Show Notes
- BOOK: .Back Pain How to build core stability for long-lasting relief by Adam Gavine and Rod Bonello
- CLINIC & Instagram: Dr Adam Gavine – Back to Function Aled Health Clinic (website) or @wasabi_method (Instagram)
Timestamps
- [00:01:00] Introduction & Overview of Shockwave Therapy
- [00:04:00] Causes & Misdiagnoses of Chronic Pain
- [00:08:30] Biomechanics & Musculoskeletal Health
- [00:16:00] How Biohacking Meets Chiropractic Care
- [00:22:30] How Shockwave Therapy Works (Device Tech & Science)
- [00:30:00] Shockwave Applications for Pain & Erectile Dysfunction
- [00:40:00] Global Research & Success Stories in Shockwave Therapy
Dr. Adam Gavine: The Science Behind Shockwave Therapy (Biohacking Part 2)
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:01] Hi, Dr Ron. Here it. I want to invite you to join our Unstress Health community. Now, like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q&A on specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing Unstress Health Advisory panel. Now, we’ve done hundreds of podcasts over listening to with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders, but with membership we have our Unstress Blab podcast series where we take the best of several guests and carefully curated specific topics for episodes which are jam packed full of valuable insights. So join the Unstress health community. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel. Click on the link below or just visit Unstress health.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you. Well, we this is really part two of our bio hack exploration now. Last time we spoke in part one was with Camilla Thompson and Azra Holgate Alec, and they spoke about shockwave therapy. And I must admit I was not familiar with that therapy. But as you will hear, today is an interesting thing, an interesting form of therapy, an interesting use of energy to stimulate circulation and to really get some positive biological responses. My guest is Dr Adam Gavine. And Adam’s background is chiropractic, but he is an expert in shockwave therapy. His company, Wasabi, which we talk about that name in this podcast, is is leading the way in shockwave therapy with in collaboration with the legendary in the biohacking world, Dave Esprit. Now biohacking, as I said in the first part, is another expression for what we used to call trying to be as healthy as you possibly can, but it taps into a whole lot of other modalities of which shock therapy is one now. Adam’s chiropractic background stimulated my interest in how you would approach chronic musculoskeletal pain, which is has been of interest to me throughout my 45 years in practice. So I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr Adam Gavine. Welcome to the show, Adam.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:02:53] Hi, Ron. Thanks for having me on. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:02:56] Adam, you are a chiropractor, of course, and chiropractors deal a lot with chronic musculoskeletal pain problems. And it’s an area that I’ve been very interested in for my entire career over 40 years. And the thing that often surprises me and I think frustrates many patients is they go for a Cat scan, an X-ray, an MRI, and it all comes back normal. And yet they’re in terrible pain. And the doctor says, look, all the tests are normal. There’s a totally new hit. What do you think causes musculoskeletal pain? Big question there. I know. Yeah. You know what? It’s a good thing.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:03:34] It’s a good question, but it’s there’s no simple answer. It’s funny because I. I just listened to Dr Stuart McGill on Andrew Huberman podcast, and I. I know Stu, and I’ve been to his seminars, and it’s funny, I could tell he was kind of biting his tongue because he doesn’t like to answer question generic questions. He goes, I can tell you, I can give you a specific answer if you give me a specific question. So it’s like 45 year old male with this injury caused by caused by this, has this co-morbidities. You know, he needs context and then he can properly answer the question. So so I’m kind of similar because he he rubbed off on me.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:04:27] Yeah. Well, let’s say somebody come in with, you know, headaches that they’ve been suffering from for the last 25 years and they get 2 or 3 headaches a week. They say, you know, you’ve probably noticed this, too, where you ask people how often you get headaches and they go, not very often. And you go, How often is that? And it’s 2 or 3 times a week. Yeah. Which is shocking. Yeah. For some people that’s not very often and others it is. But, but someone like that, you know, I mean, what are we looking for that gives us a hint that there’s something actually wrong?
Dr Adam Gavine [00:04:57] Well, kind of my area of expertise is, is really the biomechanics. So I’m really focussed on on the biomechanics. And and that’s kind of my job when people come to see me is if you come to see me and you have neck pain or headaches, my job is to figure out is it biomechanics, biomechanical, musculoskeletal or not? Those are kind of my options. And usually the the the real easy way to kind of figure that out is with with musculoskeletal or biomechanical, I should be able to reproduce the pain. And I should be able to find a way to alleviate or somewhat diminish the pain or find a position that makes it better. Whereas if it’s if it’s like a type O condition, which which just means it’s non musculoskeletal, it won’t really matter. Like if you’re, if your neck pain is due to like a disease, like if you have, if you have rheumatoid arthritis or you have you have some, some other like autoimmune disorder or something like that, yeah. Then it won’t really matter per say what I do to make it better or worse. Whereas musculoskeletal is there should, there should be basically like a poison and a cure. So for for low back what Stu McGill talks about like so if your flexion intolerant bending forward is the poison so you need to eliminate or reduce that and extension will be the cure. So if someone’s coming in with back pain and they and they keep bending down all the time, I got I got to stop them from doing that. And then I got to get them to start doing extension to alleviate their problem. But I’m still using the the musculoskeletal system, but I’m using in a manner that’s not going to piss off the problem. It’s like Stu says, don’t pick the scab.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:07:04] Yeah.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:07:04] And my mentor used to say, you know, when people used to pick the scab, he’d be like, Congratulations, You’ve just bought yourself another day of back pain.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:07:13] Right.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:07:13] Because it’s not that you have a complex problem. It’s like if I had a scab on my arm and every day picked it and it bled, and then I said, Dr Ron, why does my why does my arm not heal? Why does it keep bleeding? And you’re like, well, Adam, because you pick it every day and therefore the healing process never gets a chance to finish the job?
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:07:34] Yeah. Yes. I mean, in your experience, people I mean, putting aside a diagnosis of autoimmune or, you know, rheumatoid arthritis and that where they’ve had some history of, of a trauma. I mean, I think people often don’t realise that muscles have got a long memory really don’t they.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:07:55] Yeah of course of course they do.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:07:57] And in how long, how long, how long would someone, you know, a trauma, be significant to a person’s pain experience?
Dr Adam Gavine [00:08:07] It can it can be decades. It can be decades. Like, you know, I’ve had people where I can tell just by the feel. Once you once you’ve been doing what I do for a long enough, you you develop this tactile sense and and we’ll segway into this later. But I do myofascial release called A.R.T.. And the master Dr. Mike Leahy who invented it he’s he’s a freak like you. He would work on people and he would feel their tissues and be like, this feels like he probably did it about 12 years ago and he would be within a couple years. Like all the time it was like freaky. He’d go to another person and be like, this is like three years ago. Another person would be like, This is at least 30 years old just by that, because you could tell by how how the tissues move and felt and whether they had been stuck like that for a long time. It’s almost like they harden kind of like rust on an on a piece of metal. You can just you can just feel and you based on how it feels, you can establish how long they’ve had it. But you know, if you if you really badly sprained your ankle when you were a little kid, you can still have problems related to that. Not only a lot of people get stuck on just the the musculoskeletal component, but there’s a whole the whole neurology. People forget like a lot. All of these soft tissues have a direct connection to our brain. And our brain has The way I had explained to me on a on a podcast was was really cool is our brain has a 3D map of our entire body and all our sensory nerves and our sensory organs, whether it’s, you know, all these mechanical receptors and muscles and joints and ligaments and tendons, they’re constantly working with the brain. So it’s a back and forth. So the brain’s going, Hey, how’s that ankle going down there? And then the ankle sends a signal. All good here, boss. Or vice versa. It’ll go, Hey, boss, we’re having troubles down here. We tore some ligaments and we. We strained some muscles, and we’re really unbalanced in here. And then the brain goes, okay, I’ll send some help. And then. And then your body will make accommodations to get by. And so if it if you weren’t able to recover fully from that ankle sprain and you had some ongoing deficits due to that, like you tore those ligaments and they cause ligaments, they’re kind of like a slinky, You know, if you pull a slinky really far apart, it never quite goes back to its original shape. Ligaments are like that. So if you sprain your ankle, it will never be as taut as it was prior to that sprain. Yeah. So now you have a lot more joint laxity so that joints kind of kind of sloppy in a way. And then that slides around and moves and then that leads to some osteoarthritis because that joints not meant to slip and slide around all the time. And it rubs. And it rubs and it rubs. And all of a sudden you get you get wear and tear from that. So that’s what happens on our neck and our back. Usually low back pain is the most common. One is is disc problems. And they’re due often due to joint laxity. The joints themselves, the vertebra become unstable. Then when you bend forward to pick something up, you have, instead of just having flexion, you have flexion plus translation. And that translation leads to a sheer force on those discs. And the sheer force is what what damages or irritates those discs.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:12:04] And then it kind of gets to the point of also when people are in pain, they will see different practitioners and chiropractors, osteopaths, physios generally where they go. I know the lines are often blurred between those, but yeah, how do you characterise the difference between those? Is there a difference or is it just in spelling?
Dr Adam Gavine [00:12:26] Yeah, well, there there is, there is a difference. Well, and the thing to point out here is, is that just because I’m a chiropractor doesn’t mean I’m going to treat like all the other chiropractors. It really depends on when you studied. It depends on what university you studied at, what techniques you’re fond of, because like, there are certain techniques that I just wasn’t that good at. So I kind of shied away from those ones. And I found other ones that I liked or I was good at and I just kind of stuck with them. So you can see essentially ten different chiropractors and get ten different treatments, even though we went to the same university. Right. So so I tell people and I talk about this in my book, I wrote a book on back pain, which I can show here a few years ago.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:13:15] Links to that. Yeah.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:13:17] So in the book, we actually have a chapter on how to figure out whether you’re seeing a good practitioner or not. There’s like a checklist.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:13:25] Okay.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:13:26] And so we we enumerate the the basic attributes that a proficient professional good practitioner should have. And we actually do the opposite, too. We we show you like what bad practitioners do.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:13:41] So can you share with us a couple of those little points? I’m going to list them all out.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:13:46] Yeah, well. Well, just some, some basic ones are or just whether they take a thorough examine, they conduct a thorough history. So they talk to you about like, what we were talking about earlier. It’s all of these context things. You know, when you had injuries, whether you had any surgeries, you know, little things like how’s your diet, how is your sleep, how your exercise, how your stress levels, how is your how’s your family life, all of these things. It’s a confluence of of things that affect how our body functions. Yeah. Like, you know that with you’ve written a book on it essentially. And so all these things kind of chip away at like if we talk about like a baseline of optimal health, all these things keep moving us further and further away, like a standard deviation or two away from that optimal. And that’s when, that’s when we develop these, these conditions or diseases. So, so like I listen to like guys like Doctor Mark Hyman and that’s what he talks about is, is we need to stop looking at treating disease and start looking at people and going, how do we optimise health? Okay. When you’re sick, you clearly one or 2 or 3 standard deviations away from the optimal health instead of going, we’re going to treat those conditions. All I got to do is restore health. Restore health. Restore health. Right. Get your sleep better. Get your nutrition. Better get get your stress down, get you doing things you enjoy, get you doing some meditation, some, you know, some breathwork you know all these things. And the cool thing is, like with biohacking, there’s like a menu. It’s like when you go to a restaurant, you can pick what you want. You don’t have to. You don’t have to have everything on the menu. When you go to a restaurant, you go, I feel like chicken tonight, or I feel like the beef or I want a vegetarian meal. You can have whatever you want. And that’s what I encourage people to do, because some people are like, I know I’m supposed to go do a sauna, but I just I hate it. It’s uncomfortable and I don’t I’m like, Well, don’t do it. Yeah. You know, it’s like, yeah, go do red light therapy or go do PMF or, you know, go do meditation or there’s so many things you can do to to restore health in one capacity or another. And that’s what’s so cool about it is there’s, there’s so many options.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:23] Yeah. Yeah. One of your options I mean, what I want to talk about biohacking, obviously, but, but coming back to your active release technique and what I mean, you told us a little bit about that.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:16:36] So active releases is essentially a myofascial release technique. So, so basically I’ll just kind of give you example. So if I’m working like the forearm flexors here. So basically I’ll take the the muscles I’m working and put them in a shortened position and then I put a little bit of compression as well as tension on those tissues. And then and then I’m going to lengthen. I was tissues under tension and then I reset. And I’m going to go in again and I’m lengthening those structures underneath my hand. So essentially, again, like I was talking about with all those mechanical receptors and propria receptors, and in here, it’s I’m I’m not a lot of people just think you’re breaking up things. It’s it’s it’s a neurological modulation. Okay. I’m telling I’m telling the brain to I’m updating the app that 3D map in your head. I’m updating it because after a while, if I don’t move something for a while, that 3D map becomes kind of blurred, like the picture of the map becomes blurred. And then the communication between my forearm and my brain isn’t as clear. My brain is going, Hey, what are you doing down there? And my forms, like, I’m not really sure. You know, I can’t quite move as well as I used to. And then your brain this goes, yeah, whatever. We’ll deal with it later. Whereas if I’m if I’m giving the that part of my body stimulus, I’m updating that app and then my brain goes, I remember you, Now we can get that to do what it used to do. And that’s the beauty of it. That’s that’s really even something you’ve had for decades know. I’ve had people with shoulder problems they’ve had for like did 20, 30 years ago. And I get in there and I and I break up the gunk, the adhesions and all of that, and I update the app and all of a sudden they’re like, my God, I can move my arm again.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:18:39] Yeah. And I had I had I had a very similar experience with a practitioner from an injury that I’d had 20 years before. So I this is music to my ears, someone familiar with. But but I think this isn’t the point. Isn’t it the one with with an injury? There’s compensations. Yes. And when those compensations get hard wired into your brain, you start to have problems called chronic pain. And the irony of chronic pain is that it’s not where necessarily the problem may not be necessarily where you’re feeling the pain.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:19:12] Yes. And that’s and that’s like what we kind of talk about in the book about being a good practitioner, a really good practitioner will take the time to figure out what the hell is going on. Whereas an average practitioner, you just go, it hurts here, doc, and they go, okay, let’s start there. And it’s like, Well, that wasn’t hard. They kind of told you. Mike Well, I’m always questioning in my head, I’m going, Why does it hurt their. You’ve got the same spot on the other side. And that’s how it doesn’t hurt. So why What’s going on that what’s different on this side than that side that makes it hurt? Right. So I’m always I’m always like Sherlock Holmes trying to figure things out. And I’m and I’m checking the body as a as a whole. Whenever I look at the spine, it’s. It’s never just a neck problem or a low back problem. It’s a spinal problem because it’s all attached. Yeah. If the locomotive is not moving right while the rest of the train behind it is being affected and vice versa, if the caboose isn’t right, then it affects because of the roll attached. Right. And neurologically, when you look at it, you know, if something’s not functioning or moving the way it’s supposed to, the it screws up everything else. Again, like you said, your body will have to compensate. And you can get away a lot of the times with these compensations for a while, like if your body goes from plan A of how I bend my elbow to plan B, well, you can get away with that for a while. But eventually plan B starts to fail and then you go to plan C and then you go plan D and those become really inefficient. And then all of a sudden you’re like, I got all these elbow problems. And then I check you out and I go, Well, actually, your problem is your shoulder. Your brain just got your elbow to do all the bloody work. Because it was compensating, because your shoulder couldn’t do what it was supposed to do. And so your brain goes, Well, I’ll just get the elbow to compensate. And then eventually your elbow starts starts to fail because it can’t handle. It’s not as big and strong as your shoulders.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:21:21] No. No. I love it. I love it. Now, listen, we are going to talk. You mentioned the word biohacking, and it’s become a real buzzword. You know, I think many years ago, it used to be referred to as trying to be healthy. But now it’s called biohacking. And and as you say, and I like this idea of a menu of options. And you mentioned a few of them. Sleep and exercise and all that sort of stuff. But one in particular that you’re very interested in is this method called Wasabi. Yes. And I always think of some hot Japanese condiment there, but I think there’s another way of looking at it. So tell me, what’s what’s with the name? What is.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:22:01] Wasabi? So the Wasabi.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:22:03] Method.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:22:03] Yeah. So we started we’re essentially a Shockwave Therapy company. And I started with a man named Dave Asprey, who I’m sure you know about. He’s. He’s essentially the one who coined the term biohacking. They call him the father of biohacking. So he’s been doing it for over 25 years. And he’s going to he’s got a massive conference that he runs every year in the States that I was just I was just there in Dallas and at the end of May and that’s where.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:22:37] To I should say, we spoke to Camilla Thompson and Azra Alagic about the conference. So I’ve gained a little bit of insight from them, but I’m fascinated to hear your perspective on it.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:22:49] Yeah. So Camilla and Azra were kind of helping me out there. They’re friends of mine, so they came along. They’re helping, helping us out, out at the booth. And yeah, so we we launched, we unveiled Wasabi method at, at the conference, which was a little stressful because we didn’t have much time. Like by the time we decided we would try and go to the conference, it was like February and we had nothing. So we went. We work like crazy around the clock, just like I we were signing contracts like at the conference, at the conference just to get, get like finalise everything. So that tells you how close to the wire it was. But yeah, we had to, to tell you the truth, it was, it was mind boggling how, how well we did. We were actually there was over probably over 100 exhibitors in the, in the tech hall. And everyone kept saying to us, yours was the busiest booth in the whole tech hall. Right. Interesting and.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:24:00] Encouraging.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:24:01] And so we were offering treatments and they were they were free treatments using our device, which which I have here. You can see the I’ve got the handle from for the. So this is the handle of the shockwave device, which is what we use to, to treat soft tissue. So so essentially the technology is there’s a ball bearing inside the chamber here. So it works kind of like a pistol or a gun, and it’s connected to compressed air. And so that compressed air has controlled bursts that come out and pushed the ball bearing which which hits this tip here. So if you can visualise it, it imagine like you or you’re hitting a big gong and it’s making these acoustic sound waves. So this is essentially like the gong that the the bullet hits the gong. It creates these acoustic sound waves and then they travel into the tissue. And when they travel into the tissue, they they create all these physiological changes to the tissues they’re applied to. So one of the main ones is it causes an almost instantaneous analgesia. So you’re you’re no see sectors which are the nerve nerve C fibres have what’s called substance.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:25:21] They are the eye Dr Ron here it. I want to invite you to join our Unstress Health community now like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q&A on specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing Unstress Health Advisory Panel that we’ve done hundreds of podcasts over listening to with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders. But with membership, we have our Unstress Lab podcast series where we take the best of several guests and carefully curated specific topics for episodes which are jam packed full of valuable insights. So join the Unstress Health community. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel, click on the link below or just visit Unstress health.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you. To our listeners. They are the pain receptors. Yeah, the nose receptors. Yeah. The pain receptors, yeah.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:26:41] So they have what’s called substance P, which is which is a chemical that these, these nerves release to, to stimulate pain. Now that the nerves only have a certain reserve of substance. P So we’re essentially draining those nerve endings of substance. P Which will give you a local analgesic effect. So it’s kind of, it’s similar to like if you eat something really spicy and it burns like your mouth burns and then after a while it goes kind of numb. So that’s, that’s why we call it wasabi.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:15] Okay.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:27:15] Okay. So that’s what baby aspirin came up with that name because it because it’s spicy. And you get that. You get that nociceptive effect, that kind.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:25] Of thing. Yeah.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:27:26] Yeah. So that’s where the name comes from.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:30] Is that very. I mean, I know that in chiropractic circles. Yeah. Something called an activator. Yeah. Was often used, which was like a little gun. Yeah, I have one. Very. Yeah, very specifically. It’s okay. Don’t. Don’t have. Well, let’s save them. Yeah, Thanks. It’s okay.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:27:48] I have it somewhere.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:50] Yeah. Yeah. No, no, but it is like it’s a it’s a smaller version of what you’ve just shown me. Yeah. Without the sound, I guess. Yeah. But is the rationale similar?
Dr Adam Gavine [00:28:00] No.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:28:00] Is it different?
Dr Adam Gavine [00:28:01] No, it’s totally different. It’s totally different. So. Okay, so if so, shockwaves are. I’m sure you’ve everyone seen that video, you know, where they drop an atom bomb and they show a little house what it does to it and it just obliterates it. Like you see this wave that’s actually a shockwave. That’s just a massive, huge one. So the way they found out about shock waves was soldiers were coming back with lung problems after the war. And they they found out that when, like, bombs or grenades go off near a soldier, the shockwave created from these explosions were going through their tissues and actually damaging the lungs. So that’s how they actually discovered them. So. Then they use they originally use the technology to to break up kidney stones called lithotripsy. So when you use high energy shock waves, it’s it’s catabolic. It causes the breakdown of tissues. Now, they they noticed if you decrease the energy a little bit so that it’s low to medium energy, it causes anabolic, or, growth like. Factors to be released. And one of one of the main ones is, is what’s called VEG F, So it’s vascular endothelial growth factor. And that’s one that helps your body grow new blood vessels called what we call angiogenesis. So that almost helps with anything like any pretty much any soft tissue in the body. If you help the blood flow to that area, you’re going to help with with the healing. So so I tell people, think of blood almost like water and parts of your body like plants. So if an area like my my shoulder isn’t getting enough due to an injury, I can’t get as much water into that area. Then that that that tissue is going to kind of wither and not it won’t thrive. So when we when we work so when I work on that tissue, I’m essentially telling that the body, it’s like clean up on aisle five. So even if that’s really old injury, if it’s ten, 20, 30 years old, it doesn’t matter because it’s still a living tissue. I think a lot of people think our bodies like we’re cars are mechanical things that it can’t be replaced. It’s still living tissue. Even your bones are living tissue. They change. The oldest tissue in your whole entire body is 13 years old. So 13 years from now, you will have grown. Every cell in your body will have been replaced with new cells.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:30:58] Yeah.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:30:59] So you can make the next generation of cells healthier and stronger than the previous one, even if you’re an even if you’re 80 or 90. You actually can. And so that’s this whole idea is we’re telling people, don’t get stuck on your age, which it’s how things work. So we want to get we want to restore normal function and normal blood flow to that area so it can do what it’s supposed to do, which is get blood flow to those muscles, take away by-products and toxins as well, and help get oxygen to to those muscles. And that going back to what you were talking about before with the with the musculoskeletal and pain, that’s why a lot of people get these chronic problems is because it’s it’s they have they essentially have hypoxia these these these muscles are areas are essentially being starved or deprived of blood flow and oxygen.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:32:01] Which is what which is what on a very basic level what massage tries to do and that is improve the circulation to the area. But you’re actually saying this shockwave therapy Wasabi method is is actually stimulating an increase in micro circulation, like improving the plumbing? Yes. To flush out the chemicals and bring in the growth factors to stimulate repair.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:32:28] Well, it’s it stimulates the growth factors which those cause all the changes. So so you would get a release where causing the proliferation of of collagen were causing a proliferation of stem cells or causing a proliferation depending on the tissue you work on, you get a proliferation of fibroblasts. So fibroblasts themselves make the collagen ten or sites and tendons so like tendon cells. So your body will like create new tendon in the area, repairs it and, and regenerates the tendon. So it’s that’s one of the main things it’s known for is, is treating tendon ofthese but also you can treat other things like it’s it’s you can treat erectile dysfunction with it because of because of the angiogenesis and some of the other growth factors we were talking about. It causes the release of in us which is endothelial nitric oxide synthase and and N-NOS which is neurogenic nitric oxide synthase which makes nitric oxide which we know causes a basal dilation of of arteries and capillaries.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:45] Wow. Neat. I mean we’ve done a lot of programs on nitric oxide as it relates to breathing. I mean breathing through that. That’s why nasal breathing is so important because so much I mean, we had a guest on Dr Rosalba Courtney, who said to me in passing, 60% of the body’s nitric oxide is produced in the paranasal sinuses only when you breathe through your nose. Yeah. And I thought, wow, that’s a very, very big statement there. If ever you needed a reason for breathing through your nose. But nitric oxide is a is a very important. You want to talk to us or remind our listener about what? Nitric oxide. You know, why it’s so important.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:34:23] Yeah well again it’s it causes. The main thing I’m aware of is that it causes basal dilation. So particularly if you have, if if you have. Erectile dysfunction. There’s the subcategory of vascular erectile dysfunction. That’s that’s essentially going to make a huge difference. And whether you can attain and maintain an erection is is how much nitric oxide you have as well as using the angiogenesis because that’s that’s the main problem. There’s not enough blood blood flow to the penis. And that’s why they can’t get an erection essentially. And and we can. That’s essentially remedied that with with this technology and then non-invasive manner. That’s the other beauty of it’s non-invasive.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:16] I mean I think I think that is what I mean. That is what Viagra and all these other. They, they target that increase in circulation. Yes. To to do that. I mean I’m I’m looking at that gum and I’m thinking about erectile dysfunction and wondering, is this used around the base of the penis? Yes.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:35:35] Yeah. Yeah. We actually have with wasabi method, we have we have education modules. So I’ve got experts that treat this daily that helped us develop these modules. So we show you exactly how to treat these these areas when you purchase our education.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:55] Right. Well, okay, so this is a machine that you’re looking at for the general public to use or to put in practitioners hands, basically, yes.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:36:07] So in the United States where we’re selling, we don’t sell it here in Australia, we have it’s an FDA class one device, so it’s essentially classified, almost like a massage device. So we we actually sell to non-medical laypeople. But the caveat there is you’re only allowed to treat yourself. You’re not allowed to treat others. Okay. Which no other no other companies that I’m aware of are doing like the company I work for prior to setting up Wasabi method there, one of the biggest shock wave companies in the world, and I tried to partner up with them because I’d worked for them for ten years and they didn’t want to partner up with Dave and I for that was one of the main reasons because they refused to sell to non-medical right, even though the FDA deems it okay. They were like, No, we don’t want to do that. And Dave and I were, you know, we’re kind of rebels and we want to give we want to give people power. You know, we want to be like Prometheus and steal fire from the gods and give it to the people so that they can thrive.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:37:20] Yeah. Okay. Are there any downsides to a member of the public who may not be, you know, I mean, are there any adverse effects? Yeah.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:37:32] There are. There are some contraindications which we we go through and we make very, very clear. Actually, I repeat it on almost every slide. So what the country indications are so like some of them are like pregnancy, some of the things that you can’t use it on kids. So under 18 that’s kind of the the growth plates they they’re not really sure how it affects the growth growth plates. If you’re on blood thinners or if you have any like hemodynamic problems like haemophilia or like you bleed really easy or bruise really easy. If you’ve had a cortisone injection. But that the caveat there is it has to be after six weeks. So if you had a cortisone injection three months ago, you’re good. I can work on that area. But if you only had it two weeks ago, then I got to wait another four weeks for it to for the bolus to be absorbed. Other things if you have like a tumour or stuff like that, just because it causes the release of all these growth factors. So we don’t want to release a bunch of growth factors around a tumour to make it grow more ideally. Yeah. So those. Those are the main ones. You can’t use it over the lungs because the it can cause air filled tissues to expand. So we we worry about possibly causing a lung to rupture or. Or.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:39:01] And when you’re, when you’re using it in your clinic for treating chronic pain. Yeah. What what sort of regime how over how many treatments would one expect to see change? I mean, you mentioned at the conference you were getting good results, presumably in one session. Yes. Well, what is typically a course of treatment look like in a clinic?
Dr Adam Gavine [00:39:21] Again, that’s it’s condition dependent. So, you know, if if someone’s got like I had a gentleman I saw today with plantar fascia problem and he’s had it for about three years and he’s in his 50s pretty still pretty active. But you know, for him, it would probably I told him it’ll take probably 5 to 8 treatments to to get a significant difference.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:39:53] With that and each each treatment would be what? How long is each treat?
Dr Adam Gavine [00:39:58] I just I do about 20 minutes for for treatment. So it’s not, it’s not that long. And comparatively, you know, for for the cost. Like I charge 125 for 20 minutes compared to say like if you had to if you went got PRP which used to work in a at a clinic that had sports meds, they would charge.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:24] Just remind remind our listener what PRP stands for.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:40:28] So it’s platelet rich plasma.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:30] So where you take your own. Yeah.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:40:32] So they take some blood out. They spin it around so they. The plasma rises to the top, kind of like cream. And. And then they inject that into usually tendons or muscles that have that have been damaged or have a, have a tear or or some kind of injury. And they’re about $500 an injection. And they usually do at least two, sometimes three. So that’s going to cost you a thousand bucks to 1500 bucks. And and the results aren’t always you don’t you don’t always get better with it. You know, it’s I mean, I found in in my clinical experience about it’s about 5050, I get about 50% of people who get them go, yeah, that really sorted me out. Or another, the other 50 are like, it didn’t really do anything. So it’s a lot of it’s a lot of money to to spend versus you can come see me 12 times. You know, for the same price. And I just said to you, it’s going to take 5 to 8 visits. So that’s probably half the price of getting up here.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:41] Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, most lot less intervention. I think it’s an interesting, interesting. I have not heard of the shock therapy, although, you know, the the activator. No, that’s not like that in the therm a gun, which would be just so you know that’s not even.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:41:57] Yeah, that’s. That’s purely mechanical. Purely mechanical.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:42:00] Yeah. This is actually shocks sound.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:42:03] Why there are acoustic acoustic pressure waves.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:42:07] Wow. Yeah. And invariable is is it set at one? Does it. Yeah. So there’s.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:42:12] There’s an intensity so I can increase the intensity or decrease. So that’s basically how hard that the bullet hits that the tip. So as as you increase the intensity, it tends to be cause more pain essentially. It’s not a pain free treatment. And like after I put it on people’s legs, their arms are like, you put this on people’s, you know, genitalia. Yeah. And I’m like, yeah, but we usually, we usually turn it down or you can actually have, you can get a bit lighter, lighter cane like I, I’m friends with a compound chemist and I’m like, can I, can we use light? Okay. And he’s like, he’s like, Yeah, yeah, I can make it for you over the counter as long as it’s below 10% light octane in the, in the mixture. So, so we can use, use stuff like that as well.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:01] Wow. Well, well you know, you’d need commitment for it and I’m sure there’s enough motivation there to probably provide the commitment for that kind of treatment. Listen, it’s very interesting to catch up with you and hear about that. We’ll have to we’ll have links to your site. And I’m assuming you’re doing this treatment in in Australia now. Yeah. Yeah. But the machine is the machine available for practitioners. Not not the.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:43:27] Part in Australia.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:28] No, not registered. Yeah. So you’re the only one using this shockwave. What? Yeah.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:43:34] There are other devices that you can buy.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:37] How does it compare? How does it compare to other other acoustic shock waves? Yeah.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:43:42] So and so there, there’s kind of different levels. Like the company I used to work for, they always touted themselves as being, you know, the Ferrari of the shock wave community. But what what they’re kind of showing in the literature is you actually don’t need the Ferrari all the time. Like, it’d be like you having a Ferrari to drive ten kilometres to work and 60 kilometre zones. It’s like, well, you’re not going to get hit. You can’t use that Ferrari to its full extent. Right. So our device it, it gets the job done. You know, it might not be as, as. High, high end as those other ones. But you also you also don’t pay as much, right? So you don’t have the Ferrari price tag going going with ours. But it’s what the literature is showing is you actually you don’t need that level of intensity to cause a physiological changes. There’s a range. As long as you’re in that range, you’re causing the changes. So you can you can go higher up, but you’re essentially almost hurting the person for for no added benefit.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:45:02] And is there a home of this research, you know, that’s being done around shockwaves? Is where is most of the research coming out of.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:45:10] A lot of it’s done in Europe. So so the technology originates from Germany. So there’s there’s lots lots coming out of Germany, Switzerland, but China’s doing a lot as well. So they’ve they’ve got some pretty interesting research because they don’t have all the restrictions that some of these other countries do. So they like I heard one study they were doing on infants with cerebral palsy because it works quite well with spasticity. So they were they were essentially treating these newborns and getting crazy effects like these these kids who would normally be, you know, kind of stuck in a position of spasticity like that. If they treated them straight away, they were they were causing like these these permanent changes and restoring normal range of motion in these kids because at that age there’s so there the tissues are so amenable and and plastic to to allow these changes. And if you can get in there straight away it’s it’s life changing for these for these kids.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:46:26] Wow. I mean, I have to really explore the this whole new area of shockwave therapy. Yes. It’s alluded me in my professional journey, but I’ve tried all that, and.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:46:37] Yeah, we’ll have to come. I’ll have to come by. I’ll show you. Like you can treat TMJ really well with it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:46:42] Right?
Dr Adam Gavine [00:46:43] Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You can treat, you can treat skin. So again, because it helps with the angiogenesis collagen. So you can treat like scars. I used to work for an orthopaedic surgeon, so like, right after surgery, I’d work on some of their scars to help with the healing. You can work on burn victims. You can help with the burns. You can work on things like lymphedema. Helps with that. So we have we actually have a module on advanced techniques, so things like that. We included wounds. It has an antibacterial effect. So I read I read this one study. This gentleman, he was in his 90s and he had a golden staph infection in his forearm and he couldn’t take antibiotics. And they treated him for a week with shockwave. And it it got rid of his golden staph infection.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:47:40] Well, I imagine that could well, that could well be the nitric oxide component of it, because not only does nitric oxide improve circulation, it’s also anti-microbial.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:47:51] Yeah. Yeah. I’m not sure what the mechanism of action, but like. Yeah, I can send you that study. It’s crazy. Like his arm looks like it’s going to, like, fall off and then like, a week later, it’s all healed up with no antibiotics.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:06] Yeah. Well, Adam, listen, I want to thank you for joining us today and sharing this form of therapy that is certainly new to me and probably new to many of our listeners, but that seems to be a very interesting one. We’ll have links to your site. Yep. And thank you again.
Dr Adam Gavine [00:48:22] Yeah, Thank you. You can reach reach me at at Wasabi_method on Instagram. And our email is info at wasabi method.com. Happy to chat to anyone that has any questions or comments.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:37] Great. Thank you. We’ll have those in the show notes as well. I’ll thank you so much. Thank you. Well, as I mentioned before, while biohacking may well be the buzzword, let’s not forget some of the great bio hacks that are available to us each and every day. Getting out in the early morning sun to get the circadian rhythm going and the melatonin production and the energy production within each and every cell of your body. Sunshine doesn’t get much cheaper than that. And getting out in the midday sun to get your vitamin D, If your shadow is longer than you are, then that sunshine is really not going to be providing you with the vitamin D and vitamin D is central to the optimal function of every cell in your body. There’s other hacks, of course, like sleeping and exercise and good nutrition and rest. But the shockwave therapy is a very interesting adjunct to that. We will, of course, have links to Adam’s site where you can get some more information on that. I would encourage you also to join our Unstress Health community. There are so many benefits that come with it, both to your health and financially as well as some great deals there. I hope this finds you well. Until next time. This is Dr. Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be well. Feeling stressed. Overwhelmed. It’s time to Unstress your life. Join the Unstress Health community and transform stress into strength. Build mental fitness from self-sabotage to self-mastery. And together, let’s not just survive, but thrive. Expert led courses, curated podcasts, like minded community and support, and much more. Visit Unstress health.com today. This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. This content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or is a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.