Sensate and Elemind Longevity podcast 3-12-26 Transcript
Title: Transcript: Sensate and Elemind Longevity podcast
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Linda Sherman 00:05
Welcome to the Rethinking Aging Club show. I am Linda Sherman. Each week, we host presentations and discussions with special guest experts on an important topic in the field of rethinking aging. We’ll be introducing this week’s co-hosts and guests during the show. We’re happy you’ve joined us.
Today is March 12, 2026, and we are delighted to be bringing you two amazing speakers that we are so thrilled to have with us. We have both Meredith Perry, the founder and CEO of Elemind, and Anna Gudmundson, the founder and CEO of Sensate. Both of these companies are portfolio companies for the AgeTech Collaborative by AARP, and both of them were in the AARP pavilion in the Venetian at CES 2026. This week, from March 8th to March 14th, is Sleep Awareness Week, and I’m sure both of them are super busy. So we are really appreciative of them taking time to join us today. Thank you so much. I want to introduce my two co-hosts, Debbie Howard and Ray Gordon, and I’m going to start with Debbie Howard. Debbie Howard co-founded the Tokyo-based AgeTech platform Living Best, which uses consumer insights to guide AgeTech innovation. She’s a caregiver-friendly workplace strategist and the author of two related books. Through both Living Best and her company, Aging Matters International, she’s a participant in the AgeTech Collaborative from AARP.
Debbie Howard 02:27
And I’d like to introduce Linda Sherman, the founder of the Rethinking Aging Club, which is also a participant in the AgeTech Collaborative from AARP. Linda is managing editor of Boomer Tech Talk, home to the club’s podcasts. Formerly CEO or CMO for multinational subsidiaries in Japan, Linda is now Chief Longevity Officer for LA-based Marine Biology and Environmental Technologies, which creates Miracle of the Sea Natural Marine Extract Consumer Products for rejuvenation and wound healing. Linda, back over to you.
Linda Sherman 03:05
Thank you. Ray Gordon is an architect, urban planner, futurist, and prior graduate school professor at both Pratt Institute and NYU. Ray brings a unique perspective to scientific aging-related topics, and Ray Gordon is tech reporter at boomertechtalk.com. Thank you for everything that you do, Ray. I want to have Debbie go ahead and introduce Meredith Perry, and we will start today with Elemind. Please, Debbie. Thank you.
Debbie Howard 03:47
Thanks so much, Linda. Our first speaker today is Meredith Perry, co-founder and CEO of Elemind, which, as Linda mentioned, is a portfolio company of the AgeTech Collaborative from AARP. Elemind is a company that develops wearable neurotechnology to achieve the same benefits with better sleep as some pharmaceuticals, but without chemicals or side effects. Meredith is a director on the board of the J. Craig Venter Institute, and she is inventor of a long-range ultrasonic wireless power system. She holds numerous patents in neuromodulation and wireless power transmission. A University of Pennsylvania graduate, Meredith has been recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, fast companies, most creative people, and Vanity Fair’s the new establishment. If that’s not enough, Meredith also received Elle Magazine’s Genius Award. I really like that one, Meredith. Meredith, we are excited to learn more about Elemind. Take it away.
Meredith Perry 04:59
Hi, everyone. And thanks so much for having me. Well, yes, it’s a very important week for sleep, and we’ve developed a wearable headband that can actually help people fall asleep much faster and fall back to sleep much faster and will soon also augment your deep sleep. So if you’re somebody that has trouble falling asleep, or maybe your issue isn’t falling asleep, but you wake up in the middle of the night repeatedly and you can’t go back to sleep. We have a solution for that, which is a device that will read your brain waves at real time and stimulate the brain in response to what we read with a sound pulse. And the sound pulse will actually interfere or intercept the brain wave patterns that are associated with wakefulness, and when that happens, people will fall asleep much faster. So it’s like noise cancellation, but for the brain.
Debbie Howard 05:48
Thanks, Meredith. That’s a great description, and I was able to try Elemind at the AgeTech Collaborative from AARP booth there. And thank you so much. You and your partner were so great, and I really I’m actually a very good sleeper myself. But I could see I fell asleep pretty fast, like within I’d say 10 to 12 minutes or so, I think. Wasn’t that the trial time?
Meredith Perry 06:15
Yeah. So everyone did different session times at CES with a maximum of 15 minutes. So if you fell asleep, then you certainly fell asleep within that window. But we put like 500 people to sleep in the middle of the CES showroom floor, amongst all the chaos and noise. Sometimes people fell asleep in as quickly as three minutes, and other people took around 11 minutes, which is actually the median amount of time that, you know, our 10,000 or so customers over the last year or so take to fall asleep using our product.
Debbie Howard 06:48
And that’s really something, Meredith. Thanks for putting it that way. If you were not at CES, you cannot imagine how loud the show floor is. And you’re right, Meredith. People were just falling right asleep in the middle of all of that, and you had a great setup there. When I was there, Reuters was interviewing you. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Meredith Perry 07:09
Sure. We had a number of different journalists and press outlets come by our booth to check out our technology, and like with everyone, you know, we think the most compelling way to describe what our technology does is just to demo it for you. So we put many journalists to sleep right there on the show floor as well. I don’t remember my conversation with Reuters specifically, but it was very fun to have all the journalists try Elemind and really get at least a sample of what sleep with neural modulation feels like, even just for a quick nap in the middle of the day.
Linda Sherman 07:43
Debbie was with Dr. David Wang, and there are photos of her on our LinkedIn show post for this show, with a carousel of photos, including Dr. David Wang setting up Debbie and a couple of shots of Debbie there in the booth. So thank you so much. That was such a great setup that you had. Back to you, Debbie.
Debbie Howard 08:11
Yeah, it was really fun to try it, Meredith. And my significant other has serious insomnia, and I’m trying to convince him that this is a good solution for him, but he’s really anti-everything, so it’s going to take a little more work. But let me ask you this: How do most folks find you at Elemind? Are they already diagnosed with sleep disorders, or tell us a little bit about how that journey—that customer journey?
Meredith Perry 08:41
Sure, our customers are all across the board. We’ve got people that generally have insomnia, and they’re searching for every possible solution. They’ve tried every drug. They don’t like being groggy when they wake up in the morning, and they’re just sick of having to take a pharmaceutical and have the consequences of that. They’re also addictive, and they don’t actually produce natural sleep. You’re just kind of sedating yourself. So some people find us that way. You know, they just find us on our website, maybe through an ad at elemindtech.com. But it’s not just for people who have insomnia. It’s for if you are a new parent and you want to sleep when your baby sleeps. I just had somebody call me crying. They were six days in of being a father, and he said, “I’m sleep deprived. I’m this. I’m that, and I have so many thoughts running through my head.” And then I realized, “Wait a minute! I have my Elemind.” And he was able to sleep at some random time in the middle of the day when he put his Elemind on, when otherwise he’d be totally off-kilter because he doesn’t normally have to fall asleep at like 2 p.m. But then, if you’re somebody that just wants to snooze your way from one location to another on an airplane or fight jet lag, you can use it for that too. So people come to us, whether you are an athlete, whether you’re a traveler, whether you are a new parent, or a woman going through menopause. There’s many different reasons why people need help with sleep, and Elemind can help most of them.
Debbie Howard 10:06
Thank you for that explanation. I love the idea of the jet lag control as well, Meredith, because I know Linda and I and Ray are always going back and forth with Japan, and it’s a real bear to try to manage jet lag as well. I would say.
Meredith Perry 10:23
Definitely, yeah.
Linda Sherman 10:26
Can I mention that I love your sleep with our CEO campaign? Your marketing campaign is so clever.
Meredith Perry
Thank you.
Linda Sherman
And when I met Meredith, she’s in the booth wearing a hat that says “Sleep with our CEO,” which people were doing by being there with you, and then she’s on a ferry, and she’s all over the place with people in various situations, putting them to sleep. It’s so marvelous. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Meredith Perry 10:55
Yes. So we have a campaign called “Sleep with Our CEO,” and I go into strange locations, whether it’s around on the streets of New York City, on a ferry, outside a Giants football game tailgate. We did something at a gym, and we will put strangers to sleep in environments that you would not expect to be able to sleep in, and it works really well, you know. We put someone to sleep on a conference room table in eight and a half minutes. We put someone to sleep on the floor of a loud gym in New York City. We put someone to sleep on the New York City High Line. We even got kicked out of Times Square in New York City trying to put someone to sleep there. So it’s a funny series. It’s unexpected, and we think it’s compelling because if you can sleep in those situations, then you can sleep with Elemind anywhere, and that’s what we’re trying to prove.
Debbie Howard 11:49
I love those events, Meredith. That’s really good. But I also want you to talk a little bit about the studies that you all have done, because I was looking at your website, and you’ve got that great Learn About page that’s got your various studies. So tell us a little bit about some of those.
Meredith Perry 12:06
Sure. Yeah. So you know, as we like to say, we take our science seriously, but not ourselves. So we’ve got, you know, funny marketing campaigns, but the truth is that we are very buttoned up when it comes to science, and everything we say and do is backed by a clinical trial and published in top-tier scientific journals. A lot of people don’t know this, but we have our origins at MIT. My co-founder, Dr. Ed Boyden, is the lead neuroscience professor at MIT, and that’s where our neuroscience came from. And we published a clinical trial in Nature’s portfolio a couple of years ago, which showed that 76% of people with sleep-onset insomnia—that’s people that have trouble falling asleep—could fall asleep in roughly half the time when they used Elemind versus their normal. And this study has been repeated not just with people with insomnia, but also healthy sleepers. And now Elemind is in a number of other clinical trials across a lot of different categories outside of just sleep specifically, and all of those clinical trials and publications are published on our website so that you, the reader, can see them as well. And if they don’t make sense because there’s a lot of scientific jargon in there, throw it into ChatGPT and have ChatGPT summarize it for you so that you know what it is that you’re buying.
Debbie Howard 13:26
That’s a great idea, Meredith. I just wanted to ask you one more question, Meredith. I saw that, of course, you have the white paper and sleep studies, a number of different sleep studies, and then there’s this thing about essential tremors. Tell us a little bit about that as well, because that’s a really something we talk about in this room a lot.
Meredith Perry 13:45
Sure. So, what Elemind’s technology does inherently is it allows us to predictably modulate the brain from the outside. The brain is like the mainframe for the body, and we can influence neurological activity, and neurological activity helps control lots of different behaviors. So sleep is one of those behaviors, but also body movement is another one of those behaviors. And we first created Elemind’s technology for people with essential tremor. Essential tremor—I’m sure you’ve seen somebody shake. Maybe they have trouble like holding a fork, or their hands are shaking as they’re lifting up a cup. Those are involuntary body movements called tremor. And what Elemind’s technology can do is effectively cancel out the tremor. So, in the same way that we cancel out brain waves to help somebody fall asleep, we can also physically cancel out the tremor in somebody’s hand so that they can remain stable as they are holding a cup, for example. This has just been studied clinically. We do not have a commercial product out for that. I don’t know if we ever will, but it’s something that we know a lot of people want and need.
Debbie Howard 14:57
I see. So that’s very, very interesting.
Ray Gordon
Hi, this is Ray. I have a couple questions. The first is, without getting too technical, the brain is sending out all these signals, and it has a lot of activity everywhere. How do you identify the way to deal with the signals that deal with sleep, and how does it interact with that? I mean, given all the other functions of the brain that are happening simultaneously.
Meredith Perry 15:23
Sure, it’s a great question. So, as we go from an awake state to a sleep state, the brain actually transitions from high frequency to low frequency, and there are very characteristic brain wave frequencies with each phase of falling asleep and the sleep process. So, when you’re awake with your eyes closed and you want to go to sleep, we see a dominant, roughly 10-hertz frequency. It’s called alpha. Then, as you start to drift off to sleep, there’s a dominant frequency called theta, which is even slower. And then, when you’re in deep sleep, which is called slow-wave sleep, it’s even slower. It’s called delta. And so we know exactly what frequency ranges we are trying to isolate to look at. So that’s exactly what we do. We lock on to your individual alpha frequency. There’s actually a range of those frequencies that we’re looking at for each person. We will actually compute which frequency each individual has as soon as we start reading the person’s brain. We will lock on to that, and then we will stimulate specifically to that one frequency to help interrupt that brainwave pattern until the person’s asleep. And when we detect that the person’s fallen asleep, we stop stimulating. Does that make sense?
Ray Gordon 16:34
Yeah. So you’re basically transmitting a signal that either blocks or is complementary to that signal that you found. Correct?
Meredith Perry 16:43
It interrupts it. So the signal that we’re sending is actually just a sound pulse. It is like as innocuous as it gets. It’s literally just a burst of pink noise, and we play it at a specific phase of the brain wave frequency that we’re reading. So, for those who haven’t thought about physics in a while, what “phase” just means is like if you’re at the peak of a wave or the trough of a wave, and we know that if we hit a certain frequency at like the peak of the wave, then we can maximally disrupt it. So we read your brain in real time. We identify exactly when to hit your brain with a sound pulse, so that we can interrupt it to drive the brain from wakeful patterns to restful,
Ray Gordon 17:23
So it’s sort of like those sound modulators that can knock out loud noise by showing in the exact opposite wave.
Meredith Perry 17:31
That’s exactly it. So that’s why we call it noise cancellation for the brain.
Ray Gordon 17:35
Right. Fantastic. How deep is the sleep that you induce?
Meredith Perry 17:38
So we aren’t inducing a specific stage of sleep. We just bring somebody from wakefulness to sleep. So what that’s doing is it’s taking somebody from an awake state to the first stage of sleep, which is light sleep, and then your brain takes over after that. We are going to be releasing, hopefully this spring, maybe early this summer, something called deep sleep stimulation, which detects when the brain has naturally gone into deep sleep, and once you’re in there, we will then augment your slow waves. We will actually deepen your sleep so that you have even more restorative sleep than you had before. So it’s actually the opposite of what we’re doing to help transition someone from wakefulness to sleep. Instead of canceling something out, we’re actually augmenting it. So we’ll be able to deepen your sleep further, and it’s about the amplitude of those waves as opposed to lengthening the amount of time spent in deep sleep.
Ray Gordon 18:32
Great. I have one other question: Can this technology be used not to necessarily put you to sleep, but to relax? In other words, if you’re an athlete and before a big competition, could you use this to calm your mind, get yourself into a state of focus without going to sleep?
Meredith Perry 18:50
Absolutely. Although you know we recommend not lying down. So if you want to relax with Elemind, we recommend a session that’s under 10 minutes, maybe even five minutes. Five minutes seated so that you don’t accidentally fall asleep. But you use the same exact technology. Actually, just did this with a group of people a couple days ago who didn’t want to fall asleep but just wanted to feel relaxed. And it was in the middle of the day. They sat up in a chair. They closed their eyes. They listened to L.M.I. stimulation for just five minutes, and they felt very relaxed at the end of it, so you’re on the path to sleep, but you’re not asleep at the end of that. But it’s got to be a short session; otherwise, people might actually fall asleep.
Ray Gordon 19:28
So it’s the duration.
Meredith Perry
Yeah.
Ray Gordon
Great.
Linda Sherman 19:33
Thank you so much. I know that Anna has things, and she tried Elemind. We have a photo of her trying Elemind at CES, but I’d like to go ahead and let Anna explain Sensate first and then have her jump in and talk about Elemind as well. Does that sound good to you, Anna? Anna Gudmundson is the CEO and co-founder of Sensate, a wellness technology company helping people reduce stress and improve resilience through research-backed innovation. A technology leader with more than 20 years of experience building and scaling companies across mobile, social media, and wellness. She holds a master’s degree in IT engineering and speaks four languages. Anna has received the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce Woman in Tech Award and has been recognized by the Los Angeles Times as one of its inspirational women in business. She has also been featured by Inc. Magazine among the most influential women in marketing and by FNA among 10 women in science and technology who inspire. Under her leadership, Sensate’s Device has received honors, including Time Magazine’s Best Inventions and Real Simple’s Smart Sleep Award. Anna Gudmundson, please.
Anna Gudmundson 21:08
Thank you so much, Linda. Thank you. Yeah. So my path has always included groundbreaking technology, and it has increasingly been about human potential, health, and well-being. I’ve also navigated too near burnouts myself, so I’m very, very conscious of the sort of modern words, overclocking of our nervous system. It is my co-founder, Stefan Chmelik, who pioneered integrated healthcare in Europe over the last three decades. He ran an elite clinic there, and they observed that a critical common denominator in a patient’s likelihood to recover was very closely related to vagal nerve tone, and their clinic received a lot of people with complex stress and trauma-related health conditions, chronic disease, etc. So their clinical observations really revealed that poor stress resilience and frequent activation of the body’s stress response undermines recovery by suppressing immune system, digestive system, cardiac and respiratory systems, and obviously we know that it also increases inflammation, and rest or relaxed nervous system and sleep is obviously very very closely related. So we co-founded Sensate to bridge that gap. So, combining cutting-edge technology with ancient wisdom, because low-frequency sound vibration in the chest is nothing new. It is very similar to omming. I’ve actually practiced getting the omming. The om, getting the resonance to the center of my chest, and doing that consecutively for an hour, and I felt euphoric, so it works. It’s just not necessarily what people will do right now. And you know, both Meredith and I providing tools that make certain things simple, but this really also has roots in common ancient traditions, and it really is to help move people out of a constant state of fight or flight and into a sort of empowered state of calm. And if we look into the aging landscape, obviously, we know that we have a crisis in both stress and sleep. Roughly 4 in 10 adults over 65 reporting insufficient sleep, and 1 in 2 over 60 with chronic insomnia. So it’s really a huge problem. And on the stress side, 76% of American adults report chronic stress, and this is directly connected then to cardiovascular issues, type two diabetes, but also accelerating aging. And we know that this constant activating of stress response is suppressing immune system, increases inflammation, suppresses digestive system, etc. So very clear medical links there as well. And what Stefan realized and what we realized was that just telling people to relax and that they need to go to sleep doesn’t necessarily work. And so our device is a sort of palm-sized, pebble-looking device that you place on the sternum, like where you get bone conduction. You put on headphones and you start a session in an app. You will hear music, which is sound therapy through the ears, and those frequencies are harmonized with the infrasonic frequencies in the chest area. And the sessions are between 10 and 30 minutes, so it’s more focused on the sort of relaxing moment. Although we found out that about 40% of people actually use it before sleeping and fall asleep. We also have people that use it when they wake up and are anxious and to sort of get back into deep relaxation or sleep. And we are a wellness product, so not sort of a medical device. And in the Lisbon study, we could see that a single 20-minute sensory session decreased heart rate, increased theta brain waves that are associated with deep meditation by 26%, and also decreased beta brainwaves that are associated with worry by 27% and also we only done one small study or medium sized study on sleep just out of interest. And that showed that after two weeks of use, participant gained an average of an hour of sleep per night and cut the time that it took to fall asleep by almost half. So yeah, we’re seeing that it’s already a vital tool. I think the most important thing about Sensate is that we actually are achieving ongoing, long-term usage, which means that we are achieving behavioral change. And someone is starting a Sensate session on average every 12 seconds somewhere in the world, which means that we are creating a little bit more inner peace as we speak, so yeah, I’m excited to dive in more.
Linda Sherman 25:44
Thank you so much, Anna. Obviously, Sensate works both for relaxation, meditation, stress release, and so forth, and it can encourage sleep. But please, please feel free to focus on the other aspects of Sensate. I used Sensate just yesterday at the dentist, and it was fantastic, and it intrigued everyone who was around me in the chair. So one of them could actually feel the vibration through something that was kind of touching me, and it works. It just made me relaxed, and I think it is a tool that can be awesome for getting better at meditating if you haven’t instantly become a great meditator when you tried meditating. I believe that Sensate can help you, and I really like the soundscapes that you have gathered together. Can you talk more about that? Thank you.
Anna Gudmundson 26:59
Yeah, of course, and you’re not the only one. Actually, our first version of the device, we didn’t realize that people were going to bring them around everywhere. So, we got complaints that it turned itself on and off in the bag, and we’re like, “Why do people have it in the bag? We realized, of course, people need it in various circumstances. So now you need to press and hold. So that was relearning from our users all the time, and there are actually a number of clinics as well that are using the device: longevity clinics, a lot of natura clinics, integrated healthcare, etc. Yeah. So these soundscapes, we’re working with composers to develop music for downregulation of the nervous system, and to be able to compose and integrate that with the infrasonic waves that are felt, not heard, in the chest area. And for some people who wonder what infrasonic waves are, it’s just low-frequency sound vibration. So a purring cat, for example, emits infrasound waves. So when you put your hand on a cat, you will feel it vibrating, but it’s actually sound, and so that’s what the device emits in the chest area. And the chest area is obviously built to create resonance, and that’s what opera singers use to project, and we’re very familiar with. But there is also an element of preference when it comes to music, and that’s why we have developed a larger library of these soundscapes because some people just have a personal preference for one session or another session, and also to provide different lengths of sessions.
Ray Gordon 28:32
It really works with the vagus nerve, which is an amazing nervous connection there that connects a whole bunch of organs, and I think that there’s a lot of people in the yoga field that also see the benefit in that. I was wondering whether the placement in the middle of the chest is, you mentioned, resonating in the chest cavity. If that is an additional benefit, or you’re trying to target the vagus nerve specifically?
Anna Gudmundson 28:58
Yeah, absolutely. That is the whole point, and we said the position isn’t extremely exact, but just sort of on the bony area and not further down on the soft area. So that’s where we try to ask people to have it. And then, you know what we know is that it works, and then it’s this interesting thing. Can we say that it targets the vagus nerve while low-frequency vibration or sonic resonance in the chest area does have you know, done invasive research and put something on the vagus nerve? No, but we can obviously see all the relaxing biomarkers. So we are targeting the vagus nerve. Absolutely correct. As you mentioned, the first time I learned the word vagus nerve was actually in yoga because that’s why we om. So, “Oming Om” in yoga is to tone the vagus nerve. So obviously our product is very closely connected to that. That’s absolutely correct. And then we are harmonizing the frequencies, and I think that is sort of a little bit sort of next level of larger budgets and probably collaboration on research. I mean, it’s fascinating, with music and how harmonized frequencies make us feel good. And you know, music is really fascinating in general. So obviously, we’re integrating that on a subaudible and audible level, where we’re actually harmonizing the frequencies. We can definitely say that, you know, when we hear harmonies that are on frequency, we think it sounds good. It relaxes us, and so you know, nothing controversial there. But I think there’s so much that we’re discovering right now in the area of vibration and frequency and sound and music personally, also just fascinating. But what is it that makes certain frequencies sound more happy or sound more sad? Like, what is it, a nervous system that interprets things in a certain way? We don’t actually need to know why. We just know that it does.
Ray Gordon 30:47
Yeah, and also there’s a lot of connection between breath frequency, modulating your breath, and how that relates to relaxation. So I’m assuming that this also tends to calm that while it’s also sending these vibrations through you; is that accurate?
Anna Gudmundson 31:04
Yeah, absolutely. So in the very original studies that were done in the new medicine group clinic, the respiratory rate was one of the clear biomarkers. So slow respiratory rate. We actually, you know, like the instruction, and where this product came from was people who were quite unwell. So really, the groundbreaking thing is that you don’t have to be good at doing certain breathing techniques or meditating, which I think a lot of people struggle with. And especially, I say that I use it when I’m too wired or too tired because I am an experienced meditator. But if I’m super tired, it’s very difficult, and also if my brain is really, really spinning, it’s also quite difficult to meditate. So I’m personally extremely passionate about the fact that this tool works so well for people that are also less privileged and maybe don’t have access to, you know, yoga studios, meditation classes, or just don’t kind of, yeah, no pun intended, but resonate with that, and that’s where we’re also seeing this incredible long-term usage where people are actually using it for multiple years. And if we’re going to nerd out a little bit on that side, what I am very interested in, and also which is very promising, is that people can also, like, not use the product for a couple of weeks, and then they come back. So I think what we’re achieving is that we don’t need to nag. We provide a tool that really works for people when they’re experiencing stress or sleep issues, is great for traveling as well, and so it’s a tool that exists in their life. And because it actually works for them. We don’t need to keep remember to use it or reminder. It’s actually more needs-based, and so then we have that behavioral change, and people have a good way, a sustainable way of regulating stress when it happens. And stress is kind of guaranteed in life, hopefully for less and less silly reasons. But you know, stress is part of life.
Ray Gordon 33:02
That’s interesting. That it looks like a gateway to meditation. I mean, a lot of people you talk to about meditating, they can’t get their head around not paying attention anything specific, but paying attention to the fact that you’re not paying attention. And this gives you something to actually focus on, which is sort of interesting. You’re focusing on this vibration and music, and it tends to relax you and get you into a meditative state without you having to work at it. And I think that’s rather interesting concept.
Anna Gudmundson 33:29
It is very interesting, and also it’s kind of what happens to me when I, in the use case, when I just have too much spinning in my head and I still need nervous system-level relaxation, is that, it almost like the noise just goes into the background, and also having worked in tech for 20-25 years and been part of a lot of the exponential tech that hasn’t you know had only positive impact. I’m very particular about what tech I fully stand behind, and because the use of Sensate also somatically brings you into the body. It’s so important that we feel our bodies to have the long-term benefits, and so I can, you know, fully stand behind it. For example, if we talk about AR, VR, I think there are great applications, but we are already visually overstimulated. So I have some reservations around, like, a wider mental health use AR/VR, and I do think that it takes us out of our body, and so the fact that we actually somatically, without forcing it, can have a physical sensation from this sort of purring, I think, is also a very important benefit.
Ray Gordon 34:38
Yeah, you brought an interesting point in the fact that we are so overly focused on visual cues that I think that stimulating or the use or the awareness of other senses is really really useful.
Linda Sherman 34:50
I love the term “purring” because we can all understand that. I would love it if you would explain the difference between vagal nerve stimulation and vagal nerve toning. You have a wonderful page explaining this on your website, which I’ve shared in the show notes. Can you explain this to our audience, please?
Anna Gudmundson 35:13
Sure. And this has actually evolved quite a bit. When Stefan was working with this actively in his clinic, people hadn’t even heard about the vagus nerve. And originally people calling it or what it was called, there’s a white paper on that as well, was just acoustic vagal nerve stimulation, but because there have been, you know, I shouldn’t say proliferation, but it’s been a number of new vagus nerve stimulators that are using electricity. Then VNS has kind of become the term for electrical because that used to be EVNS and we used to be AVNS, but now VNS in general tends to refer to vagal nerve stimulation, and so we don’t want to sort of confuse and tread on that. So vagus nerve stimulation typically means that you shoot some electric pulse from a nerve ending into the center of the nervous system. Some devices do that on the neck. Some devices do that through the ear. And I think cases where we think that this might be a good idea, for example, and I would say then definitely go for the FDA-regulated versions. Could be cluster headaches, very intense migraines, and we are all really big promoters for electrical vagus nerve stimulation, especially for medical conditions. You know, it’s not necessarily as comfortable. It’s not necessarily a super relaxing experience when you’re using it. So I think there are also different efficacy of different of those products. So there can also be side effects, minor. I would say in comparison to something like medical pharmaceuticals, if that is the option. But you can get minor burns. There’s obviously surgical gel included with the sensors and things like that. But we generally are very very positive towards the use of EVNS as well. So vagal nerve toning, and you know, we’re referring that to the sort of what we have been doing for 1000s of years, which is omming and chanting and getting that vibration into the center of the chest. You can do that over a longer period of time and also see all the, you know, associated biomarkers. Now, a lot of people are talking about improving vagal nerve tone by, you know, all sorts of processes, cold plunges, and whatnot. And I’m not an expert in those areas, so I’m going to leave that out. But in essence, with layman’s terms, again, you know, it’s my co-founder who is, I say he’s the healer; I’m the hustler; he’s the medical engineer- and I’ve done all the best design. But in layman’s terms, it really means stress resiliency, and we get triggers from a lot of things in life every day. And the purpose or the benefit of having a good vagal nerve tone is that when that whatever it is, scary email or we open a letter with a too big bill or whatever it might be, that the vagus nerve that there is a transmitter that’s reacting and giving you that little pause to not activate all the havoc in the body that the stress response does, which I mentioned before. So improving the stress resiliency means that we obviously activate the stress response less frequently based on the same triggers, and I think that’s definitely something we all want to pursue. And when I talk to business people and leaders, and so I also say it’s not really that we need leaders that are avoiding stress. We need leaders that are really stress resilient, so we can take on the big hairy problems. And I think that is on a bigger scale and on a smaller scale. So, yeah, improving vagal nerve tone is basically improving stress resilience.
Ray Gordon 38:48
One question about the music: How do you decide to choose what type of music and what kind of themes for your music?
Anna Gudmundson 38:56
Yeah, so there are obviously certain combinations of harmonies and pace for neurals. There are number of different elements that are ingredients in the music, certain type of nature signs. So it’s it’s across you know pace, harmonies, sounds, etc. And we work with composers, started able to work within that framework, and then also integrate and compose with the non-hearable, which is interesting because you actually need to experience what the music feels slash sounds like. And a reference there is that Bach, for example, composed some pieces with infrasonic pipes. So some cathedrals actually have subaudible pipes, and when you harmonize those frequencies, it actually creates this sense of awe and expansion. And so it is also not new to compose with infrasonic waves, and you know having the purpose of feeling a sense of relaxation or calm or expansion. And then, as I mentioned, we try to have a little bit different styles, and that’s why we’re also working with a few guest and partner composers because there is also a really strong element of personal taste, which we can’t remove from the equation.
Ray Gordon 40:15
Great,
Linda Sherman 40:17
Ray and I know a sound healer named Jai who is, we feel amazing. She has this amazing voice and is constantly composing new things that she does in sound healing classes here. But I can see now that you can’t just take one of Jai’s pieces and throw it onto your app. It has to be scientifically set up so that it has your patented infrasonic resonance, right?
Anna Gudmundson 40:45
Correct. Yeah, it’s a person that we could work with, but we would also have to build a piece for the platform.
Linda Sherman 40:54
Got it, Meredith. Do you have, now would you like to say anything about Elemind and allow the two of you to interact with each other.
Anna Gudmundson 41:04
I would love to, and I love what Meredith is doing. I had a chance to try it at CES. I’m not like a daytime napper, but I think I got into like theta state or something. If I don’t know if Meredith remembered, I was totally blissed out, and it was really wonderful, deep breath.
Meredith Perry 41:21
Yeah, we both tried each other’s products and love them. I tried Sensate actually several years ago and couldn’t believe how calming it was and how centered I felt when I tried it. And you know, one thing that we didn’t get to try, which would be really fun, is to combine the products. You know, to have like the ultimate mind-body relaxation with vagal nerve stimulation and acoustic neuromodulation. So, if anyone wants to try that and let us know how it goes, we’d love to hear about it.
Anna Gudmundson 41:52
Absolutely, absolutely. I want to do more. It was just like a first try. I also have aging parents. I always give them a bunch of products and to use, so definitely something I’m interested in trying out more.
Meredith Perry 42:06
Great,
Linda Sherman
Debbie.
Debbie Howard 42:07
I just love that we are now getting tools that can help with a lot of this stress management and improving our sleep quality. These tools are actually becoming affordable as well for normal people. I noticed that this year at CES, actually, and I’m comparing years past, like the last couple of years, it just seemed like the things that we were putting on our faces were really heavy and almost intrusive feeling. But I didn’t feel that way at all with Elemind, Meredith. I’m going to just say it was so nice and light as a headband on your forehead, and I really appreciated that. And Anna, I didn’t get to try Sensate, but I’m dying to try that as well because I’m also a yoga fan, and you know the science behind both of your products is real, and that’s a wonderful thing for many, many people who need the things that you’re offering. Yeah, thank you so much for all that you do.
Anna Gudmundson 43:12
Thank you. Yeah, both stress and sleep have such enormous impact on the aging population and on so many medical conditions as well in cognitive decline. And we do our best as well to provide, you know, the vices are HSA/FSA. You can get them on GovX and also working with trauma-informed learning centers and various groups. So we do whatever we can to make it accessible. But even as you mentioned today, both Elemind and Sensate are not 1000s of dollars; they’re in the low hundreds of dollars, and so that is a huge shift.
Meredith Perry 43:49
You know, one of the great gifts of using this kind of stimulation, both Sensate and Elemind, is that there’s no risk of side effects. There’s no risk of side effects. There’s no risk of overuse. At least I can’t speak for Sensate, but I can speak for Elemind, and so you can achieve these great mental states without needing to alter your chemistry in the body, which makes it safe and very accessible for anyone, regardless of your condition.
Debbie Howard 44:18
Yeah, those are really, really good points, Meredith. Anna, did you have something?
Anna Gudmundson 44:23
No, I said I couldn’t agree more.
Debbie Howard 44:25
Yeah, yeah. So I just want to have one question. I know we’re running towards the end, but for both of you, like, is there any, and I’m not trying to put you on the spot, but I’m just very interested as the development of these technologies moves forward. Are we looking at anything for easing the agitation of dementia patients, for example? Just out of curiosity.
Meredith Perry 44:48
So for us at Elemind, agitation isn’t something that we’re looking at, but we did just get awarded a major grant from the UK Medical Research Center {Council} alongside Imperial College London, University of Surrey to look at how we can use Elemind technology to push the brain of a dementia patient into deep sleep so that they can actually consolidate memories. So we’re hoping that we’re going to have some major impact there, but that’ll be a several-year-long clinical trial.
Debbie Howard 45:20
Wow, that’s super exciting, Meredith.
Meredith Perry 45:22
Yeah
Anna Gudmundson 45:23
Yeah, I love that. I look forward to those studies, and I think that you know, it is directly related. As I mentioned, poor sleep is already proven to have a negative effect on cognition and drug cognitive decline. Similarly, we know that very, very well about stress. So anything that causes inflammation and poor regulation of stress will definitely have a long-term impact in cognitive and lot of chronic conditions.
Debbie Howard 45:51
Right. Thank you so much.
Linda Sherman 45:54
Having used Sensate personally, I would think that it would help reduce agitation. Now, if somebody’s in a full-blown state of throwing things at somebody, that’s tough, right? But maybe on a regular use, you can get them into a better frame of mind.
Anna Gudmundson 46:15
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, we do know, and I always want to be very conscious on things that we haven’t done research on, but like we have a lot of people using it also that really have panic attacks, and so we have a lot of anecdotal also reports around numerous health conditions. But of course, downregulation of the nervous system, improving vagal nerve tone, all of that is going to help with agitation over time.
Linda Sherman 46:38
Thank you. Yes, I did notice on your website the testimonials for panic attacks. That’s very specific and should be related, I would think. Okay. Any last things that you would like to say, either of you, before we close?
Anna Gudmundson 46:56
I think everyone should just like, I think we all need to really take care of our nervous system; sleep and stress management and regulation is absolutely critical. We can talk a lot about what we eat and exercise; all of that are interconnected as well, obviously. But I just encourage whatever it is. If it’s meditation, if it is Sensate, if it’s Elemind, ideally both, whatever it is, I think we just need to really take care of our nervous system.
Meredith Perry 47:27
Amen to that. And yeah, if you’re interested in trying our products, please check us out online for Elemind; you can find it at elemindtech.com. That’s E L E M I N D Tech.com, and Anna, do you want to share the Sensate website?
Anna Gudmundson 47:45
Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the reminder. It’s getsensate.com, so that’s G E T S E N S A T E.com. Perfect.
Linda Sherman 47:57
Okay, thank you so much. We really appreciate you, and I’ll let you get back to an incredibly busy week and busy lives. And being founders of startups is a lot of work. So we really, really appreciate you taking the time to be with us. Thank you so much.
Meredith Perry 48:17
Thank you for having us.
Anna Gudmundson 48:19
Thank you so much, everyone.
Ray Gordon 48:21
Thank you very much. Take care.
Debbie Howard 48:22
Thanks, everyone.
Linda Sherman 48:23
Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. This is Linda Sherman, founder of the Rethinking Aging Club. We appreciate your supporting the Rethinking Aging Club podcast by subscribing to our channel. See you next time.