Intro: NanoVi and the Optimized Recovery Protocol

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 0:00

Welcome to the Five Codes Podcast, where we discuss evidence-based methods to elevate yourself to the next level through optimizing the way you look, move, perform, feel, and connect. Welcome to the Five Codes Podcast. Today we are talking very in-depth about a key element of my optimized recovery protocol, the Nano V, with Rowena Gates. Rowena Gates is the best person to talk about the Nano V device. She has her PhD from the University of Washington. She is very versed in the science and the literature that supports the mechanism of action for the Nano V. And it's a little bit different than other items in my optimized recovery protocol. I also think it's really important to mention that I have no financial relationship with Nano V or any company like Nano V. They don't sponsor the podcast. I do not make a dollar off of them, and I never will. And with all that being said, I hope you enjoy the wide overview and the deep dive into the scientific nuances of this key part of my optimized recovery protocol. Well, Rowena, thank you for making the trip to see

Meeting Rowena Gates

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 1:00

us. I'm glad it worked out. Appreciate having you here.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Pleasure to be here.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 1:04

Yeah, absolutely. Um, well, I really want to dive into Nano V today. That's that's our our subject that everybody's really interested in. Um, you're a unique expert to be able to talk about it. You know, we had talked a little bit offline before this about how I found Nano V in the first place, how I incorporated this. Um, I guess lesser known. I mean, people have definitely heard of it, but like in my space, at least in the you know, surgical world, it's it's unknown. I think it's pretty safe to say that for most of my colleagues. Most of my patients may have heard of it from a sampling era of just being in the space, like we talked about a little bit, but I discovered it first through uh its benefits to athletic recovery. And um, you know, I love this athlete's mindset. It's what I carry for myself and my preparation, execution, recovery. Same for my patients, preparation, execution, recovery. And so Nanovy having a background in athletic recovery really fits into my profile overall, especially when we're talking about preparation and recovery from surgery. Um, and I love to think of my postoperative recovery profile, I call it, I call it my optimized uh recovery profile as like a pyramid of hierarchical pyramid of evidence, basically. Um, and so that means things that have really strong evidence, have a very clear application to surgery on through, you know, there's plausible mechanisms, there's benefits been shown in surgery, but there's not huge trials, like whatever it may be. And nanobe fits in at the apex of this a little bit where there aren't direct trials on surgery. That's like elephant in the room. This is not has not been studied in surgical recovery directly, which does not mean that there's not a benefit, though. It is, has been studied in athletes recovering from athletic endeavors, which is what I really want to get into. And there are mechanisms between those. There are also differences, but there's definitely a metabolic and a physiologic stress of surgery that mimics something like what would happen with exercise a little bit. So I'm gonna just kind of get into it. Tell me a little bit about how NanoV works in the first place. What does it do?

SPEAKER_02 3:06

So, for people who are not familiar with it, it's a device where you breathe humidified air that's coming from the device.

How the NanoVi Works: Structured Water and Protein Folding

SPEAKER_02 3:14

And what's important is the humidity is treated with specific wavelengths. So the water droplets and humidity are bombarded with wavelengths that can be absorbed by water.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

And so if you look at red light, it goes through water. Yes. Right? So it's hitting the biomolecules. Nanov works differently. It once it's absorbed by water, the droplet has to change the energy state because it's absorbed energy.

SPEAKER_03 3:43

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

And what it's done to the droplets is made them so that the water molecules are more coherent, more lined up, more packed together. And when you inhale it, it hits the mucous membrane in the body, and that energy transfers to the water in the body. And most of the molecules in here are water, like something like more than 99% are water. So there's a good connection to transfer throughout the whole body really quickly. And what we're doing is we're creating this more um ordered water, or it's also called exclusion zone water. Um, but it means that it's packed together so it's more like a gel than like a liquid. Uh, and it only forms on surfaces. So we create this gel-like surface on proteins, is what we're doing. And um the proteins rely on that in order to fold, and they have to fold in order to function, and they do all the work in the cell, and so we're just helping them do their jobs, and the body knows what to do, but we don't override anything, the body goes from there, and we're just creating a better environment for the body to do that work, right? And so that's essentially where we come from, and just a little bit of history how this was invented is we copied what the body does. There's um a wavelength known in the body to create this uh ordered water that the proteins rely on. And so what we did is we did it outside the body, used the same wavelength, modified the humid airflows and use that to deliver it. And so we're just mimicking uh a natural process and we're kind of augmenting it, which the body shouldn't need to be augmented, except that we do we have so many stressors in our society. Yes. So we most of us can use a little extra help.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 5:50

Right. Yeah, or a surgical stress in my case. Correct.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

So I often talk about or athletic stress in your case.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 5:56

Yeah, exactly. In my personal case, definitely. Because I always think of um recovery. I talk about surgery as a metabolic stress or a physiologic stress to it. And it's funny that you mention, you know, exclusion zone water, structured water, you know, coh uh the cohesiveness of the water, because to many people that sounds very hand-wavy at first. And it and it has historically um kind of fallen in that. But it's interesting in that even let's take something that has a ton of evidence to back it up as well, like red light therapy. Um, conversations about water, interestingly, are emerging significantly in the red light therapy literature mechanistically. Because if we really go back into red light before, we knew that it, we knew that it worked anecdotally, basically. Then we had to, we, the royal we of medicine, had to go back and go, well, what are the mechanisms? And the first mechanism was cytochrome C oxidase, you know, like a chromophore we'd call it, which is great, a plausible mechanism inside the mitochondria in the Krebs cycle, you know. And then we get into um more recently, we also see distant effects from red light applied to one area of the body. You put red light on your back, your whole insulin sensitivity systemically changes. Well, there's something more than just a local effect happening with it. That's what all that told us, right? And it's exclusion zone water is sort of what has been pointed to because longer wavelengths of light have a high affinity with their long wavelengths energy energetically with water. And so um, this has been this has come into light, pun intended there. This has come into the light of like how it's working in the red light space. Yeah, so it's not that it's not a fringe science at all. Um, changing a uh molecul an environment for a protein or an end enzymes or proteins as well, right? That's I know you guys have studies in that, but changing that environment is is not far-fetched, it is supporting a mechanism, and as you mentioned, an inherent wavelength. Do you know what that wavelength is? Yeah, what is it?

SPEAKER_02 7:54

A little under 1300 nanometers. 1278 or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think I well, I'm not sure. But yes, it's a long, it's a longer wavelength, yeah. Yeah, and so red light is gonna be what six, seven hundred nanometers. And so we're working that works through the skin, but ours will not go through the spaghetti. It has to go water to water. So they're you know, we're coming at it quite differently.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 8:18

Yeah. And to be clear, this wavelength that we're talking about is it's not it's this is not photobiomodulation on the patient directly. This is to the water before it's inhaled.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Correct.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 8:30

Yes, correct.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

And then we have the studies on that to show the influence on the water.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 8:35

Yeah, so tell me about that.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

And so that was done. Um, the the one of the leaders in water science is Gerald Pollock, and he's in Seattle, where we're located, and he's been a wonderful friend to our company and to us. Uh, and he introduced us to a lab in Italy that had the ability to test the water droplets and also tr test the outcomes. And so we can show, we have shown and published that it um does have that desired effect to create the exclusion zone or easy water, which we call ordered water because that's what the scientific literature calls it is ordered water. And so for people that aren't familiar with that, it's called exclusion zone water because the molecules are packed together so tightly that they push anything else out, and so they exclude everything else and they form this tight layer that's that's really more akin to a gel than a liquid. Um, and so anyway, that's uh that's the lab that did all this work with us um because he was able to kind of arrange that for us. Otherwise, we probably never would

The Water Science and Red Light Connection

SPEAKER_02 9:45

have found them. Right. Yeah. And so that's been published. I think there's a few different papers that are published on that.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 9:50

Yep. So that's sort of level of evidence number one, strong evidence that your device creates exclusion zone ordered or structured ordered water. There's another step though, too, right? Now you're looking, the next step was to then take that, okay, what is this doing to enzymes, right? So what tell me about those studies.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Right. Okay, so that was a big study that was done. And these different so enzymes are proteins that catalyze

From the Lab: Enzyme and Protein Damage Studies

SPEAKER_02 10:17

reactions. So we we tend to call them all proteins, but they are in this case it's enzymes that were really key to good health, basically. And they measured three different enzymes and damaged them with heat, with chemicals, and with oxidation. So we care a lot about the oxidation, right? Especially athletes. And um they did it, the study was done so that they measured before if the nanov was used to treat the proteins before uh they were damaged, and then looked at outcomes or after they were damaged. And so what they did what they found was that regardless of before or after the nanovia was beneficial, and they believed that the reason it was helpful prior to damage was it made the it was a better environment so the proteins were more stable and less susceptible to damage. And then with recovery afterwards, just helping them become viable again. And so the what they would do is they would take a population of the enzymes and um damage them down to maybe 10% or 10-15% of functional proteins. And then uh then that's what they were looking at, and then how many recovery, what percentage do we get back? And it would go from 10% to 45% or something. It was a pretty dramatic recovery uh with the Nano V, but depending before or after varied. So heat damage proteins did extremely well uh with recovery after the damage, which are they're notoriously very hard to recover uh an um a damaged heat a heat damage protein. And so if you treated before damage, it did no good at all. Zero. Like it didn't, it wasn't different from the controls.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 12:16

Okay. What about for oxidative damage? Was there a difference there? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Before and after.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 12:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

And so um, and then that is sort of also supported where uh if an athlete used it before an all-out exercise test, they had considerably less blood lactate

Human Data: Blood Lactate in Athletes

SPEAKER_02 12:36

at the end of the all-out exercise test, 17% less. Yeah, and that was double blind placebo controlled, so we know for sure it had a pretty dramatic impact.

SPEAKER_03 12:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

A different thing, but it's all kind of pointing in that same direction that it has a preventative function.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 12:54

So I just want to highlight there that we just transitioned now, and you just kind of seamlessly put those together, which is great. But we transitioned from in vitro studies to now studying athletes. These are human studies now that we're talking about, showing um, again, measuring one thing, lactate, right? But showing a different statistically significant difference in an important parameter when we're talking about all-out exercise. Yes. Presumably a strong metabolic physiologic stress that involves some oxidative damage to proteins. Um and and so that's like a that's a big important transition. Because I've taken it from the lab in vitro to the from the dish to the to a human, right? Right. And that's not so let's let's get into the human data a little bit now then. So we talk about lactate. Tell me about some of the other, again, I love that it's an athlete's, but let's talk about some of the other studies in humans and athletes.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

Well, one other in athletes is uh also double-blind placebo controlled, is um looking at the the white

Immune Response and Faster Recovery

SPEAKER_02 13:57

blood cells that are components of recovery, and a pretty good considerably faster recovery after the all-out exercise test uh when the nanov device was used instead of the placebo device. And so different components were measured, and the results ranged from 10 to 17 percent um higher response in in that healing response after damage.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 14:21

Yep. So this is like lymphocytes and leukocytes and granulocytes and monocytes and all these types of things. And I believe lymphocytes didn't change, but leukocytes and monocytes and granulocytes did. Yeah. Um, and this is showing, I'm just like translating for our for our listeners, showing um an important immune response. This is another sort of um something that gets modulated or changes with exercise, but an improved response, an elevated response to the exercise with nanovie when compared to a placebo or sham device, basically. Right. Um, and this is also double blind placebo controlled as well. Yes. So this is important. This is like really important to say, okay, we have another mechanism to show. And again, so I love that study because we again showing a response in a stressful situation compared to a placebo device. And this is the first one for me that can really carry into like, okay, well, now we're talking about like potential immune changes in a stressful situation, like surgery. Um, so this does not say, oh yeah, you're gonna recover from your surgery better because you know you're using the nanov, but it does give a a trail of crumbs of very plausible evidence into the athletic space that show now we're not just talking about lactate, which is also important. We're now talking about immune cells mixed into this. So um a better response in a stressful situation with the nano V present, which I think is really important to highlight. Because now that gets me peaked, like, okay, and now we have more plausible evidence towards this as well. Um mechanistically, that's just how my brain works and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

I know, I know you'd love it if we had a wound healing study, but a big medical claim. We don't we don't study any of the things that are uh diseases or maybe a medical claim. Yep, exactly. We we go underneath that.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 16:11

Right. And it's fine that those, and there's reasons for that, right? There's like very strategic reasons for that, and it's fine that they don't exist, especially because you know, we talk about the safety of this device. Like, you know, the worst case scenario with this is that you're inhaling humidified air. Yes. That's the absolute worst case, right? Um, there's no, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, is there any risk to the nano V at all?

SPEAKER_02 16:34

There's no risk. There is uh one issue with people that are carrying a heavy toxic load. It will help with detoxification. So then you want to modulate it so they don't detox at an uncomfortable level. But it's actually a good thing. It's just that you want to kind of manage it.

SPEAKER_03 16:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

And that's the only area where um it's you know, it's just you keep an eye on it.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 17:01

Well, we just had a chance to go through our clinic space a second ago, and you got to see all of the protocol and the all the devices and everything. And it was interesting. You said a couple times, I thought it was interesting. You said they play nice together.

SPEAKER_03 17:15

Yeah.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 17:15

And I know this on some level, and I've learned things from you even today about, you know, I love, I love that everything has a reason. We talked about this. I love that everything has a reason, the order of which we do things. I think about these things. I'm deeply curious. Everything is crafted for a reason, right? There is no accidental part. We were even just talking about the order of these operations. So I'm gonna pick your brain a little bit on how nano

Playing Nice: Hyperbarics, Red Light, and PEMF

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 17:39

V plays nicely with these other modalities, hyperbarics and um PEMF and red light. Let's talk about those a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Yeah. Um, in each of those cases, there's a really good reason why uh it can only make that other modality work even better because they all have value. Uh, it's just that if you improve that cellular function, you're gonna get more out of them. And in some cases, you can mitigate um issues that could be caused by other modalities. Uh, and so that could be helpful. But mostly it's just that if you look at hyperbarics, we're gonna get into hyperbarics a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Yeah, we can talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

So hyperbarics are a wonderful wound healing. I mean, uh that they're just fantastic there. And um, once the person comes out of a dive, their body remains flooded with oxygen for for up to an hour. Like it's quite long before before it gradually diminishes. And uh the nanovie device often is thought of as an oxygen device, and people get more energy and they're more alert and so on. But it's only because they're using the oxygen better. So ours is a full-on utilization improvement, whereas hyperbaric's adding the oxygen under pressure, getting it into the plasma, and so on. Um, so since they're still flooded with oxygen, if you add the nanovie device to improve the utilization, you're gonna get a whole nother win out of that hyperbaric dive.

SPEAKER_03 19:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Like it's gonna have an even bigger impact with no downside. And the nanoves also in there repairing oxidative stress damage. And so that's always a good thing, regardless. But it's it's a great thing to do after a hyperbaric dive.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 19:29

Yeah, I like that. And and hyperbarics would be a great example of, you know, in my pyramid, my hierarchical pyramid, I talked about tons of evidence, very strong in the literature, wound healing, surgical recovery. There's just really no question about that. But compared to nanov, especially, hyperbarics carries risks, right? There's not all upside. There's pneumothoraces, there's tympanic membrane, eardrum issues, like pressure injuries, there's oxidative parts of it, right? Especially, again, in the acute post-surgical setting, that becomes, you know, sort of fleeting. But when we're talking about long, long-term use, these are things to think about, right? So when you use you kind of uh insert it in there with no risk, like that's an important aspect to it. Now it's making your hyperbaric session, which is good stuff and comes with a little risk, you're kind of doubling down on the risk that you invested a little bit too. You get double the benefit with, you know, no increase in risk, right? Yeah, it's not like just diving for twice as long, right? Um, so I think that that's really cool and really important to highlight as far as like, wow, what a great way to do it, which is why we do nano V after hyperbarics. Um, and what about with uh PMF and

Oxygen Utilization vs. Oxygen Delivery

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 20:40

red light and what other types of benefits do you see with nanovy playing nicely with those?

SPEAKER_02 20:44

The way I I look at actually both of those is they they'll kick things into action, they'll stir things up uh in a very positive way. And though what the nanovies doing is helping with the cellular function that helps take advantage of that. Because any of the things that get kicked into action, say by red light, um uh it always involves these protein functions to get to take advantage of it, to utilize it, to actually put things to work in the cell. And so when you combine the two of them, you've got things, you know, you've initiated things and you've improved the whole cellular environment for taking advantage of that.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 21:28

Yeah, you've created a demand and given energy for the machinery to work, and then the nano V is physically supporting the machinery, basically. If you want to think of it as tractors or something like that, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Yeah, yeah. And and I think there's a lot of it is energy production. And actually at Dave Asprey's last conference, I spoke about um about that we're most of us are not short of oxygen. In fact, most of us exhale a great deal of oxygen. We what we are not that good at is utilizing it. And so that's really where I was like, it does it the red light, it'll improve mitochondrial function, but you've you want to amp that up even further.

SPEAKER_03 22:09

Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

If you can utilize the oxygen better.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 22:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

So it gets it stirred up and then it gets utilized.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 22:16

Yeah. So now you just create a connection between hyperbarics, red light, and nanovia there all together, right? That ties, which we all know, and this is the the structure of my protocol, but it really, really ties them together. And that's an interesting take on it. Be the idea that it's not the lack of oxygen, because the a lot of people's strategy is to like hyper saturate themselves with oxygen, hyperexpose, you know. Yeah. Um, and it's an interesting thought that it's not that may not be the answer, just delivering more. It's the utilization of that oxygen better.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

And I do love the uh the high low, the hyper and hypooxidation, because I think that's a training effect that's really valuable. And I think athletes are are kind of doing that. They get that pretty naturally, but if you're not getting it, then there are there are also devices for that. Um, but I think that, yeah, that flexibility and resilience is what we're going after.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 23:12

Totally. This is like my workout life, um, you know, training underwater in the pool, holding my breath, lifting weights, things like that. Um, which, you know, like my friend and you know, call mentor Laird Hamilton, this like surfer who's pioneered this underwater workout is really like laid out very well. I use that with my patients as well, though. We talked about this a little bit, leading into surgery, where um when I start working with their exercise routine about eight weeks before surgery, there are to create resilience, right? I want them to be able to exercise and function in a hypoxic environment, low oxygen, or in a high carbon dioxide hypercapnic tolerance. And so the types of workouts that I have them doing leading into it, you and I talked is like that may be the most novel of all the changes that I make. It used to be starting creatine or, you know, whatever types of nutritional changes I was making that was very novel in the past. But now, as I guess the world is caught up with those things, almost everybody's on creatine. Now that's not surprising or cool anymore. But these types of workouts are because they're doing exactly what you're talking about. They're creating different environments of high oxygen, low oxygen, high carbon dioxide, low carbon dioxide, which creates resilience. And especially for me in anesthesia, which we can talk

Anesthesia, Neuroinflammation, and Resilience

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 24:27

about, um, nanovian anesthesia, where in anesthesia, I want my patients to be very tolerant to high or low oxygen. I'm keeping them like right in the middle of this line as much as I can. But if there's any deviation throughout their anesthesia, you want them to be very, very tolerant to that change. Um, and yeah, so you're right, whether it's flooded, whether it's low, whatever it may be, I want them to like be able to tolerate that. And they come out the other side of anesthesia very um quick to recover that way. Uh, and then I use a very specific protocol. I call it a neuroprotective protocol. Um, it minimizes postoperative cognitive dysfunction. It's very gentle on neuroinflammation, but there's elements of surgery itself, whether it's just the physical surgery and the damage associated molecular pathways, or oxygen changes that could also create those things. And so now we've literally covered all our base, the drugs we're giving, high or low oxygen, you know, the inflammatory state of the surgery itself. And uh it's that resilience that you just mentioned that really ties into it.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

That's great. I didn't, I'm very curious about your doing things in a pool because I've had that experience where you um, you know, breathe hard, go even four feet deep, and exhale. And it's stunning. And I think the part of it's the pressure of the water, even. And it's stunning of how big a factor that is compared to being on land.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 25:47

I just uh yeah, it's it's quite the it's quite the experience under there. Um it's you know, it's a little bit of I always kind of tell people when I'm introducing it's a little bit of breath work because you, you know, you're gonna be working but only breathing at certain times. You're controlling when you breathe. Um and the breaths tend to be quick and they tend to you tend to miss one every once in a while, and you sometimes it's all you can think about. And but you come to a place where you know it's like, okay, I can do this, and um, you're underwater longer than you want to be. It's there's a lot to it, it's very much a mental game to it as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Which is good to do things that are hard because they keep us tuned up.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 26:24

Uh-huh. You know, this is hard and very unique and a very uncomfortable environment for some people being underwater.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Oh, for most of us, yeah. Like humans. Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 26:33

Yeah, it's that's not meant, it's not where we were meant to live. That's very certain. Um you you know, in the anesthesia idea, in the anesthesia vein, um, with nano V and that idea of neuroinflammation, I know that you know, we've talked a little bit about nano V

Cognitive Performance and the Brain

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 26:51

and cognitive function or like cognitive performance. Tell me about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

We have a lot of that, and I just I have a cult tomorrow on that very issue. Um, but what we've shown for one was a QEEG that a neuroplasticity center sent to me showing before and after one session and um reducing the inappropriate brain activity, like just bringing the it back into balance. Um, and that's probably also related to HRV that you can show in one session. Sure. But what we've done more recently is looked at the blood flow in the brain and oxygen utilization in the brain. And those are are significant increases, uh, 9 and 11% for those in a session. And so what's happening is that the brain is you're gonna feel better. And it's why people will say, Oh, I I feel so clear or alert or whatever. That's the most common um thing that people notice in an anovision. And it's well, no doubt if you're getting that much better um you know, function in the brain. Right. And so um it's also there's oxidative damage to the brain. So people like we we've talked about athletics, but if somebody is highly focused for two and a half hours, they could burn as many calories mostly with their brains as running a marathon.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 28:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

We know this, yes, and they've done this strain, and so their brain is foggy and tired. And so that's where we also see a lot of use for cognitive function amongst executives and some professional athletes, not enough. It's uh that we just don't know that many of them.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 28:39

I'm your professional athlete who uses it for that reason. Yes. Yes, yes, in the operating room. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

And it's so surprising to me because I thought it would be all about physical recovery, which is noticeable. Yeah. Especially for those guys that are tuned in. It's very obvious to them. But with uh what the cognitive function, I hadn't thought that that was a really big factor for any of these pro sports. They're playing at such a high level and they have to stay so focused.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 29:04

Yeah. That's really interesting because I mean it ties into what you mentioned before about oxygen utilization, but now I just have a very specific location, right? Yeah, the brain. Um, which is a you it's interesting to mention the caloric use, you know, which is just a measure of energy consumption, right? Like how our brain is so high demand for energy anyway, different types of energy. We get that from glucose, we get that from ketones, there's all kinds of ways to get it, get it from creatine. Um, but and that ties into kind of this question of uh of okay, when our brain's under periods of stress. In this case, a cognitive stress, a demand stress, a functional stress, a good thing like exercise. When we exercise, we break things down, but we release, we also have mechanisms to protect that action. We release BDNF and exercise-induced IL6, myokines, and things like that that are like, I was stressed, but this was good for me. Like I was stressed, and cognitive stress is usually the same way. I was stressed, but this was good for me. Um, and there's, but that it still adds up, right? I think the most common thing that I hear with young surgeons when I'm training them or working with them is when they're when we're doing these big long cases, is they're like, I'm so I sat there all day, I would, but I'm so tired, right? Um, and so in periods of cognitive stress, in periods of sleep deprivation, or in periods of post-anesthesia, right? We have a stress placed on our brain. There's an inflammatory, a metabolic demand. And it's interesting when something like Nanovy can improve that. I notice and use it for my like cognitive performance around surgery, which I tease you that I'm your professional athlete because I've there's a physical aspect and a very focused cognitive-driven aspect to what I do. Like I work hard to get into a flow state every day before surgery, which sounds cliche, but it is a very real thing, and it is a very high energy demand state on your brain.

SPEAKER_03 30:51

Absolutely.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 30:52

Very high. And so I have to recover after that. So if I'm doing back-to-back surgical days, the Nanobee is part of my recovery.

SPEAKER_03 30:57

I love it.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 30:57

Because I've got to like recover and get it's like I always tease as like a professional baseball pitcher having to pitch two days in a row.

SPEAKER_03 31:04

Yeah.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 31:04

There's a lot going on there, right? And and so I it's interesting that it fits into that. But I guess, you know, my question or my hope would be that we could feather out, and I know that we're not here yet, but the stress of a cognitive demand, the stress of poor sleep, which, you know, even with a perfect sleep, which I'm so focused on, it's never actually perfect, right? And then the stress of anesthesia. Is it is this blanketing and doing them all the same, or is it having differing effects, kind of like protein versus chemical, or excuse me, heat versus chemical versus you know, inflammatory degradation of a protein or oxidative damage of a protein. Is the nanov affecting all of these cognitive states differently? Demands sleep and inflammation?

SPEAKER_02 31:47

I'm gonna guess at that because what nanovia does is so fundamental uh that it's your body, and your body probably does address them differently.

SPEAKER_03 31:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

But what we do is is just so fundamental because, and that's one of the things I love about it, because the nano V sets up the environment, and then it's your own body that determines what to do. You're not hammering it with something, you know, a substance or something that's gonna override those processes. And I would imagine that in each of those cases your body would handle those somewhat differently and also very similarly for most of them. Yeah, but it's um it it's just the the recovery phase, that's where athletes decline is when they're not getting the recovery. Most of them are trained well enough, you know, they're yeah, all of that. And uh it's the recovery that makes all the difference. And that's where we had it at a we have one at a university um basketball team, d1 basketball team. Actually, they beat Gonzaga five years ago. Sorry, yeah, it's kind of upsetting. I'm not gonna name them even, but anyway, they have guys that are 20, 19, 20, 21, and these guys are under a lot of pressure because it's a business for them now. Yeah, so they're not gonna be able to do they have a lot and they can switch teams and all these stressors, and they those guys notice the difference in their energy. And it's like, well, they're only 20 years old, you know, it's not like me.

SPEAKER_03 33:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:26

And so I think it's it's pretty apparent they're gonna be tuned in and they're overstressed, like they're overstressed in every way, is is my impression.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 33:36

Um there's gonna be another cognitive, you know, stress. That's interesting because as you were talking, it really clicked with me. I'm like, oh yeah, we're talking about the machinery being able to work better, like not the stimulus and what the machines are doing, but just the machines, the proteins are stronger to do what they do. So it makes that whole question I just posed of uh cognitive stress, um, an inflammatory stress or poor sleep stress, like, yeah, it doesn't matter what the stress is, the machinery that repairs those or that that pushes through is going to be strong.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Yeah, you've tuned up the engine, and then once it's what better tuned, then it, you know, it can perform at whatever speed, whatever it needs.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 34:17

Well what other parts of a

HRV and DNA Repair

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 34:20

surgical recovery? I know there's some like we talked about HRV, um, and you know, what about like DNA repair? Like what other parts of nano V have been shown that would maybe kind of carry over into like a surgical preparation or surgical healing phase?

SPEAKER_02 34:36

We've shown uh improvement in double strand DNA damage, which is the hard kind of damage to repair, and that was significant in athletes again, but that definitely carries over because DNA damage is DNA damage, you don't want it. And when um a group out of Europe did another study that it was all independent of us, and they didn't publish it because we didn't pay them more money to do more study, I see, but we got the preliminary results, and it was a it's a cancer center using radiation to damage proteins and see what happens. And they they showed pretty significantly um that it would improve either before or after that damage. And so that was that's kind of one example of how it's it's just kind of this general benefit. And the DNA study was also out of Europe, uh, where they uh they looked at athletes and training with or without the nanovine. That was an Olympic training center, so they had a very um precise protocol. These athletes did exactly the same thing and so on. It was kind of crazy. And so those were just studies we didn't um have anything to do them with them, actually, they were done completely independently of us, so um, we don't have maybe as much detail as we'd like. Yeah, but you know, that but we're grateful for them.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 36:08

Of course, yeah. Um well let's talk about HRV a second. And HRV is something that I look at in my patients. We kind of talked about this. I look at when I can, when someone has a wearable, an aura ring or a whooper or whatever they may have. Um I get to with my patients that are into it, which if they have it almost by definition they are, I'll get to look

Tracking HRV Through Surgical Recovery

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 36:29

back at six to 24 months worth of baseline HRV levels. And then surgery happens, and I look at in hindsight, we'll look at the whole first week, we'll look at week one to two, two to four, and then one month one to two to three to four, and kind of like follow them out or sometimes a year of when their return to baseline HRV is, how low the dip goes. I'm following this along to publish it, which is not published yet, but um collecting this information from my patients. I have really strong data about it so far with the very, you know, similar trends and slight variations. And so this would be a great thing for Nanovie to study in this post-surgical setting because HRV is not perfect, but it's a good metric of where somebody's at in a recovery process compared to, especially if you have their baseline. And um and it's just interesting to really that data just tells us like how long is somebody depressed, to what degree, and how long does it go on? But these are all in my patients who are getting the same recovery protocol, which undoubtedly alters it. And we're gonna talk about how Nanov alters HRV too, right? So I know we know that their HRV recovery, their depression's probably lower because they're more resilient going in, that recovers faster, doesn't stay down as long. But even then, and I see in my patients HRV taking a lot longer than people would expect, many months to return to a true, true baseline, true baseline. Now it goes down and then recovers relatively quickly, all things considered, but it's not there yet. Even at two or three months, it's not done, which is mind-blowing for a lot of people because we're talking about facial surgeries, really minimally invasive facial surgeries, right? And so I have some theories about this a little bit as to why this is happening. But I also have patients who I've seen who had surgery somewhere else in the past in a recent enough time frame where I have all of their wearable data surrounding that, a very applicable, similar type of procedure. Um, and they're usually seeking a revision from me. So I kind of, you know, we're like on terms and I have all their old data, I'll have all their new data if we decide to move forward. Or some, I have a couple people who just given me their old data, which is great. And we never even did surgery, so I don't have their comparable, but I have a baseline on like this is what it would normally look like with this with a facelift or an eyelid surgery or whatever. And there's certainly improvements um in what I see in my patient population, and there could be confounders there, uh, but sometimes it's the same person, and the second recovery is significantly better than the first was.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Which is they're older.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 38:58

Yeah, and they're older, right? So you would expect it to be different, sometimes only a year or two older, but like older nonetheless. But how there's studies with with Nanov looking at this HRV trend in athletes, again, very similar. I noticed myself my HRV varies the most depending on what my exercise has been. Sleep affects it, but not as much as exercise does. So tell me about that and tell me about Nanovy's effect on HRV and athletes.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Well, there's um there's uh several studies. The early work was done on athletes, and that was by an elite trainer that that showed that it was uh they recovered, it basically used it to show recovery of how fast they could bounce back. And that was very clear evidence. And then we had a doctor that did another study that was um, I think it it was 32 people, so it wasn't large, uh, but that was a dramatic improvement in uh the stress index was dropping by uh 45 percent, and that was in one that's one session, and then the parasympathetic built by about 19%, so it was really dramatic. It tended to be an older population just by the patient base of the clinic. Okay, so it's you wouldn't expect the same thing in a 30-year-old as a 60-year-old or whatever, but um, it was really, really impactful. And so we've done more of that, and we've done a longitudinal study for a month, a period of a month long where people used it daily. And um, those results are really uh they're very compelling for heart rate variability, um, and also for sleep anxiety, depression, uh, with self-reported um surveys over the course of the month, but also statistically significant on those metrics because people just you know felt better.

SPEAKER_03 40:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

But those are I think the HRV is very tied. It's it's an indicator of any of the mood issues that people have.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 41:07

It's interesting to tie emotional health or emotional regulation in with that. Even we just talked about cognitive capacity and recovery and athletic recovery. We we know they're all tied together, right? So having the ability to recover faster makes sense. It's interesting that that was looked at though.

SPEAKER_02 41:22

Yeah, yeah. So we haven't we haven't released that yet, but we are and we're actually gonna we are in the in the process of adding so it's a bigger sample size. But that was that was really compelling, and I really liked the 30 days, which I would argue for your patients, they should have it for 30 days and beyond, because it will help with that heart rate variability piece, but just that overall cellular function that's gonna keep them on track.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 41:50

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in an ideal world, they get to use it quite a bit pre-operative before they come to see me, right? So they have the pre-operative resilience building, because again, like we have in vitro studies showing that enzymes are more resilient or or DNA, uh more resilient to damage from well, that's radiated radiation stress, but stress in general. Yeah. Um, so it would make sense to have them using it pre-operatively and then of course having it post-operatively. So that's the story of my life. I wish they could do my entire protocol for a month afterwards, you know. And most people are are on it for a week or sometimes two afterwards, where I get to have them physically here. Oh wow, that would be amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

But also before, like you you just don't get enough time before.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 42:36

Yep. Yeah, we get to do what we can before. Um, but and sometimes we have a few days, but a lot of times it's like I said, just some lifestyle changes. So they need the nanoby when they start making it before the second we decide to go forward with the procedure, that's when they need it in their house. And we keep it for afterwards. Yeah, like it just goes nicely on the you know, the table next to you, and you can use it when you're reading and things too.

SPEAKER_02 42:59

Yeah, absolutely. It's decorative.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 43:01

Yeah, it is. It is fits into a nice like biohackers um sort of paradise, basically. Well, as we sit here in this beautiful home, this is where

The Role of Nature in Healing

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 43:10

my patients recover. We were talking about the fractal patterns of the trees and the water and the mountains out in front of us. Let's talk a little bit about this. Gets a little bit off topic for Nanovie, but it's something we share a passion about the role of nature in healing. How does that fit in?

SPEAKER_02 43:24

Well, for one thing, if we were out there all the time breathing the humid, beautiful air activated by sunshine, we maybe wouldn't need all these other things.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 43:34

It's interesting to think that sun, like the wavelengths of light from the sun affect the air, which of course makes sense. Yeah. That 1200 to thirteen hundred uh nanometer wavelength is coming from the sun. It has to be. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

So it's interesting that way that there's it's beyond just what the body does internally going out, that it would happen, you know, next to a waterfall or which if you're rowing close to the water with the morning humidity. Or something. I don't know. But it's no, I think nature is if we were to do the things that are free, like for most of us, nature is free and breath work, meditation, all these things that bring us back into center, um, then we go a long way to being, you know, uh recovering or being ready for some something like a surgery or as an athlete. So yeah, there's there's so much of the body, and that's the one thing I want to say is the anatomy doesn't do it, the body does it, right? It's regenerative, but the body's healing itself. And I think that's so important to to recognize that this is a uh we're designed to heal, we're designed to regenerate. And sometimes it's just getting rid of the stuff that gets in the way of that, which includes removing ourselves from nature, right?

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 45:00

Yeah. Um, you know, we I toured you around and showed you like where I want my patients to get their sunshine and where we ground, and and these are all parts of it. And it's interesting that you just mentioned, and again, in addition to the fractal pattern views, I kind of joked with you that yeah, we've known since the 1950s in urology, urologic surgeries, that patients that had views of trees healed faster, like old studies, no question about that. Like pretty straightforward. So out the window, here we are with this incredible views. That's no accident. Um, but you mentioned regenerative medicine, and I wanted to touch on that a little bit, maybe back into Nanovy and how it interacts with. Let's just talk about regenerative therapies, whether that is exosomes or you know, autologous platelet

Regenerative Therapies, Stem Cells, and the Mitochondria

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 45:45

products or stem cells. Um, because stem cells are a large part of the procedures that I'm doing, but in a different sense than people think about. It's I'm not necessarily, you know, taking allogenic stem cells and injecting them into their joints or something. I'm using their own stem cells that are coming with their fat that I'm already using to rejuvenate their face.

SPEAKER_03 46:06

Yes.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 46:06

So there's a regenerative benefit to the fat pads I'm putting on and to the overall surgical healing and recovery. So, how does Nanov interact with those types of regenerative therapies?

SPEAKER_02 46:16

I think that it's like an just an excellent tool to support that because it's using whether the stem cells they have to differentiate, they have to hone in, they have all these functions that are protein functions that make those stem cells work. The same with uh the peptides, for example, they they have to get utilized in the body. And I think that that's why stem cell doctors have better outcomes with the nano B. And and with both pre-treatment and post-treatment, again, yeah. But you you tee the system up.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 46:56

Yeah. That's interesting because there's this, I kind of joke that with the recovery protocols and modalities that you know kind of everything meets in the mitochondria sometimes. But if we go in order of thinking deeper than that, mitochondria is a collection of proteins, right?

SPEAKER_02 47:11

It is.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 47:11

Yeah, so it's kind of funny, funny to think that way. I really like that.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Yeah, the the inner mitochondrial membrane is mostly proteins and certainly the protein complexes that are at the actual engines that create energy. So it's no surprise if you improve protein functions that you improve mitochondrial function.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 47:30

Right. And we don't want to get into the the lipid membranes and the improving the lipid profiles as well. That's a whole different, that's a whole different podcast.

SPEAKER_02 47:37

But okay. Yeah.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 47:39

Um

Closing Thoughts

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 47:40

but well, I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and shedding light and educating me and kind of reinforcing the protocol that I love so much.

SPEAKER_02 47:49

Oh, I I applaud you for what you're doing, and it's so fun to be here. I just wish I was getting coaching in the swimming pool.

SPEAKER_00 47:57

Maybe next time they'll get underwater, we'll do some hypoxic workouts. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 48:02

Yeah. No, it's really been a pleasure, and I'm I'm so impressed with what you're doing. And I know people come from all over the world to your center, and they do that for a reason.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 48:13

Right.

SPEAKER_02 48:14

So that's to your credit. And you're so young.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 48:16

Uh thank you. I appreciate that. Yes. I'm older than I look, I think.

SPEAKER_02 48:20

Well done. Yes, thank you. On both counts.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 48:22

Yeah, thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

Yeah, thank you.

Dr. Cameron Chesnut 48:25

If you have any questions or topics you would like me to explore further, please leave them in the comments. I read them all and they often help shape the future conversations here. I also want to be clear that the views shared on this podcast are my own and are not associated with or representative of my clinical teaching affiliation with the University of Washington School of Medicine, nor should this be taken as individual medical advice. Thank you for spending your time with me. I appreciate you being here, and I will see you on the next episode.