Bioelectric Health with Garrett Salpeter: Transforming Pain and Performance | Podcast #432

Bioelectric Health with Garrett Salpeter: Transforming Pain and Performance through Newfit technology, including direct current stimulation for neurological healing and muscle regeneration.

💪 Direct current stimulation through Newfit offers a unique approach to healing by targeting the nervous system's software, enabling faster recovery and pain relief.

🔄 Polarity reversal in direct current stimulation allows for precise muscle activation, aiding in targeted training and movement re-education.

🌟 Athletes like Mike Tyson and Saquon Barkley have experienced significant benefits from Newfit, including pain relief, muscle activation, and enhanced recovery.

👩‍🔬 Ongoing research partnerships and studies showcase the potential synergies of Newfit with other modalities like peptides for optimized healing outcomes.

🧠 Newfit's impact extends beyond pain and performance to conditions like neuropathy and MS, showing promising results in nerve regeneration and spasticity reduction.

📈 Newfit's direct current stimulation has the potential to enhance ATP production in muscles, supporting mitochondrial function and cellular healing processes.

🤝 Collaboration with clinics and practitioners nationwide highlights the versatility and effectiveness of Newfit in combination with various regenerative treatments, providing holistic healing solutions.

 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it's Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Welcome to the Beyond Wellness Radio podcast. Feel free and head over to justinhealth. com. We have all of our podcast transcriptions there, as well as video series on different health topics ranging from thyroid to hormones, ketogenic diets, and gluten. While you're there, you can also schedule a consult with myself, Dr.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: J, and or our colleagues and staff to help dive into any pressing health issues you really want to get to the root cause on. Again, if you enjoy the podcast, feel free and share the information with friends or family. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Hey guys, Dr. Justin Marchegiani here from Beyond Wellness Radio.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We got Garrett Salpeter back on the podcast from NuFit. Garrett, welcome to the show, man. How you been?

Garrett Salpeter: Garrett Salpeter Justin, thanks for having me back. Everything's been going good. I'm excited to share some updates with you and it's great to catch up as always. Dr. Justin

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Marchegiani Absolutely. Today, we're going to be talking about using the body's electric code, transforming pain and performance.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We'll talk about injury prevention. We'll talk about autoimmune issues like MS. We'll talk about neuropathy. We're going to dive in. We're going to talk about athletes that are using this technology and different modalities to kind of heal and recover from injuries. Faster. So I'm excited to dive into these topics.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What's good in your world? Let's, why don't we do a couple minute recap on, you know, what it is you do and the technology that you've created. And so people are up to speed.

Garrett Salpeter: Yeah. Happy to do that. So for, for anyone listening you may have heard our previous episodes, maybe not. We'll do a little overview here.

Garrett Salpeter: Our company is new fit and we're best known for the newbie device for neuro bioelectric and in order to understand why any of this technology is relevant in the first place, I think it's first important that we understand the role of the nervous system in healing and recovery. So, so many times when people are in pain or dealing with injury.

Garrett Salpeter: They or their therapists are focused on the hardware, they're focused on the bone, muscle, tendon, ligament, et cetera. And although those, those tissues may need to heal, a lot of times the biggest issue and the biggest influence that delays the healing process is actually not the hardware, but the software.

Garrett Salpeter: It's the nervous system, which is the control system of the body or our brain, spinal cord and the nerves that go out to the periphery, out to the arms and legs. They send the signals that tell the muscles what to do, that turn organs on or off. And literally is the control system of the body. So it's very relevant as you can imagine for many areas of health and well being.

Garrett Salpeter: And it's also vitally important that we address the software when we're dealing with pain and injury, because oftentimes that is the thing that holds somebody back. I'll, I'll share a quick story to illustrate this with you. So I was in the athletic training room here at the university of Texas. So I'm in Austin at our local university there.

Garrett Salpeter: And five days beforehand, there was a player on the team. Who had an AC separation. So, so ligament damage in his, in his right shoulder, and he could only lift his arm up like 30 degrees and it had already been five days, but he was progressing very slowly. They thought it was going to be another three or four weeks because that's how long it normally takes for that ligament to heal.

Garrett Salpeter: And they were so focused on the hardware and I was in there demonstrating and, you know, timing just happened to work out where I was able to share with them this software based approach. And so we took. The newbie device, which has this direct current that allows us to interact with the nervous system directly and powerfully and find where the nervous system might be guarding or protecting and shutting down muscles and trying to limit movement and where there's hypersensitivity, it leads to pain.

Garrett Salpeter: And so going through this process, we actually mapped around on his body and found spots on two of the rotator cuff muscles, the supraspinatus up top, one of the down on the, on the bottom of that rotator cuff complex. And we stimulated those muscles and had him going through different movements. And in a few minutes, his arm was up at horizontal.

Garrett Salpeter: And a few more minutes, his arm was up overhead and he looked up and he said, what the bleep did you? And, oh my

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: gosh,

Garrett Salpeter: it's a good question because in seven or eight minutes, obviously we're not healing his ligaments, right? What we're doing. Is repatterning, recalibrating, reeducating his nervous system because it wasn't so much the damage that was limiting him.

Garrett Salpeter: It was his neurological protective reaction to it. And so helping him work through that, he was able to go train with his team that afternoon, play in the game that next Saturday. And he, you know, instead of missing three or four games, he was back playing and, and didn't miss a beat. So. It was, it was very cool.

Garrett Salpeter: And I think that's a cool you know, very kind of exam, a powerful example that illustrates this principle of why it's so important to work with the nervous system. Yes, there are times when the tissue damage is, is greater, and that's more of a factor. And you wouldn't necessarily have a case like this where, you know, in one session, the guy's back or the athlete's back or the person's back, ready to go.

Garrett Salpeter: But you But there are a lot of cases like this where we see significant improvements, you know, in one or a few sessions by working at, you know, getting to the root cause of really why it's taking so long to recover. And that is that neurological response. So the you know, I think that kind of, kind of frames it up for the conversation at least.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. I mean, so you can have this software issue where the nervous system signal to that tissue. It's guarded. There's a protective spasm because the body's like, Ooh, injury. Let's just hold this tight. Now we can relax that neurological signal. We can, you know, whether it's, we're resetting the Golgi tendon or the muscle spindle, the alpha motor neuron, whatever we're doing neurologically, we're hitting the reset button on it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But also too, if we get that electrical conductivity on the area, we're also, helping to drive inflammation down, improve blood flow, improve oxygenation. So there is a part where the hardware is still improving due to the inflammation reduction, nutrition, oxygenation too.

Garrett Salpeter: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's, I think that's a great, a great point that yes, we're working on the software.

Garrett Salpeter: And yes, that was the primary reason driver for the primary reason we had such a significant breakthrough in eight minutes. But, It's not the only thing you're absolutely right that the software then is also linked to the hardware and how the software is functioning can dramatically affect the longer term healing process of the of the hardware because yes, it has to do with blood flow and your nervous system controls the constriction or dilation of the blood vessels.

Garrett Salpeter: So it's, it's in control of how much blood is being delivered to the injured area. And of course, if you have less blood being delivered, that's less proteins, less of the raw materials. Being brought there to help rebuild and repair any damaged tissue. And then if you look at the, the globalist, that's locally, if you look globally as well, how the software, how the nervous system is, especially in the auto, not from the autonomic perspective, how it's working to either support or not support the digestive process, right?

Garrett Salpeter: The more parasympathetic we are, as opposed to sympathetic fight or flight, more parasympathetic we are, the better we can digest our food, absorb nutrients, again, giving the raw materials that can support. the healing process. So there's both the local and the global effect of the software for sure. Dr.

Garrett Salpeter: Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's cool. We get a lot of biohackers that listen to this podcast, kind of talk about the wavelength differences. I mean, you can keep it, I mean, you can go a little bit deeper, but how is this different than like 100 TENS unit? Like we have TENS unit that people will put on. It'll kind of like an electric ibuprofen, if you will, it kind of helps the pain from a perception standpoint.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Talk about like the wavelength frequency, what's different?

Garrett Salpeter: Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. So for, for everybody listening to this, the biggest difference between technology like the newbie and, and virtually everything else that's out there is the difference between direct current and alternating current.

Garrett Salpeter: And there's really interesting history here where some of these benefits that I'll share with you here, some of these benefits of direct current were actually known back in the 1960s, 1970s, but there was always one big problem, which is, you know, the Soviets did a lot of work with their athletes, for example, and whenever they would turn it up to a high enough level to really make a difference to create.

Garrett Salpeter: This enough stimulus to drive adaptation within the nervous system. When they would turn it up to those levels, they would burn their athlete's skin. And so there was this, this big problem. Cause when you have direct current, you know, the positive ions flow towards the negative and vice versa, these charges build up, it dissipates, heat leads to burning.

Garrett Salpeter: And so there were benefits known even back then, but it was a case of the baby being thrown out with the bathwater where because of that issue with burning, Direct current fell out of favor and into that void came all of these alternating current modalities like tens units Like Russian what we call Russian stem Interferential FES and MES, you know, so most of everything that's out there is Is alternating current that's because you get it into the body without the stinging without the burning so there's more comfort and got it and so there's there's Two main reasons why direct current matters and, and I'll get into those, but first I'll share with you, we have found ways to now get direct current into the body without stinging and burning the skin.

Garrett Salpeter: That's part of the special sauce of this. So we get the benefits of direct current. But with the comfort of alternating current and that safety, no risk of burning sort of dynamic. So, so, okay, now all that all that leading into a why does it matter? So there's two main categories of benefits. One has to do with the hardware.

Garrett Salpeter: One has to do with the software because like you and you know, like you said, they support each other. So software wise, the direct current allows us to bypass A lot of the protective co contractions, like when you have an alternating current signal, as that signal goes back and forth, back and forth, positive, negative, it actually sends a signal to your nervous system to contract muscles on both sides of your joint.

Garrett Salpeter: So if you were trying to move your arm, it's like your bicep and tricep would be fighting against each other. So it's like if you're, if you're driving your car, you'd be hitting the throttle and brake pedal at the same time. Ah, accelerator and brake at the

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: same time. Yes.

Garrett Salpeter: So there's this, this really interesting thing.

Garrett Salpeter: I did this in the process of creating the newbie. I took a prototype newbie on one arm and a traditional tens unit on the other arm. And I put them on, I put them both up to 50 milliamps, which feels fairly intense and the alternating current, the tens unit side, that arm, no matter how hard I tried, it was just locked.

Garrett Salpeter: I couldn't move through it. The newbie on the other hand, well, on the other arm, actually, the newbie, the newbie prototype, it felt just as intense because just as much energy is being delivered. And yet I'm able to move through it because we're bypassing a lot of that co contraction, getting more sensory input into the nervous system.

Garrett Salpeter: And so this allows us to go through that mapping process that I described where we can scan around and find where the nervous system is guarding, protecting, inhibiting, shutting down muscles, right? All these different things. And the hypersensitivity where that hypersensitivity is that can lead to chronic pain even after an injury is healed.

Garrett Salpeter: So, so it allows us to interact with the software and reeducate and repattern and really accelerate that process of neuromuscular reeducation on the software side. And then on the hardware side, it also, by creating these direct current fields. It actually causes cell migration in a way that can influence the healing process.

Garrett Salpeter: And perhaps that's a, a segue into a recent study that we did. So this is in the peer review process right now. Perhaps by the time this is out, it'll be published or shortly thereafter. But we did a study on neuropathy patients. So these are average age of 74. where, you know, these are diabetic neuropathy patients.

Garrett Salpeter: The standard of care is just to manage symptoms. No one believes there's any cure or real, any real opportunity to improve. And we had 150 patients. 75 of them got traditional alternating current TENS unit, you know, best in class TENS unit. And with them, you know, what people expected is what happened very little to no change with the direct current of the newbie.

Garrett Salpeter: However, we saw not only did the patients report that they were feeling more sensation, they had less pain, they were better able to complete their activities of daily living. You know, they reported these things, but, you know, not, not, it wasn't just that. It was, it was actually measured with EMG and nerve conduction velocity testing.

Garrett Salpeter: So literally like putting in needles to test the electrical activity in nerves that increased. So they're actually seeing axon. growth, remyelination, build, literally rebuilding the actual peripheral nerves themselves. And so there is, you know, there was some of this literature in animal studies showing the effects of direct current on healing and regeneration.

Garrett Salpeter: And to our knowledge, this is one of the first showing in humans, these differences in effect between direct current and alternating current. So we're really excited about that, but that speaks to that second category of. Benefits of direct current. There's the effect of the fast functional changes on the software side.

Garrett Salpeter: And then that longer term support of the healing process on the hardware side. And when I say longer term, the study was, was only six weeks, two sessions a week for six weeks. So people were already seeing some improvements. Of course, they could have been bigger had they gone on for longer. And, you know, there's more, more work to do to really understand all of that.

Garrett Salpeter: But the, the progress there in that study is very exciting because that's, you know, 30 something million people in the United States alone have neuropathy and the solutions are, well, non exist. I mean, generally there, there aren't solutions. There's just palliative care, try to manage symptoms, help people feel a little bit better.

Garrett Salpeter: Oftentimes it's, you know, pain medications or things like that, but you know, no one's really fixing the problem. And of course there's stuff that you deal with, you know, there's underlying metabolic dysfunction, all these other things that you want to address as well. But. you know, as important as that is, it's still also important to help rebuild the nerves and restore function there.

Garrett Salpeter: And so that's where this comes in.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So most of your neuropathy patients, are they diabetics, just high blood sugar that's causing glycation and it's inflaming the nerve? Or is it, is there an MS autoimmune component where the myelin's being destroyed? Like what's the mechanism of these patients having this?

Garrett Salpeter: So for this the, the, this, this was all, there's, there's different types of neuropathy, but diabetic neuropathy is the most common chemotherapy induced neuropathy is out there. And then there's a, there's a, you know, there's idiopathic, you know, then there's other causes as well. There's certainly mechanical injury.

Garrett Salpeter: But with this population, diabetic neuropathy oftentimes the mechanism is the increased blood sugar damaging blood vessels and the damage, damage to the microvasculature that would be feeding nutrition to the nerves. And when the microvasculature, when the blood supply dries up, the nerves essentially atrophy because they're not getting any fuel.

Garrett Salpeter: So, you know, imagine if the. If the fuel blood supply was cut off to your muscle, you know, your muscle, same thing happens to the nerves. And it most commonly happens down in the feet where the circulation tends to, to be diminished most significantly, or, and then that's sort of where the issues show up earliest in most of these patients.

Garrett Salpeter: Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's correct. So essentially, you're driving better blood flow, opening up these capillary beds, getting more nutrition in there. And then obviously you're stimulating the nerve. So the nerves are getting stimulation and they're, they're conducting better essentially, right?

Garrett Salpeter: Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter: So it seems like there's probably two components and we don't know if it's more one or more of the other. And that, you know, there's certainly more study to happen to, you know, more area for further study here. But yes, one component is. increase it, you know, restoring blood flow, increasing vascularization, et cetera, like you described there.

Garrett Salpeter: And then the other is stimulating regeneration of nerve tissue directly. So there's, there is some literature on, on this mechanism. So if you, if you put nerves in a direct current field, they'll actually grow preferentially towards one terminal. And then if you switch it, switch polarity, they'll grow towards the opposite terminal.

Garrett Salpeter: So you can grow axons, you know, more. You know, motor axons more down towards the feet, sensory axons more up towards the spinal cord by changing the direction. So you actually want to spend some time with the current going in one direction, you know, the direct current in one direction, and then some time with it in the other direction for the most complete regenerative effect.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. So with DC current, is that more in harmony with the nervous system? Because you mentioned AC, it's kind of bouncing back and forth. So you get essentially the posterior and the anterior or anterior posterior going at the same time. So it's hard to move it. It's kind of locked. So how's, how's the DC current kind of work with the nervous system in general?

Garrett Salpeter: Yeah, it's a, that's a great, great point. I'm glad you brought that up. Alternating current. It is, it is foreign to the body and at low levels of current, If you just, this is another interesting thing. If you compare direct current and alternating current at low levels, alternating current will create a little bit of a stress response within the body because it is a signal that's foreign to the body.

Garrett Salpeter: Our nervous systems conduct naturally on direct current. And if you think about it, there's one pathway that goes from the brain down to the body, the motor or efferent pathway. Then there's another pathway that goes from the body up to the brain. That's the afferent or the sensory, right? Bring sensations for processing the brain.

Garrett Salpeter: Okay. So it's like, there's like a northbound and southbound lane of traffic and they're separate lanes and you don't, you don't have someone driving south on northbound lane and vice versa. So that's, that's what would happen in the, in the case of alternating current, whereas with the direct current, you're able to.

Garrett Salpeter: Essentially align the flow of the signals to the flow of traffic that exists naturally there. So there, there's some, you know, I certainly believe that that's part of why it works more effectively than alternating current is that the fact that it's, you know, matches more closely as more, you could say harmonious with how the nervous system works naturally.

Garrett Salpeter: So there's definitely definitely something there. But mechanism wise, I think it is that, you know, the biggest signal to us is that even at lower levels where it shouldn't necessarily be stressful, is that change in autonomic function is measured by heart rate variability. So I think that's, that's sort of, that's a good indicator, at least of what's happening.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But you're also able to move that muscle more effectively because both sides aren't contracted. How much does the movement Change it. 'cause as you go through a movement pattern, let's say it's a shoulder issue, maybe certain parts of the movement, oh, you feel it kind of light up more where maybe a tens unit, it's just, you're just bombarding the signal and you're in that same position.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How much does the movement change the therapy or allow the, the nerves or muscles to, to heal and reset better?

Garrett Salpeter: I think it's a big deal, and that's why in our, in our, you know, protocols and techniques that we. Teach in our certification program, our basic applying the 80, 20 principle, what techniques are going to get the biggest bang for the buck, help the most people create the most significant positive change.

Garrett Salpeter: And when we find our hotspots, like I talked about with that football player, we do have, do have patients or athletes moving in, in large part, because. It actually helps them, not only do we have them moving, but we want to have them doing a movement where they're either currently limited by a range of motion restrictions, by pain, some sort of deficit in coordination, something like that.

Garrett Salpeter: Because wherever they have those compensations or those deficiencies, those are the poor movement patterns that are going to tend to linger on. So we want to attack those and go after those right away. So when we do the movements, one component of, of, you know, with the goal of trying to accelerate this process of neuromuscular reeducation, bringing the, the nerves and the muscles back online.

Garrett Salpeter: One reason to do to do that movement in particular is that we can, by stimulating these areas with. The newbie fill in the gap. So if someone, if someone's trying to do a movement, like it's a pitcher throwing a baseball and they're always kind of having to hitch around this little area of the shoulder because some muscle is inactive, if we stimulate that muscle or give them the neurological input they need now, all of a sudden they can go through a more smooth, correct, biomechanically efficient.

Garrett Salpeter: movement because that they're getting that input that they need. And so they can accelerate that process of relearning that movement, how to do that movement in an efficient way, accelerate that process so they can learn it so much faster. And it seems to seems to really work well together to have the stimulation Combined with movement ultimately the, you know, any effective therapy does move towards that goal of, of movement.

Garrett Salpeter: And so this is a way to help people get there faster. And, and, you know, so many times in order to, you know, it can take thousands and thousands of repetitions of corrective exercise because it's sort of an uphill battle having to think and really work through all these neurological restrictions.

Garrett Salpeter: Whereas when you give someone the right input neurologically, a lot of times the efficient movement just happens. All of a sudden that throwing pattern is better or someone was shifting to the, to one side in their squat. And now all of a sudden it's more even without them having to think about it. So it's, it's sort of like running a software.

Garrett Salpeter: Debugging program. Yeah, start working better. And that movement is the way to present the opportunity for learning and really accelerate everything.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. So yes, you're you're defragging that hard drive, so to speak. And so by scanning, let's say your picture, you're scanning some of these areas.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: you may find these hotspots and then the thinking is that tissue is dysfunctional. It's not quite working, turning on, turning off, optimally absorbing force, creating force. And so then you can apply that input. And then as that person goes through that movement, now they can bring these muscles back up to a better level of homeostasis, essentially.

Garrett Salpeter: Yeah, I think that's a great way, a great way of saying it, you know muscles have to be able to work through their whole range of motion. They have to, you know, contract. To shorten, they, they do still contract as they lengthen. It's a balance of contraction relaxation. I never just go totally limp. So it's a matter of, it's a matter of motor control of being able to control muscles on both sides of the joint of all joints, you know, in, in a very precise way.

Garrett Salpeter: So it has to do with timing. It has to do with. Subtle turning on and off or subtle contraction and relaxation moments and, and doing it for all these different motor, you know, thousands of motor units, tens of thousands of muscle fibers to make up these, these gross level muscle movements that we see. So the precision of neurological control is, is just so profound and fascinating.

Garrett Salpeter: And I did a lot of my graduate work in, in motor control and just loved it. You know, sort of my, I also, you know, done studied engineering and so it was sort of like that looking at the nervous system as if it's a big computer and seeing all these signals and if you can, if any of the signals are off that sophisticated coordination is going to be off.

Garrett Salpeter: And so we're just trying to basically, you know, plug the leaks or give the missing input so that all of these processes can just work. Better. And there's, there's so much to it that if any of these pieces are off the, you know, there can be, you know, the body actually can have strategies to, to compensate, but there you eventually you can, you can run out of the host for sure.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. So, essentially, we're, we're helping to reduce inflammation. We're helping to have better neurological patterns. You're kind of breaking down the science. AC, kind of TENS unit versus DC, direct current, more functional, able to use the muscles better, better adaptation because you can actually work through movements and then you can, you can retrain that muscle better where with TENS, you're kind of just stuck and it's more pain reduction, not functional improvement.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we talked about some of the neuropathy. I know that. The Terry Walsh study, Dr. Terry Walsh and MS patients, so you're, you're seeing good results with neuropathy, inflammation with MS patients. You also mentioned other types of neuropathies. Oh,

Garrett Salpeter: if you mentioned MS actually, you mentioned Terry Walsh, so there's another study that we had published in, within the last year of the time we're recording this, in 2023.

Garrett Salpeter: Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, cool.

Garrett Salpeter: It was a, it was a case series. on functional recovery for MS patients. So that was looking at improvements in strength and spasticity. It was a case series. It was seven MS patients done by a physical therapist as it was part of the Centura health system in the Denver, Colorado area.

Garrett Salpeter: And that was, that was really cool to see improvements in, in their abilities to perform activities of daily living, you know, improvements in strength in reductions in spasticity and all these different things. Spasticity is an interesting thing. We talk about This ability to contract or relax muscles.

Garrett Salpeter: You know, spasticity is this interesting phenomenon where there's all this contract contract signal that's going there and there's not as not the ability to send that relaxed signal to counteract it. And a lot of times this is an interesting, I'm sorry, it's a little detour, but a lot of people, a lot of people misinterpret what, what energy does in muscles.

Garrett Salpeter: You know, a lot of people think, Oh, it must take energy to really contract muscles. But if you think about it. Contracted muscle is actually the lowest energy state and that may sound weird, but you and I have talked about this before, Justin, but for people listening, think about, think about the lowest energy state a human can be in.

Garrett Salpeter: That's, you know, death, right? Not making any, any energy at all. And if you think about what happens to a corpse, the muscles don't just go limp and flaccid, they actually go into rigor mortis. Rigor mortis. And so there's this default setting is actually for, for, for the actinid, for the muscle fibers to sort of grab on, attach to each other and shorten.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Someone has a stroke too. They have a stroke too. Right? Yeah. You get all the muscles shortening. So that makes sense.

Garrett Salpeter: Exactly. Exactly. So it actually takes energy and intentionality. To lengthen and relax muscles. So spasticity is a little bit of a, a sort of slip into that default state of contraction. And it takes the ability of the nervous system and, you know, to send the signal and enough energy present in the muscles with, so the metabolism, of course, helping as well.

Garrett Salpeter: It takes that to both of those things to stop spasticity. And so what we're trying to do there is Is restore the neurological signal, help the brain and nervous system see this area of the body so it can more effectively send those signals. And then, of course, try to try to influence the person to make various lifestyle changes to improve their metabolism, the ability to create energy to maintain that length and state of muscles to.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's great. Now, how are you doing these studies? Are you hiring PhDs or researchers to kind of come in and just do kind of case control studies or how does that work?

Garrett Salpeter: So we have a PhD neuroscientist who's a full time member of our, you know, leadership team. She's our vice president of clinical affairs.

Garrett Salpeter: So she runs two areas, two big areas for us. One is supporting research and then the other is translating that research into our continuing education curriculum for practitioners. So for people who are using the newbie, we have this, all these different certification courses and our basics foundational course on the newbie.

Garrett Salpeter: And then we have several specialized courses and everything from athletic performance and muscle hypertrophy to treating neurological patients like MS and neuropathy patients, you know, these populations we're talking about. So so she's, she's running that. So she. Supported, you know, if there's a study, she wouldn't do the data analysis because of conflict of interest, but she can help with study design help with, you know, some of the practicalities of writing up studies.

Garrett Salpeter: And so we have a research partner that did this with us, this neuropathy study across several sites. Group that actually certifies physical therapists in EMG and nerve conduction velocity testing. And then the study in Denver was a this one physical therapist who, you know, we had worked with, who was passionate about the newbie and wanted to take on the project.

Garrett Salpeter: And so she was the primary investigator on that study there. So it's been having good partners. And then one other actually we had two other studies published on one topic of muscle hypertrophy. And that was a, A professor at the University of South Florida. He's a professor who had done a lot of the first research in the United States on blood flow restriction.

Garrett Salpeter: And he and his lab did two studies looking at the effect of the Nubian muscle hypertrophy, which means muscle building. And so he, one study was on the acute, like what happens in the 24 to 48 hours after exercise. And one of the things that we see with the newbie and with traditional weightlifting is muscle cell swelling.

Garrett Salpeter: The muscle cells actually bring up fluid. So that's like the pump. When you see this, you know, people, muscles are pumped up because the muscle cells are holding on fluid because they bring in blood plasma, which has proteins that help rebuild muscle cells. And, you know, they're trying to bring in. bring in energy and raw materials to rebuild.

Garrett Salpeter: And so we saw the acute response was about the same using the newbie and using traditional weightlifting. And then we looked at muscle growth over an eight week training cycle. And again, saw that it was very similar with the newbie and traditional weightlifting. So, so another research partner there, but that was another cool line of research showing that you can get.

Garrett Salpeter: legitimate muscle building using the, using the newbie with little to no external load. So why does that matter? Well, sometimes, you know, someone's been injured or, you know, elderly population, you know, might be difficult or dangerous to lift heavier weights, where this can allow you to get most of the, most of the benefits with, without any of the risks of injury or re injury or making it more accessible or, you know, whatever it might be for the person.

Garrett Salpeter: Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's awesome. Very cool. I want to go into some of your interesting case studies because I was watching Joe Rogan the other day and, and they actually brought you up because Mike Tyson was using the new fit device during his training. He's got a fight coming up with Jake Paul, I think later on this year, and he was using this device.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I know I talked to you many times as a handful of NFL players, Major League Baseball players, hockey players. I wanted to just get a couple of little tidbits of whatever you can share that's public on some of these athletes, maybe just a couple of anecdotal case studies before I dive into that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: When you do some of the. you know, the electrical stimulation and healing on the DC side, you reverse the current on that. You, you have, you reverse the polarity. Can you just, just dive in? Because you're really science minded. What's happening when you reverse the polarity when you're doing training and movement?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What's happening there?

Garrett Salpeter: So you're, you are switching the direction, right? It's going to be going positive, positive charge. They're going to be going this way. Towards the negative and vice versa. Then when you switch it, they're going to be going the opposite way. And, you know, I think, I think about positive charges a lot because the nervous system has sodium and potassium pumps, right?

Garrett Salpeter: And those are both positive ions. And because of that, there's, there's typically going to be more stimulation locally around the negative electrode, because that's going to be attracting more of these positive ions. And. You know, it's not like it's all or nothing. It's more like 60 40 maybe, but so, so if you have 60 percent of the stimulation around the black electrode and 40 percent around the red, then when you switch it, the election, the red electrode is now going to be the negative.

Garrett Salpeter: And it's going to get its turn, so to speak of, of getting more stimulation or more input. So if you wanted to do muscle building on your arms and super set your biceps and triceps, for example, you can have it set to where you have more stimulation on your biceps. Then you can switch the polarity. So you have more stimulation on your triceps when you switch to the other exercise.

Garrett Salpeter: So you can do stuff like that. You also, as we talked about earlier, if you're trying to help rebuild nerves, you can get nerves building in one direction, and Towards the negative terminal and then switch in the opposite direction. By by switching the direction of the current. So there's benefits there too.

Garrett Salpeter: And then I think there's something else to really learn about is some of these more subtle effects of, of polarity on the body. And I'm thinking about the work of Robert Becker and the body electric, this postdoc from the eighties,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: he

Garrett Salpeter: talks about the, so he talks about the perineural system, there's of course the nerves, it's then these, you know, binary encoded on off signals.

Garrett Salpeter: These discrete action potentials, but they're surrounded by this scaffolding. That's the perineural system that also has electrical activity, but it's more like a semiconductor and it's more like these subtle, more like an electrical bias. Like there's a little bit of a field going in one direction or the other.

Garrett Salpeter: And so I, I think there are ways for us to influence those fields and have a greater impact on the healing process. And, you know, that he even talks about things like, you know, regenerating limbs, you know, which is electrical fields is our, our house stem how salamanders create stem cells and regenerate entire limbs.

Garrett Salpeter: He also talks about electro anesthesia, how you can change polarity across the brain, how, how polarity across the brain changes between sleep and wake states. And that's it. How it's possible to induce those changes and, you know, put someone to sleep electrically to induce, like you would with anesthesia, a state where you could do surgery on someone and you could wake them back up immediately without any of the chemical toxicities of anesthetic medications, you know, so there's, there's, there's opportunity.

Garrett Salpeter: I'm not by any means claiming we can do that. I'm just kind of looking ahead at, you know, What some of the things that I think we might be able to do with electricity down the road too and a little bit of why polarity matters now, why we, at least we know it matters now and why it could matter in the future with some of these applications too.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so the benefits really going to be from anyone with injury issues, anyone interested in prevention or anyone at the highest form of athletics that are trying to perform at their optimal level. So kind of that being said, let's, let's go into some of your case studies, if you don't mind.

Garrett Salpeter: Oh yeah, for sure.

Garrett Salpeter: So you were talking about, you know, Mike Tyson, he, he had used it actually in preparation back in 2021 or 2020 and 21 when he fought Roy Jones Jr.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah.

Garrett Salpeter: So, so he had, Mike Tyson has a very interesting story. He was a physical specimen. He was one of the most powerful athletes in the world. And this, you know, really strong looking guy until he wasn't, he had chronic pain and it sent him down this very challenging road where for 10 years he had these various mental health difficulties, chronic pain caused him to, to rely on medical marijuana and he actually got in some businesses around that and he ballooned up to over 300 pounds, he had a ton of weight.

Garrett Salpeter: Oh yeah,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: huge.

Garrett Salpeter: And he actually, you know, he, we have a video here. I can share the link if there's a place to put that too, but we have a, a great video where he's talking about how, you know, whenever he would try to train his joint pain came back and he says, he remembered why he retired until he started using the newbie and he was able to, to train and move around in the ring and, and do his, his, you know, calisthenics and different things without pain, and that actually literally gave him the ability to, to go out and fight again.

Garrett Salpeter: And now he's doing it again, a few years later. It he, he worked with a guy named Brad row, who was a former Mr. Olympia level professional bodybuilder. And Brad was using the newbie out in the LA area and worked with Mike for the six months leading up to his fight. They did, they did one or two sessions a day, literally for the six months leading up to his fight, because that's what gave him the ability to move and train without pain.

Garrett Salpeter: So it made a big difference for him. And then he's, you know, used it off and on and. He's back in, in camp prepping for the next fight now and it's been, it's been very cool. And so yeah, Joe Rogan you know, very graciously mentioned the, the newbie and us and he read a few paragraphs off of our website on a recent episode.

Garrett Salpeter: And I was, you know, it was very cool to, to hear that. So he's a local guy here in Austin and we've got some, got some mutual friends. I, we gotta, we gotta get, get it, gotta get him officially to, to use the machine. I don't know if he's actually, he's, he's had, you know, with some. Different people that we know he's had some opportunities to use it, but I don't know that he actually has it.

Garrett Salpeter: So Joe, if you're watching this, we got to get you on the newbie.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, that'd be awesome. Very cool. Yeah. So speaking about Mike Tyson, so he's using marijuana to kind of decrease some of the pain stuff. We know marijuana is also a central nervous system depressant, right? So it's going to make the nerves probably function slower, right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that's not going to be in harmony with what a boxer needs. And so essentially you're able to find a different modality to get the pain down, but also allow his nervous system to function at a higher level, which is what he needs. Muscles on and off to be able to fight, right? Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter: For sure. Yeah, for sure.

Garrett Salpeter: And then in terms of terms of athletes, you know, there's, there's several others. There's some bigger name athletes that, you know, Carl Anthony towns in the NBA playoffs right now. Wasn't there a pitcher?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wasn't there a Cy Young winner? Pitch Cy Young award winning pitcher that came to you recently?

Garrett Salpeter: We've had a few big name pitchers.

Garrett Salpeter: So there's actually, you know, 15 major league baseball teams are using it. So I texted with athletic trainers of using it with a lot of pitchers and all of their players. Now you know, a big, a really cool one was Saquon Barkley,

Garrett Salpeter: The running back for the Giants in this coming season. Yeah. With the Giants just got picked up by the Philadelphia Eagles going into this season.

Garrett Salpeter: And he, you know, has an interesting, had an interesting experience where a few seasons ago he had an ACL tear and subsequent surgery to repair the ACL in his knee. And he, five months after the surgery, he was still in this, you know, in this kind of in between state where he, you know, is weak, he was stiff, he was in pain, he was struggling.

Garrett Salpeter: And even though he was working with great people, they're still really hardware focused. And so he, he worked with Dr. Elitrosh, this famous surgeon out in California. He did Tom Brady's ACL. Tom

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Brady's

Garrett Salpeter: ACL, yep. He's like the other up there with James Andrews type of guy. Yeah,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: for the shoulder. He did the shoulder stuff.

Garrett Salpeter: Yeah, yeah. So, so so Saquon at five months on Dr. Elitrosh's functional scale was, was a 23 out of 50 on his, you know, functional score for lower extremity. And, you know, he's frustrated and he then, you know, through, through his physical therapist out there, we we started working on them. He used the newbie and he talks about how in the first session he was able to engage his quad muscle again, and it changed the whole trajectory of his recovery six weeks later.

Garrett Salpeter: He went out to Dr. Elitrosh's office and went from a 23 out of 50 to a 49 out of 50. So it just, it made, it made a huge difference for him. And he also, you know, another video we can share the link to, he talks about how he still uses the machine to help with muscle activation. If he tweaks anything, he uses it to treat it right away before it turns into anything more serious.

Garrett Salpeter: He uses it before games to activate his muscles afterwards to recover. And. He calls it, he calls it his cheat code. Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, I don't blame you, man. Are these guys combining any other modalities like cold plunges or like percussive massage guns or like red light or laser light frequency to to kind of work as an adjunct along with us?

Garrett Salpeter: Some, some of them do, some don't, you know there are, there's various clinics that use different modalities and technologies in combination with the newbie and they all can work well together. So that's, that's, that's good. Some, you know, some of the guys are, are like big biohackers themselves and they have a red light panel and a cold plunge at home along with a newbie.

Garrett Salpeter: And some of them are more kind of old school, you know and the newbie might be the only thing, only new school, you know, technology thing that they, that they are really into. It depends on the, on the, on the person, their personality.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because the infrared frequencies, they penetrate really deep and they help with inflammation and blood flow.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then obviously the red light's gonna get to the mitochondria, really stimulate a lot of tissue healing and blood flow. And obviously the mitochondria is important because that's the powerhouse of the cell. Have you seen any studies or have you done any studies looking at the newbie and what it does to the mitochondria in the muscles?

Garrett Salpeter: So nothing specific to the newbie yet. That is, you know,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: that'd be an interesting study right there

Garrett Salpeter: and interesting, interesting area for further study there. I have, I have seen some research that shows that micro currents generally can increase ATP productions, you know, three to 500 percent in the local area where they're applied.

Garrett Salpeter: If you're, if you're using more significant currents, You know, you could actually be using up some of that energy at the same time. You might be creating more, but also using it more. So there's, there's, you know, there's some research out there that, that gives us clues that there is something happening, nothing yet, however, specific to the newbie something I'm very interested though, and something that, That I definitely would like for us to look at.

Garrett Salpeter: Dr. Justin

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Marchegiani Yeah, that's cool. I mean, I'm always interested in, in kind of you know, mixing and matching modalities. I mean, I have a cold plunge, I have red lights, I have red lasers, infrared lasers. I have the newbie, you know, a lot of biohacking modalities. So I think it's really cool. A lot of these guys at that high level, they're going to be, you know, doing a lot of different things.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I like that. Any other cool clinical stories at all with different professional athletes coming in?

Garrett Salpeter: Let's see with professional athletes. I mean, there's some good ones. You know, I, some of the best ones are the ones I get, I get texts with athletic trainers from, you know, the LA Dodgers or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, or, you know, different teams you know, and I hear, hear these great stories of, you know, pitchers who are supposed to be out on the, on the 15 day DL and they get back in a few days or, you know, these, you know, there's, there's a lot of those, some of the more.

Garrett Salpeter: exciting ones might be, you know, these MS patients, for example. So I'm sorry, I'm shifting gears a little bit, but you know, this there's stories of MS patients who, you know, like there's one that, that was pianist, you know, going to Juilliard to play professionally. And then she got MS in her early twenties when she was just about to really begin her career.

Garrett Salpeter: And she lost the ability to play the piano and working with the newbie for six weeks in her, in her late thirties, you know, 15 to 20 years later, she, she was doing these different hand dexterity exercises with these electric gloves on connected to the newbie. And she sent us this video of her playing scales on her piano for the first time in over a decade.

Garrett Salpeter: And it was just such a moving, you know, really, really amazing. Amazing site to see there. So

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: amazing. That was really inspiring. That's amazing. I can think of a patient of myself that, you know, years back, chronic knee pain marathon runner. And you know, when you get someone coming in, that's a chronic issue, you're like, all right, what's this?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: This is going to be three times a week for the next one to two months. You kind of get that protocol kind of going. And I remember in one treatment, the pain was turned off. Obviously, there had to have been a neurological issue where the muscles weren't quite firing. And like you said, we just did a software reset.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And sometimes when your phone and your computer is not working, sometimes just a reset is just like what fixes everything, right? And so, that's kind of, I think, what happened there, which is cool. Also, are you familiar with any of the peptides, like the BPC 157 peptide, the body protective compound? Any thoughts on that or using that as an adjunct?

Garrett Salpeter: I am familiar. I'm not an expert. So, you know, please. please don't interpret what I'm saying as, as if I am. But I, I do like combinations of certain peptides, whether it be BPC 157, TB 4 or TB 500, you know, or, you know, anything. Dr. Jim Kross Or also, you know, I would also think of PRP or exosome or stem cell.

Garrett Salpeter: Jim Kross And sort of the same. Jim Kross Anything that's going to be supporting the healing of the hardware. Dr. Justin

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Marchegiani Exactly.

Garrett Salpeter: I think it's also important that we Pay attention to the software and make sure that is totally working to support the healing process. And the two, you know, we have a few regenerative clinics around the country that are combining, you know, peptides and other regenerative stem cell PRP based treatments, combining those with the newbie and the results are extremely positive.

Garrett Salpeter: So I do think there's a, a meaningful synergy there. And it seems like a great combination, certainly an area for further study. Dr. Justin

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Marchegiani I love it. That's excellent. We're gonna put some links down below here just so you guys can get access to Garrett's information. I put my link here, new.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: fit justinhellslashsnl. We'll put the link in the description so you guys can see that. Reach over to Garrett. Garrett sees patients or his clinic sees patients in Austin. He also has clinics worldwide or at least US wise. So there'll be a little find a practitioner on the new. fit website and eu. fit website.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you can look there. And if you're a practitioner or you're someone that wants to get access to this awesome technology, there'll be a link where you can reach out at new. fit slash Justin help put the link in the description. Feel free, Garrett, anything else you want to leave the listener with any other coordinates that they can get access to any other, you know, really good stories you want to leave the listeners with.

Garrett Salpeter: Gosh, there's, there's a lot of stories, you know, I, I talked about this, this athlete who had the shoulder and had these breakthroughs here, you know, there's other, other stories that have one, one that I tell in my book the new fit method, by the way, I'll mention is on Amazon, you know, printed and audio book and here we go.

Garrett Salpeter: Oh, nice. Thank you. There it is. So I

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: got my, I got my own

Garrett Salpeter: signed copy, by the way. That's right. That's right. I love it. Very good. So the, you know, there's an example, you know, these common things where people quote unquote throw their back out, you know, where they're having these bad spasms and that's so, that's such a fascinating example because, you know, it can be debilitating.

Garrett Salpeter: People could be in such excruciating pain and the pain is actually the body's reaction to oftentimes, you know, if there's actually something pinging on the spinal cord, that's a different story. But so often it's the body's reaction to a subtle nerve, you know, nerve pain. Grazing or, or slight, slight irritation and there's this overreaction.

Garrett Salpeter: And so, you know, we've had people hobble in like, you know, 10 out of 10 pain where opiate pain meds can't even put a dent in it. And in, in, you know, one treatment, sometimes they're feeling so much better. They can be, you know, they can, they can be hobbling in and literally like, like jogging out because of.

Garrett Salpeter: How working on this, working through that pattern of neurological spasm, how, how dramatic that can be. So I just, you know, I share that just as another example that might hit home for some people of the importance of working on working with the nervous system, but it also is relevant for, you know, for fitness, for, for health, you know, tracking heart rate variability.

Garrett Salpeter: There's so many, so many valuable things that come from, come from the nervous system. And if anyone is interested in interacting with us or following along, you know, Thank you, Justin, for mentioning our website. We're also most active on instagram. Our business page is new fit rfp for rehab, fitness and performance.

Garrett Salpeter: Also, just a couple months ago, beginning of this this calendar year, I started my own personal instagram page, garrett. salpeter, and that's been been a lot of fun to put some content up there. A little different from, but, but certainly dovetails with everything we're doing on the business page as well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's great. I'm going to add right now your Instagram to that as well. That's perfect. No, I love everything that you said. That makes so much sense, man. I think you're providing a lot of great resources, you know, What people had 10, 20 years ago was just surgery or maybe some PT where we stretch and strengthen and that was it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And there wasn't many more modalities. PTs are getting better, adding in soft tissue, adding in some of these bioelectric devices. I imagine you're probably seeing more PTs coming to you as practitioners, wanting to incorporate these modalities to their practice. Is that true? DrMR. Yeah,

Garrett Salpeter: there's at the time of this recording, there's about 380 or so, 390 clinics around the United States that are That are offering the newbie in their treatments, you know, it's physical therapy, chiropractic clinics, other, you know, wellness facilities, different medical facilities.

Garrett Salpeter: And then we have, you know, some in Canada, some in Australia, hopefully some online in, in Europe, a couple actually in the UK. Trying to, trying to get more of a presence in Europe later this year as well. So there are people out there using it. So definitely the, the provider locator on the website can be a good resource for, for patients looking for a place to go.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome, my man. Very cool. If you guys are in Austin, feel free and check out Garrett's clinic or reach out online. All right, Garrett. Awesome to see you, man. We'll chat real soon.

Garrett Salpeter: Awesome. Thank you, Justin. Thanks, everybody.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You too. Take care.

Garrett Salpeter: Bye.