Blood Flow Restriction Training Discussion Between John Doolittle, Steven Munatones and Dr. Mercola
Episode Description
In this interview, former Special Operations Navy SEAL Capt. John Doolittle and Steven Munatones — two KAATSU experts — discuss some of the many benefits of this revolutionary fitness method.
Check out and order a KAATSU support system and keep in the fight.
Transcript
Welcome, everyone, to the Take Control of Your Health podcast. This is Dr. Mercola bringing you the latest cutting-edge interviews to help you achieve optimal health. You can receive more information by subscribing to my free daily newsletter at Mercola.com. Because you won’t find us on Google or Facebook. We respect your privacy and will continue to fight the Silicon Valley censorship. Thank you so much for listening.
So let’s get started with this week’s latest program to help you and your family take control of your health. Welcome, everyone. This is Dr. Mercola helping you take control of your health. And today I’m excited to have two guests to discuss one of the really the most innovative concepts in exercise therapy I’ve ever been exposed to. And I’ve been passionate about exercise for over 50 years. So this is groundbreaking and you’ve just got to listen because the impact it can have on your life of you and the ones you love is beyond dramatic.
So we have John Doolittle, who is a former special captain, I believe, in the Special Forces, who is now involved with KAATSU , K-A-A-T-S-U, which is the pioneer in developing this form of training called blood flow resistance training. And then we have Stephen, too, who’s also going to be joining us. So welcome, guys, and thank you for joining. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us, Dr. Mercola. It’s an honor. Yeah.
So which one of you would like to give a brief history of Dr. Sato out of Japan, who really is an extraordinary individual, a pioneer who developed this therapy over 50 years ago and is now 73 years old. His arms are bigger than most everyone’s legs watching this and extraordinary shape and real testimony to the value of this approach. So who would like to discuss the history of KAATSU and get us up to speed?
John, I can handle this one. Dr. Sato is a real innovator, as you say, and he’s a visionary. Back in 1966, that’s when he first had the inspiration to start something that we now know as KAATSU . And he literally worked, self-experimented on himself. He was a biohacker in the 1960s. And his initial goal was how does he actually maintain his musculature. That was his goal. For seven years, he experimented on himself. He started out using bicycle tubes. He then went to elastic tubing of some sort and he tried KAATSU around every part of his body. So he would tie a tube around his mid forearm, mid-leg. He tied bands around his forehead, his chest, his abdomen, and he finally came up with the system that we now are still currently using to this day. So that was seven years of self-experimentation. Then he proceeded to experiment on his patients and people around him, family members and friends during the ‘ 80s and ‘ 90s.
And then it was in the mid-90s when a professor of exercise physiology at the University of Tokyo who expressed an interest and said, “Dr. Sato, you’re aging, but you’re actually getting bigger. How is that possible?” And when he explained that he was doing it without weights, this exercise physiologist, Dr. Ishii proceeded to do a variety of groundbreaking research, and that led to another 20 years of research that the Japanese have been conducting to this day. And Dr. Sato with Professor Ishii, and then very specifically and more lately, Dr. Nakajima, a renowned cardiologist at the University of Tokyo Hospital, did all the ground-breaking work between 1996 and about 2015. And that’s where we are today. Okay, well, thank you for that history.
I first heard of blood flow resistance training or KAATSU specifically from Ken Ford, who is at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. I listened to one of his podcasts and discussed it and was really intrigued. And that was the first scientific explanation I understood of that. And you mentioned the Japanese doing a lot of the initial research, but there’s been loads of research done in the United States, not just on KAATSU, but on the more generic version, which is blood flow restriction training. And we’ll discuss the differences between those two.
But the reason I’m so fascinated with this is because we have a problem in this country. As people get older, they have a tendency to develop muscle loss. It’s called sarcopenia from the two Greek words, sarxs, which means flesh, and penia meaning poverty. So it’s a progressive loss of muscle mass. And it’s not just the muscle fibers that are being lost, it’s the muscle strength. So there’s something more going on than just an atrophy. It has to do with the quality of the functioning units, like primarily the mitochondria, that get depleted and damaged and dysfunctional as one ages. And traditionally, heavy exercise training has been used, conventional resistance training. And that is typically done with pretty heavy weights. And there’s this term that people need to understand, which is called the one rep max. And that’s the amount of weight that you can lift, the most weight that you can lift at one repetition. And that’s your maximum. And typically, when you’re doing conventional strength training, you’re working in a range of 60% to 80% of that number.
But with KAATSU or BFR, it’s just easier to say BFR in the future. So I’ll refer to BFR, which is an acronym for blood flow restriction training. You’re using ranges of weight. You still use weight, although you could use body weight in some cases. But in most cases, it’s 20% to 40% of when your one rep max. And I’ve been doing this for a few months now, but I’ve understood the principles. And I’ve learned that a competitive person will typically move towards the higher end to 40% or even push it to 50%. But that’s a mistake. You really want to use going to the 20%. So literally one-fifth of what you typically, the most weight you can lift. But you’re not doing it with just a few reps. You’re doing a lot of reps. You’re going to 30 repetitions, at least on the initial first set. And if you can repeat the 30, the next two sets great. But if you can go to 25 or 20. And the key, at least with the upper arms, is you want to minimize the amount of time between the sets. So typically, as Dr. Sato figured out, it’s about 15 seconds, which isn’t a lot of recovery time.
So it’s a lot of work. You’re really pushing it. And it provides profound benefits, which we’re going to talk about in a minute. But I’m wondering because I’ve read the books that Dr. Sato has published in KAATSU Academy. And it’s unclear to me, at least it’s somewhat nebulous. I’m wondering if either of you can comment on the frequency of the training. Typically, well, one of the restrictions of it is that, at least for your arms, you only want the bands on for 15 minutes and on the legs for 20 minutes. And you don’t want to go any longer than that because that’s just what has been figured out. So I guess the question becomes, because it’s such a light load, even though you’re doing a lot of work, there’s not as much muscle damage and you’re able to recover better than when you’re doing heavy-weight training, which you’re only doing most people a few times a week because it takes so long to recover, but you recover much quicker with BFR.
So I’m wondering what the frequency of the training is and the parameters that you would typically advise individuals who want to do one or even more sets a day? Go ahead, John. You know John, before you answer, why don’t you just a little history of how you got into this? Because I think it’s really intriguing. You were, as I mentioned earlier, in the special forces, and you’ve actually come to my house and help train me with this. And you have very interesting history. So why don’t you start with that first? Yeah, no problem. Hello, everyone. I retired two years ago out of the Navy. I worked in Naval Special Warfare for 25 years. And when you work in the special operations community, it’s not a matter of if you get hurt. It’s when you get hurt. So as an example, I had 11 orthopedic procedures done on me over a 25-year career.
My last shoulder surgery, the physical rehab, the physical therapist, used KAATSU on me. And it was an injury that was the exact same injury I had had when I was six years younger. And I recovered and rehabbed in almost half the time, about 60% of the time. So they definitely had my attention.
And what I think when we’re talking about the rehabilitation aspect that you can use with this as a tool, when you’re dealing with elite athletes or tactical athletes or athletes in general, and they get hurt, they oftentimes want to get after it too hard, too fast, too soon. And the beauty of the KAATSU piece is you can really stress the musculature and the physiology of the body without straining the skeletal system. And I think that’s really kind of the game changer when you’re talking about rehabilitation, because we’re always interested in rapid rehabilitation. We want to get the guys back on the battlefield as quickly as possible. So that’s how I was introduced to it. I’ve learned a lot since those days.
It’s not just the rehabilitation aspect. There’s also a recovery from heavy work and a warm-up piece and a whole other hormonal cascade piece that I know Dr. Mercola, you’re going to hit on here in a second. Yeah. So with respect to the original question was the timing and the frequency. Are there any parameters you use with respect to the number of days a week that one needs to rest or recover from this or any guidelines with respect to using more than once at a day? Well, in general, there’s two forms of KAATSU that you know about, right? You have the cycle function, which is a period of pressure on, and in a rapid complete depressurization.
So on the device you have, it’s 20 seconds of pressure on, five seconds of pressure off, 20 seconds of a higher pressure, five seconds off, 20 seconds of a higher pressure. When you’re doing that type of training, you can do it as much as you want. When you’re doing the sustained pressure, that’s the second function.
So going and training up to a certain level of pressure and sustaining that, when you do that type of training, we try to tell the human performance strength coaches and trainers to not do that aspect more than once a day. But what we find is when you’re working really hard, right? Especially when you’re talking about these type-A personalities in the gym, getting after it and pushing heavy weight. One of the things that guys are almost always dealing with is that delayed onset muscle soreness. You hear people talk about DOMS a lot. When you’re doing KAATSU, because, and again, I’m not a researcher and I don’t have a science medical background, but I can tell you from personal experience and with all my teammates when you’re doing KAATSU, because you’re not tearing those fibers down, like we were talking about earlier, like 80% one rep max, because you’re technically doing light intensity load training, there’s very little to any delayed onset muscle soreness from inflammation coming from tearing muscle fibers.
So what you find is people can get after it. Very, very intense type workouts with KAATSU, and within a matter of hours feel like a hundred bucks like they haven’t worked nearly as hard as if they had done that same level of intensity with heavyweight. Okay. So let me get into some of the science and one of the reasons that I’m so excited about this, because as you mentioned, you’re really tricking your body and you’re tricking it into believing that it’s lifting a weight far heavier than you’re lifting. As a result, you’re able to get the benefits of lifting the heavy weight with virtually none of the damage. And you just get the benefits.
So how do you get these benefits? It’s because you’re restricting the blood flow in the limbs, and it’s either the arms or the legs, not at the same time, one or the other. And you do it typically restrict it to a range that’s about half of the arterial occlusion pressure. It’s enough that the blood continues to flow in the limb. And that’s important. It’s not a total occlusion. It’s a partial occlusion. And the blood continues to flow. So there’s continued oxygen, but it’s at a radically reduced level. But the venous output, the venous return back to the heart is stopped. So what you get is an accumulation of metabolites. And to understand how BFR works is, literally, and let me just highlight this. I have never seen in my entire life anything more extraordinary than BFR with respect to exercise. It is just the ultimate, and I’m so saddened that I didn’t know about this earlier, could have saved me so much time, effort, and energy. So that’s why I’m sharing with this now.
So why am I so excited about it? It’s because of this trick. And the trick is, well, before we get into the trick, it’s important to understand that the way that there’s two types of muscle fibers. There’s a type one, which is slow, oxidative, uses oxygen essentially. And they’re usually smaller fibers for endurance. And then there’s type two muscle fibers, which are fast, glycolytic. They don’t use oxygen as hardly at all. And they use, in fact, a substrate of glucose called pyruvate. And they metabolize pyruvate to lactate. And I’m sure you’ve heard of lactic acid. And this is the burn that you get when you do conventional weight training, but you get this burn when you’re doing even more of a burn because you have compression and occlusion of the lymph. So this lactic acid builds up locally and it does magical things. When the lactic acid, it stimulates a cascade of hormonal and metabolic benefits to cause a radical increase in the size, acutely and chronically of your muscle and the strength of the muscle. And in fact, I mean, you’ve heard the term frequently, many people who are weight trainers say they’re going to get swoll. Well, in fact, that is exactly what happens when you have occlusion training on. Your muscles will swell up. Typically, it’s at least an inch in circumference if you’re doing it right. For me, it’s about an inch and a half. So my arms will start at like 13 inches and they’ll grow to 14 and a half after I’m finished with a set. And it stays enlarged and swollen for a while. But anyway, what happens is because these type two muscles, because the type one muscle fibers are exhausted, there’s not enough oxygen, the type two have to come in. And these are the type of muscle fibers that are activated in high-intensity exercise. They give you all these benefits.
And you need type two fibers to actually grow the muscle. So the lactate level accumulates. It doesn’t escape because the venous flow returns to the heart is obstructed. So it accumulates. And the lactate increases the osmotic pressure. And as a result of that, water has to come in, and this is what causes the swelling. But eventually, you’re going to release the pressure and the lactate that’s accumulated to pretty high concentrations will go and do magical things in your body. First of all, it flows out and goes to your brain. And there’s actually, you know, your brain operates primarily in glucose, but we know that you can use ketones too.
Now, BFR has nothing to do with ketones, but it’s an alternative fuel source. But it has everything to do with lactate. And this lactate is another, just like ketones, are another alternative fuel source for the brain. And in fact, the brain can actually work to 60% to 80% of its energy can be done with ketones. And similarly, you can almost use the same amount with lactate. It can survive on about 60% lactate. I mean, it works really, really well. And it does, once it gets in the brain, and it gets in there through an MCT, which is a monocarboxylic transporter, it puts it into the brain. And it basically is fertilizer for the brain. And it produces something called BDNF or brain-derived neurotrophic factor. And it’s just incredible. I mean, you get smarter when you do this, not just a little bit, but I mean, your brain starts to function at a much higher level, much higher level, because this lactate stimulation of BDMF.
And not only that, it does two other magical things. It increases another hormone called the vascular endothelial growth factor, which is VEGF is what it’s called for short. And this is an angiogenic hormone. And why is that so important? Because as you get older, it’s such a key component. The microcirculation, the capillary supply to your muscle, and specifically the type two muscle fibers, and the muscle satellite stem cells that surround those type two fibers are depleted. And they’re not nourished as well. As a result, they’re compromised. And normally, and this is pretty intriguing. There’s studies that show this that were done relatively recently. When you just do regular strength training with someone who has compromised some microcirculation to the type two fibers, they don’t get the muscle growth. You have to have good circulation. So this is why that is so key with BFR is because you increase VEGF and that’s fertilizer for your blood vessels.
So you get stimulates all this capillary growth, not only in your muscles but in your brain and your heart, your liver, all your tissues, which is really good because you want good circulation, especially as you get older. So when you have an improved circulation to the type of fibers, then you’re able to stimulate those muscle satellite stem cells. And that’s what’s responsible for reducing those growth. But you can’t do it if you don’t have a lot of good blood flow. And then finally, another benefit is that the high lactate levels inhibit a substance called myostatin. And if you haven’t heard of that molecule before, it’s somewhat like it sounds. Myo means muscles and statin means stop. So it’s a negative regulator of muscle growth. So when you have high levels of myostatin, which tends to occur as you get older, it actually inhibits your ability to produce muscle growth.
And one of the beautiful things about this training with the lactate, and you have those high lactate levels, it actually lowers your myostatin by 50%, cuts it in half. I mean, that’s as effective as taking, there’s a lot of people who take drugs to inhibit myostatin. And you can even go online and look at Google images and find myostatin growth or inhibited mice or cows or even horses. And you’ll see these pictures of these massively body-built, looks like body built building animals. And it’s only because they’ve inhibited myostatin. So you can do the same thing with the BFR. And it also increases another hormone called F… It’s actually a glycoprotein called follicular stimulating, follistatin. Follistatin. FTS1. And that goes up by 900%. And this FTS1 actually inhibits myostatin even further. So it does all this magic.
And essentially, for 15 minutes of an investment in time, we’ll talk about the intensity that’s required in a bit, but you’re going to get this incredible growth in your muscles and a radical improvement in the strength. And that is so important because sarcopenia is a massive problem. And one of the reasons I’ve been so fascinated with this is that I lost both my parents within the last two years. And I failed, failed miserably to address this as they grew older. And that’s because I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know that there was simple, easy solutions. And this is something that occurred, I mean, it occurred my own parents. So it’s clearly occurring with almost everyone out there. It’s not always foolish or not an astute observer really fascinated with health, but I mean, it happened to my parents. And they became progressively weaker, and they were eventually bedridden, not bedridden, confined to wheelchairs, and that rapidly accelerated their demise. And I’m sure, I mean, they could have easily lived for another few years with a higher quality of life. So this happens to everyone as you get older.
It’s inevitable, invariably inevitable, but we can delay it dramatically with tools like this. And it’s not just that you want to be buff. I mean, it’s not bad to be looking buff, but you want your muscles serve a function other than just supporting you and helping you move around. They actually are a very important metabolic organ. They comprise almost half of the body tissue and muscle. And it’s the primary way that you’re able to lower your glucose levels and active insulin. So if you have more muscle mass, you’re less likely to become insulin-sensitive and develop diabetes or obesity. But also, it prevents frailty. Frailty is what takes you out. It’s what took my parents out. This progressive loss of your function. And not only frailty, but it provides a reserve. Because when you get injured, you know you’re going to need a reserve of protein and muscle is a magnificent source of protein. It’s a reserve of protein that you can use when you don’t have access to it for whatever reason, but it can help your immune function. So it’s so important to have optimal muscle mass as you’re aging.
I don’t know of any better intervention than blood flow restriction training because you don’t have to use heavy weights. And in fact, for someone like my parents, if they were alive now, I would just have to put the bands on them and just simply do body weight, you know, just do biceps with just their hand weight, nothing more. And that probably would have produced magnificent gain. Then it probably would have moved up to a pound or two pound weights. I mean, really, really tiny weights.
Because of the restriction, you get this magnificent metabolic acid of events that actually reverses, in some ways, the aging process. So Stephen or John, if you’d like to comment on that, and we can discuss it further. Over 70% of our users are people over the age of 50. And most of those people, unlike the Navy SEALs like John or Olympic or professional athletes, they’re not actually into any kind of resistance training.
And we do exactly what you would have recommended to your parents to actually go through the motion of movement. Whether that’s stretching, whether that’s just extending your arms up with the bands, and we see the effects. Now, their arms may not increase an inch and a half as yours were, but most of our users over the age of 50, they’re not motivated or they’re not interested in an inch and a half growth. They just want to be more toned or be able to stretch and rub the top of their head or touch their toes if they’re standing up. So you know those people with the products, they could use them up to twice a day doing the cut cycle as John recommended 15 times a day. I’m sorry, 15 minutes a day, twice a day, and without any extra equipment.
And they find that to be effective, convenient, and very sustainable. They can do it 365 days a year if they wish. Yeah I couldn’t agree more. This type of training, and we’ll talk about the details of how one can access this in a moment. But this type of training, in my view, should be used by every single person over 50. I mean, there is almost no reason not to. And the other form of non-weight training with a use for is something that’s called KAATSU or BFR walking, merely to put the bands right near your groin and put them in pretty high pressure. And then just walk with it. That’s it. And I do that pretty much every day. I walk typically supposed to do 20 minutes. I use a little lighter pressure so I walk a little longer, but you’ll get extraordinary benefits just by walking. I mean, nothing more than that. No weights at all.
Yeah, you can do squats and deadlifts and calf raises, lunges, and a variety of other leg exercises, but you really don’t need to unless you’re seeking that component.
So John, did you have any comment on it? Just that what we seem to see a lot of guys doing, especially in special operations, they’ll have a prescribed workout or the Human Performance Program that’s already programmed for that day. And they’ll go through all of that without KAATSU. And then at the end of the workout, as a finisher, they’ll put KAATSU on and they won’t use any weight. And they’ll do a lot of functional movement type things. There’s that whole aspect of the neuromuscular pathway, enhancing that after a heavy workout, putting KAATSU on, and just doing something as simple as a very like half-speed grappling with jiu-jitsu, or krav maga, or shadow boxing, or even just light calisthenics. Something like that, when the guys have the bands on at the optimal pressure, can be a very intense way to finish out an already pretty intense. And one of the things that you do when you help me understand is that you could put these bands on when you’re doing things like swimming and being a former Navy SEAL and an avid master swimmer, you use them every day pretty much in your swimming exercises.
And I’m certainly not a swimming professional, but I use them pretty much every day. I do about 15 minutes of backstroke with them on. If you’re doing 15 minutes of sustained backstroke, that’s actually impressive. You’re right. At the end of, say, a master’s workout, I’ll put these on and go with some buddies of mine for five or 10 minutes. And I’ll be smoked. Something about being in the water column and being horizontal. Actually, I have to back the pressure off a little bit from my optimal pressure on either legs or arms. But yeah, absolutely. When you’re untethered, the bands are waterproof and aqua therapy is something a lot of the guys are using it for as well. It’s incredible. I mean, the applications are almost limitless if you’re creative.
So let me go into, if you’re interested in using this to increase muscle mass and not necessarily address sarcopenia directly in the elderly, but say you’re younger and you have the potential to gain more muscle mass and I couldn’t recommend an intervention more widely or more aggressively. And I want to describe the details of how to do that, at least from my experience, and then you can chime in. But from reading the literature, it appears that the blood flow restriction training is really probably one of the most effective ways to increase muscle size. But if you will increase muscle strength, but doesn’t do as well as the conventional resistance training, that you’ll do better with on the 80% list, but you’ll still or 60, 80%. You’ll still get stronger. There’s no question.
So to do this, to get this increase in size and to actually increase the concentration of lactic acid, you want to stay within the restrictions of you want to have the right pressure. You don’t want it too tight. If it’s too tight, you know basically, there’s a simple test to check capillary refill pressure where you take your palm, you push your thumb into right below where the thumb on your other hand is, and you see how fast it’ll turn white and then see how long it takes to turn pink again. And that should not be any longer than three seconds. If it’s less than two seconds, it’s probably not tight enough. If it’s greater than three, it’s too tight. If you have any pain, it should definitely loosen them up or stop it. But tingling or numbness. You don’t want to be pinching a nerve. But it’s pretty easy to do. There’s a pretty broad range, probably between 40 and 60% of the arterial occlusion pressure. But you got to get that pressure right. Once you have that pressure right, then you can do the exercise.
And the exercise should be restricted to 15 minutes for the arms and 20 minutes for the legs. And normally, in my experience, you can fit in three different types of exercises within that timeframe, about five minutes per exercise. So like this morning, I did bicep curls. And normally I can do a bicep. I mean, my one rep max is probably 50, 55 pounds, probably a 55, but I did it with 15 pounds, which is like perfect. In fact, I would probably go, I might even do 12.5. Somewhere in that, maybe 12.5 might even be a bit better, but I do that to 30 reps, nice and slow. Slow up, slow down, and then waiting for 15 seconds. Usually, what’s interesting, you know I was doing peak fitness exercises, which was for me, it was primarily elliptical, but it was cardio high intensity training. We warming up and then going all out for 30 seconds and then recovering for 90 and then doing seven or eight cycles of that.
And what I noticed is that one of the things that happened is that there was still an increase in body temperature where you’re sweating. And that happens almost immediately when you’re doing the blood flow restriction. You start to sweat. That means, in my view, that it’s high intensity exercise that you’re activating those types of motifs. To do that, normally I do 30 reps. And if I can do 30 times three, that’s great. But most of the time, it’ll be the second set. I’ll do 25 and then it goes down to 20. And then that’s one exercise. Then this morning I did triceps, did that for the same thing, and then I do hand grippers with flexors of the forearms. And then by the time you finish those at the three sets of those in 15 minutes, you have to take the bands off because you reached your limit. And you really want to push it hard. I mean, you don’t want to push it to failure completely, but you really want to push it.
You want to feel a little burning, which is from the lactic acid in your muscle. And then you get the benefit. And you know it might be interesting for you to check the size of your muscle beforehand, which is easy to do. You just have your muscle not flex, but just put your arm straight out and put it around the middle of the biceps. And usually they have these tape measures that have a band that can go in and it’s real easy to measure.
So I mean, typically, my arm is growing about an inch and a half, and now it shrinks back after the exercise, but it’s pretty interesting to see. Well, one of the things that we’re noticing and I know we want to talk about the hypertrophic effects in muscle building, but I’d also like you mentioned the VEGF, and I just recently learned kind of what that represents. There’s a whole nother aspect with wound healing and wound care and lower extremity wound care and that kind of stuff. We see people that are working on these muscle strengthening or overall fitness. Yet when they start having wounds that they’re dealing with, they seem to be healing faster.
So one of the things we wanted to talk with the VA about was what’s going on with that in addition to the muscle-building aspect. And I propose it as a question to you with what might be going on with that. I mean, I experienced it myself. They did a case study on me. I just recently had a total knee replacement. And at the seven-day mark, they said, “Hey, these stitches should have come out already. What’s going on here?” And at the three-week mark, it already looked like the five to six-week mark. And I’m not talking about the muscle aspect, but just the wound healing piece of it. Yeah, I suspect that’s related to the improvement of the microcirculation from the VEGF.
But one of the other components that we should have talked or discussed or mentioned is that the improvement that occurs when you have an injury and you have to be putting your limb into a cast. And this is something Dr. Sato initially observed. There was just a dramatic decrease in the atrophy. In fact, almost no atrophy occurs. Normally, there’s quite a significant amount of atrophy that occurs after immobilizing a limb for four to six weeks. So you can prevent almost all that muscle loss with just regular use of the blood flow restriction training. And I have a great example of that. When I first met Dr. Sato a little over two years ago, I had my family with me in Tokyo. And my daughter at the time was 10. And she had just broken her arm. Family vacation. We’re going to Tokyo. She breaks her arm literally the day before we go. So they put her in a soft cast.
We got to Hawaii, they put her in a hard cast. By the time we got to Tokyo, she’d been in a hard cast for about three days. And immediately, Dr. Sato, of course, asked if it was all right if we were all right with him doing some KAATSU on a 10-year-old. But that’s exactly what he did. Because it was a cast that went almost all the way up to her armpit. He put the bands right you know at the most proximal part of the arm and had her do just that, that isometric hold during the pressure on phase and in a relaxed during the pressure off phase.
And he recommended for the next eight weeks that we well, she was in the cast for another six weeks. But she did KAATSU isometric holds every day, morning and night for the next six days. Now, this is a 10-year-old, but when she came out of the cast, her arms were the same size at both the forearms and bicep, tricep, which would I understand for a 10-year-old at least, there should be pretty significant atrophy and there wasn’t. Yeah, it definitely works. It’s crazy not to use this.
So the only argument, this is what I want to discuss because is a really practical component of this is the cost of the equipment. Now, KAATSU is not inexpensive. There is a professional version, which is, I think, somewhere around $5,000. The home version is typically about $2,000, the Nano, it’s called. And I know you’re coming out with a lower-priced version, about $1,000 or less. But that’s still a significant investment for most people. And the other alternative, and then you can go on Amazon and find these are just the blood flow restriction bands, which are typically under $50, and in many cases, closer to $25. So that’s quite a bit of significant difference.
I mean, it’s like almost a 40-fold difference in cost. So you know I’ve been playing with these bands too, and they are really..not only inexpensive, but they’re so easy to use and certainly less cumbersome than using the KAATSU . Now you cannot do KAATSU cycling where it pumps up and goes down, pumps up and goes. All you can do is KAATSU training where you have a consistent pressure, and you can actually get the benefits. But for many people, maybe that’s all they need.
So I’m wondering if you can address that, because to me, it seems the availability and the opportunity for most people to apply this training is going to be limited by their finances. And to have a intervention that they could use for $25, and almost if they were elderly, we wouldn’t need any weight training weights at all. But if they did, they could use just water bottles from their house. It probably wouldn’t need more than five to seven pounds. And that’s all. So that’s easy to figure. So it seems to me a pretty inexpensive solution for people to use, and it would make it more widely available. So I’m wondering if you can comment on the downsides of those and if there’s any concerns. I’ll address this. I typically would look at cost as an inverse relationship to risk.
And what I mean by that is when you put the band around your arm and I have the band here, this band is actually the really hard part of this band was actually making the air bladder inside. The air bladder inside was really quite difficult to engineer, but we did it so that the entire limb sits on a bed of air. And therefore, when you move the limb and change its circumference, the band is not only elastic, but the muscle is sitting on a bed of air and it adjusts appropriately. Now, if you have cardiac issues, if you are taking medications, if you’re older, morbidly obese, sedentary, et cetera, I personally would never, ever put a band around my arm that is non-uniform in its pressure. And with air, it’s completely uniform. And also, you know when you put bands on the amount of pressure that is on the limb, when it’s not elastic, will change. So if I do this, if I go from here, there’s a certain pressure on my limb, my arteries, my veins. And when I do this, there’s another pressure.
And our whole company, everything that Dr. Sato has been working towards and accomplish is fundamentally based on one key principle, and that’s safety. And because our core market is people or are people over the age of 50, and the oldest person that we have actively doing KAATSU is 104, this is our core market that we’re trying to be extraordinarily safe about.
And so it’s really a safety factor. And if you’re buying something for $25 on Amazon, it means it was manufactured for maybe $5. This is why we say cost and risk are an inverse relationship in the BFR market. Could I jump in as well? Sure, sure. Something else, with the cycle, when I first met Dr. Sato, he told me he never does anything with KAATSU on his clients and patients without doing the pressure on and off. A little more pressure on the cycling. Yeah, when you’re doing the cycling, you’re warming up that vascular tissue. I mean, the way I kind of visualize it is at the capillary level, a stretching, holding an engorgement aspect, and then releasing.
And then a little bit more during the next pressure and releasing. The cycle goes through that eight times. We never do any KAATSU sustained pressure until we’ve warmed up the vascular tissue. It’s one thing if you’re talking about young elite or tactical athletes that are already doing all kinds of other exercise to warm up their system.
But if you’re doing, if you’re a sedentary, you know, somebody like Steven was saying, it’s in our core market area that’s, you know, 50, 60, 100 years old. And they’re not warming up the vascular system before going right up to that optimal pressure. There’s potential issues there with that. And I kind of think of it as a guy going into gym, he’s not going to throw 300 pounds on the bench press and get after it. He’s going to warm up to that. I agree. And I would agree with that assessment too. I mean, I own a KAATSU nano and I do use every morning the cycling, probably about three full cycles before I do the KAATSU training.
But I don’t do the KAATSU training with the KAATSU system. I do it with bands. And Stephen, I disagree with your assessment about safety. That’s not been my experience. Most of the bands out there are elastic. And I couldn’t agree more. You do not want to use a non-elastic band. So you think you’re going to save yourself some money even $25 and you’d use a cloth. It’s not going to give. That is just beyond foolish and very unsafe. But I haven’t seen a band that’s not elastic out there. So that would be, you know, it’s not an issue. And they’re pretty uniform pressure except where the attachment is where it turns. So I don’t think that’s an issue. But what is an issue in some of these bands, they don’t understand it for whatever reason. They only have two inch sizes. And you don’t want too wide a cuff. And you only want to restrict the band on the arm to one inch. And the one on the leg is two inch. Now, if you have 18-inch arms, you could probably get away with a two-inch band on your arms. But most people don’t have 18 inch arms. They have a lot smaller. So you got to go to one inch.
But personally, I think the bands are great. And I think if you’re in limited amounts of income and you can’t afford the, I mean, ideally KAATSU would be great. And if you can afford it, unbelievable. I use it. I think it’s a magnificent thing. But for those who can’t, I mean, it’s crazy not to get a $25 band. Use it appropriately. You don’t do the warm-ups. If you don’t have a KAATSU system, you can’t use KAATSU cycling, but you do some other type of warm up. And then use the training. I mean, it’s basically almost free. And I don’t think there’s a really serious safety factor there. I mean, I’ve been using it for the last almost two months and actually prefer it to the KAATSU for the training because it’s just so simple. You don’t have to pump it up and you don’t have this extra piece of apparatus walking around. It’s just easier. Going to the beach, I don’t have to carry a machine with me to pump it up, you know because I can’t go over there without you know and it’s just you don’t want to bring that expensive machine to the beach. You just want to be able to tie up once you’re there. All right.
So anyway, we have our new products. You know It’s this small, the size of my hand, if it’s in a shirt pocket, if it’s in a pair of board shorts. So you know it’s $799. Yeah, it’s a good price point. Problem with that, though, is it’s got a lot of EMF when it’s got Bluetooth and No, no, no. So there’s one you’re talking about are wearables that you use your cell phone. That’s a separate product. Okay, what’s that one called? This is KAATSU Wearables. Wearables, okay. There are no bands on this. I’m sorry, no tubes on this. So it simply goes on your arm. But because I know people are worried about electronic EMFs. Product. Yeah This is a separate product from this. Okay, good. What’s the non-EMF version called? This is the non-EMF version called Cycle 2. 0. It does both training and cycle function, and it’s customizable. Okay. Perfect.
So then you can get the benefits of warming it up. Now, the challenge for the smaller units, as I understood it, and one of the reasons I went to Nano was that it can’t generate as high pressure, which is a non-issue for the arm, but it is for the legs, especially if you’ve got bigger legs like I do. So you want to go higher, you really want to go all the way up to 400 millimeters of mercury. Now, obviously, that’s above the arterial pressure, but it’s not the pressure that’s transmitted into the tissue. But that’s the pressure that registers on the device. So can this cycle two you said? What’s the highest pressure that can generate? 400. It’s the same. Oh, it can. Okay, wow.
We’ve dropped the price about a third. Wow. That’s pretty crazy. Then that becomes, you know, from $2,800 is a big difference. That really opens up your market. So if you can if that would be the way to go, then I did not realize that the price dropped so dramatically. Sorry.
We’ve listened to the customers and we understood that price was an issue. So we’ve dropped the price. We’ve made it easier to work with. And the size, the compactness, we actually our engineers made it to fit in your shirt pocket or in your pants pocket. Yeah, that would work. Does it use the same bands? It uses the exact same bands. Okay. Yeah. Well, that’s a winner.
So that would be my new recommendation then. And it’s called cycle two, you said? Cycle 2.0. 2.0, okay. So yeah, that would be, that’s a sweet spot. I mean, obviously, there’ll still be a significant number of people who can afford that for a price point, in which case, you can save up for it and you can use the simple bands in the meantime. But yeah, that’s really a great development. I mean, that’s just within, ’cause I just got this system about four months ago.
I mean, I found it, I’ve known about it through the Ken Ford, as I mentioned earlier, maybe about two years, but I just didn’t understand it. I mean, even though Ken explained it pretty well, I just didn’t fully get it. I didn’t think it was, for some whatever reason, I didn’t do it until I went to the Bulletproof Conference and met you guys at the, as you was one of the exhibitors there. And I realized it was something I had to do. And I’m so glad because it really is the best innovative exercise therapy I’ve ever encountered. I couldn’t be more enamored and passionate about it. And I think it’s something that virtually everyone would benefit from. I guess unless you’re quadriplegic, you know, in which case you can’t get voluntary muscle contractions.
We do treat quadriplegics. Stand corrected. Yes. And they’re actually, their response is actually more significant because imagine someone who’s been immobile for years. The only time they move is with passive exercise with their therapist. But now we put the bands on and the amount of physical improvement, skin tone, musculature, vascularity, et cetera, are beyond what the medical community has even imagined. So our successes with the quadriplegics have been extraordinarily satisfying in all parties. Caregivers, the quadriplegics themselves, the family members and ourselves. How are you able to initiate a muscle contraction though? I mean, how can they get the benefit? I mean, I understand the restrictions just simply doing it without any contraction. Correct. So initially, as the person is immobile, the very first effect, we do the KAATSU cycle, just as you would, two, three, four times. And gradually, the tension in their muscles relaxes. Wow. And once it’s being relaxed, we have quadriplegics who begin like this, and suddenly they’re able to relax. Then literally, if they can begin to just do a slight movement, we begin at that point. And gradually, we get them to move. Wow. We do this morning and evening.
The evening KAATSU is extremely important. Many quadriplegics have a problem sleeping through the night. And so we do KAATSU ideally an hour before they go to bed. They sleep much, much better by all parameters. Therefore, simple things like a laceration, you know, on their leg, on their arm, et cetera, heals significantly faster. Gosh. And so we have an active program right now with anybody who’s a quadriplegic, and we love to help these people. Man, that is fantastic. I had no idea that that would work, but it makes perfect sense now that you explain it. Obviously, you have to use the KAATSU equipment for that. You can’t do that with a band because you need the compression off and off. But I’m intrigued not only with that, but you mentioned how the improvement of the sleep.
And I’m wondering what you’ve noticed on sleep quality improvement in time. You said an hour before. Would this just be one or two cycles on the arms, or do the legs too, or how does that work? Ideally, you do three to five cycles on the arms and then the equipment, three to five cycles on the legs. But many business people, many professional athletes, they cross time zones or people are just under stress. We ask them to put the bands on their arms or their legs. And they do simple exercises. It’s like rotating their shoulders, like a tricep stretch, just typing emails, sending a text to your children or your spouse. Something very simple. We do not want to stress the body. So adrenaline is produced. We just want to relax the body to prepare it for a deeper sleep.
I’m going to play with that. I had not considered using it because I typically do it in the morning and I imagine it might be better to use a lower pressure. Would that be why? Yes. You’re absolutely correct. I typically go about 270 on my arms for the morning, but I would maybe 200 or so, 170. 200 to 220. About 50 points lower would be exactly right. Okay, yeah, because it would just wouldn’t seem right because when you’re going to bed, you don’t want to be really exercising. That’s not the time to exercise. But this is a different, this is a different principle, different concept. So it’s interesting, I’m going to play with it tonight. Yes. We started this with our bedridden patients, patients with dementia, et cetera. And we noticed over the course of many years that the closer we were doing KAATSU to their bedtime, whether we were in a retirement community or in a hospital, that they were reporting back to us and their caregivers were reporting back to us how much better they slept and how much better, obviously, the next day they felt. And so we fine tune this, we fine tune this, and we literally have a jet lag slash insomnia protocol, which this is a part of.
And John can share this with you. Ideally, an hour before you go to bed, very simple movement. I would barely even call it exercise. Just simple movement at a lower cycle pressure, arms and legs, and take it off and you’ll sleep like a baby. John, do you want to comment on that too? And do you think he can get away with just doing the arms? Absolutely. Go ahead, Steve. Yeah.
Personally, it depends how I feel that day. If I have some, if I’m traveling from city to city, and I have some emails to do before I go to bed, I’ll have them on my arms. That’s very simple, just tapping away at the keyboard. Or if I have some phone calls to my family or to John, for example, I’ll strap them on my legs as I’m on my cell phone talking, maybe moving my toes or turning my ankles around. And that’s enough.
All right, John, do you want to comment on that too? Oh, yeah. I use it every night before you know one of the things we’re dealing with with veterans and across the active duty space is guys that get stuck in this hypervigilant state and PTSD sympathetic state and things like that. Anything, any non-pharmacological tool that’s out there to help kickstart that proper circadian rhythm, we’re all about experimenting with that. And so, yes, we’re using it a lot to help guys with sleep. I’d like to just jump back to the quadriplegic piece. And I’ll use Romy, a friend of mine as an example, a special forces group guy that he was shot through and through. C7 was completely destroyed, total paralysis, all four limbs. What his therapists use KAATSU for on him is primarily to improve the circulation piece. But the immediate thing he started reporting back on after the afternoon sessions was one, he was sleeping better, which right out of the gate, that’s a game changer for somebody. But. For anyone. Two, and this kind of surprised me. I was not expecting this. In his feet and ankles, every time he gets horizontal, he has a neuropathic pain response that makes it very, very hard for him to go to sleep. And he has a pharmacological solution to that, to just kind of knock him out to get to sleep. He found that the neuropathic pain piece was significantly better. And some mornings, when I talked to him after the fact, he said he had no neuropathic pain.
So I don’t know all the details with how that autonomic nervous system goes with somebody that is truly a complete quadriplegic and has no muscular control of their limbs. But if you can improve circulation and you can do anything to help with neuropathic pain, that, to me, when we’re talking about especially the veteran space and you know then we start getting into phantom limb pain and all these other things, that’s in a really exciting space in the Veterans Affair scenario that that’s why we’re really leaning into the VA medical system.
Well, just further confirmation that this is one of the most exciting innovation and exercise training and really health that I’ve ever encountered. And as we mentioned earlier, it was developed by Dr. Sato in Japan five decades ago. And I’m wondering if either of you or both can comment on the prevalence or the adoption in the United States, because from my viewpoint, it’s just barely touched the surface, scratched the surface rather. And there’s not many people who understand it, let alone use it. Correct. We have, I think, most 95% of our users range from San Diego to San Francisco, from New York to Boston. We have some cities, you know, Tampa, some pockets in Austin Texas, Park City Utah, that do use KAATSU. Certainly on the professional and Olympic sports level, those athletes are always looking for an edge.
So it’s very popular. But really, the amount of Americans who are exposed to KAATSU or even heard of KAATSU or any kind of BFR is tiny. And it is a new space. It’s got a significant track record of success, but we have yet to properly and comprehensively introduce this to our society. But through your greatly appreciated work and support of this, we hope to change that equation. I do too, because it’s really one of the missions of my site and professional life is to help people understand simple, inexpensive interventions to radically change your life. And KAATSU and BFR qualifies this on steroids. But John, I would like you to comment on the professional athlete, because one of the, not that that makes a big difference, but it might impress some people.
I know it impressed me because I’m happening to be more interested in athletics, is that the best or the fastest swimmer in the world, the one who is targeted to break Michael Phelps records at the next Olympics. I forget his name, but you certainly know him. He’s using KAATSU training now. So maybe you can speak to that a bit. Sure. Who you’re talking about is one of our biggest ambassadors for KAATSU. He is absolutely one of the fastest swimmers in the world. I don’t want to say he’s the fastest, especially with the World Championships going on today. Yeah. Olympics will turn out. Absolutely incredible. His name’s Michael Andrew. What’s incredible with Michael is he doesn’t just use it as a human performance aspect. He doesn’t just use it for training. He also uses it for the recovery immediately after heavy work, and he uses it to warm up before an event.
So imagine somebody getting ready before a big swimming event. They’re in the ready room, and they have the bands on doing not intense cycles, but still doing the pressure on, pressure off. Engorging at the capillary level, holding that wide open, getting the vasculature nice and wide open right before an event to help with just simply improving blood flow. And then right after the event, when arguably, all the tissue in the major limbs is just saturated with lactic acid depending on the type of event that he or she just did. Now, instead of going and I’ll talk swimming because that’s kind of my world and Steven’s world. And the traditional way to approach a warm-down after any race is you hop right into the warm-down pool. What Michael started experimenting with was instead of going into the warm-down pool, going right to the table where the trainers put the KAATSU bands on his legs, do a cycle on his legs, do two cycles on his arms, or vice versa, in order to help flush all of a lot of the toxins in lactic acid out. Because when the bands even when the bands are at a very tight aspect, they’re never so tight that the blood’s not moving.
You already mentioned that. But the cardiac output, the stroke volume has to increase in order to keep the blood flowing, right? So now if you imagine you have the leg bands on, they pressure up, everything gets engorged distal of the bands, and now you have this rapid complete decrease in pressure, and the stroke volume cardiac output has responded to these tight bands. So now you have this almost flushing sensation. And you really feel it. For example, if you did a heavy, heavy, or a very hard deadlift day and then right after doing those deadlifts or right after doing those squats or whatever it is, you do some heavier cycles. You’ll feel that flush. And it’s pretty incredible. So he’ll use it as a warm-up. He’ll use it as a warm down.
And then in his training phases, he’ll swim in an untethered mode, which creates a pretty high lactic acid aspect and the corresponding hormonal cascade that comes with that during the training. So he uses it for the whole enchilada. Yeah, well, thanks for sharing that. It’s an aspect of the approach that I’ve not really fully appreciated. And I will definitely start integrating that into the cycling. And again, the cycling can only be done with the KAATSU equipment. There’s nothing else on the market that does this. You really can’t do it with the bands. So simple bands. So that’s really good to know. And something else with the cycles. Dr. Sato. Oh, go ahead. Let me just finish this one comment and you can discuss it. But what I noticed with the cycling in the morning, typically I do some stretches and then I’ll do some pull-ups, dips, and push-ups, just one set, not three sets. And it’s just with the cycling.
And interestingly, my arm circumference increases by an inch. Now I go to an inch and a half if I just use the training mode, but it’s just simple cycling does it, which is just, to me, shocking. But anyway, I’m sorry. Go ahead.
I just wanted to add one piece, which was that Dr. Sato for decades has worked almost exclusively in the cycle mode. And even today, when you go there, even if you’re doing performance training with him, he will work in the cycle mode. He’s a huge advocate of using it. So can you expand on that? Does that mean he does his training in KAATSU cycling too? He tries to do the KAATSU Cycle as much as possible. And I might defer to Stephen on the details. Yeah, I’d be interested in that because you know he’s an impressive human being. We’re going to put a picture of him. At 73 years old, he looks like he’s 33 years old. Yes.
So he’ll do KAATSU Cycle simply because at his age, he sees the performance gains as you do, whether he’s stretching or doing some slow contraction of the bicep, triceps. He does a KAATSU Cycle on his step master machine where he works his legs. And you know he’s the only one on the planet other than his wife who’s been using it over 50 years. And both of them are incredible specimens. They’re so healthy. Yeah, if you could send me a picture of her, I’ve only seen his picture. That would be interesting to see what his wife looks like. So we have the female example of someone who’s been doing it for five decades. Yes. Her skin is amazing. It’s 20 years younger than you would even imagine. It’s really incredible. And that’s one of the other aspects that Dr. Sato has long inspired is actually because there’s so many capillaries in the epidermis for people who’ve had surgery, who’ve gotten an accident or have a small scar, or just a woman who wants beautiful skin, this KAATSU Cycle is really the way to go. I agree.
I’ve decided to move it up one step and actually have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber in my house now so that after I do my KAATSU cycling and BFR training and go into the infrared sauna and swim a little bit with some more BFR, then I’ll go into the chamber for like an hour and a half. And I think that it increases the oxygen and works very powerfully, synergistically with that.
So I’m hoping to get the combined benefits. So either of you have experience with combining it with hyperbaric? No, I have not. Okay. I’ll share what I find in the next few months too. What we have had, because we are now supplying KAATSU in 47 different countries around the world, many people are experimenting with all sorts of equipment that they have.
And we’ve always advocated, you can do KAATSU standalone if you wish, or you can do KAATSU and combine it with anything. An ultra G machine, a hyperbaric chamber, whatever you would like. It’s an enhancement of what you’re doing. It can also be a standalone modality if you wish. That’s great. So I really appreciate you guys taking time out of your schedule to help provide a wider picture of the benefits of this enormously beneficial strategy to improve your health.
I think you really have to have your head examined if you don’t seriously consider integrating it into your schedule. I mean, even as a simple basis of doing the BFR bands is the first step. And then saving up for not purchasing initially the cycle 2.0, which is a really great innovation to reduce the cost by literally two thirds of what the previous price was. So any closing comments or points you’d like to emphasize?
Our information is at KAATSU-global.com. We welcome any and all inquiries, questions. It could be from an academic researcher, a PhD, MD, or someone who knows nothing about exercise and science. We want to introduce this to the very best athletes and the quadriplegics from coast to coast.
Yeah. John, do you have any comments? I think Steven closed it up pretty well. I would like to just take this opportunity to say thank you to you, Dr. Mercola, for really helping spread the word for how much potential this has to help people around the world. The way I look at it is, yes, you can help any athlete make incremental improvements. I’ll guarantee that 100%. But what’s more interesting to me, is that incremental improvement to an athlete, you can have an exponential change in life to somebody that might be dealing with metabolic syndrome or hypertension or a whole host of things that better circulation helps them with. So thank you for helping spread this word. You’re welcome.
But the big one is, of course, is frailty. And really, what’s motivated me most, as I mentioned at the beginning, is my parents who developed that. And they needed this. And I failed to recognize the importance that this could have had on them. And just as simply as putting the bands on them and just having them do these simple exercises could have provided a dramatic improvement in the quality of life. And you’re right, it’s not incremental. It is exponential. I mean, you’re talking about a radical change in the quality of their life. And it’s not so much about living more years. It’s about increasing the health span or the quality of the life that you have, the years that you have left. And it’s virtually, well, it’s very challenging, if not, well, I won’t say impossible, but very hard and difficult to lead a satisfying, fulfilled life unless you have access to adequate muscle function.
And, you know, this KAATSU and blood flow restriction training will help you achieve it. I mean, it really is the single best, most effective strategy that’s out there. And, you know, I’ve been looking at this thing for 50 years and it just deeply saddened that it took me the majority of those 50 years to figure out to find this approach. It’s so radically effective. But hopefully people will consider, watch this.
And, you know, I actually mentioned earlier too, I put together, it took me about three months to write this review paper, but it’s gonna be submitted to one of the journals real soon and hopefully be published by the end of the year. And along with how to implement KAATSU or blood flow restriction training, because it really isn’t that hard. You just have to do it. It takes a little bit of time and effort, but it’s certainly worth it.
