
Yeah, well it’s just, what I see it being sometimes is it’s a bit of a catch-22, especially for some of my patients where it’s like…

Nicholas Hool (27:50.744)
you

Leigh Ann Lindsey (27:56.055)
If I could just calm down, I’d be able to meditate. But if I could just meditate, I’d be able to calm down. And so there’s a time where the physiological experience of that intense, overwhelming stress is so, so hard to overcome. And I’m not over here trying to say, it’s all about the willpower and you’ve just got to be able to focus and go into that place.

Because I completely agree with you. Is there an emotional and in my case, know, depth psychology is all about the unconscious mind. So we talk a lot about what’s going on in the unconscious, but is that a component to why I’m experiencing this? Absolutely. And it might originate there, but there are very real physiological cascades that are now happening that if we only try and address it from a mental emotional perspective, it’s gonna be really hard to reverse that. It’s gonna take much, much longer versus if we

Nicholas Hool (28:39.686)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (28:49.233)
In my opinion, the beautiful secret sauce is if we can…

tune into the mind, body and spirit, support it from that mental, emotional side and that physiological side at the same time. That is where that deep, deep grounding can come in so much faster. So, but that’s what I love about your product is it’s something that you can use to settle things and then be able to maybe do that deeper inquiry when it’s appropriate and when it’s right to go, okay, what was that about? know, in my case with patients, it might be something like, what are the unconscious beliefs?

Nicholas Hool (29:05.869)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (29:24.081)
that are triggering this fear and are they true and what are the more expansive thoughts we can bring in, cetera, et

Nicholas Hool (29:31.766)
Yeah, 100%. Stress and anxiety have been around forever, but I feel like the first category of solutions to solve it were more on the emotional and the mental side. And for the last several decades, we’ve of mastered our understanding of…

the mental side and the emotional side. like there’s so many programs out there that are proven to work. And we know that like we know that meditation works, breath work works, emotional regulation works, it all works. But there’s still the problem of it’s really hard to do well if you are in a dysregulated state. It’s not that it doesn’t work. It’s that it’s hard to do it well, because there is also the physiological side. It’s not just emotional.

There’s also physiological components to it. And I think in the last, you know, 10 years or so, a lot of the research has been going into studying what’s physically going on. Not, I don’t, you know, we know pretty well what the emotional triggers can be. And we have protocols that can identify emotional triggers, but what’s causing the physical symptoms? Because once we can identify the physical, we’re not going to just brush aside the emotional and just do the physical because

Well, that defeats the purpose because if the emotional is not taken care of, then you’re always going to be going into these fight or flight states. But you want both. If you do both together, now it’s like, I mean, we’re getting as close as it gets to, I don’t want to say cure it, but like completely mastering your emotions and how you feel.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (30:59.951)
Exactly.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (31:11.639)
Yeah. Well, yeah, and I think it’s worth noting, because I remind my patients all the time, we’re not trying to, healing doesn’t mean getting you to a place where you never experience anxiety again. Anxiety is a normal human emotion. In fact, a healthy nervous system isn’t one that never, ever, ever gets dysregulated.

A healthy nervous system is one that might have like the correct response to the correct stimuli and is then able to go back into regulation much, much quicker. What I see so often when there’s just so much unmetabolized trauma, there’s so much present day stress that’s happening, they’re getting, know, their nervous system is going into a stress state, whether that’s fight flight or freeze fawn.

over kind of the small everyday things that really aren’t threatening, aren’t dangerous. And then once they’re in that dysregulated state, it takes so long to be able to come down out of that. So really it’s just about reversing each of those. I’m very, very few things are putting me in a stress state and when they do, it’s actually an appropriate response.

Nicholas Hool (32:17.75)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (32:20.073)
And I’m then able to regulate much quicker. But just to your point, we need both of those. Sometimes I love all the nervous system. I love that the nervous system is being talked about so much more. And I try to remind people that like, you can do all the Vegas nerve exercises in the world you want.

Nicholas Hool (32:38.86)
Yes, no doubt.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (32:40.609)
And if we never address some of these deeper unconscious contributors, we’re just gonna continually need to be soothing, soothing, soothing, and probably more and more and more. So it is, I completely agree about bringing the two together.

Nicholas Hool (32:44.866)
Thanks for watching!

Nicholas Hool (32:51.416)
Yeah, having both is really powerful. Yeah, because you could activate your vagus nerve every single day, but if you never deal with the trigger of what’s causing the stress, you’ll feel better for short transient moments, but you’re still going to be getting hit with stress so frequently over little things that don’t matter. That’s like, well, the goal is to do both.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (32:56.014)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (33:12.449)
Exactly. So I’m curious, having studied the nervous system so much in biomedical engineering, are there any things that you see on social media about the nervous system that you’re like, my gosh, that’s just like completely wrong or counterproductive? I don’t know. Do you notice anything like that? Can you share some of those?

Nicholas Hool (33:30.782)
absolutely. Just because most people, yeah, most people just don’t go get a PhD in biomedical engineering. I would say my sort of path towards, you know, experiencing information about the nervous system on the Internet was I didn’t know anything in the beginning. Right. So I’m open minded. think I think everything everyone’s saying is true. I go learn about the vagus nerve.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (33:41.431)
Yes.

Nicholas Hool (34:00.098)
And then suddenly I’m like, everything everyone’s saying is wrong. Like, no, it’s not that it’s this. but to some degree I’ve learned that it depends on who is saying it and why they’re saying it. for example, if, if I’m a researcher and I say something wrong about the nervous system, like that’s a big deal. But if I’m a marketing person trying to sell something, I’ve learned that you can’t really.

communicate too much technical information to people because they don’t get it. so marketers typically dumb down their language. They keep it really, really simple. And the risk with that is you say something that isn’t perfectly accurate. And it’s kind of like, that sounds a little woo woo. So I, for me, it’s like, I try not to, I don’t get as angry or upset anymore when I see stuff that’s being said the wrong way. So for example,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (34:35.396)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (34:59.16)
A lot of products out there use skin vibration to help you relax. You might put it on your chest, on your wrist, and it vibrates your skin. And they advertise saying, stimulates the vagus nerve to calm the nervous system. And I’m just like, that’s literally not stimulating the vagus nerve. It’s skin vibration. Your vagus nerve is not right here. It’s not on the outer part of your chest.

It’s a very specific nerve in the body and that’s not stimulating the vagus nerve. But again, what I realized was even if it’s not stimulating the vagus nerve and they’re claiming it is, does it really matter if the outcomes are actually what people want? They’re still relaxing. It’s still calming them down. And the risk is if someone’s buying it because they actually need a vagus nerve stimulator.

Well, one, they’re not gonna buy that because they know it doesn’t actually simulate it. They’ll probably look at getting an implant or a different device like ours. But if you’re just looking at outcomes and someone is kind of crossing the line with what they’re saying, as long as it doesn’t pose like a health risk to somebody, I’ve learned it’s not really that big of a deal. But like those are things all the time. Like people come out and say, hey, this…

this massage device we made stimulates the vagus nerve. It’s like, no, it doesn’t. It literally isn’t touching the vagus nerve. Now the vagus nerve might be employed in the holistic mechanism that your massage tool is activating. But, you know, I think a lot of people say stuff like that because it’s a buzzword and it, you know, gets marketing out there. You know, I will say there was a recent podcast that came out.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (36:31.138)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (36:46.127)
Totally. 100%.

Nicholas Hool (36:53.496)
I’m not afraid to name the guy. Kevin Tracy is a vagus nerve researcher who did clinical trials for a vagus nerve implant product. And he was just on a podcast with Tim Ferriss and he said something that just annoyed me. Most people would not catch this, but because I got my PhD in it, he basically concluded that the only vagus nerve stimulators that are true vagus nerve stimulators are implants that go right on the vagus nerve. Anything else is not a real vagus nerve stimulator.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (37:20.623)
Mm-mm.

Nicholas Hool (37:23.862)
And that bugged me because it’s like, so you’re just brushing aside 20 years of published non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation research. And there’s several studies who have literally put electrodes into the body on the nerve, stimulated it from the outside and have picked up measurements of activity. It’s like, I don’t think the dude had even read those studies. I don’t know what his motivation was. I’m guessing has something to do with.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (37:48.462)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (37:52.61)
being financially tied to selling implantable devices. you know, you just get a lot of people saying a lot of stuff that’s kind of woo woo. And it’s, I think it just comes down to who are they and why are they saying what they’re saying? I think it’s okay to criticize people a little more aggressively if they’re figures of authority and they’re trying to establish themselves as like credible sources and they say something wrong. But, or if they’re trying to sell something, you know, if it’s

blatantly false that’s wrong, but you know, it’s try not to get too worked up anymore about it because it doesn’t ultimately matter. And you know, you could make the same argument about our stuff too. You could say like, well, you’re not targeting the standard location of a Vegas nerve stimulator. So therefore it must not work. It’s like, first of all, I just shared with you my entire story of why I’m targeting that spot.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (38:31.162)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (38:50.518)
Most people don’t know that. So they would just assume I’m some sham guy who just made something up. But it’s like, no, the reason that the last 20 years of Vegas nerve stimulation research doesn’t have it right here is because nobody’s been doing it. Everyone does it on the same location and expect to see different results, but I didn’t get those results. So I tried something new. But yeah, I think just a lot of misunderstanding about the anatomy of the nerve. assume that.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (39:07.15)
right.

Nicholas Hool (39:18.102)
can’t target it from here or there. And it’s like, no, you actually can. You’ve just never done it. But again, my main thing is, you know, what are the outcomes people are promising? That’s the most important thing. The mechanism is important, but the mechanism is really mostly important if you’re considering risk. Like if the mechanism involves certain parts of the body functioning that if it goes wrong, it could cause harm to your health. Well, then yes, mechanism does matter.

But if there’s no safety risks, then mechanism’s not as important. Mechanism is also important if you’re trying to get hyper precise protocols for certain types of cases. But if there’s no risk and it’s more of a general application and you’ve got all this research showing the outcomes are good, then mechanism’s not as important in my opinion. Some people will say it is important, but it’s really not.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (40:13.903)
Yeah.

No, I hear you. I hear you though. I completely agree with what you’re saying because I do think to some extent if we don’t let ourselves do our experiment with anything until there is 20 years of peer-reviewed scientific data proving it works for that, we’re gonna always be 20 to 30 years behind.

Nicholas Hool (40:35.266)
Yeah, yeah, we’ll never have innovations. And the unfortunate part is there’s always going to be the established medical community that will always criticize new stuff that says there’s not enough research behind it. The research isn’t good or like it hasn’t been studied on the right types of people. Therefore, no, it’s bad. And it’s like, that’s such a like, I don’t know what the right word is, but I read

Leigh Ann Lindsey (40:39.726)
No.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (40:47.672)
Yes.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (40:57.187)
Yeah!

Leigh Ann Lindsey (41:03.641)
Well, there’s a total lack of nuance. For me, it’s super frustrating. So I’m in the integrative oncology field. So we work with cancer patients, many of them are doing Western treatments paired with a lot of extra integrative things. And I always get so frustrated when I hear the Western doctors saying, well, that hasn’t been studied for this, it’s bad.

Nicholas Hool (41:05.59)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (41:26.562)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (41:27.885)
and they’re making this total black and white statement rather than at the very least just being able to go, hey, that hasn’t been studied for this. So I don’t know. But because there’s no study, it’s like automatically given this negative bad label. And I think that’s just way, there’s like such a lack of nuance there.

Nicholas Hool (41:46.22)
Yeah, it’s unfortunate because there’s so much stuff that could help people. People don’t also realize this, but studies cost a lot of money. You can’t just go do a study. If you or one of your patients stumbled across something and it solved all their anxiety problems, it works. It works for them, and they give it to 10 of their friends, and it worked for all of them.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (41:55.597)
Yes!

Nicholas Hool (42:12.246)
Like they’re not gonna have the money to go run a double blind randomized placebo controlled study. Those things cost like a million dollars depending on how you set it up. So, but does that mean it doesn’t work because he didn’t run a double blind placebo controlled study? Like no, it worked on the people that used it. And that’s really the most important thing that matters is did it work? The second thing to consider, so let’s say you’re evaluating stuff that has.

very limited research behind it, but you have lot of testimonials and people saying it works, it works. You these types of things, you know, a lot of people will put into the woo woo category. It’s like, it’s woo woo science. There’s no science behind it. Okay, well, evaluate the risk. Is it something that could harm me if it goes wrong? So think binaural beats. You know, there’s like 10 years ago, it was totally woo woo. There was like very little research behind it, but it was working for people.

But like there’s no harm in trying it. It’s just sound going into your ears. So why criticize it? Why not try it? If it works, then it worked. It worked for you. Who cares if there’s no research behind it. And it takes a decade to get the research behind it. It’s not like, you know, a new innovation comes out and immediately everyone’s researching it. It takes time to promote that this new tech exists. And then it takes years for people to actually set and run studies. So it’s like,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (43:21.165)
Yes. Well, exactly.

Nicholas Hool (43:39.704)
You know, I think it’s fair to run these studies for safety, but in my opinion, if it’s a low risk thing you’re considering, I don’t think we need as aggressive research behind it to prove that it works. It’s different than a pacemaker, right? Like if you’re considering a pacemaker, a thousand percent, need double blind randomized studies to prove it’s safe, because if that goes wrong, it could kill you.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (43:56.129)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (44:01.466)
completely.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (44:08.225)
Yeah, no, I completely agree. And just, think more nuance on many individual, not just doctors, but just individuals of being able to go, just because there’s no studies behind it for that thing, we don’t need to demonize it. In fact, let’s actually empower our patients’ critical thinking and maybe just be able to be honest of like, hey, I haven’t seen studies in that thing being used for this specifically.

here’s maybe what you might want to consider and if you do go try it like use your own discernment and critical thinking. But yeah just this sort of like blanket demonizing of things just because there’s not studies done I think is actually really harmful and is keeping people from a lot of things that could be huge huge game changers in their health and healing journey.

Nicholas Hool (44:53.398)
Yeah, it is. And the sad part is it’s like the medical community, when they’re in the middle of their careers, like they’re not thinking that way. They’re only thinking, well, if there’s not double blind randomized, you know, the studies behind it, I’m not going to promote it. But usually once they retire and they’re not working, they change their minds. They realize at the end where outcomes are really the most important thing. And if something works for someone and it’s safe and there’s not a lot of risks, then let them use it.

just try it. The founder of Medtronic wrote a book. Medtronic is a big giant medical device company that makes pacemakers and other implants. And he wrote a book after he retired and he stated that in his book, he was like, there’s way too much emphasis on there has to be double blind randomized placebo controlled studies on everything we promote. But he was like, I’ve used stuff with no studies behind it and it saved lives. Are you going to tell me that I can’t

use this if my judgment suggests it could help someone just because it didn’t match the research criteria. He was like, that’s kind of the mindset that he believes medical should go towards is look at the risks first. And if the risks are low, then it’s worth a shot, right? Regardless of.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (46:11.182)
Yeah, yeah, which I think, and we’ll get off this tangent, because I do want to come back to some technical things, but what I think is so interesting slash frustrating about that is they’re giving pharmaceuticals and certain treatments and not disclose, I think, and what I hear from patients all the time and my own experience too, like not actually full informed consent of all the potential side effects and risk factors.

Nicholas Hool (46:35.434)
yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (46:37.262)
So they’re already not doing that. And then when something new comes on, they’re like, well, there’s no studies, so we don’t know what could happen. They shy away from it. So that’s the last tangent I’ll go on. And this isn’t even to demonize doctors or Western medicine. There’s absolutely.

a time and a place, but I do think there is a little bit more like critical thinking and nuance that can be brought to some of this stuff. So yeah. Okay. So what I want to first, I want to circle back to the Veil Relief, but you also have recently launched a second product, which is the headset that you’re actually wearing for us right now. I’d love for you to talk about both of these. And I want to get a little bit more of a sense for myself, but also for the audience of, let’s start with the Veil Relief. Like,

Nicholas Hool (46:58.168)
100%.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (47:21.252)
How often can you use it? How often should you use it? Do you only use it in a state of dysregulation or is it something that can be used as a preventative just wellness routine? Let’s start with some of those.

Nicholas Hool (47:32.854)
Yeah. Yeah. So just, I guess, first talking about the Verileaf, the Verileaf Prime handheld vagal nerve stimulator. So it’s the first use case it was designed for was immediate on the spot. Calm yourself down when you’re having panic attack, stress response, anxiety. And, you know, it works in a few minutes. So it’s just use it anytime you need it, anywhere you’re at, put it away. Done. So, you know, that’s

Originally it was meant for like high performance, high stress people, athletes, musicians, people giving public presentations. but it’s also just good for daily stress recovery, right? Like when you wake up and you’ve got to go to work and you’ve got to, you know, target your massive to-do list and the office you’re in has a lot of lights. There’s people, there’s sounds, there’s emails coming in. Your brain is always shifting between what task it needs to get done next.

Oftentimes you have 10 tasks you’re thinking of at the same time. Most people don’t do one thing at a time. There’s like five or 10 things at the same time, which is crazy for your brain. That triggers so much stress. And so at the end of the day, they’re stressed out, which results in being irritable with their loved ones. They might struggle to fall asleep at night. They don’t feel good. So we have a lot of people who use it for stress recovery. Like after a day,

of work, they go home, they use it, and they’re just calm. They use it before they go to bed. And it’s for a lot of people, it’s a daily use thing because the nature of their job is high stress. They have to use it every day. And it’s sort of an essential for just well-being and performance, relaxation, sleep. But it’s non addictive. I think that’s the most important thing is if you use it every single day, it’s actually not bad for you. It’s actually better for you the more you use it.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (49:28.132)
Right, because you’re training your nervous system too, I think.

Nicholas Hool (49:30.434)
Yeah, so if you think of a nerve, it’s kind of like a muscle in that the more you work out a muscle, it grows, it gets bigger over time. The nerves act in a very similar way. There’s a term in neuroplasticity, which is a concept of how the brain changes over time. And it’s more of a phrase, but the phrase is nerves or neurons.

that fire together, wire together, meaning the more often you’re using a part of your brain, the stronger those nerve cells become. And over time, they become like strong all on their own. So that’s why people that do like Sudoku puzzles or crossword puzzles tend to have higher IQs because they’re constantly exercising their brain. Same thing with

with the nervous system, the nerves in the body, these little stringy wires that go throughout the body and carry electrical signals to the body so the body can function. Those stringy wires are the nerves and they’re made up of the same cells in the brain called neurons. And they communicate with electrical signals. So if you have a vagus nerve that is really weak, to strengthen it, you just need to reactivate it. And that’s what

this device does. It brings electrical energy to the nerve to turn it on. So there’s an immediate benefit. But the more you do it, the more often you turn that nerve on, the nerves inside or the cells inside the nerve start to grow closer together. And after like 90 days of daily use, you’ve got a really healthy vagus nerve, which means you don’t won’t need to use it as much. You’ll be calm, kind of on your own.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (51:20.142)
Yeah. Meaning like you’re training that you’re training that nerve to activate better, faster, quicker, longer in times of stress. So you’re creating that resilience.

Nicholas Hool (51:29.612)
Yeah. Yeah, you’re working out your nervous system. And if you do it enough, it’s going to become strong all on its own. Now, also in the same way, if you get really strong, you go to the gym every day for for a year and you just grow, on muscle. If you stop working out a year later, you’re going to lose muscle mass. So it’s like it’s one of those things where. You kind of have to maintain it.

Right? In the early days, if you have a weak vagus nerve, you’re going to need to use this device a lot. Every day, probably multiple times a day for the first few months. But eventually you’ll get to a point where it’s strong on its own, but you still don’t want to neglect it. You still want to make sure that you’re getting that activation, you know, a few times a week, you know, just use it once in a while. But it’s definitely something you don’t need to use for like

Leigh Ann Lindsey (52:12.143)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (52:25.376)
an hour at a time, like you go to the gym for an hour. With this, it’s like, you just need a few minutes. Like just do it for a few minutes. It’s very easy. You can use it anywhere. You don’t need to be in a quiet space to do it. You can do it in a loud space and it’s gonna do its job. So.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (52:41.422)
Yeah. Okay, follow up questions that I want to try and squeeze in here. One quick comment to that actually is I often talk with clients a lot about safety signals and the, know, when there’s so many, when there’s, in my case, when there’s so much unmetabolized trauma.

especially severe trauma, it’s like the unconscious is just sending out danger signals all the time. And then the nervous system picks that up and then the nervous system sends out danger signals or is responding to those danger signals. And so sometimes what I often talk about is we’re doing this deep tending, this deep metabolizing of past trauma on an unconscious level. And however often we can give the body safety signals, the better, especially in the beginning of

this work. And to your point, as things start to settle, we might not need to be giving those safety signals all the time, but to be able to give the body safety signals. And that’s, in a metaphorical sense, what I think of with this device is every time you use it, you’re giving your body a safety signal. And it goes both ways, right? The communication from the brain to the body versus the body to the brain goes both ways. I can think thoughts of

I’m safe, it’s okay, I can be calm and that can send a signal for things to calm down but the communication also goes in the reverse. When my body starts experiencing calm, it sends signals to my brain that I’m safe, so.

Nicholas Hool (54:15.116)
Yeah, and everything you said is, so before I got my PhD, I would have taken what you just said and been like, that is BS. Like that’s just magic thinking. Like, cause I tried that. I people tell me that like just think positive thoughts and it’ll signal safety, but it’s actually physically true. Like what’s going on because the nervous system is a physical collection of

of real nerves you can touch and hold and feel. They look like these stringy little wires. And they communicate with signals, electrical signals. So when my brain thinks that I want to move my arm, how does it do that? It sends an electrical signal through my nervous system to the muscles in my arm to move. So it is as much as it is you’re thinking like, let’s send a safety signal. There’s a physical signal being sent.

when you think that. And for the safety side, it’s through the vagus nerve. And the fighter flight signals are often not actual signals, but a shutting down of safety signals. The safety signals turn off and now you don’t feel safe at all. And then there’s a feedback loop where body doesn’t feel safe, sends a signal to the brain, we’re in danger. And then brain sends signals down to the heart to speed up, to the muscles to tense up.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (55:12.922)
Yeah. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (55:27.62)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hool (55:42.006)
Like there’s real physical signaling happening inside the body. And thinking does affect that. If I’m thinking positively, it’s a totally different, you know, brain recording. If I were to measure my brain thinking positively versus thinking negatively, like the physical signals look different, which is why it’s so important to think positively all the time. If you want to feel better, it works. It’s not woo woo. Like there’s real stuff.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (55:46.478)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (56:01.177)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, they just, go hand in hand and to the point we’ve already made, being able to have safety signals coming from both mind and body is like such a beautiful secret sauce. So I love that. Okay. I do want to ask some follow up questions about a couple of specific things.

Have you had any clients share testimonials from people who have experienced nerve disorders? I’m also thinking of individuals who are experiencing, like we have a lot of highly, highly sensitive individuals where their nervous system is super frazzled. Maybe there’s even like mast cell syndrome going on where, you know, their inflammatory, like their immune system, everything is getting labeled a threat. So, so sensitive. And so there’s kind of two questions involved in this. One is,

Have you had any clients like the art, excuse me, customers like that, are they able to tolerate it? Or is there anyone that you have seen like it’s even even though it’s so gentle and safe, it’s they’re not able to tolerate it. And then on the flip side of that, you know, have you had any testimonials of this being a really great support for customers like that?

Nicholas Hool (57:17.858)
Yeah, we’ve had both. We’ve had the people that got way too overwhelmed when they used it. And we’ve had the same people say, this thing changed my life. And at a high level, it’s a wellness tool and it’s reactivating the vagus nerve to just support relaxation in the body. We’re not healing anything. It could heal stuff, but we’re not claiming that. It’s more of a holistic, if we can calm the body, usually the rest of the body takes care of itself.

So one of the conditions that we see a lot, people that are hypersensitive and their bodies are just stuck in sympathetic overdrive, the fight or flight state every day, is something called POTS or dysautonomia. I didn’t know about this until it got into this field, but it’s not like a known medical condition. It’s more of, you see it a lot in functional medicine clinics because

it is directly associated with the vagus nerve. And these people that have POTS or dysautonomia, their bodies and nervous systems are stuck in fire flight. And we can measure their heart rate variability, which is an indicator of vagal tone or how strong their vagus nerve is. And it’s always super low. You know, someone will be sitting down, just standing up sends their heart rate to like 180 and it’s a miserable feeling. anything can trigger that sounds physical touch. So,

For people that are that sensitive, we don’t typically promote our product for that because ours is considered a high intensity vagal nerve stimulator. Now it doesn’t mean you have to use it at full strength. You can still use it at its lowest level. But those people need to start out very slow. If you haven’t worked out in years and you go to the gym and lift the heaviest weights possible, you are going to be feeling horrible for the next week.

you’re gonna be in pain, your body’s not gonna be able to move. It does not mean it harmed you. Your body is not falling apart. It’s just that was too much. Like we need to go slow. And the same is true with people with very, very weak and sensitive nervous systems or a vagus nerve. You need to start slow. So we do work with doctors on what we call the low and slow protocol where you use it at its lowest intensity.

Nicholas Hool (59:45.164)
but it’s typically like a minimum of 20 minutes per session. Like you’re gonna need to use it longer. You’re not gonna get an immediate benefit from it. Usually it takes several days, sometimes even weeks before you start to finally feel what it feels like to have your vagus nerve relaxation response kick in. But once you get there, I mean, we’ve had really powerful testimonials of people where like one lady,

you know, she had to quit her job and cause she could not go to work cause all these symptoms were flaring up. it was miserable. Like she’s not making money. Like she’s just desperate to get back to living her life. she, she bought our product. I feel bad. I probably would have just given her one cause their situation was so bad, but she did buy it and she used it every day for two weeks and two weeks. She said she finally went from like an hour of sleep to four hours of sleep and then she continued using it and

She used it every day for four months. And she said she didn’t notice much, but after four months, like all of her gut problems like disappeared and she just got back to normal. And now she’s got a job again and she’s traveling and she credits using this every day to like helping her recover. And now we have, we got a lot of people on TikTok who share stories like that. But the, you know, it’s a different use case, right? If you have severe chronic nervous system issues.

This is not a use it once and you’ll feel better. This is like a commitment. So it’s a little bit off label for us, but that’s why we don’t really promote that. But we do have a lot of doctors and functional clinics who use it for that purpose. And for that use case, that’s one of the reasons we made the headphones is there are people who need longer sessions. And if you’re going to use it for a long time, it’s annoying to hold it. So we were like, all right, let’s make a hands-free version that you can wear.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:01:32.25)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (01:01:42.616)
But I don’t want it to look ugly. Like part of our brand is I want to make user friendly devices that are not weird to take with you in public. You feel comfortable using it. Yeah. Yeah. Or if I’m at the office and all of my coworkers looking at me being like, the heck are you doing? So we made headphones, right? Everyone’s familiar with headphones. We made it look really premium. We put like a gold color on it. So it looks more like a luxury fashion piece than like a medical.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:01:51.01)
aesthetic and not like so obvious that you’re wearing, you’re doing something medical while you’re wearing it.

Nicholas Hool (01:02:12.278)
I’m treating myself thing. And now, I every doctor that bought this has bought this and a lot of them have bought like five of them. And if now they’re using this with almost a hundred percent of their patients because vagal nerve health is so important to overall nervous system wellness. And I mean, people are loving it. Like it’s definitely has a big impact, you know, even if you’re not chronically ill, like

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:02:34.725)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (01:02:41.172)
stimulate your vagus nerve every day for 90 days and you’ll be pretty surprised at how well you feel after doing that.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:02:47.26)
Yeah, my gosh. Well, can you say, are you okay if I take us a few minutes over? Okay, can you say a little bit more just for the audience who’s like, okay, so which one should I get? The difference in that deciding factor. It sounds like one of those might be just if you want to be supporting your nervous system for much larger quantities throughout the day or you feel that you really need to or maybe you’re in that realm of sort of a chronic illness or deep deep nervous system.

Nicholas Hool (01:02:51.444)
Absolutely.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:03:14.862)
dysregulation, it sounds like the headset might be better or just maybe more user friendly because you can use it without needing to keep your hands involved.

Nicholas Hool (01:03:21.73)
Yeah, totally. So if you are serious about strengthening your vagus nerve and maximizing your nervous system function and wellness, you’re gonna want both headphones and the handheld. The reason is because you’re gonna want to stimulate your vagus nerve as often as you can, especially in like the first 90 days, I guess you’d call it like the intensive wellness program. The headphones are great for first thing in the morning or first thing at night.

when you wanna do more of a longer session. Think like 20 minutes at a time. The handheld is good when you wanna go places and you’re traveling and you can do it on the spot for just a few minutes at a time. So having both is actually the best if you are someone who like really needs to work on strengthening your vagus nerve. If you are someone who wants the most powerful, I guess, calming experience, the headphones are the best. We do have data.

Subjective data in our studies that show people were more relaxed in 10 minutes using headphones versus 10 minutes with this But the differences in objective physiology Recordings were no different. They’re the same. It’s just subjectively This is a lot more relaxing and I mean I can tell you this thing is Deeply relaxing when you put some sound on and get both sides going hands-free I mean you just want to sit back and after 10 minutes, you don’t want to get up. You’re just like I just want to sit here

I feel so good. But you know if you’re more on the budget side and maybe you can’t afford an $800 headphone, you know the handheld is an excellent tool. It’s gonna do the same job. It just might take a little more effort. Might take, you know depending on who you are, you might have to use it for 10-20 minutes at a time. If you’re a healthy person that’s just high stress, usually this works in like three minutes so you don’t need to use it for too much.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:05:15.664)
Okay.

Nicholas Hool (01:05:17.528)
But you have to hold it there, which may not be what you’re looking for. Maybe you want more of a passive experience where you just put it on and it does all the work for you. It’s also $299, so a little more affordable. But I also like this one too. It’s got different features. the headphones only target the vagus nerve. We have protocols here where we can target stress in any part of the body. So if you have…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:05:43.824)
okay.

Nicholas Hool (01:05:44.278)
tension in your wrists, you can target it right here in your arms, you can come up here, you can do it on your shoulders, on your traps and just release any tension in the body. We don’t promote it for this, but there are cases you could use it for headache on the forehead. it’s a really like it’s kind of in its own category and being able to use it around the entire body. We actually have a clinical version for a different clinic who

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:06:08.43)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (01:06:13.848)
reaches a lot of people. built a custom version of this for them. It’s like a thousand dollars, but that’s what it’s for. It’s for the whole body. So you can kind of use this on the whole body as well, which is cool. yeah, it just comes down to your lifestyle and how stressed out are you? If you’re severely stressed, the headphones are the most effective. If you’re on a budget, handheld is great, also effective. And if you want, know, if you’re the most serious about improving your vagal nerve health, get both and use it as much as you can.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:06:25.488)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:06:43.311)
Yeah,

I’ll land this plane soon, I promise. For someone who’s trying it, I imagine there’s, I imagine you guys have on the website general protocols and recommendations, but do you also suggest, let’s say someone does those first three minutes and they’re not noticing anything, is it sort of like, you’ve gotta find your own sweet spot? For someone it might be five, for someone else it might be 10. How do you suggest kind of experimenting? Is it keep the intensity low but go for a longer period of time first?

Nicholas Hool (01:06:48.629)
Okay.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:07:16.755)
Or is it the reverse, maybe like up the intensity but keep it shorter?

Nicholas Hool (01:07:21.718)
Yeah, it’s very different for everybody. So it’s impossible to know how someone’s going to respond to this. Like if we’ve never met them and they’re just buying it on the internet. So we always start out like we have a help center page where when you’re first starting out, we have guides on how to get started. And we always tell people start, start low just in case you might be one of those people that’s sensitive. And we tell them how to locate the nerve first. Once they locate the nerve and you’ll know it because your whole ear will feel like it’s buzzing.

Like it’s vibrating, because all the nerves in the ears start like tingling like crazy. Once you feel that, the goal is to turn it up as high as you can comfortably tolerate. Like you want it to feel strong. Now some people are going to tolerate more, some tolerate less. So we don’t say turn it up to level eight. We just say turn it up to a level that’s comfortable for you. And then just hold it there, maintain it for about five minutes. We try to tell people do it for a full 10 minutes in their first session. So five on each side.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:07:52.58)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hool (01:08:22.66)
And then most of the time people experience it after their very first session. They’re like, wow, that was deep. And then as they get used to it, they usually only use it for about three minutes. You don’t really need a full 10 minutes. We just say start with 10 to like maximize the likelihood you’re going to feel something. There are some people who can crank it up and they don’t feel any better afterwards.

So I have a calendar where I schedule one-on-ones with anybody who wants to talk to me. So I talk to these people and I try to figure out why is it not working for you. And there are always some people who just will not respond to vagus nerve stimulation. And there’s reasons why. Usually it’s because you’re deficient in some type of neurotransmitter that is involved in the vagus nerve. The two most important ones are either GABA or acetylcholine. If you’re deficient in either one of those,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:09:10.371)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (01:09:18.06)
Vegas nerve stimulation will be less effective for you. So I often.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:09:21.199)
Wow. I also would wonder if like minerals had something to do with that too.

Nicholas Hool (01:09:26.422)
Yeah, I mean, there’s so many variables that could affect it. And sometimes maybe it’s not one of those issues. Maybe you might have a broken descending vagus nerve. If you do this, but you still feel like your heart’s pounding, well, that means some signal going down where it’s not working properly. And it doesn’t matter how much you do this. This is broken and this won’t fix it.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:09:29.316)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (01:09:53.462)
And I don’t think anything can fix it other than maybe like surgery or if you’re to do it holistically, probably years of changing your diet, working on holistic techniques to strengthen it on its own. But there are people who just will not respond to it for reasons that no one really knows. And unfortunately, I don’t know how to identify those other than just helping people try new things until we figure it out. But oftentimes I recommend people who don’t respond right away.

I’m pretty good at dialing in reasons why and I change the protocols for them and then they figure it out and it starts working. Sometimes if you do have a weak vagus nerve, it will take several weeks, maybe months before you start to feel better. Some people are not willing to wait and they’re just like, I don’t want to use it for that long. I’m going to return my product. Some people are like, I’ll do anything I can to make it work and they commit to it and guess what? They get better. So,

I forgot the original question you said, but.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:10:53.765)
Yeah. If you’re not noticing, should you change intensity or change duration? I think you answered that pretty well. And then to that end, when you’re using the handheld, do you always do both sides, three minutes on each side?

Nicholas Hool (01:10:59.532)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (01:11:09.782)
In the beginning, I tell people to do both sides just to get comfortable with how it feels. Once you get used to it, you only need one side. It doesn’t matter which, they’re both symmetrical nerves that go to the same spot in the brain stem. So it doesn’t matter which one. All that matters is use the side that’s most comfortable. Some people report, I feel better on one side versus the other. I say, great, use that side. That’s all you need. But for a sense of like symmetry and balance,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:11:17.905)
Okay.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:11:31.653)
Yeah.

Nicholas Hool (01:11:38.552)
I say use both because sometimes if you only do one side you’ll feel like one side of your head is kind of buzzing and the other is not. It just feels a little weird. But yeah, you definitely don’t need to do both sides. Eventually, once you do it enough, you don’t need to do it for 10 minutes either. Three minutes is fine.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:11:40.378)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:11:58.182)
Yeah, well, Nick, this was so wonderful. Is there anything that we didn’t cover that you feel like is really, important to mention?

Nicholas Hool (01:12:05.84)
I mean, probably like a lot, like I can get so deep and technical into how this works, but I’ve had to learn like not to go too deep. So hopefully I didn’t go too deep and overwhelm people with meaningless technical stuff.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:12:08.708)
You

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:12:15.353)
no, we love that here. That’s why I’m like, tell me all, you were like talking about the mastoid and all these things. I’m like, we love to hear all of that here, yeah. Well, we’ll make sure it’s linked in the show notes, but just so people can hear it here, where can they find you? Where can they learn more?

Nicholas Hool (01:12:21.688)
Yeah

Nicholas Hool (01:12:31.478)
Yeah, we’re at who list dot com H O O L E S T like the word coolest, but with an H. So who list dot com as we can find our stuff. Right now we are taking pre orders for the next batch of our headphones, so they’re not shipping right away. They’re going to start shipping first week of December. So great time to get them for a Christmas gift. We are likely going to sell out as we get closer because we did a small batch. So if anybody wants a headphone.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:12:54.161)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hool (01:13:00.396)
Definitely lock them in now and for anyone who pre-orders we’re giving some special gifts I think right now we’re actually giving people a free verily prime if they pre-order a headphone I’m trying to get that bundle out But yeah, you can buy either of these try it out if you try it Like I said, I do offer my calendar available to everybody who buys if they want to schedule a call with me and discuss protocols And I do my best to help them achieve their goals and outcomes

And then worst case, it doesn’t work, you could send it back after 60 days and we give you a refund. So, you know, if you’re someone who’s been contemplating trying to get better, you know, at this point, the risk is doing nothing is a higher risk than even trying this. So, yeah, I just encourage everybody to take a look at our site and we have a pretty responsive support team as well for people with questions. We get back to everybody 24 hours.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:13:51.93)
Yeah, well, I was already super impressed again. It was very intentional choosing you guys as the brand I wanted to have on. But I’m even more impressed now getting to chat with you, which is why I was so excited to get to sit down with just the intention that has gone behind the design of the product, the intention you bring to customer care, even just the innovation of working on those headphones and bringing out new innovative products. So I’m just I’m really, really super impressed. And I can’t ever recommend something to

if I haven’t experienced it on my own in some capacity, which is why I love having guests like yourself on. now I can like, I already would tell people about your product, but now I can go like, this is the one you want for all of these amazing reasons. So.

Nicholas Hool (01:14:37.656)
Well yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. We’re working hard to make the best stuff we can. we’re engineers turned marketers, so that’s why our market is probably kind of like, may seem off. And we’re definitely not trying to scam people, we’re trying to make the real stuff.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:14:46.051)
Yeah. Which is, yeah. Yeah, which is honestly even more admirable because I mean, we both know like.

We came into this doing the thing we love, and then you have to learn as a small business growing how to do all these other things, you know, the marketing, the design, all these different things. So it’s super, super admirable. But I really love when the brand, like when the founder is a part of the brand and they are designing their own products. I think what a lot of people don’t realize is a lot of brands out there are just buying a pre-made product from someone else, slapping their own label on it and putting it out there. And not that there’s something inherently wrong with that, but

I just, really love when the brand is like, oh no, no, no, the person I’m talking to right now is the one who designed and developed this. And they’re so intentional about continuing to improve it. So it’s pretty special.

Nicholas Hool (01:15:39.448)
Yeah, well, I appreciate that. Yeah, thank you for having me on and allowing me the time to share my story. Hopefully you help some people.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:15:47.387)
Yes!