Transcript
Speaker: I used to love New York, but now I live with the regulated nervous system. And last time I went there, it was like PTSD 24-7. Like there is a silence. Yeah, it was like everything. And I had to have audits in on all the time to keep my balance and day centered and not be overstimulated by the noise.
Speaker: This is the Home of Healthspan podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
Speaker: Laura, thank you for joining us today on the Home of Healthspan. Thank you very much for having me. Now, before we jump in to all the topics and everything you're working on, how would you describe it yourself?
Speaker: I'm a lively entrepreneur and artist from Finland who has been living with complex PTSD. Okay. Yeah. So maybe does does the the PTSD, does that play into your founding journey with Audison?
Speaker: Absolutely. Absolutely. So I'm somebody who um grew up with alcoholic parents And childhood trauma is a little bit same as if you went to war.
Speaker: So you get similar kind of nervous system response and you are never really feeling safe. um You are constantly in in the fight and flight. So my personal experiences in dealing with nervous system like that has been a big part of founding Odisin.
Speaker: Okay. Wow. Yeah. i'm I'm sorry you went through that, but it's like, uh, Ellie Weissel, the Holocaust survivor who wrote night and was a Nobel laureate. he He was saying, you know, better for one person to suffer that thousand than for a thousand or a million people to suffer the same. And so maybe taking that pain and putting it in to autism and helping so many others with it.
Speaker: It's this gift that you can give to to so many others. So I'm sorry you went through it and i appreciate how you turned it into what you're doing now. So speaking of what you're doing now, aistcent like audio and medicine combined, what is this concept of audio as medicine?
Speaker: Well, we have been using audio and music as a medicine in every single civilization on earth. We just somehow a little bit forgot it with the Western medicine.
Speaker: um But my co-founder is a scientist in this area, and she knows that the roots of this goes to the very much in the human history and sound and music has been always part of our healing. If you think about any shaman or indigenous culture, they have been always healing via chanting and rhythm and dancing and music.
Speaker: So for us, it means that we have been taking that ancient tradition and then looked into all the science and research and the impact on brain waves frequencies and packaged that as a moving from intuitive use of music and sound into informed use.
Speaker: like boosting the elements in the music and sound that do good things and understanding specifically with each goals that what kind of music and sound needs to be created for that.
Speaker: And on that, so I'm slightly familiar with like binaural beats. I remember reading a book by Marcus Aubrey or Aubrey Marcus um that talked about those. And I downloaded the file and and would do those sometimes in the afternoon and their theta waves, beta waves. Like, can you explain kind of the science behind how this works?
Speaker: Yeah, so Bynoropies was actually founded already 1873. So it's a new not a new invention. um But now the research is really booming the last 50 years. So it's a brain phenomenon that we put the same sound, slightly different frequency in each ear. So let's say we would put 195 hertz to your left ear and hertz to your right ear So the difference of the hertz is, in my example, is 5 hertz.
Speaker: So when brain is triggered this way, brain wants harmony and optimization because brain uses so much energy. So the brain fixes the error in the signal by starting to beat in the frequency in between.
Speaker: So this is now, in my example, 5 hertz. with this eighth theta frequency. So when this stimulation goes on 10 minutes or more, your brain is synchronized um to go integration between your hemisphere left and right increases.
Speaker: And it tells to your entire because it's the central command system. So it tells your entire body that now we are in the theta brain based state. And that brainwave state is your deep meditation, like super deep relaxation and r REM sleep.
Speaker: So that is what I meant that we can decide per goal, like whether you want to feel more uplifted or if you want to calm down for sleep. All of these five brainwaves, they have different purposes in your body.
Speaker: So with this technique, we can take you to the goal that supports whatever you want to achieve in that very moment. and can you take any audio into it? Could you take a Taylor Swift song and offset it on one ear and the other and and get the same effects?
Speaker: You can actually do that with any sound. The issue is that, like I said in the beginning, since the history, we have used music and sound for healing. So it is like enormously potent medicine.
Speaker: But the Taylor Swift song will not make you fall asleep. It will make you upbeat, uplifted. So if you would try to put, let's say, delta brainwave activation in Taylor Swift's song, that would be a very conflicting message to your brain.
Speaker: Like the music is telling another story and then the brainwave activation is telling another story. So that can a little bit mess you up. So that's why we don't put Odyssey Engineering to any music. But actually the music is first composed for the goal.
Speaker: Okay, so it's all original composition Audison uses. It's all original composition for the goal, and the and the composers are trained to our methodology, and they need to stick with that template. So let's say you want to fall asleep.
Speaker: That is actually the hardest. I'm a composer myself, so there is a lot of music by me. My artist's name is Ghea, G-E-A. So sleep music is the hardest because as an artist, you would want to put some rhythm, some dynamics, but you actually need to be super calming and there can't be even any fun sounds. It just needs to be the most boring music you have ever written in your life.
Speaker: And then you can put the delta brain wave activation in it and then it supports your goal of falling asleep. So we don't want to confuse the brain by giving it like conflicting orders.
Speaker: So what are the different, I'm going to say flavors, but you have sleep. I assume maybe there's a calm, there's a focus, there's an energy. What are the different flavors you can do with this?
Speaker: Yes. So we typically build either upward trajectories all the way to gamma brainwave, which is your hyper active brain beating like super fast.
Speaker: um And that is your heightened creativity, your heightened consciousness, ah your extra mood boost. Or then we can take almost to zero, like 0.5 is the lowest brainwave and that is delta.
Speaker: And that is sleep. So anything in between. so So the human brain goes between this very high gamma state that is is almost 100 hertz all the way almost to zero. And we can pick any of the hertz in between.
Speaker: So we can make you kind of super creative, um uplifted, or take you super tired into your deep sleep. And anything in between like deep relaxation, little bit lighter relaxation, problem solving, cognitive boost, flow state is one of the things that we support.
Speaker: Then we work with athletes, you know, let's say that. So we have been now doing like user guides. Let's say you're ah um a soccer goalkeeper. So your nervous system challenge is that you are bored most most of the time, standing there in front of the goal, waiting for something to happen. And when something happens, you need to be super sharp.
Speaker: So we can support your your nervous system to train into those situations, how how to stay engaged and still not, you know, constantly be in the fight and flight because that will be overly consuming.
Speaker: No, I was a swimmer and most of us, and especially probably best known, Michael Phelps always had the headphones, had the same playlist yes before he would go race. is it Can it be that much of a trigger going before a race? and And maybe depending on the distance, maybe a marathon runner would want something different than 100 or 200 meter so runner.
Speaker: And do you have that level of dialed in? of Okay, this is going to be fast off the box, ready to go. This is more of a sustained, carried energy. Yes, yes. So we don't have techno, any high beat music like that. So every single one of our content is is defined to activate your parasympathetic state and flow state. But as we discuss and work with athletes, it is often that what you want, um because if if you kind of
Speaker: go orally hyperactive. You can hurt yourself and push yourself in a not smart way. Actually, your best state comes from the flow. And that is, it can be, you can be uplifted, but not super anxious.
Speaker: kind of you need to Because the anxious mindset start it causes you to make mistakes and to burn yourself out. So you kind of we we we are finding the balance. so So we say to the athletes that if you need like ah your favorite music before your race, that's completely fine.
Speaker: There are so many other moments in your journey you can use audits and you can use it while you travel to the competition, while you deal with the competition nerves, while you do your recovery after it. Like we don't want to compete with your favorite music, but just we have all these examples that but how can you use it and then you pick the one that suits your routine the best.
Speaker: mean, it just seems like that could be people may have their favorite music, but if they find they can get a competitive edge of, hey, I'm not going to listen to Drake. I'm going to listen to this Audison Vile and I can improve my time by two or three percent.
Speaker: I would think top athletes, they're going to go for that, right? They're going to go for whatever performance. Absolutely where small margins matter. And also you can train yourself. Like like I said in the beginning, like I have complex PTSD.
Speaker: So I didn't even know such a thing existed. And i was I was always the kind of high performer on the words of burnout. never able to relax. So now that I master my nervous system, it helps with everything.
Speaker: So then I can really like guide myself to the state I want to be in. And that's something that we work with the athletes that even when you don't have the music at your hand, like our chief scientist, she had a she had a dental operation, surgery.
Speaker: and she had been pushing it because it's not pleasant and she was not allowed to use auditing while she was at the, because she needed to hear the instructions from the medical doctor.
Speaker: so So we tried this trick that she was memorizing, like remembering one of the songs. And she could see from her aura ring that actually during the surgery, she was in restorative state.
Speaker: because she had learned to master her mind with autism. So even without the track on, she could, she could trigger that effect. And then, um, the good impact was that, that, that the dentist said that the people who are less nervous, they bleed less because we, we, you know, we pump more blood when we are nervous. yeah So it actually helped her to recover better. And the surgery was easier to do. Okay.
Speaker: Now, all of these things you could take exogenous substances. So all the way from like amphetamines as uppers to downers to go, or use caffeine to wake up, use nicotine, maybe to focus use. There's all sorts of concoctions that people use to to come down at night.
Speaker: But depending how your liver process, how they conflict with each other, you have to be careful how much or the frequency or how you load all these. Are there similar risks or concerns of dosing for audio as a medicine for audio? Or can you keep using it?
Speaker: You can use it as much as you can. When we were doing the launch, um we are now now measuring um your listening history, so I used it 17 hours per day. That was a bit extreme. But the good thing is that the methods you listed, they all have tradebacks.
Speaker: you know, you take coffee in too much, you will be very shaky and you kind of pay the price of that method. um With music and audio, you don't. So it's it's super non-invasive. It's your own pre brain creating to the beat, so you can't kind of overdose it. Some people take a little bit time to get used to the lower brainwave frequencies.
Speaker: So it can feel if you start with theta and delta and you you have your eyes open and you are doing stuff, you can can feel a bit funny. But all the time you will get used. i I was one of those people, so I needed to compose for theta and it made me feel a bit funny. But now I can do everything with all the brainwave frequencies. But that's also feeling a bit funny. It's kind of not dangerous. You just know that, okay,
Speaker: okay, my brain needs a little bit brain training. So maybe I try the lighter, you know, higher frequencies first. So there is no side effect. There is no trade back.
Speaker: Like all you get is a little bit nicer personality because you are less, less on cortisol. That's great then. That's great. So you mentioned Aura and you're in Finland. As I understand one of the Aura co-founders is somehow associated or no?
Speaker: Yes. So basically two of the co-founders have invested twice in the company and they are also advisors and they opened collaboration with the original O'Ring people, including their chief science officer, Dr. Hannu Kinnunen, who is behind their scores, you know, the resilience scores. Sleep scores, all that. He was their employee number one. And we also have their employee number two who built the algorithms and the architecture and all that in our team, as well as several other advisors, their communications person and all that. So we are kind of standing in the shoulders of a giant that we have these
Speaker: These wellness pioneers, health tech pioneers who have built a unicorn as our advisors. So that has saved a lot of time. and it has especially helped us because we have built the wearable connection to Audysin where you can track your results. So sleep score that we show in Audysin, that is built by Dr. Hannu Kinnunen.
Speaker: So so um the same person who built those scores for Overeem. It's a natural progression, right? So the Aura is just tracking your data. It's not changing your data. Exactly. And so something like Audison that you plug on top and say, let's track and then see the impact. So that's that's very much at a lively. What we try to look at is plugging into Aura or your Whoop or Apple Watch. you know Where are you starting and what interventions move you forward? So I guess with this partnership, with having these scores, what kinds of metrics are you seeing?
Speaker: are positively impacted by autism. So you brought up sleep. you know what What kind of improvement on what kind of timeline do you see? So the biggest instant improvement we see in respiratory rate. Okay, I could use help with that. no Yeah, so so that one is is something that reacts first.
Speaker: um Sleep is something that is very personal there. So there's a lot of variation. I have seen some... That feels almost like a miracle. Somebody who was suffering from from menopause causing insomnia and started to sleep well since the first night.
Speaker: So those are kind of really quick wins. For some most of the people, it takes a little bit time. So sleep is one of the most challenging issues already active nervous system is causing. So we typically see on the group level that first like irritation and anger and snappiness, like the quick cortisol responses start to go go lower. And over the time that is is showing up then as an oral sleep improvement.
Speaker: And now now we are bringing to market because our sal solution requires headphones because we need to left and right separation. So either earbuds or headphones. And a lot of people are finding it hard to sleep with those headphones.
Speaker: So we have developed um together with our partner a sleep headband that actually comes with Audysin Delta Brainwave activation pre-installed. Okay. And does it eye mask headband or it goes above...
Speaker: ah Right now it doesn't, I can actually show show it to you, it's right there. um It doesn't go over the eyes yet, but that's what we are now developing that it would go because I even saw my own brother during the Christmas break that he was sleeping it and he had put it covering his eyes. So that's a very, very relevant relevant relevant point.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, because i I do an eye mask and I do wax earplugs unless I wake up in the middle of the night and then I swap out for my AirPods to listen to Yoga Nidra and SDR. Yes. thing To get me back to sleep. So, you know, I'm your target audience. yeah Yeah, we absolutely have to get get you one. um I'm completely dependent myself on it. I wouldn't trade it for any money because because I travel so much and I can sleep with it on the airplane and then it helps me massively with jet lags.
Speaker: Yeah, which you just mentioned. And thank you for making the time. You just got to Austin. Yeah, I just got to Austin and and I woke up 6.30 a.m., which is amazing, considering that it's it's such a big time difference. But I had the headband on all night.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, that that helps then. So you brought up sleep. um You brought up... the respiratory rate, one metric that is obviously very much in the news ah is the heart rate variability yeah and this idea on vagal nerve stimulation. I've tried all sorts of things, right? The Sensate, the Apollo Neuro, the Pulseto, and those are devices trying to stimulate. Is this is audio something that can impact the the vagal nerve stimulation? Because you talked about sympathetic and parasympathetic.
Speaker: Absolutely impacts it and overall HRV. um We did a study with with nurses in the United States because one thing about audysin is that it works while you are working.
Speaker: So compared to all of these other methods you mentioned, you typically need to set aside time. So the people who are the most stressed and busiest are kind of out of scope. So if you would call the nurse and say that you should meditate more, they they might get a bit irritated.
Speaker: But our nurses, they were able to use on average during two weeks, two and a half hours auditing because you can have it on while you are on your computer, while you commute, while you do your shopping. So they didn't need to do any lifestyle change or take more time of their busy schedules. They averaged over increase in just two 22% in two weeks. That's, that's incredible. Okay.
Speaker: Yeah. We should, we should get you also ah plugged into a lively, you know, so what we do, we integrate with whoop and aura Apple watch, whatever, pull the person's data and identify what metric they need to focus on and then help them find the minimum enjoyable action to actually do that.
Speaker: And so this, as you said, with the nurses, right, it's so passive, you could go in, this would be a great one for our rate variability. it sounds like potentially sleep and respiratory rate. I'm excited for the respiratory rate as well. Yeah, we should absolutely talk about that. would make so much sense. And you are so right about like the minimum enjoyable um intervention, because I think that's where the wellness market is failing, that you need to go to this huge life transformation when you have the least energy for it.
Speaker: Yeah. And even if you get, this is interesting because we're having this conversation at the beginning of January, right? So these people plan their new year's resolutions, these huge interventions, and they have zero impact because two weeks later, they're not doing it. And so the most effective thing is the thing you will stick with.
Speaker: And so that's all that matters. Yeah. that's All that matters. Yeah. You are so right about that. So that was also our philosophy um that, that,
Speaker: There is a need for an intervention that works while you are working and doing going about your life because the life seems to get busier and kind of more stimulating all the time.
Speaker: we don't have any more hours on the day, so what can we do? And Audison only takes 10 minutes to work. So we already saw a statistically significant impact on on relaxation while people are working and having Audison on. So speaking of the working, so obviously this is it's consumer because the individual has to use it. yeah But a lot of times the benefit could accrue to the employer if you're more focused, if you're more productive, if you're less stressed and getting sick less frequently. And so I think of cultures,
Speaker: like Japan, right? Where they had at the factories, they would go do their calisthenics together in the morning. Is this something that companies could or should set time aside say, hey, we're going to have 10 minutes where we listen to our audio audison before we start the workday? Or what does this look like potentially in a corporate environment?
Speaker: So we have done over 10 corporate pilots actually. And the beauty of Audison is that you can incorporate it to any part of your workday. As long as you have around 10 minutes, either working on your company. We have been doing it even with the tele salespeople.
Speaker: So even they can have 10 minutes, whether that is on the bus while they're commuting, even though their work is super hectic and you don't have to be on the call. They even managed to use it like 10 minutes per day is the minimum. um Then we have been working with knowledge workers. So our first customer was the biggest retail company in Finland called SOK.
Speaker: And this was their salespeople, so people who are commercializing their media spaces. So it was kind of a startup inside of a corporation, a new business. And you know how it happens if you don't meet your targets, you're going to be eliminated pretty fast. And they were in this point. We did like a measurement. We didn't yet have a variable connection, but we measured with Karolinska exhaust and disorder scale. We saw that there were issues with that, that they were a bit exhausted.
Speaker: and they needed to work more to catch up with the KPIs. But they came out of the exhaustion within the first month. The second month, their KPIs grew four times, so 400%. The next month, they started to go above budgets.
Speaker: And they ended the year exceeding their budgets. And we have seen several pressured sales sales teams happening the same. So there is actually a huge win for the for the employer. And that was our first strategy to focus on that.
Speaker: There is, of course, that challenge that everybody needs to kind of commit to use it. yeah Or then you can do it it so that you provide it to the employees who want to use it because you can't force anybody to use anything. Look, as a salesperson, if you're going to lose your job or not, and you see the people using it have these results, you think, hey, I want to take what they're taking, right? now I want those results. Exactly.
Speaker: And they loved it so much that the big part of this team, they actually moved to another employer once their leader moved. And now they started to use it again. So they were asking it, like, we need this to be a part of our performance tool. And lately, this team was filmed to the Finnish TV news, how they are using Audisyn and how it's impacting their productivity. So it's it's ah it's a huge, interesting segment for us.
Speaker: yeah I mean, it's performance enhancement, whether it's sports or it's the corporate athlete. Exactly. You're improving the core performance. Exactly. You make far less mistakes.
Speaker: You're overall healthier. You think better because it boosts your cognitive abilities. There are so many benefits. yeah well And so we talked a lot about kind of creating these files, you're listening to them and the the positive impact they can have. I'm thinking the other side of audio.
Speaker: So we live in, especially in cities, there's all sorts of noise pollution constantly. Are there certain noises or noise environments we should try to avoid that may dysregulate us?
Speaker: Oh, that's an excellent question. I would say that that's the thing with them big cities nowadays. I used to love New York, but now I live with the regulated nervous system. And last time I went there, it was like PTSD 24-7. It was like everything. And had have audits on all time it it was like everything and i had to have oys in on all the time to keep my balance and stay centered and not be overstimulated by the noise.
Speaker: So noise pollution, it' it is a huge problem. So if you think about the modern human being, like now we have these smartphones and they have all kinds of alert alerts and sounds that they are all triggers to and stimulation. And then the environment, because our bodies did not evolve yet.
Speaker: like We are still hunter-gatherers, meant to be in the forest, collecting berries and hunting animals, and only having our nervous system activated when there is a real danger, like a bear coming to towards us.
Speaker: And then we solve it by running away or fighting to fight the bear, but hopefully not. But now we are in these noisy environments. Even the office environments can be massively noisy, like the open office. So we are constantly triggered to be in the fight and flight, even though there is no real danger. But our body doesn't separate like, is this just, you know, traffic noise, notifications? It's all ah causing overstimulation and fight and flight.
Speaker: Another kind of question on that front. So you talked about being in New York, there's this overstimulation of the sound, polluting and kind of taking you out of your equanimity. And so using Audison helps get back to that equanimity, the equilibrium, the stabilization.
Speaker: you know, one of our five pillars at Alively is social connection. So I am curious when you talked about you were using it 17 hours a day. if you always have headphones in what does that do to connection? So for example,
Speaker: I used to wear my AirPods constantly, right? I'd listen to 200 books a year and a bunch of podcasts, whether I'm in the gym wherever I was, I had it in and realized I was really isolating myself.
Speaker: And so I've tried in public to deliberately not do it. Now I'm in Bermuda. A lot of the time it's much quieter than New York. um But to engage with people at the gym, at the grocery store, wherever I'm walking through town,
Speaker: And so where is that line between, hey, i want to pull into myself and do this, but also i i am part of society and want to engage with society?
Speaker: That's a very good point. And I would say that my 17 hours was very extreme when we were doing a launch. So. You don't need to. Let's remember that 10 minutes per day is enough. so So all the other minutes of the day you can be without headphones. Using it before you go to bed is enough. Using it while you sleep.
Speaker: So you have so many moments to use it. So don't do it 17 hours. Right. I went a bit crazy because i was I was so much under stress. But you bring up a very good point that social interaction is extremely healthy. And there I would give the guideline, it depends on your personality. So I am an introvert. So so I love social interaction, but my battery trains. And then there are the extroverts who battery gets recharged with the social interaction. So you need to kind of listen to yourselves. But I would...
Speaker: I would give a kind of tip to all the fellow introverts that I sometimes do the isolation too much because think about it, I'm living with this complex PTSD that alone makes the social interaction overstimulating for me. So my reaction has been to withdraw from the social interaction as much as possible. But that makes me depressed. It happened to me during COVID.
Speaker: And I didn't know this, but but it happened like like like I need it. Everybody needs it. We are we are that kind of community species. We need to interaction. So be kind of careful with yourself. What is a healthy interaction to you? What is kind of nurturing? What is training and and how much then you want to be with your headphones and how much without them?
Speaker: sense That's a so good disclaimer. and just kind of public service announcement, right? The dosing is dependent just like any medicine. So whether it's audio medicine or a pill.
Speaker: Exactly. Exactly. It doesn't replace the human connection, but it can help. For instance, um I once had, ah in Austin, I had a Lyft driver who was like on a very bad mood and I asked what up and he said that he had been fighting with his wife. So then I explained to him that how using a method for nervous system regulation before conversation that you know is going to be heated, you will go to that conversation from a better place or if you need to recover from it.
Speaker: If you still end up in the fight, you can use it. So you can kind of combine it with your social interactions because not all of them are always pleasant, unfortunately. Is when you were talking about the impact on sales, I don't know with the study that I would be curious about and partner with the university and somebody actually knows what they're doing here.
Speaker: But which of these impacts empathy? Because my my guess is the sales people are more effective because they're not pushing their agenda as much. yes They're more empathetic.
Speaker: with the person they're trying to sell to. And I imagine in those conversations, yes, there's something down regulating. So you're not, but it's also, you're becoming more empathetic. So I'd be curious how that could be measured before and after and the placebo and and all of that. yeah That's a really interesting area of exploration to me.
Speaker: That is very interesting area. When I've been doing those those like corporate clients, we often do like a kickoff. And then in the end of the kickoff, everybody listens to Audison for 10 minutes. And it's a completely different group after that.
Speaker: Everybody's in their bodies. They are present. They are less you know agitated. um And I guess that's where the empathy comes in. Then you have a room to actually see. And if you think about the salesperson, that if they are anxious,
Speaker: And they are they are a little bit like, okay, i need to I need to get these sales. I need to get these sales. You come to the interaction from completely different energy than if you feel safe. And I guess that makes a whole difference.
Speaker: as Well, or this has been incredible. Again, i'm sorry for the pain that led you to here, but I'm incredibly grateful for the science, the beauty, the impact that you're having, and that you've been able to turn all that into for, it sounds like yourself, using 17 hours a day. Also so many, so many others, and I'm sure that number is only going to grow.
Speaker: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me and thank you for the work you do. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast. And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other Healthspan role models on Alively.com.
Speaker: Enjoy a lively day.
