Unlocking The Brain's Potential: Photobiomodulation Therapy With Liam Pingree

Lisa: Welcome into Pushing the Limits. This week I am joined by Liam Pingree from Ireland, all the way around the world. He's taken time out of his evening to be with us today, so thank you very much, Liam. Welcome to the show, lovely to have you.

Liam Pingree: Thank you, Lisa, pleasure to be here.

Lisa: Right. Now we're going to get into some interesting stuff today. People are going to be really excited to learn about this. Now, you are the founder of a company called Neuronic. Before we get into what Neuronic is, which sounds really interesting, can you give us a little bit of your background? How did you get here and how did you get to be founding this? This is a photobiomodulation, red light therapy device that you have developed. But give us a little bit of your background before we get into the science of this.

Liam Pingree: Yeah, okay. So I guess it really was an entrepreneurial kind of spirit in me from a young age. I had worked in several different businesses, some startups. I worked in fund administration, I worked in an off-grid solar company in Rwanda, I worked in a debt capital market startup. And mainly I was studying international business, did a global experience, and after college moved to New York to price derivatives, so the risk on derivatives. And that was the career I was going to go down, finance. Then after a year of doing that, COVID kind of hit, and that really went up in the air. I was going to move back to London.

Liam Pingree: And so it turned out that I had seen this video on Facebook, of all places, and in the video there was a guy called Max and he had Parkinson's. He was taking tablets for a couple of years, and after a couple of years he thought, these aren't going to be working anymore. So he rang a friend. He'd seen a study on red light therapy on mice in Australia and he thought, hey, the red light has worked on these mice that have Parkinson's, they got better, why couldn't it work on my brain? And so he gets this bucket, puts a strip of near and red lights in, staples it under his chin and wears it twice daily. And after a couple of years, in the video it reports Max is playing the piano again, nine out of ten symptoms improved. I thought, this is too crazy. It was the first time I'd heard of red light therapy and I went and Googled it and had seen there was a lot of papers.

Liam Pingree: I'd actually noticed the video in college and parked the idea, thinking that I want to go out on the kind of finance route. Meanwhile, going through that kind of stage, I had an auntie that went through cancer and had memory loss, and got to the stage where she couldn't remember faces even when you were there in person. So that was kind of hard, and I had then experienced what it was like for someone to go through that. And it kind of just clicked that maybe this is something I want to do. Being a bit entrepreneurial, seeing this idea and having someone go through that, I thought, why can't we make something based on research and get it out to the masses, rather than have people make their own kind of at-home device? And that's kind of our mission.

Liam Pingree: And so we found a device that we upgraded, we put in 1070 nanometre lights and designed it. And after that, we're now putting 100% of the profits back into research and development so we can actually further enhance the devices, hopefully bring down the cost as well, economies of scale. So that's our kind of mission. We want to make this accessible to more people and get an FDA license for the approval of something like Alzheimer's in the future.

Lisa: Yeah, and we've got an avalanche of Alzheimer's coming at us, just humongous statistics of how many people are going to have Alzheimer's in the next five to ten years. It's really quite frightening worldwide. And this is going to debilitate not only the people that are dealing with Alzheimer's, but the caregivers. As a caregiver, or someone who's had major brain injuries, I know what an impact that has on my ability to function with my businesses, because Mum needs care all the time. And this is going to affect so many people's lives.

Lisa: So that's just Alzheimer's. That's not Parkinson's, ALS, multiple sclerosis, that's not all of the other things, long COVID, for goodness sake, all of those sorts of things. ADHD, autism, all of these other things that are in the background as well. So of course, when anything comes up that is going to help with brain rehabilitation or supporting brain health, I'm into it, and I'm always listening out for the next thing.

Lisa: And red light — I have a red light clinic here, I have red light panels, and I've used Dr Lew Lim's Vielight device before, which is in the 810 nanometre range, I believe. And Mum uses that on the daily. I've seen firsthand what red light can do, both from a systemic, from skin health to healing injuries to brain health. But when I came across your guys', this Neuradiant 1070, which is your device — and this, for people who are listening, looks like a helmet. Are we allowed to call it a helmet?

Liam Pingree: We can actually have it right here, so it kind of looks like that for the people on video.

Lisa: Yes, the ones on YouTube, have a look at this, because it looks like a bike helmet, but it's a very sophisticated bike helmet. And it's got thousands of LED lights on the inside of it that are pulsing at — well, is it a range? It's a range, and it goes from 1050 to 1070, I believe. Is that right?

Liam Pingree: So it has 256 LEDs inside. It's at the 1070 nanometre range, and then it can pulse anywhere from zero to 10,000. So it doesn't have to pulse, but you can set it that way.

Lisa: Right, okay. And so you've developed this very easy-to-wear helmet that you can use a couple of times a day, or depending on your protocol, and then we can get into that in a little bit. And it's got 256 LEDs in it. What is the red light doing in the brain? And why did you pick the 1070 nanometre range? Because most of the research, and certainly the panels that I have, are in the 620 to 850 sort of range. This is going really quite high up the scale, so to speak, to 1050, 1070. What is the difference between those nanometre ranges and why did you pick that one?

Liam Pingree: Yeah, great question. So the 1070 nanometre range is in the near infrared, so it's actually invisible to the human eye. Sometimes the question we get asked is, hey, I've turned on my device and the lights aren't coming on. We actually have two test lights on either side so people can see, okay, there's something going on. But if you shine an old phone, like through the camera, you can see the lights actually coming in. But to the human eye it's invisible, so it sits on the invisible spectrum.

Liam Pingree: And why we chose this light is because a study at Texas — Hanli Liu published a paper that was showing lasers to LEDs, and it was done on the forearm, but they were showing the 810 and 1070. And in the report they published, it said that the 1070 had longer-lasting effects and actually penetrated further. So that's kind of why we wanted to pick this wavelength over the typical 810. I don't think that's anything to say against the 810. I think that it does different things, because it can penetrate a little further. I think the difference with the 600s and 700s are maybe better for the skin and kind of surface level, but I think they all have different benefits. We went with the 1070, we have great results with it.

Liam Pingree: And I know in Durham University, Paul Chazot published a study and talks about it. He's got a great talk online where he talks about the 1070 actually going through, and because the brain is made up of so much water, it actually acts as nearly a magnifying glass and refracts into the brain and has more of an effect. And that's his kind of, I suppose, scientific understanding of why the 1070 actually works better than a lot of other wavelengths, because you don't have that same reaction for some reason.

Lisa: Is there any sort of thermal effect when it's going so deep into the brain and it's doing something to the water? Is there any problems with heat transfer at all or anything?

Liam Pingree: Typically the 1070 — so LEDs are non-invasive, they're not high enough power as the lasers typically, and they're not concentrated all on one kind of area where it could heat up the tissue. So typically they're regarded as very safe.

Lisa: Yeah, so it's not like a laser. Because we often hear about lasers being used for skin peels and goodness knows whatever else they use them for. The LED technology, I feel like, is a lot safer and able to be used at home, for home use.

Liam Pingree: Exactly, exactly. And that's what we wanted it to be. We wanted a unit that was simple to use, easy to put on, comfortable to wear. You get the controller, you click one of your programmes and then it starts, and you wear it from 5 to 15 minutes a day, and then you put it away. So it's quite easy to use.

Lisa: Yeah, that's what's really brilliant about it. And with this helmet, it's got different sections, isn't it? I heard an interview that you did with Alex Fergus, also a fellow Kiwi, who's an expert on red lights obviously, and we were talking about the different segments that the helmet has, so that if you do a QEEG on the brain, then you'll be able to see where you've got deficits in the brain. Can you explain a little bit how that technology works in with what you're doing?

Liam Pingree: Yeah. So I suppose the base approach that we have with the EEG is, if you were to get the EEG scan and there was underactivity in one side of the brain, for example, that was supposed to be at the higher range, pulsing at 40, when you're in a state of focus and attention, and then on your brain scan it shows maybe you're at 32, what you're going to do is turn on that kind of section and you're going to pulse it, and you're going to pulse it higher, to try to increase it. Because what happens with the brain is it picks up on the external stimuli. That's why you have binaural beats, and that's why it's like 40 Hz binaural beats and you get that focus for study, right? Well, your brain is reacting to the external stimuli and mimicking that. So the same effect that can be done with noise, the theory is the same effect can happen with the light. More and more studies have to be done on this, but we have been getting good results. So that's why we target it based on a QEEG and get more specific.

Liam Pingree: I think it's very important to highlight that you can separate this: you have the biological effects, photobiomodulation, and then you have this kind of more brain entrainment that a lot of neurofeedback professionals would be more familiar with. And you're doing basically a broken-down level of neurofeedback, because you're looking at the scan and then you're pulsing the light on the section you think is relevant, with the light as kind of external stimuli. Then you have, like, complete just —

Liam Pingree: — photonic dose. So if you put the helmet on and you didn't pulse it at all, you're just going to use that setting and the light's going in, you're getting the photons — that's just photobiomodulation, and that on a basic level has great effect. And then this is kind of the brain entrainment part that enhances that.

Lisa: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Just for those listening, when you do a QEEG it's like neurofeedback, so they can measure the brain waves, and you've got your alpha — help me out here — theta, beta, delta brain waves, and they all have different frequencies that you're pulsing at. And if someone has ADHD, for example, maybe you've got — is it too much gamma in that case? Do you know which one it is?

Liam Pingree: Yeah, so the brain — I don't know which one it is, but your brain would be essentially over-firing, it's firing too fast and you want to calm it down and you want to under-stimulate, so you lower the pulse rate in that kind of specific wave group.

Lisa: Yeah. So with your device, you can set it to 10 hertz or 40 hertz, and this will give us — if I was at night time and I'm wanting to relax and do my session, I'd probably put it on the 10. I know that's what I've been doing with the Vielight, we put it on the alpha, and that's more of a relaxation. Before I go into a podcast or something and I want full focus and full concentration, I might put it on and do a session on gamma. And with your device, though, you can split that between all the six areas of the helmet, can't you? So you can go, I want more on this side and then less on this side.

Lisa: And that's where the power of this device comes in, because you also offer consultations for people who are dealing with — so there's the set standard for different types of protocols that you could run, but then there's also the possibility to buy a consult package with you guys, with some of your experts in this area, who can look at your QEEG and then give you the right protocol for your particular brain. So it's getting really personalised. Tell us a little bit about that journey for people, and what would you recommend if people are looking at this device? Joe Bloggs is just wanting to optimise his brain, hasn't got any major issues yet — just buy the device, put it on, choose one of the preset modules. But someone who's maybe got Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or ADHD or autism or that type of thing, they're probably better to get a block of consultations with you.

Liam Pingree: Yeah, that's usually what we suggest. But again, it's not medical advice — we're kind of looking at the brain as the organ and seeing what's going to go on there. So typically that is the way it works, though. People will want to get a further understanding than a personalised one. So if someone comes on the website and they purchase the device, they get it and, like you said, Joe Bloggs can set it up, but with every device sold we actually give a free consultation anyway. Just one session where people can ask questions, get set up, see what's best for them. And that isn't the EEG scan or anything like that.

Liam Pingree: If people buy the package — and they can purchase the package after that session, so maybe they want to just chat first and then they want to purchase that as an add-on — they go to a local clinic where they can actually get the QEEG, and they would send that in to us. And then once we look at it, we analyse it, and then based on that scan we'll then make recommendations on a certain programme that you can use. And then we'd go into the programme, we'd set it up with you. You have a little tablet controller and we tell you, okay, turn on the front section for 10 hertz, turn on the back for 12 hertz and keep the sides off, run that for one minute, take a break for one minute, and then the next part you're going to run for three minutes. So you can make it very customisable because of that.

Liam Pingree: And I think it's a really good part with our device to be so customisable, because for research opportunities as well it allows researchers to test all the different pulsing, it allows people to test with different dosages. And I think that's also a really good thing, because it allows a lot more researchers to kind of start looking deeper into the science and further understanding exactly what protocols work best for what. And I think we have a good idea, but I think there's still answers that need to be found out.

Lisa: Yeah. You've got lots of research — have you got any research yourself ongoing through the company?

Liam Pingree: We have one trial that we're recruiting for. Last year there was a study published on long COVID, and we are in another few active ones, but they're not yet released. And then we have more coming later in the year that are in the planning stage, and these are working with other kind of parties — some of them aren't funded by us, they're research institutions or other facilities that are doing this and we're just involved in them. The one we're recruiting for, that is funded by us, and that's on our website.

Liam Pingree: We are also working with the FDA. We want to get a medical device licence with Alzheimer's, but that's going to take a bit longer, because we are a company that doesn't have investment — we're actually using the resources to actually be able to fund this kind of research.

Lisa: Wow. Yeah, and to get FDA approval for a medical device takes a long time and a lot of — you'd better be an ultramarathon runner, I think we're talking about, to get through all the hoops. But that would be amazing if you could get to that point. But I mean, there's over 9,000 studies, I think, last time I checked, with red light therapy and the brain. This is not new. We've got lots more to learn, as you pointed out.

Lisa: Where is some of the research that's pointing us to this, that this could be really beneficial? So maybe if we go through some of the common things, like Parkinson's — obviously you mentioned the gentleman with the bucket, Max. Is Parkinson's one of the things that — I mean, this is not medical advice and all the disclaimers there — but what is the research showing for Parkinson's, for example? Do you know any research off the top of your head? Putting you on the spot.

Liam Pingree: Yeah, I don't know a huge amount of the Parkinson's research, because we have clients that have Parkinson's that we're working with and they have great results, but because we're with the FDA, you kind of have to pick one area that you're going after, specifically for trials, and that is Alzheimer's for us. So I haven't been, I suppose, involved in the research on Parkinson's. I know there are companies that very much specialise in that and are having great results and they're published in a lot of papers. And I think the Parkinson's patients that we have — or clients, I suppose — are seeing great results with it. Typically, after a few weeks of use, they are noticing things like tremors being reduced. But then again, it's very subjective, the kind of findings that we have so far with the device. We really need studies and metrics to be involved to be really saying, hey, this is definitely working for Parkinson's.

Lisa: Yeah. And I mean, this is the problem with everything — we need research, more research on every damn thing there is. And we can't wait for all the research, is my take on it. If something has got some research, it's safe — safety being the biggest factor of consideration. Cost obviously is another consideration. But otherwise, why not? If you could afford it, why not try these things? Because if you wait for the research to catch up, you may be dead before that happens, especially if you've got these major issues like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and things. So go hard and go now is sort of my approach to things.

Liam Pingree: Right. And I think if you don't kind of do something when it's actually becoming so notable... I mean, the history of this has been around for years. In the 1970s, NASA used it on the International Space Station. I think it was firstly for increasing the growth of plants, but then they later found out that it could be used for accelerating wound healing. So it's not novel technology at all. I think it's a lot more on the brain, but we're getting a further and further understanding of this. If it can accelerate wound healing, surely it's doing something on that tissue level. It's having that biological response and it's actually helping the damaged tissues, and it's helping increase blood flow, reducing the inflammation. So naturally and fundamentally it's going to help alleviate a lot of symptoms with the different conditions that we're talking about, because a lot of root causes is inflammation.

Lisa: Absolutely. Inflammation is at the cause of most problems in the brain and in the body. This low-grade chronic inflammation that we're getting just as we live, and we're exposed to toxins and viruses and all sorts of traumas and things that happen to us — we're going to have inflammation in the body, and downregulating inflammation in all its forms and all the cytokines and things that are involved with that has got to be good.

Lisa: I mean, I love my red light. I do it every day. I probably over-do it — I have all sorts of devices. I have three massive full panels in the clinic, and then I have also devices that go around body parts, and then I have little devices that I have under my feet when I'm standing at my computer. And I'm an absolute fiend when it comes to red light therapy. And I've done interviews with scientists on what red light does. So if you're wanting to dive into some of that, go and check out the past interviews that I've done with Dr Lew Lim and Dr Marvin Berman, if you want to dive into the mechanisms so that you understand the science.

Lisa: But from the way I understand it as a layperson, you've got chromophores on your cells and you're receiving the light, and that's helping donate electrons to the cytochrome c oxidase and the electron transport chain of the mitochondria — that's one of the things, at least, that it's doing, so that you're producing more ATP. So that if you've got dysfunctional mitochondria, then this is a way to bypass some of those problematic areas. And so this is just getting more energy to the cells, downregulating the inflammation, helping the cells on a cellular level function better. Just talking now in generalities, that's got to be good. That's got to be good for so many things.

Lisa: And this is why I think it's just a systemic thing to be looking at. I mean, I do it for my skin, and I know that from healing — like, I've had Mum, who is 82 and obviously has got lots of problems, and we've had skin breakdowns and things from lying in bed too much when she's had issues. The red light clears that stuff up instantly, like really —

Lisa: — like within a day or two, things that could have been problematic bed sores for most people healing really, really fast. I've seen some pretty incredible things with red light, so I'm just really excited. And of course, in the brain, everybody's going to react slightly differently and some people will take longer to respond than others.

Lisa: Liam and I were chatting before, and the way I see it with biology is that most people don't give things long enough of a go for them to actually work. I see this time and again in the hyperbaric oxygen clinic. I try to set people up to understand, to give them the expectations of how many sessions they're going to need, because people often — especially in an age where we have everything instantly, you want instant load of your website, you want your app to do the transfer of money to your bank instantly, everything's instant — biology is not instant, and it does take time for things to kick in and to work and to do its thing. Even when you're taking supplements, people think, "I'll take a supplement and in a month's time I should see everything." Sometimes it takes three months, six months, and things are happening at a cellular level.

Lisa: Another thing that I've noticed with people is that they forget how bad they were, because we're programmed to see negative, right, because of danger and our environment. We don't always see the progress. When I was working with Mum, back from her original aneurysm, I documented it with little home videos and iPhone videos and photos, and only when I looked back at those photos or those videos did I go, "Holy crap, we've come a long way." Whereas I was sitting that day going, "We're getting nowhere, we're not improving, nothing's happening, nothing's happening for the last two months." And when I would look back, that would give me the courage to then go, actually, she wasn't able to even find her mouth with a spoon before, and now she's driving the car. We've come a long way, right? But only when you look back or you remember.

Lisa: So I'm quite keen on things like questionnaires that really elucidate the problems that people have at the start, when I'm consulting with them, and then maybe doing it a month or six weeks in, or two months, depending on the treatment or whatever, and then seeing if there's a change. Because we've forgotten how bad the pain was or how bad the wound was, or whatever the case may be, and we've just moved on and we're moaning about the 5% that's not fixed, because that's the way humans are programmed. And then people give up just before there's often a breakthrough.

Lisa: So my word of encouragement: if you're going to try something like the Neuradiant, give it a good go. Don't just do it for a week and go, "This isn't working, I don't feel anything." You won't. It's happening on a biological level. I don't feel what my hormones are doing right now. I don't feel if something is out of whack until I go and take a test and see that, actually, yeah, something's out of whack.

Liam Pingree: Yeah, and I think it's so different for everyone as well. Like you said earlier, it works on a range of conditions and it also works on healthy people, and then the timing of it is very different. So some people might not think they have results, and if they have Alzheimer's they're thinking, "Hey, this person hasn't got better." But what are our results, and what is better? If you have a rate of decline that's going down, and you've managed to pause that, you don't see any changes, but it hasn't got worse. It's very hard to say, if she didn't use red light therapy or wasn't doing any other treatment, what it would have been if you didn't use that and how bad it could have been. So it's very hard to measure some of these things.

Liam Pingree: But then if you talk about a healthy individual, it could be quite different. We had a brain health lounge that we were invited to in Vegas before the Super Bowl. It was a football kind of party and a lot of them get TBI. But actually there was a device there that could measure your cognitive processing speed, and the device we had used before — it's called the NeuroCatch. We had a football player that used the NeuroCatch, got a baseline, and he had a cognitive processing speed of 500. Then he used our device for 10 minutes, went back, did a second assessment, and it had gone down to 430. So that's a 70-point increase in cognitive processing speed after just one session. For football players, that's huge. And that just goes to show that, hey, you might not feel like you're doubly sharp — he felt a bit better, he didn't know if it was placebo — but then when you look at the results, you can actually see, no, he really is. It's just that we might not actually pick up on that. So like you said, with the photos, the videos, it's so important to document it, because it's so hard to see change. We have our views changing daily and you just don't pick up on slight changes, and you don't even realise how much has gone by.

Lisa: No, this is so important a point for anybody dealing with any of these chronic degenerative diseases or acute injuries — that they don't give up too early, and that they do push through. It's the same when I'm working with athletes. You get the ones who have been athletes for a long time, who know how the body works and that they're going to have to grind it out, right? They just do what they're told. When the coach says jump, they say how high, and they just keep going, and they'll do whatever you say. You say stick a carrot up your nose and they'll do it, because they're just told to do it, if they trust the coach.

Lisa: And then you've got other people who want the instant fix. They want the pill. I had one yesterday: "Oh, we've been on this pill for a month, I feel sorer, it's the fault of the pill." And I'm like, where do I begin with someone like that? They're difficult, because it probably wasn't — maybe they got a cold, maybe they had the flu, maybe they injured themselves. They're looking for something to blame, and so those types of people are going to be finding blame no matter what you do.

Lisa: So it's just understanding. I know that I'm going to have success with the ones who are committed. That's why I love working with athletes, because athletes will push through the hard yards. They'll be in the hurt locker, they'll do the hard parts. Whereas you've got other people who are dying of cancer and they won't swallow a few supplements, and I'm like, really? You know what it's like to have cancer. How hard is it to take some pills every day, even if it is quite complicated and you have to take quite a few? For me, it's just unimaginable that you wouldn't. Maybe I'm wired differently, and that's why I select who I work with. But if people push through, they can get extraordinary results sometimes.

Lisa: And there's no guarantee with any of this. You can buy the Neuradiant and it doesn't do what you want it to do for your particular brain. Nobody knows, nobody's going to know, you have to try it out. But I'm very excited to get one for Mum. I'm saving up hard at the moment to do that, and really then to get it into the clinic and start using it, getting people aware of it so that they can try it. Because there's not a lot of other options out there. As far as pharmaceuticals for Alzheimer's — it's been a complete disaster. Billions and billions spent chasing the wrong tree, chasing the wrong rabbit down the wrong hole.

Lisa: And there are lots of other things that we can do. I had Dr Dale Bredesen on the show, who's got the 36 holes in the roof sort of analogy that he uses, and 32 of them are covered off with red light therapy, photobiomodulation in the brain. This is a good place to start if you've got Alzheimer's or neurodegeneration, I think, because you're covering so many of those 36 holes in the roof that he talks about, meaning that there's all these things that could be happening. It's not just one thing, and one pill is never going to fix it, one medication is never going to fix it, because you've got all of these aspects — hormonal, environmental toxins, viruses, whatever the thing is that makes up your problem. And you have to plug all of the holes, work out which of the holes you've got. But photobiomodulation, red light therapy in the brain, covers 32 of those 36 holes, so that's a really damn good place to start, I think.

Liam Pingree: It definitely is. It's worth saying as well that there's no one quick fix. Red light therapy is definitely something that helps on that fundamental level, but if you're binging on highly processed foods and you're spiking your glucose levels daily, and you're not getting exercise and you've got other lifestyle factors, these kind of alternative therapies are only going to do so much. You really need to take the holistic approach where you're doing everything in moderation. I would say you don't need to be at that extreme where you're taking everything to the next level, where you feel like you're not living, you're just on a routine. I don't think it needs to be that extreme. Obviously you can, and it's probably the healthiest. But if everything's in moderation and you're incorporating these other therapies into it, then I think you have a good chance at dealing with anything that life throws at you, because you're going to have some resistance built up.

Lisa: Yeah, and this is the other thing that's a good point, Liam, that you brought up: the resilience of the brain. You're paying into your bank account, basically, when you protect your brain, for future possible traumas that it may be exposed to. And all of us have trauma. I love the work of Dr Mark Gordon, who I'm deep in his research at the moment. He is a specialist in traumatic brain injuries and non-traumatic brain injuries and hormone optimisation. It's setting a reserve capacity aside. It's like you save money in your bank account for a rainy day, right? And it's the same with the brain. So you put in good supplements, good nutrition, good exercise, optimised hormones — I'm a big fan of things like peptides, red light therapy, hyperbaric, your choice of therapy — but you're adding to your bank account so that if you have a brain injury, or if you get a brain cancer, or if you get some horrible thing happen with your brain, or if you have a genetic predisposition, then you've got money in the bank to pay for it. You're not on the bones of your ass, sort of thing, and you've already spent. And I know this

Lisa: from having Mum — her reserve capacity is now much, much less. So a little cold will send her brain offline because of all the injuries that she's had. Despite everything that I've done to the brain, her reserve capacity is less than the average person, especially now at 82 and after all the brain surgeries and so on that she's had. So if she gets a slight illness, her brain will go offline completely. If she gets a UTI, for example, she'll be in full-blown dementia within a day, and it's frightening, it's hell. And why is that? It's because she has no reserve capacity, because she's had so many injuries, injury after injury to the brain. And I've done a hell of a lot to repair, but I can only do what I can do, and so she goes off. But I've managed to get her back every time. The amount of times that I've lost my mum, where she's been unable to talk, unable to respond, unable to know my name or who I am or what I am — a hundred times over the last nine years — and every time I've got her back. And she's sitting there reading the newspaper now, read and write and do all the normal sort of things, and talk, and back again.

Lisa: So I've seen the brain and its capacity to regenerate, and I also know that reserve capacity is something you want to be putting into your bank account. You want to be proactive with your brain. So for anybody who's having traumatic brain injuries on the repetitive — like sports people, like rugby players, like NFL players, anybody who's doing martial arts or boxing or anything like that — they really need to be paying into their bank account now. They need to be doing hyperbaric, they need to maybe be on a keto-based diet where they've got more ketones in the brain, and doing red light therapy and doing these things that could protect their brain. Because I heard a statistic today: people in contact sports who have repetitive brain injuries are 19 times more likely to develop dementia than your average person on the street. Nineteen times! I think it was a horrendous amount — much more than the genetic predisposition, which is between three and 12 times the amount if you've got the APOE4 gene. This is even more than that genetic predisposition. So be proactive with your brain's health if you don't want to lose it, because that is you. You lose your brain, you lose you. Other diseases and things affect your body, but you're still you. Not so when you have Alzheimer's and dementia — you lose your absolute essence, and the pain and the suffering that it causes your loved ones is also horrific.

Liam Pingree: Absolutely, yeah. And I think as well, you're talking about building up that kind of resilience. I think it's actually more of a common thing now, we're looking at holistic health, we're looking at wearables. If you look at the Oura Ring, the wearable that people have, and you go on the app, they have a recovery score, they have a resilience score. Now they're looking at your daytime stress, they're looking at how much and how quickly you can recover. And obviously a lot of that's for the body, but the same thing we can think about for the mind. It's all connected really. And so if you can do these things like you've already mentioned to protect the mind, keep it sharp, make it as healthy as it can be — well, once it gets injured, once it's a football, it's a knock at rugby, someone can actually bounce back a bit quicker. It's obviously still an impact to the head, it's not great, you should avoid it if you can, but you're going to be in the most prepared state for it. And then the sooner you could probably do these different things afterwards, the more likely you're going to have a significant recovery and have less damage occurred. Obviously you're not going to tell people don't play the sport or compete, because that's what you do, and some people will never give that up, and that's completely fine, it's their choice. But at least if you're wanting to be careful of it, maybe just look at some of these things and invest in it, because really it's the later half of your life that you're going to be missing out on if you don't take a bit of action now.

Lisa: Yeah, totally, 100%. I'd love to see sports teams take on this sort of technology, and hyperbaric. I'd love them to get hyperbaric into rugby teams, for example. And I'd love them to maybe even be putting the guys on the right supplements before they go on the field, or the girls go on the field, so that they have that reserve there. Things like plasmalogens, which I've done a podcast on with Dr Dayan Goodenowe, which are a phospholipid that really protects the brain. Dr Dayan says, goes so far as to say, that if you have plasmalogens on board before you have a concussion, you won't get a concussion. It's so protective of the brain. Actually, he's written a book called Breaking Alzheimer's that I highly recommend. Have a look at his work, Dr Dayan Goodenowe. And so you combine the plasmalogens with the NAC and the hormone optimisation and the red light therapy and the hyperbaric, and you've got a recipe to be protecting your brain if you're going to go out and play rugby or basketball or whatever these high contact sports are.

Lisa: Because we want to live life, we don't want to not live. We want to push our limits and be our best and do that, but not pay the consequences so terribly. And not only yourself pays the consequences, but the mood changes, the personality changes. A lot of people get very aggressive or very problematic with their behaviours, or suicides — these types of things. These are major things that destroy families, and that's why I'm very passionate about it, and having lived it. Having lived it not only with Mum, but other members of the family who have had repeated brain injuries, and the consequences of it are just so enormous. So I'm really grateful for people like you that are putting devices like this on the market, doing the hard yards, doing the research, for all the scientists around the planet that are doing this so that we can actually take advantage of this.

Lisa: So Liam, is there any sort of finishing words that you'd like to leave us with, anything that — I know you're working on having, is this right, you're working on having the QEEG as part of the helmet in future? Is that something that you're working on?

Liam Pingree: It is something we're working on. It's very primitive at the minute, so we're working with Santa Clara University over in California, and the idea is to have an EEG embedded into the helmet essentially, so it can read the brain, give the information to the helmet to then stimulate the programme, and using an algorithm it can do all that kind of process that we do manually. It's still in that very early stage, so it'll be a few years to probably develop some technology like this, but that is something we'd like to do, because EEGs — you have to drive to a clinic, sometimes you're very far away, they're not accessible, and there's a higher cost associated with it. And there's people behind it and the people have to get paid as well, so it's understandable that there is a cost there. But we're trying to make that technology happen. But yeah, it's going to be a few years.

Lisa: Yeah, but the new Neuradiant 1070 is available now. You can get consultations. Your team have been kind enough to give me a code, and it's Tamati100 — so my surname, T-A-M-A-T-I with a capital T, 100 — and you'll get $100 off the device if you decide to do it. And you can get a consultation with that as well. So just let us know where people can go to to buy this, and where can they connect with you — social media and all of that sort of good stuff.

Liam Pingree: Yeah, so neuronic.online, that's the website. It's the global website that anyone can buy anywhere in the world, and we give free shipping. And the socials are just Neuronic, so @neuronic. You'll find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as well. If you want to go online, you can see everything about the product, you can see the research that we're currently conducting, you can see the full team, and you can also call the number on our website and speak with someone if you have any questions or concerns about buying the device, or any other thing that you just want to discuss and speak to someone about before making the investment.

Lisa: Yeah, because it is a significant investment, but it's an investment in your future, and I think well worth giving this a go, especially for those who are dealing with something major. Liam, thank you so much for taking so much time out of your very late evening now over in your part of the world. I do appreciate the dedication to your job and what you're doing and getting the word out there, and the amazing work that your very large team now does. It's fantastic to be able to share this with my audience, and I'd love to be kept updated on any new developments. And if you do manage to get the QEEG with the red light going, that would be really, really exciting. So thanks so much for being on the show today, Liam.

Liam Pingree: Thanks for having me, it's been an absolute pleasure.