128: Red Light Therapy Protocol for Knee Pain and Recovery with Forrest Smith CEO of Kineon

MK: Besides treating joints and muscles and soft tissue, what's next with red light? 

Extra: Forrest Smith is the CEO and Co-founder of Kinon Labs, a health technology company specializing in targeted red light and laser therapy devices to reduce pain, inflammation, and improve mobility. 

Forrest: And I think it's a very good call out that not all inflammation's created equal.

When you can treat these inflammation, uh, points locally early, you actually osteoarthritis rates go down. Uh, cardiovascular impairment in the region, um, gets, uh, improved. And then also cardiovascular delivery systemically and risks because of that go down as well. 

MK: All right. Hey Forres, thanks so much for joining me again.

I think it's the third time now on the podcast. Um, I'm super excited for a specific reason because in the past, you know, we talked a lot about red therapy and photobiomodulation, and it was all not abstract to me, but, you know, my injuries were always, you know. Like a strain or what have you, you know, that would heal fairly quickly, comparatively speaking.

Um, couple of months ago I got an MRI on my knee after it's been bugging me for a while, and it turned out I had three things going on for me. One is a, uh, actually two tears in my meniscus. A complex tear and some other tear, uh, but damaged meniscus on the, on the inside of my left knee, uh, a laterally split MCL 

Forrest: right.

MK: Osteoarthritis, the latter. You know, I thought only old people would have, um, and I would never be, you know, bothered with that. But, and that I learned actually later, once the surgeon went in and did the arthroscopy, you know, he took picture like kinda, here, do you see this? And I'm like, no. And I go, well, that's the osteoarthritis.

There is degradation of your, of your cartilage tissue going on. For me, that was the first time where I really had to use the Move Plus Pro. You know that red light therapy photo biomodulation device that, that you guys have and I've been using for years it feels like. And that was the first time that actually it had to use it for the knee, you know, because I remember it used to be called the Knee Plus, right?

Back in the days. That's right, 

Forrest: that's 

MK: right. When 

Forrest: we first launched it. Yeah. 

MK: And, and I never knew I used it for everything Pop the knee. Now for the first time, you know, unfortunately I had to start using it for the knee. So I wanna talk to you a little bit about, you know, what's going on with those specific injuries, how they, you know, what can you do in best case scenario to prevent them from happening, right?

But then once you have them, be it something that has developed over years, or in my case it was, I think, a. Something, I, I did a stupid movement, whatever, probably with deterioration leading up to it, and then it just pushed me over the edge. Right? Um, but what, what happens to the, to the tissue? What can, what can you do to prevent it from a lifestyle as well as maybe therapeutic perspective?

And then once you have an injury like that, how does red light play into this? Because I've been saying for a long time. Based on, you know, research and based on what I learned from you, that you can actually regrow cartilage tissue, which sounds unbelievable because, you know, how would that work? Uh, so I wanna talk a little bit about that, how that's possible and why that's possible.

And in the general skin, what happens, you know, how does inflammation play into all of that? Why is inflammation always bad, but bad in specific cases? And how does photobiomodulation or red letter therapy, as you know, most people would call it. Explain to all of that. How can it speed up the healing process and, and how does it then tie back to the Move plus Pro that you guys have developed that used to be called the Knee Plus and now's, you know, you can use it for a, a lot of other things, obviously, even B things.

But let's talk more about the, the knee aspect. 

Forrest: No, it's great questions. And, and I have to say, I'm, I'm right there with you and, um, you know, the, I having torn my meniscus as well. I, I, uh, I'm treating daily on it and there's, there's, we see this a lot though. We, we see a lot of, you know, whether it's, uh, N-X-N-B-A guys or NFL guys.

Um. A lot of athletes, uh, really had this on early onset of osteoarthritis, and it's because traumatic tissue damage can be a cause for that. And so I think just to dive right in on this, um, one of the things that we see with traumatic tissue damage with the, the knee in particular is you, you have a lot of, um.

Ligaments and, and cartilage, et cetera, are kind of coming to a, a, a head around your knees. We're connecting a bunch of stuff in there. And then there's a capsule that it sits inside of, uh, which is a synovial capsule, which is a fluid-filled sac, uh, that kind of helps all of that move in a, in a good way.

Um, one of the things that we see with this is when you injure any one of those, uh, those pieces from a, a soft tissue standpoint. You won't only see the short term inflammation and, and I think it's a very good call out that not all inflammation is created equal. When you have acute inflammation, a lot of what it's trying to do in your body is bring different growth factors into the area and help you repair that tissue.

But when you have that inflammation years and decades on, and this is what we're seeing really from a, um. Uh, from, from a, a test standpoint is that when you have that traumatic tissue damage, even after the surgery, even after your rehab, we see data from particularly the NFL guys, there was a very strong 3,500 player, uh, uh, follow on tracking from a, a, uh, a survey standpoint that really showed how much impact there was from an inflammation standpoint, even 10 or 15 or 20 years later.

And so. And, and this is guys who, who didn't stop playing because of the injury. They went back, they had world class rehab. They went back to play sports at a a world class level and really had a, a, uh, kind of powerful, um, negative outcome that they didn't even know. And so not only is it, uh, is it local, when it's local in that synovial capsule.

One of the things that's gonna happen locally is that chronic, uh, inflammation is going to degrade the tissue at a much faster rate. And so, um, one of the things that we're really attempting to do with, uh, the lasers is target that inflammation. And there's a couple of different ways that we measure this.

Uh, with TNF alpha, uh, uh, tumor necrosis factor alpha, which is commonly, um. Chronic inflammation marker and, uh, interleukin six. Uh, and these drop by 80% roughly, it's kind of typ typically 70 to 85%, uh, within a two to three day treatment. Using lasers on that joint. And so when you can drop that degradation factor, that's how you can start getting back into, to healing the, uh, the tissue there and, and regrowing it faster from a, a cartilage standpoint.

So, um, you know, people hear that and they're like, regrow cartilage, you guys are just selling snake oil. This is crazy. So just to kind of talk through some of the mechanisms of that, you have two sides to the equation, right? One is. Degrading injuries and inflammation. The other one is the, the, the, there's benefits laser on.

The first one of those is the very fast growing front end of your soft tissue, which is called Chondroblasts. Um, there's, there's two main parts, and, and without going too far into the weeds on this, there's two main parts of that, uh, that cartilage tissue. There's the fast growing part, which are these cells, uh, called chondroblasts that grow.

The tissue around them, they, and they, the faster you can kind of get those to grow, the faster they're going to generate the, the cartilage behind them. And so what we think of as the more kind of cartilaginous tissue is called extracellular matrix and what you need to grow extracellular matrix is more of these chondroblasts, which red light therapy triggers a faster growth of those.

And then you need type two collagen, which is these fiber structures that actually get built into that. That, uh, that cartilage. Uh, so that's the, um, that's the two sides of the equation where you're, you're degrading the tissue more slowly and you're regrowing the tissue much faster. And so that's really how you can see the, the most positive outcomes from a, um, uh, from a, a tissue regrowth standpoint, uh, in the knee.

I, I'd, I'd love to kind of just tag one other thing on there. Is. When, when they measure these NFL guys, they, they see the degradation of that tissue. Everybody has early onset osteoarthritis. The other thing that they measured was the poor, not just local, but. Regional and systemic, uh, cardiovascular performance.

And so, um, you know, what that looks like for measuring in the quads, for example, is um, your quad over the injured tissue would be something like 1.5 to two degrees colder than the uninjured leg. And what's causing that is that that inflammation in that synovial capsule doesn't stay local. It starts trickling out into the rest of the body and you see your quad.

Perform poorly, more poorly on a cardiovascular delivery standpoint. And so it cools down and that doesn't sound like a huge difference from a tissue standpoint. It's a very big difference. Uh, so you're gonna be more likely to injure that leg. You re you recover it more slowly. And the cardiovascular performance also.

We see a 50% increase in those players who'd had these ACL L tears. Uh, that was the, the NFL study again, um, for cardiovascular events. So, you know, the, the, um, again, over decades as that, uh, that, that, uh, inflammation, that chronic inflammation continues to be generated, you can actually have a higher mortality risk from a cardiovascular standpoint if you don't go treat it.

So when you can treat this. Inflammation, uh, points locally early, you actually, osteoarthritis rates go down, uh, cardiovascular impairment in the region, um, gets, uh, improved. And then also cardiovascular delivery systemically and risks because of that go down as well. 

MK: Uh, and one thing I've noticed, I've, you know, I've, I've fused even before the surgery.

I fused as soon as I. And funny enough, you know, the way my injury started was the, I think it's called the pletus. Is it muscle behind the knee that, you know, responsible for tibia rotation? Uh, that one I think I strained or tore partially or what have you. I heard a pop and that's where it hurt. And then I think because of my.

Changed movement patterns because I couldn't sit still either. You know, I, I started using red light and began just doing things, you know, to the point where I was not in a lot of pain, but I changed my movement pattern to kind of protect, you know, that area. And I'm not sure if, because of doing that and maybe, you know, walking in barefoot shoes on asphalt for hours with a heavy rock sack, you know, things that in retrospect, maybe I could have avoided one, one could say, um, you know, that I think then led to, uh, my meniscus.

Being more, I don't know if it, if it caused the injury. I think the injury was already there, but at least it became apparent. Right. So much so that I had to get an ex or an MRI and figure out all of the stuff that's not quite right in there. Yeah. And, but I, I started using the Kenyan Move Plus Pro immediately and, um.

One thing, a couple, you mentioned a couple, you know, inflammation. Uh, I wanna talk about that a little bit more. And as you know, in, in the context of non-steroidal anti anti-inflammatory medication. Um, but also, you know, like the day on surgery, I walked, you know, I, I got up and walked home and I started walking and I started moving, you know, fairly quickly.

I was back into doing a lot of things. Like within week one I started squatting. I mean, only 225 pounds, but nonetheless, 

Forrest: yeah, 

MK: you know, at week two. So my progress, my recovery was incredibly quick. And there was a time then a few weeks in where I was doing something and I'm like, you know what? I have not thought about my knee 

Forrest: Yeah.

MK: In at least a week. 

Forrest: Yeah. 

MK: You know, so that was for me to sign, okay, the stuff is healing, you know, quickly. And, and, and that was really good. But going back to the inflammation really quick, because one of the things that, two things that my, uh, my surgeon recommended is to take for 30 days, um, aspirin.

Post-surgery 750 milligrams, which is not a low dose. 

Forrest: Yeah, 

MK: right. Uh, it's to prevent clott, and I'm like, you know, that's an anti-inflammatory. And then he said, for pain, you know, ibuprofen, that's also an anti-inflammatory. I'm like, that's the exact opposite of what I want right now. I want inflammation in the tissue.

To support the healing process. If I suppress, that stuff's not gonna heal as quickly. Right. 

Forrest: That, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. And, and you know, just, just to kind of, I just pulled up with something here because we, we, we see this a lot. Like a lot of times people who are going to the doctor aren't gonna have the level of sophistication you do from a research and.

Question asking and skepticism around this. Uh, and so, um, we just pulled together a little bit of research on, on NSAIDs and, and just kind of the impacts for this, and I don't think this is broadly known. I'll share the, the document with you afterwards. But, um, if you use chronically NSAIDs at, even at the doctor given level and that, and the one that you have is actually above kind of a, a standard, uh, level, um.

Short term, uh, my, uh, uh, uh, infarction risk for your heart if uses for 90 days. If you use ibuprofen for 90 days, your, your, uh, myocardial infarction risk goes up by 48%. Uh, your incident of heart failure goes up by 35%. Atrial fibrillation and flutter goes up by 40 to 70% Major coronary events. Your risk of major coronary events goes up by 75%.

No one's, no one's handing this out with these prescriptions. What they feel like is, my doctor said, try this, and hey, it's anti-inflammatory. I'm just gonna eat them every day. Um, these risks. Are incredibly high, but also it impairs the healing. So on top of the fact that you're gonna put yourself at a major risk from a cardiovascular standpoint, the, uh, the cytokine responses are affected, uh, blunts IL two.

So some of those good inflammation, uh, markers that you'd get for kind of being able to rebuild the tissue, um, are, are blunted, um, in bone healing. You see osteoblasts. Uh, reduced, uh, you see, um, uh, keratinocyte migration in Epithelialization for, um, from, from the reduced prostaglandin, uh, impacting, uh, recovery, uh, collagen and fibroblast function.

We were just talking about fibroblast. Um, the, the matrix that those fibroblasts form slows down so you build cartilage more slowly. Like it, it's, if you're taking this for knee pain, you're doing, it's doing exactly the opposite of what you'd like it to do. So, you know, it just, it's crazy to, to that this isn't more broadly known.

MK: Yeah, and you know what, when I was an athlete back in my twenties, I ate, I were proven like candy and I, I don't even know what impact, you know, long-term impact that had on, on my health. You know, there are. Certain things that I'll probably never gonna be able to fix just because of the damage that I had done for probably a decade or so of Oh wow.

Popping. I mean, for, for competitions I would, I would consume 2,400 milligrams of ibuprofen. 

Forrest: Oh wow. 

MK: Um. And even for regular workouts, you know, at least two, 600 milligrams each. So that's 1200 milligrams ibuprofen for years, you know? Wow. I guess, knock on wood, that I did not have any, I was not in that statistic.

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Forrest: I mean, the good thing is that it's, you were relatively young, so the, the risk increase was still small because your risk was small at the time and you've done so much training that's offset that in the meantime.

That, that you really should be at the other end of the spectrum for this. But it's, you know, it's crazy. Imagine, imagine the folks like our parents or, or you know, um, the older generation where their risk is already high and you're increasing that by something like 75%. And then also the, the degradation is faster for them, and you're increasing that degradation is, it's just crazy that this isn't more broadly educated.

MK: Yeah, it, it is, it is sad. Um, now let's go back to specifically my, my knee. And then actually I'm gonna wanna bring up another soft tissue injury. 

Forrest: Yeah. 

MK: Um, but for the knee, in terms of protocol, how long do you need to use? The Kenyan Move Plus Pro, the example. I mean, I would assume that, well, I, I don't, I don't want to assume that because there are, there are certainly light dosing going on that you, that's unique to you guys that might not apply to any other, um, light out there.

But nonetheless, are you gonna do this for five minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, three times, 30 minutes a day? What is the, the proper dosing for, for the Move plus Pro? 

Forrest: So as much as you can, uh, the 15 minute protocol, uh, is the best. If you don't have 15 minutes, just do five. Uh, the main thing is consistency though.

So what we try to coach for this. And I, I am, uh, as, as bad as anybody that I coach about it when my knee is hurting, so it'll flare up. I'm doing box jumps or I do something. For some reason, overhead squats really triggers a, a bit of inflammation there. And so when it hurts, I do it 15 minutes, like, like clockwork.

When it stops hurting, I really should continue to do the 15 minutes, but I, I probably shifted doing instead of 15 minutes every day. I probably do it twice a week, and that's better than nothing. But what would be best is if I shifted down to five minutes a day. When I'm in a maintenance mode and 15 minutes when there's some kind of trigger from an inflammation standpoint.

MK: Gotcha. And is there a need to, to shift the device around, like, specifically, you know, my injury appears to be more on the inside of the knee. Mm-hmm. What I've been doing, because I, I, I don't know, knee an anatomy well enough to know it. Exactly where the damaged tissue is or was. And so I have it like, you know, 15 minutes, a little bit lower, and then 15 minutes a little bit higher, and then maybe I shift it around a little bit.

So my total session time when I do it in the evening is, you know, while I, you know, maybe sit on the couch and watch TV with my wife. Um, I don't, I don't mind the 15 or 30 minutes or whatever, or even 45, but I, I keep shifting it around. Is there such a thing as doing too much? 

Forrest: If you're doing it in the same space, you can get too much.

But if you're shifting it around like you're doing, it's great. Um, I would say that the most important, uh, area to do for, for most knee injuries again, is, is where it's, um, where you're accessing that synovial capsule bit that covers all the soft tissue. And what we found is when you bend your knee, um, on either side of the kneecap, uh, so there's the kneecap's patella.

If you go down a little side, there's a very soft point. If you have, uh, vertical. Modules over those soft points, they have direct access into that synovial tissue, and that's the number one place to treat. And then if you have, and, and with the only outlier for that being, if you have something like tele tendinitis, um, that's not really inside that synovial capsule.

So we have this occasionally with people who are doing particularly, um, high, high repetition. It, it's kind of a repetitive stress injury. And that, and that's, uh, a common one for, uh, the patella tendinitis. Patella tendinitis. You wanna do the end points, so where it connects to the patella and where, connects to the tibia in the front, and those are the areas where you can treat the most effectively.

MK: Okay. All right. Alright, so I'll, I'll keep that in mind. So basically then the module positioning, since, you know, I have three modules on my, um, move plus Pro, I would've two, one on each side. And the third one, does it matter? 

Forrest: Yeah, you just, just put it in the back, uh, and it'll, it should, uh, we usually do kind of, uh, whenever I do it mine, I, I do two vertical ones in the front over those little soft patches by the, the, uh, patella and then a, a horizontal one in the back.

And, uh, you, you really target that. Synovial capsule very effectively. There are a couple of things around, um, again, sometimes your, your, uh, you can treat something where, um, it is off of the synovial capsule. So if you have something where you, uh, with the, the MCL or, or something like this where you feel like, I wanna treat this locally, that actually can help as well.

Um, but definitely, uh, whatever you're doing, make that additive to the Ville capsule because that's, that's gonna be where you get the best value treatment. 

MK: Oh, okay. So yeah, I did not know that. Good to know. Okay. Um, all right. Um, maybe let's talk, uh, about well penetration depth. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the knees, you know, it, it looks like it's impenetrable almost from, from the outside, right?

Um, how do you get that light into where it needs to go without affecting all the layers, you know, that lead up to the impact tissue. 

Forrest: I, I think it's, it goes back to those direct channels. We wanna have the most direct, lowest kind of, uh, tissue channels into the s NoGo capsules. We can, so those, those little soft patches be beside the patella really offer the best way to do that.

But with the lasers, particularly the 8 0 8 nanometer ones, um, we see five to six to seven, uh, centimeters of penetration with a reasonable level of dosage and delivery. And so again, this is why we use the lasers. There's, there's, um, you know, there there's a lot more to building the product. Uh, we have to go through more regulatory.

It's harder to engineer the products. It's more expensive to build them. But when we tested lasers versus just LED lights out, the lasers are, are hands down the winners for it. 'cause you just get better penetration into that tissue deeper and, and more effective delivery. 

MK: Gotcha. And is it the same for soft tissue, like, you know, went to Costa Rica?

Uh, as you know, um, not too long ago, um, I got roped into playing soccer on the beach. I lasted exactly 30 seconds of first ball contact. And my, my hamstring hurt. So I'm like, come on. You know? And, and then, you know, as part of my research, obviously, you know, into, I mean, why is this happening? And I, I'm fit, I can, you know, I'm strong, you know, and all those muscle groups, you know, I can deadlift and, and 500 pounds and, you know, squat like crazy and why do I get injured?

And then I realized that there are so many factors as part of. Fitness that I've never really paid attention to. Like, you know, and, and funny enough, whenever I, you know, I butcher an animal, you can really see the layers of muscle with, you know, with the tissue separating it, and they're supposed to be sliding, you know, so there's not, not, yes.

Supposed to be a whole lot of friction you. There is, you know, there is, uh, there is, uh, neurostimulation timing and when the muscle contracts versus in what, you know, stage of expansion. There are so many factors that can, that go all of into this, that you also wanna train with exercise that are typically fairly boring, you know?

Yes. That's why nobody ever does it right. 

Forrest: And it also, you don't have cool numbers with it either. So you can't, you can't go say like, I deadlift 500 pounds. It's like, oh, I did, I did 20 of these a day. Like there's no, there's no kind of upside to it from a, a, uh, kind of engagement standpoint. 

MK: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Um, but the one thing I noticed on day one, I couldn't even walk, you know, it was so painful. And, and immediately my, my mother-in-law, you know, we gave her, I think it was the generation one. It was the, I'm not sure if it was still a knee plus or it was already the first move plus, but it was a very early, I'm like, what is this?

You know, it looks way different than anything I've, I've seen in a long time. But she had it, you know, in Costa Rica with her and I'm like, this is awesome. You know? So I start, you know, treating my hamstring immediately, and I can tell, you know, every single day. The, the healing process or the less pain, better, you know, more range of motion, better movement.

It was incredible. You know, it's, it's like, it's, it's night and day, you know. 

Forrest: Oh, that's awesome. But that's great to 

MK: hear that. Yeah. I mean, but also from, from that perspective, you know, is that the same principle as in the in with cartilage tissue or is there something else going on when it's pure soft tissue or, you know, muscle tissue?

Forrest: So one thing I, I'd love to add in there, because we, we've actually been playing with this both from a professional standpoint with how we interact with some, some of the trainers that we're talking to and, and doing some testing with it. But myofascial training is becoming a bigger and bigger, uh, kind of, um, training modality.

And it's exactly what you're saying. It's, it's things that you don't really think of. It's not kind of like the. Standard lifts that you would do. Um, it's more kind of rebound type things and, and, um, you know, similar to what we would kind of traditionally think of as plyometrics and, and things like this that you would've done as a sprinter.

Um, this myofascial training is really also helpful. Uh, 'cause 'cause like you said, with when you're, when you're bushing an animal, you also see. The casing of the, um, of the muscles at every level. So the casing outside the, like the big muscles and then down to the little muscle fibers, everything has a myofascial kind of casing on it.

And so, um, there, there's really a big impact there. And one of the things that we do see is that treating that myofascial tissue. The myofascial tissue also has more nerve, uh, kind of endings. And, and you, you feel that, uh, more than, than, um, necessarily just the kind of muscle bellies. Um, but all of that to say the, the, uh, there's, there's a number of different things that are being explored, uh, from a both treatment and avoidance.

So how do we avoid these type of injuries and, and how do we treat it? Um, this, this actually does work very well for penetrating through the lasers. Very well for penetrating through into the muscles. Um, but I think one of the things that, that, uh, you know, it's, and it's very exciting to be on the research side of this, that all of us should be thinking about right now is how much of this is actual muscle tissue and how much of it is that, that, uh, myofascial casing tissue?

Um, and, and how can we train and treat for both of those and the lasers are showing amazing. On both sides of those. Um, but the, the penetration is a, is a big key for it. And so the lasers actually provide much more penetration into this type of tissue versus something like a, you know, we, we see people often kind of using what we think of as generation one.

Uh, red light therapy products like panels, and you, you can trigger good surface level, um, outcomes from that. So wound healing or increased levels of, uh, fibroblasts, uh, from a, a, uh, a regrowth standpoint for your skin and, and things like this. Um, but dosing internally, we, we just think of these as more kind of 2D dosing where you'd like to have lasers for the internal tissue dosing.

And it's just been much easier for us from a dosing model build. Photon delivery standpoint for dosing to use the lasers and get into that internal tissue and, and really trigger some much better 3D dosing. Because when you're doing 3D dosing, you're, you're dosing, you know, 10 to 100 times more tissue, um, than you would if it's just the 2D version.

And so it's just the, the results, the outcomes, the reduce pain, reduce inflammation, the regrowth of the tissue, uh, the regeneration, all of it has a, a much bigger lift when you can treat with the lasers. 

MK: Right. You know, besides. Treating joints and, and muscles and soft tissue. What's next with red light? I mean, what else can you treat?

I know that your interest is in, you know, up here, getting in, getting into your head, uh, getting into your, your gut, right? Uh, what is, what is next? 

Forrest: So next is, uh, head and gut and we're, we're bringing some really exciting new products that actually have slightly longer wavelengths of nine 40 and 10 64 and have really, we've seen a great explosion of research in this space from really credible labs over the last two, three years.

And so we're actually able now to kind of. More in a more informed and educated way, build our dosing models and flesh those out relative to these new wavelengths and that more internal tissue. Um, and I, I think the, uh, the brain is so exciting. I need all the help I can get, um, you know, with, with the, even the gray cells working these days.

But it's, it's something where there's, there's also. So many more risks for us, uh, from a population level one. And we see, uh, whether it's kind of microplastics, whether it's, um, you know, the, the, uh, the dietary impacts, your, your gut being your second brain, uh, whether it's the systemic inflammation that we're seeing from poor dietary choices.

Uh, there's, there's so many different stressors, uh, in endocrine disruption. Uh, that we see and that our kids will see now versus what our parents saw, uh, you know, 30 to 50 years ago. And so being able to offset those with really powerful tools for improving microvascular delivery in the brain, um, for being able to improve, uh, kind of nitric oxide delivery to the brain.

Um, we, we've been testing, so, and we'll have to get you involved in the, in the next rounds of testing if you're up for it so much. And so. Exciting data around the brain. Uh, it's just such a high leverage point for us as humans and in our existence. Like there's everything that you do on a daily basis is impacted by your brain and being able to help people with things like depression, anxiety, A DHD.

And reduce risks in some of the, the, uh, the early symptoms of Alzheimer's. Um, from a microvascular standpoint, it's just very exciting. We're, we're, um, super pumped to start bringing these to market and have some of the labs we're working with start publishing more of their data and, and start seeing people actually make changes in their daily life and outcomes.

Um, based on this, with, with, uh, again, with the combination of gut and brain, you can reduce, uh, the brain you see in the day. Again, get energy when you have, uh, you know. Kind of depression. There's, there's really some powerful physiological markers for this. And, um, there, there's good ways from a, a, uh, behavioral kind of talk therapy and things like this.

There's a number of different ways to approach that. But if you're not dealing with the physiological underpinnings, you're, you're kind of tying one hand behind your back and going into a fight. And so there's just one more tool to be able to add into a, a good stack of approaching things from diet, supplementation, exercise, and now a new tool to be able to, to help with these things as well.

MK: Right. Yeah, that's, that's super exciting. I'd love to get, you know, involved as soon as, as it makes sense and, you know, test some of that stuff. That's, that's super exciting. Obviously I certainly rely on my brain every day to varying extent and, you know, making it work better is always a good thing.

Alright? Absolutely. Um, so. What's your take on, you know, I mean there is, you know, there are now infrared zones with red light. There are obviously red light panels. We talked about, you know, treating something inside of your body versus treating something, you know, maybe surface level or maybe getting red light into your eyes.

Mm-hmm. You know, there's probably an impact to that. Um, how exciting overall is, is red light for you in, in all of its different use cases? And, and what do you, what do you see as a, as a, I wanna say as a, um. A reasonable, uh, set of tools as far as red light is concerned for overall wellness. You know, do you use panels?

Do you use saunas, infrared, you know, with red light maybe or not? Uh, what's your take on all of that? 

Forrest: So we've been using the finished style sauna with the contrast therapy. So not, not necessarily there, there is actually when you're using, we, we have a, uh, a wood-fired one. So, um, there actually is infrared coming off of the stove there.

Um, and a lot of the places that, that use those, they'll have some kind of blocking around those, or, or rocks around those. I actually like the idea of the, the infrared coming outta the, the, um, the heat generation stove. Um. With that said, uh, we're, we're doing that, you know, three or four times a week with the contrast therapy in a, in a cold plunge and seeing really amazing results, particularly when you are able to stack those.

And, uh, that's, that's both from recovery and from a a, uh, I was mentioning I had a flu, uh, recently, um, just couldn't get my brain back working and, and couldn't, and it like something that. In the brain, uh, type issue that it was having a harder time clearing through. I feel like this is a really good, uh, uh, you know, uh, methodology for using these.

Um, we do use, uh, panels and, and masks. My wife is, is, uh, is big on the, the, uh, the red light masks. Um, and, uh, those actually show a very good, uh, you know, uh, uh, outcome level. Um, and there's some things you can do with a, um, I, I think, I dunno if we've talked about this on, on camera, but I think there's some really exciting things happening.

Uh, with peptides and being able to stack, um, different kind of adjunct therapies, uh, with the red light, where we see really synergistic lifts. Um, I, I would say peptides is one that we're, we're trialing with the kind of wolverine stack, uh, keeping the, the soft tissue as healthy as possible. Um. We're seeing, um, things like, uh, extraoral shockwave therapy.

Um, PRP uh, stem cells. Uh, there's a, there's a huge synergistic lift between stem cells and the, uh, the stem cell, um, kind of, uh, impacts from a, a, uh, proliferation standpoint and how much they self-select those. So the scomal stem cells actually self-select into being different types of tissue at different rates, uh, depending on what type of light you're being hit with.

And so. With the, the six 60 and the, the 8 0 8 that we're using, they, they actually self-select into, um, what we were talking about earlier, the chondroblasts from a a, uh, a, a soft tissue regrowth standpoint at a very high level. So yeah, there's, there's some really cool things happening from different, uh, I, I think this is one of the things that, that's been so exciting over the past couple of years is stacking things that, that work synergistically, uh, in, in a really powerful way.

MK: All right. Good to know. It's very interesting. All right. Well, um, it's been, it's been, uh, my pleasure having you again. It's great to see you, man. Appreciate it. Yeah. I know that, uh, this episode is probably gonna air sometime in February, I wanna say. Um. But, uh, you know, we'll have all the links to the Move Plus Pro, including the, my previous reviews.

Uh, it's a, it's an awesome device. I mean, we use it so much. Uh, even the kids, you know, it's, it's like, it's, it's one of, you know, the Move Plus Pro has become, or Kenyon has become like a, a household name in, in our home where, you know, we, we use it for these things. We use it for, you know, anytime something hurts or, you know, it's, it's, it's just something that's, that's.

It's become an integral part of our, of our, you know, routine at the end of the day. Um, fortunately, unfortunately sometimes because we do stupid stuff and get injured, uh, but, but nonetheless, you know, so it's, it's an awesome device. It works. I mean, it has been working for me in every single case I've used it.

Obviously, I think, and, and you would agree to that, if you have a serious injury, if you have osteoarthritis, it's not gonna heal overnight. You know, it's probably took decades to get to that point. In some cases, don't expect it to be fixed in two weeks. Right. So it's, it's more of a long-term thing, but everything else being equal, it's gonna heal faster, right?

Forrest: Yes. Hundred percent. That's exactly right. And, and if you, if you don't mind, I'd love to send you through this just quick screen capture of, uh, some of these risks of NSAIDs because you of informing, uh, your audience and your ERs on this. And that's one thing we would love for people understand is. You might have gotten this prescription from your doctor, but please consider some of the risks that are out there that we're, we're learning more and more over the years.

MK: Yeah, please send them over. I, I might actually do a separate episode just on Oh, awesome. That because it's, uh, it is one thing. Everyone pops them because they're over the counter in, in many cases, in most cases, and nobody thinks, you know, thinks about it, why, you know, what the downsides might be. But we have actually, uh, we might have some at home for like, you know.

Emergencies or whatever. Yeah. But we, I mean, you, you really have to be in bad shape to, you know, consider taking one of those and, and I don't know, I don't know what it was the last time I, I took ibuprofen probably when I was 20 and when I was abusing them. But not, not since then. 

Forrest: Yeah. I'm right there with you.

That's exactly our approach as 

MK: well. Alright, cool. 

Forrest: All right, 

MK: well thanks so much for us. Appreciate it. Thank 

Forrest: you, Mike. See you. You too. Thank you so much. Have a great day. 

MK: Bye. 

Forrest: Alright.