Welcome to my podcast. I am Doctor Warrick Bishop, and I want to help you to live as well as possible for as long as possible. I’m a practising cardiologist, best-selling author, keynote speaker, and the creator of The Healthy Heart Network. I have over 20 years as a specialist cardiologist and a private practice of over 10,000 patients.

Podcast Summary

Introduction

Dr. Warrick Bishop, a cardiologist, author, and CEO of the Healthy Heart Network, hosts a podcast dedicated to helping Australians understand and prevent heart disease. In this episode, he welcomes back Mark Fox from Rezona Health, the developer of the Vibe device—a personal pulsed electromagnetic field therapy device—to discuss recent discoveries about how the technology may help manage atrial fibrillation through vagus nerve stimulation.

Key Takeaways

• The vagus nerve is the 10th cranial nerve that runs from the brain through the neck and clusters around the heart, serving as the "super highway" of communication between the brain and organs, controlling the parasympathetic "rest and digest" nervous system.

• Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy via the Vibe device can stimulate vagus nerve toning by targeting alpha and theta brainwave frequencies, which promote relaxation and balance in the autonomic nervous system.

• Atrial fibrillation is often triggered by sympathetic nervous system activation (fight-or-flight response) caused by stress, anxiety, or illness, but balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic systems is essential for managing the condition.

• Early anecdotal evidence shows dramatic improvements in AFib episodes, with one patient reporting her AFib levels dropped from 97% to 2% after using the vagal protocol on the Vibe device.

• Heart rate variability (HRV) is a critical measurement of autonomic balance, and studies show a single 30-minute Vibe session can increase SDNN (a long-term HRV measurement) by up to 55%.

• Doctors can reasonably recommend therapies outside standard protocols to patients who've exhausted conventional options, provided the therapy poses no known harm and the patient is fully informed about the evidence level.

• Most wearable devices measure RMSSD for heart rate variability, but the Vibe device measures SDNN, which researchers believe is a more accurate long-term indicator of cardiovascular health and vagal tone.

• The research on electromagnetic field therapy for AFib is still emerging, with formal clinical studies currently in development, making current evidence primarily anecdotal but promising enough to warrant further investigation.