Episode 121 - Ethan Pollak and Pulse: Improving Mind-Muscle Connection and Recovery

Did you know that vibration therapy can help with cognitive function and motor skills? Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to Ethan Pollak who has developed a revolutionary device that is making waves in the rehab space for MS and stroke patients, amongst many others.

As experienced weightlifters, Ethan and his co-founder, Cole, realized that many people struggle to engage certain muscles during workouts. They decided to create a product that could replicate the benefits of muscle tapping. After extensive research, they developed the Pulse Device, which uses vibration technology to improve performance and recovery.

However, feedback from physical therapists and users has shown that it can aid in rehabilitation for conditions such as ACL recovery, stroke recovery, and pain relief, particularly for MS patients experiencing symptoms like pins and needles.

Listen to learn about the mechanism used in the Pulse Device, its application for various health conditions, including Multiple Sclerosis, and upcoming features aimed at enhancing the experience of users.

DISCLAIMER
The information in this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment.

Links and resources:

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Transcript

Introduction: Hello, I'm your host, Kathy Chester, and welcome to the Move It or Lose It podcast, a podcast about all things that move the mind, body, and soul. The Move It or Lose It podcast is for information, awareness, and inspirational purposes only. I am not a doctor and I don't even play one on TV. So please consult with your doctor before making any medical decisions. The views expressed by advertisers, guests, or contributors are their opinions and not necessarily the views of the Move It or Lose It podcast. 

Kathy Chester: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Moving to Lucid. Today I've got Ethan from Pulse. So Pulse you might have seen on Instagram or Facebook being like pushed and I was super curious about it a while ago. So got in touch and we're excited to do this. So Ethan, what is Pulse?
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah. And thank you so much for having me, Kathy. It's a pleasure to be here. A little bit of an origin story about Pulse. Pulse was initially a niche weightlifting product that was designed to help you enhance your mind muscle connection and improve targeted muscle activation.
 Kathy Chester: Right up my alley.
 Ethan Pollak: Yup, exactly. Yup. My background is in fitness and our other co-founder Cole's background is in fitness. We've both been weightlifting for over 15 years and we're actually lifelong training partners. And we created the product because we noticed that a lot of times when we were weightlifting, we would struggle to properly engage and activate a certain muscle. Sharon. notice it really easily because you wouldn't feel it properly contract. And that led to having lagging body parts. So for me, it was always my arms. I was always very conscious about my form. I would make sure I was doing everything right. I'd watch a bunch of YouTube videos. And for whatever reason, that mind body connection just wasn't there for me. And I struggled to really feel that exercise or that movement, uh, working my muscle properly. Same one for Cole. So the whole product was based on this old bodybuilding technique called muscle tapping, which is actually when your spotter or training partner gently taps on whatever muscle you're trying to target and activate. And that helps draw your focus to that muscle and help you properly engage it so that you can have a more effective workout. And Cole and I actually started implementing that muscle tapping into our training after reading about it online. Yeah. And it shocked us how well it worked. We would do it and people would kind of give us some strange looks at the chip because we were doing it all the time. And we thought to ourselves, is there a product out there that does something similar to this? And after doing a bunch of research and looking for something that would provide that cue, we found nothing. And as we continue to do it, continue to see results doing it, we both thought, look, this is something we're super passionate about. Let's help other people that are weightlifting that want to build their best physiques and create a product that does this. Right. So years later, after thinking of this idea, we actually approached a product development studio called Modality. They're based in Salt Lake City, Utah. And as we're going through the ideation process, we thought to ourselves, how can we actually mimic this tapping feeling onto someone's body? That's when Modality actually said to us, you can use vibration. And at this point, we were just thinking, OK, let's just create this tap. That's going to draw the user's attention again to that muscle they're trying to target. But we didn't know anything about vibration. And we started doing all this research. And it turned out that vibration has actually been used for performance and recovery for over a decade, but primarily in high-end training facilities. mainly was used in whole body vibration plates, which is when you stand on a vibrating platform and that actually forces your muscles to try and stabilize themselves while you work out, which in turn leads to more fiber recruitment. So we found this idea of whole body vibration and said, what if we tie similar frequencies to our product And then in addition to that, mimic that attentional cue with the tap or pulsating feeling directly onto the user's skin. And that was really how the Pulse device was born. Wow. More recently, after being on the market and doing paid advertising for close to two years now, we've gotten a ton of different feedback from physical therapists, really just anybody that's involved in the health and technology space.
 Kathy Chester: Well, I guess my son, I was like, Oh my gosh, there are so many things I could do with this.
 Ethan Pollak: Exactly. And again, as, as two guys that really just built this product because they love the gym, we were shocked at first because that wasn't our intention. But then the feedback became so overwhelming specifically over this last year that we were like, okay, we need to start. targeting these physical therapists and other people working with patients and really any sort of capacity. And once we started really deep diving into that, we started doing a lot of R&D as to how we could manipulate the backend settings to actually benefit a much wider range of people than just a weightlifter. But we started getting a ton of feedback from people that were using this in conjunction with their rehabilitation protocols. for ACL recovery, stroke patients that were dealing with poor motor function.
 Kathy Chester: Right. I was going to say stroke that I work with a lot of patients that have had strokes. And so that was like one of the first things I thought is like, but I work with my stroke, which sounds like that is a huge thing because they've got so many areas that they could just have that. I was like, wow, that'd be awesome to be able to use. So that was so cool. And then, you know, and thinking with like all the autoimmune patients and things like that, so it's like non-ending, could be used for so many things, which I'm sure is in your brain, like this can go so many places.
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah, absolutely. And we actually ended up hiring two muscle physiologists based in the UK to basically compile a literature review, an internal literature review that pulled together all of the existing research on all of the different applications for local vibration. And that was one of the best decisions we ever made because we didn't understand the big scope of how many different people this could benefit until we performed that literature analysis. And what was really nice for us, and we're blessed for this is the fact that so many different researchers have done the heavy lifting and basically said, Okay, vibration works for X, Y, and Z and it doesn't work. These other applications. So we all we really had to do was just do a deep dive into all the literature. And then apply that to our product and do our own independent testing. And that's how we've gotten to the point where we are today. Because now, again, it started off as this niche weightlifting product. Now we have warm-up settings, performance settings, which are built for workouts. recovery settings, which are built with general wellness applications like pain reduction. And then next week, which I'm sure we'll get into later, we're actually releasing rehab specific settings as well.
 Kathy Chester: Really? That's really cool. So when you said the pain reduction, so you could put that on to help with pain as well.
 Ethan Pollak: Yep, exactly. Yeah. So we have multiple different recovery settings that are specifically for pain relief. One is built for really gentle stimulation to help isolate that pain and the other is for really harsh pain, but those recovery settings operate at much higher frequencies that have been shown to help with things like blood flow. And we have gotten some incredible feedback because it's really a hands-free alternative to something like a massage gun, but on a smaller and more subtle scale. A lot of the feedback we were getting was the reason that this is so great is because one, you can put it anywhere and you can go on about your day. Two, it's so gentle and almost unnoticeable at times, which is great for someone that's dealing with a really painful area because you can't use something like a massage gun on that area. So for elderly people, especially, it's a really nice gentle modality to just put into your day to day routine to help with sort of recovery that you might need.
 Kathy Chester: Sure. Now, can you turn it up for if you want it to be stronger?
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah. So I was just going to say we have this intensity slider, so you can actually adjust the intensity of the vibration right there. Some people, if you might have some higher muscle density or higher body fat, you might want some extra pressure on those vibrations as well, which is why we actually created a strap too for your arms, legs, and shoulders. So again, if you have maybe an area that's a little more dense, you can throw the strap on and get that added stimulation. But our product mostly is designed to stimulate the skin and actually modulate those pain sensors. So even if you're adding that extra pressure, it's not going to have some super magic difference because the real bread and butter of our product is the ability to actually stimulate those mechanoreceptors, which is just your skin receptors and basically confuse them for things like a pain relief application, then can allow you to perform movements pain-free.
 Kathy Chester: which is so great for so many of us, because as we're moving on with the different autoimmune diseases, one of our biggest things is we don't want to take all of this. Stop giving it to us. So a lot of us have gone away from that. And especially our newly diagnosed are like, no, we don't want this. So a lot of us have gone away with that, which has been great for someone like me to teach movement. instead of that and watch their serotonin levels come up, watch them get stronger and say, now see, we didn't have to take all those medicines now. Watch what our bodies can do.
 Ethan Pollak: Totally. And on that same note too, some of the feedback we've gotten is a lot of the other technologies on the market, they might be wire, they might be super bulky. I know specifically for drop foot, they have a lot of big braces that might not be the most aesthetically pleasing thing. So one of the best pieces of feedback we've gotten is the device is so small, it can fit under clothing. If you want to hide it, feel free. If you want to just use it at home, feel free. Whatever you want to do, do it. And it can help you again with those things like pain relief in a way that doesn't make it catch someone's eye or something like that.
 Kathy Chester: So as far as the hormonal system, does it work different for like a guy than a woman or is it the same?
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah, so our products won't have a dramatic effect on your hormones just because it operates at such a low amplitude. So like comparing us to whole body vibration, whole body vibration could increase your testosterone fairly substantially, all things considered. and have other hormonal effects.
 Kathy Chester: So a female is not going to be full of testosterone.
 Ethan Pollak: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So you won't have some sort of crazy effect or crazy noticeable difference. With that said, there are definitely some lower end hormonal effects that have been noticed, especially with our higher frequency settings like our recovery settings. Sure. One of the really big ones is actually the release of endorphins. So something that we've been told is that it can actually help relax you. Yeah. And that has actually been shown to help just improve pain as well. Oh, yeah. which is incredible. So some of our, again, settings, yeah, will have that kind of effect. But aside from that, there's no really concrete evidence we have that it's having a dramatic hormonal effect. There might be some stress relief associated with it. Like there's actually some other products that use vibration for that specific use case, which is pretty cool. But again, no dramatic differences to hormones, which is good, honestly, in our opinion.
 Kathy Chester: Well, again, you've got it in a lighter place. It's not going to be this like huge thing that makes sense. And I can definitely say yes to the bulky braces. The ones they give you that are like these giant things that if you could even walk in them, they're Velcro, so they stick together. It's a pain, absolutely a pain. One question I had was cognitive function and motor skill improvement.
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah, absolutely. And that's really what our device was built for. So going back to that muscle tapping concept, our device really is meant to stimulate both your skin and the muscle, but mainly your skin because it's so gentle. In terms of just attentional focus, essentially what it does is it's creating an attention draw by stimulating those mechanoreceptors in your skin and telling your central nervous system, hey, pay attention to over here. So for an inhibited muscle group that might be really weak or you have trouble engaging it, it comes in a lot of handy by stimulating the skin. And there's really no other products that have such a focus on engaging your skin. So that's a really big differentiator. And then the second part is actually stimulating the muscle itself, which our device can trigger what's called the tonic vibration reflex, which is essentially your stretch reflex. And by doing that, you're actually creating a proprioceptive enhancement that will give you more muscular awareness. This typically only happens above 30 hertz, which is higher frequencies. Some of our settings won't cause this to happen. and you'll really get those proprioceptive benefits from your skin. But a lot of our settings will actually trigger that tonic vibration reflex, and again, enhance your proprioception even further. And the nice thing is by providing this sensory input, a lot of people see substantial benefits with their motor function as well, because you're essentially helping your body move properly. And this feels a lot different from a typical muscle stimulator or something like that, because it's essentially just toning your brain on a specific location. And that has renowned benefits that people have experienced. So a lot of times it feels a little strange and you're almost like, what is going on? What am I supposed to feel? And then you get into the groove of it and you're like, oh, wow, like I'm actually moving better. I'm actually have more strength. So that's kind of a long winded way of answering your question.
 Kathy Chester: No, it's good because I think for cognitively, you have to constantly focus, OK, where am I feeling this? And one of the things I'll say to clients is, I need you to be present. And I need for you to be able to have anything cognitive for you to develop that plasticity. We've got to have your brain present with your body. And so sometimes I'll see them look out the window or do something like that. I'm like, no, I need you present. I need you to feel like, what are we working on right now? If we're working on shoulders, abs, I need you to be present. Do you feel what we're doing? And so I think for that to work, for them to feel, okay, where is this working? Where am I feeling it? I think it's really important. I love that because cognitively you have to be present to feel. to know where it's working. And I think that that goes really well, whether it's a stroke, whether it's MS, whether it's rheumatoid, whether it's lupus, it takes us to really have to stop and focus and think because so much of that gets clogged with our fog brain and all those things that get stuck. And so I think anytime we have a device that we have to focus on is always good for us cognitively.
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah, no, and I appreciate you saying that. It's so interesting because everyone's different, and this relates to MS, of course, in the fact that some people are at different stages, some people's body types might be different, whatever it is. Something that we're realizing day in, day out is the fact that since everyone's different, their brains might respond differently to certain cues. We're trying as hard as possible now to diversify our settings in a way that a user can go through our settings and easily be able to test just a few of them to see if they're getting the benefits that they actually need because we've heard so much feedback across the board where it's like one setting doesn't work for them and then they try another setting that we recommend them and all of a sudden it works great. Something we're trying to do is give people better muscle awareness and that receptive benefit, but for a broader range of conditions, because again, everyone's different and we're still testing every single day to try and kind of get to the bottom of this.
 Kathy Chester: I'm sure they get frustrated like right away. It's not working. Never mind, forget it. And so I know that I do that too. I'm like, well, wait, you got this. Did you do this one yet? Oh, no. So I'm sure you'll eventually have to have a person on the phone all the time answering, well, wait, you can try this and this because I'm sure you'll get a lot, a lot of that as the product gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
 Ethan Pollak: Totally. That's part of the reason, too, we have a 30-day return policy that we tell everyone about because, again, it's not a magic pill. You might not necessarily notice this incredible improvement in your movement or your gait or whatever it is on day one. A lot of the science shows extreme benefits after six to eight weeks, which is obviously a bit of ways away from when you meet the product. So we encourage people to try a bunch of things out, see what works for them, let us know if they need any help. But again, since everyone's different, we just want people to trial it and make sure it's the right fit. Because again, we're not selling a magic pill and it needs to be in conjunction with rehabilitation protocol. Like if you don't put in the work, and I know you're a big advocate of getting off the ground and moving your body and everything along those lines, same goes for our product. You still need to put in the work. It will probably help you get where you want to be. But again, it's not just an overnight thing.
 Kathy Chester: Sure. If it's sitting in a drawer, it's not going to work. And I'll often say that if I gave you a list and you're not doing it, you're not moving it, you're going to lose it. It all works together.

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Kathy Chester: How do you see this working for multiple sclerosis?
 Ethan Pollak: So we've gotten some incredible feedback from MS patients thus far. We really just started reaching this demographic of people because we're not a medical device. We haven't been clinically tested, but a lot of the use cases for our products, like improving strength, improving motor function, are relevant to MS patients. But just off the last few months, which is when we've really started to catch the attention of people with MS and people suffering from a stroke, those kind of applications, the initial feedback has really revolved around a few things. The first thing is our device's recovery settings have been able to reduce the feeling of pins and needles. Yes, I'm sure. And that is a comment that we have gotten a ton of. Yeah. Seemingly the most surefire bet of how our product can help someone with MS. Specifically, we've gotten a ton of feedback about doing this in the legs. We released an ad about DropFoot and a lot of people ended up buying it just for pain relief for their legs specifically. And that feedback's been incredible.
 Kathy Chester: Because in the legs is where we get a lot of spasticity. And then we get the draw foot, that's just another pain. Now, I've had MS for over 20 years. So I'm actually, believe it or not, I'm still at the beginning stage. I never progressed more than that. So I'm still at, not that I expect you to know all these things, but relapsing, remitting is kind of the first one. And I never progressed, thank God. But I really, truly believe that even when I was diagnosed and they said, rest, go to bed, In five years, she'll be in a wheelchair. 10 years, she'll be dead. I was like, that doesn't sound right to me at all. I'm always a rule follower. But with that, I was like, I'm not going to stop moving ever. And so I just started exercising right away. I always was. I was very athletic. I was weightlifting, always in a gym with the boys. I ran. And so my grandfather had passed away from it, and so did my aunt. and they just lay down. And I'm like, none of this makes sense. So I started right away and I just changed my diet and I stayed strong. And now I teach and I'm like, nothing of what they said made any sense to me. So I think that on the same page with you, I just think that this makes so much sense. You know, now I have a little bit of drop foot, so I get it. Like if I'm, you know, walking or trying to run three miles, I'm going to have it. So I'm working like crazy to fix it. So I love that it's going to help that. I think it will. And I could see how it will.
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah. And I love your mental toughness. I got to give you a clap for that. And yeah, no, going back to what you mentioned about spasticity. One of the great things that we've come to find is that high frequency vibration has actually been shown by substantial scientific literature to reduce spasticity. Yeah. stroke patients and MS patients. And one of the things we're working to do now is create some settings at a variety of different high frequencies that might be able to help these people. But that's definitely one of the things we've been hearing from some of these patients as well. And going back to kind of this list, I guess, of different modalities for local vibration with these MS patients. Another really big one that we found is the ability to improve strength. This has also been proven by wide ranging science, which is the fact that local vibration can dramatically improve isolated strength. So if you're dealing with weak legs, and let's say you've got drop foot and your tib anterior is just very weak, and maybe you struggle to engage it or just feel it working, our product can come in handy there. And what a lot of people are coming to us and saying is, I've tried EMS and it works great when it's on. Because EMS is causing those involuntary contractions, those artificial contractions is what we like to say. But those artificial contractions are only temporary. It's not actually helping me to strengthen the muscle. It's not helping me during my movements. So We really like to say that our product is a way to naturally improve your performance and your rehabilitation because it's actually helping you consciously focus on that muscle so that when you're not using our product, maybe down the line, you won't have to use any products.
 Kathy Chester: I love that. That's like win, win, win. You know, because physical therapy, what I wanted was to have them after. So when you're done and you can no longer, OK, and done, then they're lost. What do I do now? How do I exercise? So that is what really hit my heart. OK, so now I don't have anything to help me. And so that is what I love what you said is because what do they do? They need to have something that is still there that they can still strengthen.
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah. And the great thing too about our device is since it's so gentle, you can actually still load the muscle. So the biggest thing with muscle growth is really weight training. And a lot of times with something like an EMS device, you can't load that muscle because it's just causing these really strong contractions. So our device really just gently activates the muscle and helps you focus it. there's no additional risk associated with basically using somewhat heavier weight. We still recommend that you don't use anything above 60% of your one rep max. If you're trying to really strengthen a muscle and you want to weight train, you can do that with virtually no additional injury risk using our products, which is a nice little benefit to it as well. And then really the final benefit that we've heard feedback from thus far, just the ability to improve circulation, which can really help with things like fatigue. When you use our recovery settings specifically, and one of our warmup settings that also operates at a high frequency, you notice a pretty substantial difference in temperature. You actually put your fingers directly where the device was sitting. After you use one of those settings, you will notice that it is a little warmer or a lot warmer. And again, going back to fatigue, one of the big things with MS is obviously just tiredness back to that weakness. So we've heard a few people mention that, not a ton yet, but that's something that we're hoping to get feedback on soon.
 Kathy Chester: Yeah, very interesting.
 Ethan Pollak: We have a lot of reviews on this on our website, but one of the things you'll notice is that you will do more reps while using our product. That's great. Yeah, it's really strange. We still haven't figured out exactly the timing of the vibrations that has the best effect on this, but we actually did this student at a high school, it's called Cervite High School in California, He's now studying at UPenn, but he did a preliminary research study for us on the ability of our device to improve motor function. A wide range of basically it was high school students and some college students. But the improvement in rep range was dramatic across the board, which was really, really interesting. And again, we're still finding those settings, but we have a bunch of settings that have shown this to happen. So it's really cool.
 Kathy Chester: That's so cool. I'm so interested in it. Must be so exciting for you guys to see where it started, where you guys just wanted to see like what we could do with our workout and now where it's flying to.
 Ethan Pollak: I mean, I got to say it's become even more fulfilling than it initially because we're helping really a lot of underserved people. Yeah. And to be quite fair, we're not anywhere close to where we want to be yet. I mean, we're just releasing our first dedicated rehab setting sometime over this next week, hopefully. But one of the things I want to talk about is the feedback is still across the board. And this is something that again we're working on daily to try to figure out because one of the things we found specifically with MS patients is if you are suffering from a very severe case of MS, let's say PPMS and you. dealt with complete paralysis or a complete loss of gait and you can't walk and stuff like that. Our product has not been showing substantial benefits to those groups of people. And it sucks because obviously we're getting some incredible feedback from some people. CMS, and we want to be able to help everyone. And some of the science shows that if you have a longer term protocol that these people with those severe conditions might be able to actually reap kind of benefits. we're still figuring all that out. And literally, I mean, just today, we stumbled upon an article from one of the people on our research team. And it says that a lower frequency might actually help some of these people that are dealing with severe nerve problems. And it's so interesting because we've been using high frequency the whole time. So There's a lot of little things like that. And that's the other side of the coin, right? I mean, we're still figuring this out. And again, going back to the return policy, this is why we really want you to try the product and determine if it's going to help you. And if you need to keep trialing it because you're noticing some benefits, we're happy to give it. to anybody that's trying it out. But yeah, that's the other side of the coin. But going back to the positive side of things, I mean, we have gotten some incredible feedback that has made us just so invested in this.
 Kathy Chester: Oh, I bet.
 Ethan Pollak: We heard from a really sweet woman recently who told us our device is the first device that has helped her naturally engage her TIB anterior, which is the strongest C-flexor. But I mean, these kind of testimonials where people are thanking you relentlessly and they have your back forever and ever because they, again, they're underserved. They haven't a solution that's at least as affordable or as accessible or whatever. As our product, I mean, it's super, super fulfilling. Yeah. So we've had some incredible success stories as well. But then we've heard from, again, some people with PPMS where they haven't noticed a difference quite right.
 Kathy Chester: And I'm curious if, like with their secondary or pediatric, if they just need to have it longer. I mean, I know just training, it takes so much longer. You know, when I do work with them, it takes longer, but then there's nothing more exciting than getting a call, I step in the shower the entire time.
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah, and that's one of the things we're looking into now to, again, since we haven't fully pursued the medical route because again, we're just a wellness device at this point trying to improve those same applications that people are using it for normally. It's interesting because we've definitely heard from some patients that are like, okay, I'm starting to notice a drastic improvement in my motor function, in my strength, and they're about to get to the return deadline and they have some sort of breakthrough, but it's going to require more just like internal testing on our end to see. And going back to the point of everyone's different, you could be noticing those benefits after six weeks or something. those lines. But I definitely think there's strong reason to believe that that is definitely a real possibility that the more you use it, the more it's going to help you. And hopefully you'll have that breakthrough moment at some point.
 Kathy Chester: I'm excited to see what the product is going to do, because I think it's going to blow up. I appreciate it. I do. I think it's going to be amazing. I'm really excited about it.
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah, no. And I'm very curious to see how it'll help your drop foot as well.
 Kathy Chester: I'm excited by the little parts that I'm noticing, like, what's happening? You know, that's just, like, things change too with autoimmune. Like, we may get on a new medication. We notice it because our body didn't change that quickly as the medication has changed us. No, I think it's going to be really good. If you could say, so far, which I think you already have, has been the most, like, exciting thing, what would you say?
 Ethan Pollak: The most incredible piece of feedback we've already gotten, and I guess major success, I'd call it, is we've had a bunch of stroke patients now come to us and say, okay, this device is helping me improve motor function. But we had one patient in specific, this was pretty recently actually, within the last couple of months, He ended up writing us a bunch of really nice reviews, but he was unable to use his left hand. And he's been using our device religiously on his wrist using high frequency settings. And he's actually been able to regain motor function in his hands and utilize his fingers again. I mean, again, going back to the start of this, we never in a million years thought we created something that could rise.
 Kathy Chester: I'm thinking of one of the guys that I trained has no ability to use his hand. So I'm going to tell him about it because it's so frustrating.
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah, and it's crazy because, again, going back to not knowing everything yet, we didn't know exactly where you were supposed to place the device if you're dealing with that kind of problem. What's so interesting is our customers are telling us this now, because again, it's like you get one stroke patient that tells you, oh my gosh, I've had this incredible breakthrough using the device on my wrist. And now we get to go tell other people, hey, look, you might want to try this on your wrist. You want to improve functionality of your hand. So that was definitely one of the biggest successes. And going back to the pins and needles thing too, specifically for MS, we've gotten a bunch of comments about this, which is people just can't really move how they want to because they're dealing with, again, either that pins and needles or just severe pain. And our device has been able to help a lot of people on that note too. So that's been a really major success for us, specifically in the PT world. And one of the big overall successes of our company is it's starting to get involved in a lot of professional sports teams. And stuff like that, which has been great too. Um, like we received one of the best testimonials we've ever gotten from the Chicago bulls strength and conditioning coach who said they've been using our device daily to help cue athletes to inhibited muscles. That's so cool. Yeah. Which has been really awesome to hear. So people are starting to adopt it, which really just from an overall success standpoint has been one of our biggest goals because. Yeah. I mean, I totally get it. It's like there's this new product, it vibrates, but I don't really know why that works. Right. And there's a lot of reasons to be skeptical about it. Yeah. Especially when we're still figuring out stuff for ourselves too. Right. I understand people's skepticism, but it's now, we kind of have so many professionals backing us at this point. Right. that you're almost forced to buy into it now. We're not quite there yet, but we're getting, like, we actually, two of the people on our team now that we call strategic partners, one of them is a really renowned doctor and surgeon, a foot and ankle surgeon specifically at the General Hospital. And then we also have another guy, he's the founder of a company called Neurokinetics Pro, which he uses a wide range of techniques to help you move properly and function properly after a serious injury. So we've got some really incredible team members are backing this now. It's been awesome to see from an overall success standpoint, people adopting the technology and being okay with using it in something like a physical therapy.
 Kathy Chester: So no, I love it. I think it's a great idea. I'm excited to use it. And I'm excited to just see how it works and promote it. And I think the way you talk about it is just very honest and like, hey, we didn't know exactly what this was going to do. You don't come across arrogant like so many people do, you come across as just very, we are very excited what this is doing and very hopeful what this is going to do. And so I think that that's a great way to approach it.
 Ethan Pollak: Thank you so much. I mean, that those kinds of comments mean the world to me because that's exactly what we're trying to do. And again, that's what fuels the fire for us. I mean, helping these people that we initially had no idea we were even going to help. And it's so much bigger than just some weightlifting device for gym rats. So it's really incredible. And again, really, really appreciate you saying that.
 Kathy Chester: Last question. What is like the biggest thing that you're most excited about in the next few months?
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah, so there's two really big things that are actually about to happen, which we've been waiting for a long time. One is the ability to connect up to four devices versus two. One of the biggest pieces of feedback we've been getting from physical therapists is for larger muscle groups like a quad. it would be really helpful to have four devices instead of two. And then for athletic trainers and stuff, if they want to be working on multiple athletes, that's really helpful as well. So that's actually getting released within the next week, which is great. Also just for people that need more sensory input. Some people, again, depending on their body type, might just need that extra feedback. I think that will be really helpful. And then two is just those rehab settings. which I feel like I've probably mentioned 20 times already. It's so exciting to release these because we have studied the literature like no other over these last six months specifically, really over the last year, but over these last six months, we've really put our heads down and this has been the main thing we've been trying to do. So we've got a ton of new different settings being released. Basically, we had warm-up settings, which are meant for helping reduce injury risk after use and exciting the muscle, improving blood flow, yada, yada, those kinds of things. And then the performance settings are built for workouts, really just proprioception and enhancing muscle activation. And then the recovery settings are all those wellness settings, pain relief, sleep, those kinds of things. Now we have a full new section that's coming out for rehab. You're gonna be able to get a lot more education from this section. biggest pieces of negative feedback we've gotten is the fact that you might buy our product for something like drop foot or strength recovery after an ACL tear, something along those lines. And now we're adding all of this education tied to all those different use cases, along with new settings that we think will help better. Very good. Because we had a lot of people that were having trouble navigating our app, understandably so, because we were selling them a product that was for something like strength recovery, but they might look at the app and say, I don't see anything for ACL. What do I do? Right. And then in conjunction with that, we're also releasing a build your own setting functionality because we've actually had some clinicians tell us one of the things that would help here is the ability to randomize our settings. This has been a really interesting piece of feedback that we keep getting. It's like the brain could get used to some of these different settings if you use them for an extended period of time. It's really useful for a PT that's been working with a patient for six to eight months or whatever it is to say, hey, I'm going to actually change these settings completely. Absolutely. And we're going to give you some new stimulation that might have your central nervous system respond a little bit better. So that's also releasing in conjunction with our rehab settings.
 Kathy Chester: That's so smart. Our brain just adapts fast.
 Ethan Pollak: Yeah, and that's actually one of the unique things about our product is we found a way to avoid neural fatigue, because like you mentioned the brain adapts, and if you're working out for an hour and you've been using the device for an hour, your brain might stop noticing those vibrations. But by having a long enough interval, and this only is true for some settings, because some settings you actually want that constant flow of stimulation. But for some settings, like the workout settings, by increasing the off time in between each vibration, you can avoid that neural fatigue almost completely for use time under 20 minutes, which is really interesting. But going back to what I'm excited about, there's actually this really cool stroke certification course that is run by this guy named Steven Page. And he's actually implementing the Pulse device into this course over these next couple of months because of its profound ability to improve motor function and how the science basically says local vibration can reduce spasticity. So that is going to open up one of the biggest feedback loops for us. Once more clinicians are able to get their hands on this, try it on a wider group of patients. So a lot of really interesting stuff in the pipeline. Thank you again so much for having this conversation.
 Kathy Chester: Absolutely.
 Ethan Pollak: This is the kind of stuff that we're looking to do so we can get our name out there and hopefully reach more people that might benefit from this.
 Kathy Chester: For sure, I definitely want to check in, but I'm super excited about it. I think this is a great device. I think you're going to do very well. And if they want to reach you or to learn some more, what is the way that they can get to you?
 Ethan Pollak: Check out PulseDevice.com or check us out on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, whatever it is, at PulseDevice. We're always around to connect. So if you have any questions, just shoot us a message or an email, whatever works best for you. But yeah, thanks again for having this conversation.
 Kathy Chester: Thank you for being with me.
 Ethan Pollak: Of course. Yeah.

Outro: Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the Move It or Lose It podcast. It would mean the world to me if you subscribed and left a review. Remember, you can find me on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. New episodes of the Move It or Lose It podcast air every other Wednesday. If you have any suggestions for future guests or topics, please visit my website at www.msdisrupted.com. Until next time.