Episode Details

https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/electricfish

If you read the recent article "The Story Of How An Electric Torpedo Fish Can Put You Into A State Of Deep Relaxation, Enhance Sleep & Eliminate Stress", then you're no doubt familiar with Kelly Roman...

In that article, Kelly describes how, in 46 AD, the personal physician to the Roman Emperor Claudius applied an electric torpedo fish to the Emperor’s forehead to successfully relieve his migraines. Don't believe me? Check out “Thousands of Years Before Modern Electricity, Ancient Romans Used Electrotherapy to Effectively Treat Neurological Conditions“. Anyways, this first “wearable” was actually alive, and the “user experience” was provided by the twitching underbelly of the fish, which was enraged from being pulled out of the sea and which covered the top half of the patient’s face. It filled the patient’s nose with its fishy scent, and delivered at first a painful and then numbing electric shock (roughly the same voltage as a hairdryer dropped in a bathtub). “These are still the early days of wearable neurostimulation,” an ancient tech blogger would have reported, “But on the bright side, the device, while possessing eyes and teeth, is at least conveniently wireless.” Heh. Today we know that electrically stimulating the trigeminal nerve, which runs, in part, beneath the forehead, does in fact effectively suppress migraines. Indeed, the FDA approved the first wearable neurostimulation device to treat migraines in 2012 and like the torpedo fish, the wearable’s electrode is placed on the forehead.

But the idea of using electrical stimulation to affect not only pain perception, but mood and sleep, arose more recently in human history, and in today's podcast with Kelly you'll not only discover the fascinating history of electrical stimulation for addressing cognitive issues, but you'll also discover how a small company called “Fisher Wallace” developed a brand new deep brain stimulation device called the "Circadia" that causes your body to experience a massive natural release of dopamine, serotonin and fall into a state of deep relaxation, no drugs required.

Kelly co-founded Fisher Wallace Labs, a 10-year-old medical device company, where he leads product development, regulatory affairs, marketing, and VR strategy. Prior to Fisher Wallace, Kelly served as a business development executive at several media and technology companies, including Nielsen Media and the scientific journal Nature. Kelly is known in the medical device industry as leading the commercialization of medical grade, wearable neurostimulation.

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-The fascinating story of the electric torpedo fish that the ancient Romans used for neurostimulation...[9:15]

-How electroconvulsive therapy got such a bad reputation...[13:10]

-How two brothers called "the Liss brothers" fit in to bring electrostimulation to the modern psychiatric industry...[18:00]

-How Kelly discovered the device that the Liss brothers created and turned it into the Fisher Wallace stimulator...[23:30]

-Why electrostimulation has now entered the mainstream, and Kelly's thoughts on the new devices out there like Muse and Thync...[28:20]

-How electrostimulation can be used to increase HRV, serotonin and dopamine and to decrease cortisol...[47:00]

-How the Circadia devices compares to other sleep enhancing devices out there like Muse a