Episode 56
Measuring Erections with Dr. Elliot Justin
Teemu Arina and Dr. Elliot Justin, CEO of Firm Tech, discuss a new wearable to monitor cardiovascular health by way of measuring male performance in the bedroom.
Elliot Justin, MD, FACEP is an Emergency Medicine specialist, telemedicine expert and sex toy enthusiast. His goal is to help all men and women sustain their sexual fitness, and if they develop ED to reverse or impede its progression. This will be achieved by providing personal data via scientifically designed under wearables and more effective and comfortable cock rings and vibrators.
Now men, and soon women, will be able to assess the impact of vascular diseases, medications, supplements, and life styles upon their sexual health, while intensifying their pleasure and improving their confidence.
This conversation was recorded in April 2024.
Visit https://myfirmtech.com/ and follow @myfirmtech on Instagram to learn more!
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Devices, supplements, guides, books & quality online courses for supporting your health & performance: https://biohackercenter.com
Key moments and takeaways:
00:00 Introduction by Teemu Arina
Transcript
Music.
Speaker:Hello, this is Teemu Arina from Biohackers Podcast. Today's guest is Elliot
Speaker:Justin, medical doctor and CEO of something called FirmTech.
Speaker:And they have developed this incredible product. It's called Tech Ring,
Speaker:which is basically a cock ring for men that has sensors on it to measure your
Speaker:erectile function and performance.
Speaker:And one might think, hold on, it's like some kind of sex toy,
Speaker:but it's actually connected deeply to health and well-being. In the biohacking community,
Speaker:health optimizing community Bryan Johnson
Speaker:has definitely made his story on his nighttime erectile
Speaker:function like some kind of big news but do
Speaker:you know personally how you're doing at night or
Speaker:during the day which we also going to talk about and
Speaker:also if you can actually develop sexual function by practicing it as well as
Speaker:all the things that don't work there's so many things out there from testosterone
Speaker:to supplements and all that that promise to improve sexual function I have my
Speaker:own experience with a bunch of things, but I'm very happy to talk to Dr.
Speaker:Elliot on these topics. So welcome to the show, man.
Speaker:Thanks for inviting me. It's great to be on the show.
Speaker:This is my favorite topic.
Speaker:For many men, of course,
Speaker:it is a big thing. So very interesting to know about your background.
Speaker:So you have background in emergency medicine. You have been connected to medical
Speaker:schools, Harvard, as I remember.
Speaker:How did you get interested in sexual function? I've always been interested in it.
Speaker:I don't think there are many men who had their mother taken to a urologist as
Speaker:an adolescent because she was concerned about their masturbation habit and their
Speaker:son would not get into college. I got into college.
Speaker:So my first day of medical school, I went off to a medical library to read about aphrodisiacs.
Speaker:And then that's when you kind of realize that no one else is doing this.
Speaker:It's really just me out of this entire medical school class of 120 people who
Speaker:want to read about aphrodisiacs.
Speaker:And frankly back then in 1970s it
Speaker:was the same type of things being talked about that
Speaker:like today yohimbe horny goat weed maca root
Speaker:things things of that nature i remember when i tried yohimbe and
Speaker:i had basically a constant boner for 24 hours it was it was really painful i
Speaker:don't recommend that to anyone i i fully understand why it's not on the market
Speaker:like at least it's bad in europe right now so i live in montana and i own horses
Speaker:and sometimes i have this delusion that i'm a a centaur that I won with my horse.
Speaker:In 2015, I crashed into a tree, a tree that had fallen over a trail while riding,
Speaker:and I broke six ribs and six vertebrae.
Speaker:And then, fortunately, my spine was not broken.
Speaker:But that got me interested in what's been done to rehabilitate men with spinal
Speaker:cord injuries or to, in terms of longevity, what's been done to help men sustain
Speaker:their sexual performance as they age and lose their potency.
Speaker:And there were five papers in the medical journals at that time saying that
Speaker:urologists have been able to...
Speaker:Restore sexual function in men utilizing neuromodulation.
Speaker:So the paradigm for neuromodulation is the cardiac pacemaker.
Speaker:It's placing an electrode in the heart and taking control over the nerves.
Speaker:So my goal was to gain control of the pudendal nerve and the cavernous nerve,
Speaker:every man's favorite two nerves that they haven't heard about.
Speaker:And I had a urologist friend at the University of San Francisco implant an electrode
Speaker:in my body to no effect. I called the project O oh, for obvious reasons.
Speaker:And if I had done the usual thing, I would have raised more money and experimented
Speaker:on men in Brazil and Colombia.
Speaker:But I felt that just testing on myself and having that work indicates to me
Speaker:that this was not going to be successful.
Speaker:Several years later, a urology professor at the University of Utah,
Speaker:who's now my chief medical officer, he heard about this.
Speaker:And he said, I want to come up with a way of counting the number of nocturnal
Speaker:erections in men that are a leading indicator of their cardiovascular health. And I thought, really?
Speaker:I was unaware of that. I mean, Brian Johnson popularizes this,
Speaker:but I, like most people in the world, most doctors certainly,
Speaker:was unaware that nocturnal erections are a leading indicator.
Speaker:Now, leading indicator in medicine is a very, very powerful phrase because it
Speaker:means that it's not just an association.
Speaker:It means that it's predictive. So, if man has high blood pressure,
Speaker:we pay a lot of attention, or women for that matter, we pay a lot of attention
Speaker:and we want to treat that high blood pressure lest something like a heart attack or a stroke occur.
Speaker:But a leading indicator means you will have a heart attack or a stroke. It's predictive.
Speaker:If man has declined number of nocturnal erections, you either have a cardiovascular
Speaker:problem or you have have a major medication side effect until proven otherwise,
Speaker:and you should see a doctor.
Speaker:To be able to count this would be profoundly valuable.
Speaker:It'd be like the sixth vital sign. And what do men care more about?
Speaker:What vital sign interests them more than the health of their penis?
Speaker:I can say, as an emergency medicine physician, that short of a heart attack
Speaker:or a stroke, there's nothing that alarms a man as much as a limp penis.
Speaker:That's how I got involved. If this doctor approached me, he wants to count them.
Speaker:And I said, we can do better than that. We can, if we embed sensors into an
Speaker:erection ring, cock ring, we can make a device that can be worn not just overnight,
Speaker:which is a device that Brian Johnson uses, but we can also come up with a device
Speaker:that can be worn while men are having sex and what concerns men more,
Speaker:what's going on at night, what's going on while they're having sex.
Speaker:So one overnight, we now can count comfortably the duration of erections,
Speaker:the number of erections, the firmness of them.
Speaker:And one during sex, we can do the same. So men can now measure the impact of
Speaker:diseases that are really pandemic like diabetes or hypertension.
Speaker:I mean, 50% of the men, probably in Estonia too, because it's true in the UK,
Speaker:true in the United States, over the age of 50 have either hypertension or diabetes.
Speaker:Often have both, about 25%, 30% have both. So you can measure the impact of
Speaker:diseases. You can measure the impact of medications.
Speaker:The big erection killers are antihypertensives and antidepressants.
Speaker:The phrase goes in the biohacking world, if you can track it, you can hack it.
Speaker:So we have men and we have doctors who are utilizing our technology to say,
Speaker:what's the right dose of blood pressure medicine for you that's going to have
Speaker:an impact on your blood pressure, but not have an impact on your sexual health?
Speaker:And the same thing with the SSRI antidepressants that are also horrible in terms of sexual effect.
Speaker:And you can also measure the impact of supplements, diet, exercise,
Speaker:relationships upon your sexual performance. So what we're doing is really revolutionary.
Speaker:Let's expand on that. So I would say stress is a big killer of erectile function
Speaker:or lifestyle in general.
Speaker:So is that something that has come up in your research?
Speaker:Yeah, we see that on our recordings. So we sold thousands of these devices and we have data.
Speaker:Cybersecure, it's anonymous. We have data that's really, really enormous.
Speaker:We have the largest data set in the world. So I'll talk about myself.
Speaker:If I sleep poorly, I have no nocturnal erections. If I take a sleeping pill
Speaker:like Zolpidem Ambien, we call it in the United States, it wipes out my nocturnal erections.
Speaker:If I drink more, the nocturnal erections go down as well.
Speaker:So you can actually measure the impact of these things on your health.
Speaker:Stress is certainly a major problem and associated with anxiety and has a major
Speaker:impact upon people's sexual performance. Freud said that man has borne between feces and urine.
Speaker:Men really circle around, like a lot of their self-esteem is around erectile
Speaker:function to some extent.
Speaker:Sure. Women say they don't really care, but most men do care and they connect that to testosterone.
Speaker:Like how big is then testosterone in terms of like erectile function?
Speaker:I think that is the case for many men. Women care about it a lot as well too.
Speaker:But as far as testosterone goes,
Speaker:we have many men taking testosterone and some benefit and some don't.
Speaker:So one of the values of what we're doing is that men can see whether the therapy
Speaker:is working for them and they can start to titrate the dose that works for them.
Speaker:I never took testosterone, but when I got to recently, about nine months ago, I did.
Speaker:Became aware that pretty much everyone my age, I'm 71, that I know is taking
Speaker:testosterone, either a gel or injections.
Speaker:And I had friends down in, even in their 20s, were taking it.
Speaker:So I asked, I have a team of academic urologists and I asked them,
Speaker:what do you think is going to happen if I take it? I don't have ED technically.
Speaker:I have ED of aging, we all get, but I don't have ED technically.
Speaker:I'll talk about ED of aging in just a moment. And these academic urologists
Speaker:said, you're going to have nocturnal erections that are going to last longer
Speaker:and you're probably going to get more of them. but there was no change whatsoever.
Speaker:The benefit for me, testosterone was in the gym, not in the bedroom.
Speaker:Right. So testosterone alone doesn't explain erectile function.
Speaker:If men have low testosterone, they will benefit in terms of their erectile fitness.
Speaker:But if men are in the normal range, we don't see any change whatsoever.
Speaker:Right. I once discussed with a Chinese doctor trained in the West with Western medicine.
Speaker:I asked, what would be the one biomarker that
Speaker:you would measure for someone's health status and
Speaker:he said reproductive capability both in
Speaker:women and men and his explanation was that when
Speaker:the organism is in a poor health it shuts down it basically shuts down reproduction
Speaker:because it's not worthy to pass on that genetic information so if you can't
Speaker:conceive or you can't have boners like all of that might be an indirect indication
Speaker:of something's really wrong in the organism.
Speaker:Have you seen anything like this? I would generalize it because we talked earlier
Speaker:about how, and Brian Johnson talked about this as well too, as do cardiologists,
Speaker:that having erections at night.
Speaker:Is a leading indicator of cardiovascular health. In order to have erections,
Speaker:you need blood flow, you need nerves that work, and you need muscles that work.
Speaker:The penis and the clitoris too, likely when we have developed a device for women,
Speaker:just not marketed yet, but the penis becomes the canary in the coal mine of vascular disease.
Speaker:It's the indicator of one's overall cardiovascular health.
Speaker:And it's a way of performing almost like getting an electrocardiogram at home.
Speaker:You can see it. If you have good waveforms, we have a 1 to 10 scale.
Speaker:If your erections are hard on a 1 to 10 scale, and if your duration is more
Speaker:than three minutes on average, and if you're having three to five nocturnal
Speaker:erections per night, it's highly likely that you're in good cardiovascular health
Speaker:and that you're not aging as fast as someone who did not have those vital signs.
Speaker:Have you noticed reduced performance with things like smoking,
Speaker:nicotine use, and or caffeine?
Speaker:We have not looked at caffeine. We have looked at nicotine, and we have had
Speaker:men who have stopped stop smoking, and have recovered.
Speaker:Their number of nocturnals goes up. Their duration of the nocturnal reactions go up.
Speaker:What I'm asking is because 17 to 1800s in the Middle East, in Europe,
Speaker:people spend a lot of time in coffee shops and coffee houses.
Speaker:And women would complain that when men came back home, they brought back home
Speaker:nothing but stiff joints.
Speaker:I'm wondering if this is basically like caffeine.
Speaker:Well, you could study it. The great thing about this device is that now in privacy
Speaker:at home, you can measure the impact of these things upon your sexuality.
Speaker:So Timo, if you want to study this and you want to have 12 shots of espresso
Speaker:per week, you could say, here's my baseline before, and now I've done caffeine
Speaker:heavily for a week. What is the impact on my sexual health?
Speaker:Right. Let's go through a couple of supplements. I want you to maybe comment
Speaker:on some of these, because what is often marketed, at least in the biohacking community
Speaker:for sexual function, testosterone,
Speaker:and all of that, you got things like, we mentioned Johimbe,
Speaker:but things like ginseng that is like
Speaker:the more male herbal viagra in a
Speaker:sense in chinese medicine but also as an
Speaker:adaptogen then there is also horny goat
Speaker:weed that comes to mind we've tested a
Speaker:lot of them and i think as i shared with you earlier we receive
Speaker:one to two oral products a week and we haven't found anything that works and
Speaker:we tested maca root horny goat weed fungal wanda nitric oxide l-arginine And
Speaker:we haven't found anything that increases the number of nocturnals or increases
Speaker:a man's sexual performance as measured by the hardness, duration, and corrections.
Speaker:And that's been really interesting because a man who wants to improve his performance,
Speaker:and especially a man who has rectal dysfunction, they walk on their knees on
Speaker:broken glass to get a solution.
Speaker:But they don't trust the conventional medical doctors, and that's with good reason.
Speaker:We're not to be trusted. We don't do a good job of taking care of sexual health.
Speaker:I've never had a doctor ask me about my sexual health, my marriage,
Speaker:et cetera. And I don't have a doctor warn me about the sexual side effects of medications.
Speaker:And I think that's the norm. I think doctors are reluctant to discuss this with
Speaker:their patients and patients are reluctant to ask.
Speaker:So as a consequence, people turn to the naturopaths and integrative medicine
Speaker:and regenerative medicine.
Speaker:And I think that those people have things to contribute, but we also have to
Speaker:remember they're not testing a lot of the things they're talking about. out.
Speaker:The great thing about having, again, biohacking, if you have a way of making
Speaker:something objective, if you can track it objectively, you can then hack it and
Speaker:you can see what works. And then there's the placebo effect.
Speaker:I've got a good friend here in Bozeman, Montana, who swears by beet juice of
Speaker:a particular natural, wholesome brand.
Speaker:We tested it on six men, had no impact, but he still believes in it.
Speaker:And the placebo effect is still really powerful too.
Speaker:I have men who tell me that they get harder more confidently just by having
Speaker:Viagra in their wallet. So putting this on placebo effect, though,
Speaker:with our device, you can actually make it objective and test these things on
Speaker:yourself. Very interesting.
Speaker:So things like Tongkat Ali that, like… We tried.
Speaker:That's not fair. I think we actually tried on 21 men because it was the Tongkat
Speaker:Ali company that really was pushing this heavily.
Speaker:And we found no impact whatsoever.
Speaker:What was interesting with Tongkat Ali was that we had, and it's true for me
Speaker:as well, too, we had an initial subjective feeling that it was working.
Speaker:I felt it was working, but then the data after two weeks showed that there was no change whatsoever.
Speaker:Right. Yeah. Then like in Ayurvedic medicine, they recommend ashwagandha and
Speaker:shilajit for male sexual health, I assume like these also- We tried the first one with no effect.
Speaker:Right. It should lower morning cortisol. But the best thing to lower cortisol is sex.
Speaker:If a man had sex daily, sex with climax daily, the cortisol levels went down
Speaker:by half over two weeks. That's a profound effect.
Speaker:Does that also apply to solo sex like masturbation?
Speaker:The men in the study were having sex solo. Right. I see. Okay.
Speaker:You're eliminating the variable of the partner. One thing that I've noticed
Speaker:that works for me has been actually abstinence from sexual interaction.
Speaker:So I've done twice this 60 day, basically abstinence from ejaculation and also
Speaker:simultaneously also reduced sexual stimuli in the biohacking community.
Speaker:There's several people who are also proponent of this quite yogic approach,
Speaker:basically not not watching porn and reducing external stimuli so that what I've
Speaker:noticed, the opposite sex becomes actually more attractive and interesting.
Speaker:But also, in my experience, in the first few weeks, that's the hardest.
Speaker:You mentioned masturbation as a challenging thing in childhood.
Speaker:For many men, it's a daily practice.
Speaker:And to go one week off might be really, really hard.
Speaker:I've learned that it can be trained for, and it's a very, very hard thing to do.
Speaker:But when you get over the first couple of weeks, it becomes progressively easier and easier.
Speaker:And in my own experience, I don't know about nighttime erections,
Speaker:but at least morning wood was definitely present every single morning.
Speaker:And also like daytime owners, definitely very present.
Speaker:And once you go back into sexual activity, I felt increased sensitivity,
Speaker:enjoyment, and also this kind of effect seemed to last.
Speaker:Although you might have like often sexual interactions with yourself or with
Speaker:the partner. To me, that has been a useful, I call it almost like a reset.
Speaker:I don't know if it has something to do about nervous endings.
Speaker:But you said to me earlier when we had a conversation that actually you can
Speaker:train sexual performance by actually doing it a lot.
Speaker:So here I am, like, not doing, feeling I'm improving my performance,
Speaker:and you're telling me actually by doing it, you can improve your performance.
Speaker:So what's your take on this? I personally would not have the discipline or the
Speaker:inclination to do what you're doing because if I go a day without an orgasm,
Speaker:I get grumpy. And if I went two days without an orgasm, my wife will start complaining about my mood.
Speaker:So that's just who I am. I think what you're saying is interesting.
Speaker:And again, because with our tech ring, and I'll have to get you one,
Speaker:you can measure what's really going on.
Speaker:Sensitivity is subjective, but you could measure how hard you are.
Speaker:You can measure how long you last and you can measure nocturnals.
Speaker:So it could be interesting to, with your practice, especially if you round up
Speaker:five or six other guys who also would have a similar practice,
Speaker:to do it for several weeks, have a before and after and see what's going on.
Speaker:We could have two groups, like one going like full on. It'd be great if you
Speaker:guys, for your own controls, so you could have a period where you have sex every
Speaker:day, and you have a period where you don't, where you have abstinence,
Speaker:and then you would have before and after.
Speaker:It'd be quite interesting because I've been asked this question before in podcasts.
Speaker:And I don't have an answer. I know about the claims. I have to say I'm a little bit skeptical.
Speaker:I certainly think that there are men who report that they have sex frequently,
Speaker:they become dull, especially if they're masturbating.
Speaker:It's a hard thing to find men who are ready to do that long periods of time.
Speaker:But personally, I can say that also another effect that I noticed was increased energy levels.
Speaker:So I seem to have a lot more energy every single day.
Speaker:And this is what anecdotally I've also heard from others who have tried this thing.
Speaker:But personally, for me, it was
Speaker:not really about any of this performance or desensitization or anything.
Speaker:It was more about to be able to control my body and mind in a sense.
Speaker:So it's like a mindful practice in a sense that you can observe an urge and
Speaker:not react on it or act on it.
Speaker:And I think that's what mindfulness meditation teaches.
Speaker:It's just a form of meditation, eyes open 24-7 when you're a man to not be worried
Speaker:about those urges that you can just observe them happening.
Speaker:And I can tell you, they come and go once you stop acting on them.
Speaker:And it just becomes easy and easy to observe them.
Speaker:But that's very interesting. interesting. Let's talk about the device and what
Speaker:kind of data you are able to provide.
Speaker:So if you want to do that study, I would give you the devices.
Speaker:If you want to study this with a bunch of men. That would be very interesting. Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah. Because I actually do enjoy doing it. And I think in, from my own experience, it, it
Speaker:there's little benefit of doing it more than 30 days. And some say it's like
Speaker:the sweet spot would be like every 21 days.
Speaker:I think Tim Ferriss actually wrote about this in his book, I think For Our Body.
Speaker:He spoke about this and that he actually measured this.
Speaker:I don't know how, I don't remember how, but I think it's in his book.
Speaker:And yeah, part of it was also like having sex, but not ejaculating.
Speaker:So you would basically work with opposite sex, but you wouldn't take yourself
Speaker:that that far, and that somehow improves testosterone and performance for the next roundabout.
Speaker:So that's another test that someone could do is abstinence from ejaculation,
Speaker:but still actively getting a boner.
Speaker:You want the blood flow, what virologists say, and I see this in older men too,
Speaker:it really is a use it or lose it proposition, but men, especially as they age,
Speaker:you can get the blood flow without ejaculation, you just need to get an erection
Speaker:in order to get the blood flow.
Speaker:There was data showing that if men really abstain from sex and abstain from
Speaker:erections, their penis will atrophy and we see this objectively in men who had prostate surgery.
Speaker:They're encouraged to use penis pumps afterwards to maintain the blood flow.
Speaker:If they don't pump and do the other colorful exercise and other things they're
Speaker:prescribed, it's much harder for them to recover full sexual function because
Speaker:it's not being used. They need the blood flow.
Speaker:I remember also reading about that ejaculation masturbation is actually good
Speaker:for reducing prostate cancer risk.
Speaker:If you have two orgasms a week, your prostate risk goes down 50%.
Speaker:There's one study from Thailand, a Buddhist priest.
Speaker:There have been two studies about Roman Catholic priests that I recall from a long time ago.
Speaker:People who truly are practicing celibacy. The penis is shriveled.
Speaker:Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker:I don't know if that study group is actually completely objective, but it's sure.
Speaker:One of the great things about our device is that we take this out of the world
Speaker:of subjectivity, and we make this device available to researchers to study it.
Speaker:Now you have a tool that can make it objective as opposed to a subjective scoring system.
Speaker:That could be like a mandatory requirement to become a priest is to use your programming.
Speaker:It's 24 7 and prove it i'm practicing
Speaker:we've had this is only very very
Speaker:tangentially related to what you just said but with using our data we've
Speaker:had a couple of divorces because people will look at someone else's phone
Speaker:and say usually women oh i thought you work at two o'clock in the afternoon
Speaker:yesterday what's this what's this 90 90 minute erection you had who are you
Speaker:who are you with what are you doing that's dangerous data but let's talk about
Speaker:the data sets it like a gamification gamification thing that you get like some
Speaker:kind of awards and like medals for owners or how does it work?
Speaker:We don't give awards or medals, although we probably will do that a year from
Speaker:now. We will gamify it because we have men who are interested in its gamification.
Speaker:Right now, we just give you data like you would get from using Oura Ring or Whoop or an Apple Watch.
Speaker:You get an overall erectile fitness score, which is a computer analysis of your
Speaker:nocturnals and your sex erections. And if your score is above a seven,
Speaker:it's your 6.5, you're okay.
Speaker:We tell people how many nocturnal erections they have on average,
Speaker:how long they last. We also do the same thing for people's sex erections, how hard you get.
Speaker:How long do you last? And people can use that data to compete with their brothers.
Speaker:I got two brothers who are doing that right now. Or you can use that data for health reasons.
Speaker:I want to, in your case, I want to test out this yoga practice.
Speaker:I want to test out maca root. Taking testosterone, what's the impact on my sexual performance?
Speaker:I'm starting on new medications. Now we're getting to how most men,
Speaker:older men especially, use this. My doctor started me on this hypertensive medication.
Speaker:I'm concerned about my sexual health. Or my psychiatrist put me on an antidepressant.
Speaker:Because people are reluctant to discuss these things with their doctors.
Speaker:Now in privacy and at home, they can get their data. Yeah.
Speaker:I don't know if I would be ready to look at the nighttime boners of my brother,
Speaker:but I guess you enjoy looking at that data.
Speaker:But I'm in my 40s now, so I'm 41.
Speaker:Of course, with biohacking, I feel much younger. And yeah, and biologically,
Speaker:I'm also younger and I feel younger.
Speaker:I haven't seen or feel like any reduction in sexual performance or any of this,
Speaker:but I'm fully aware that once you hit 40, it's a downhill downhill road.
Speaker:Like 26% of men under age 40 have experienced some kind of erectile dysfunction,
Speaker:but it goes to over 50% very rapidly, over 60% when I'm getting close to my 50s.
Speaker:Yeah, I'm utterly aware of those factors so that the older I become,
Speaker:the more I should think about it.
Speaker:And it's not really very convincing or doesn't give me much hope that you tell
Speaker:me that none of these supplements that I know will work.
Speaker:What works? That's a great question. Don't get high high blood pressure.
Speaker:Don't become diabetic. If you do get those problems, comply.
Speaker:Don't become overweight. You'll look quite fit. I'm 71 years old.
Speaker:Both you and I can look down and I can see my penis. If you can't see your penis when you look down.
Speaker:You've got a problem. Because most men, unfortunately, both my age and many
Speaker:men your age, they see belly.
Speaker:And so, avoiding diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, not smoking,
Speaker:not drinking to excess, all these things are beneficial.
Speaker:In terms of sexual health, unfortunately, as I said, we have not seen any oral products that work.
Speaker:Men, as they get older, especially men who are less fit, they develop venous leak syndrome.
Speaker:I'll draw an analogy. terminology if i would sit on a plane for five
Speaker:hours i'd fly to estonia to see you and sat on a
Speaker:plane for 12 hours and my socks might feel a little bit tight afterwards
Speaker:if i was sitting for a long period of time but the rings of my fingers might
Speaker:feel a little bit tight and why is that it's because the vein the muscles around
Speaker:the veins are not pumping the blood back to the heart effectively in the case
Speaker:of the penis they're not holding the blood in the penis so the most common problem
Speaker:is not that men can't attain erect if you can't attain erection you have a serious
Speaker:problem and need to see a doctor.
Speaker:The most common problem is men cannot sustain an erection.
Speaker:And that can be due to anxiety, medications, alcohol, recreational drugs,
Speaker:diseases, but it's also most commonly as men get older due to this weakening of the veins.
Speaker:And these aren't veins you can exercise in the gym. These are smooth muscle
Speaker:veins. These are veins that you have to exercise by utilizing the organ.
Speaker:So you need to have sex a lot. Definitely. Is that like same as arterial elasticity?
Speaker:Yes, but on the venous side. The most common approach that men take as they
Speaker:get older with when they have erectile issues is they take a PD-5 medication,
Speaker:the common ones being Tadalafil and Sodanafil or Agrisialis,
Speaker:and those medications put more
Speaker:blood into the penis, but they do a very poor job at keeping it there.
Speaker:So if you can get an erection and you lose it, it's probably not,
Speaker:those drugs are going to be less valuable to you than using an erection ring.
Speaker:So one of the problems that men have, common problems they have,
Speaker:can be overcome with an erection ring.
Speaker:Even men who are healthy like you should use an erection ring on a regular basis.
Speaker:I do. I never used erection rings before I came up with this device because
Speaker:they're hard silicone. They pinch. They're uncomfortable. You want them off right away.
Speaker:So when this doctor challenged me with coming up with a way of counting number
Speaker:of nocturnal erections, I had to reinvent the erection ring.
Speaker:So our erection rings are made out of soft elastomer. They're comfortable.
Speaker:They don't block the arterial flow into the penis. They only constrain the venous return.
Speaker:So with these rings, you will last harder. And beyond rock hard, there's cock ring hard.
Speaker:Nothing is going to get a man harder. The more bloods retain your penis,
Speaker:the more sensitivity you will have.
Speaker:Nothing is going to get a man harder than a cock ring. No amount of anal,
Speaker:oral, manual, digital stimulation.
Speaker:And a lot of data shows that a ring will keep a man harder twice as long as a medication.
Speaker:One of my goals is to mainstream erection rings for men.
Speaker:Women have vibrators that are mainstream for women. My mother's vibrator was
Speaker:in the bottom dresser drawer of a storage closet. it. I don't know how many my wife owns.
Speaker:And our daughter takes them on dates. So back in the 70s and 80s,
Speaker:there was certain like shame, stigma associated with women using vibrators.
Speaker:Oh, you have to have a natural orgasm. That's gone.
Speaker:And men have this shame as well, or rectum rings are kind of stigmatized.
Speaker:Therefore, we're gay men.
Speaker:Or therefore, people are into fetishes. And that's stupid.
Speaker:It's unfortunate. So we go to medical conventions. We ask one question.
Speaker:We want to tell the difference between a gay doctor and a straight doctor.
Speaker:The question is, do you use a cock ring?
Speaker:Straight doctor. I don't need that. It's like Superman kryptonite.
Speaker:Gay doctor. Last night. Got a better one? It's not about, I don't need an erection
Speaker:ring. You don't need one either.
Speaker:But if a man, do you want to have one? Do you want to have a more intense orgasm?
Speaker:Do you want to have a long lasting erection?
Speaker:Do you want to have more control over your erections? And then a ring is the
Speaker:answer. Maybe the health aspect is the way to change the stigma,
Speaker:that it's not about giggling about using these things and like a shameful thing,
Speaker:but it's actually it's a health product.
Speaker:So it's something that improves blood flow and general well-being and health over time.
Speaker:And it's actually something that you can support with technology.
Speaker:And in this case, it's better designed for that.
Speaker:It's not just for the sexual act, it can be used overnight. night
Speaker:so it's no longer like it loses kind of it's like it's my
Speaker:hope that that people will develop a positive relationship
Speaker:with this wearable the way they do with other wearables so
Speaker:we know that if people have small light to small rings they
Speaker:pay attention to the data they pay more attention to their health it's my hope
Speaker:that by giving people data that tells them about their cardiovascular health
Speaker:as well as their sexual health that they will pay more attention to things that
Speaker:will get them healthier and avoid things that are unhealthy yeah for i can say
Speaker:that for my My abstinence practice definitely improved hardness.
Speaker:It was absolutely noticeable and crazy.
Speaker:So I would love to try that just to see if it's true.
Speaker:When we talked about the different supplements like L-carnitine,
Speaker:zinc, all of those, there are studies that show that they do increase sperm motility.
Speaker:So it could improve fertility, sperm out, all of that. My co-author, I think Dr.
Speaker:Oli Sovjari spoke about using...
Speaker:Acetylcarnitine, Alcar to improve motility when they were trying to conceive
Speaker:with his wife, which they succeeded.
Speaker:So he took like a tested approach to it.
Speaker:And yeah, so maybe they don't improve the cardiovascular side or like nighttime
Speaker:or daytime boners, but definitely you can improve your sperm quality.
Speaker:And one thing that I would be interested to test as a biohacker is red light
Speaker:I don't know if you have been shining red light on your testicles,
Speaker:but that's one thing that seems to have interesting evidence.
Speaker:And it's also connected to mitochondrial function and also the production of
Speaker:ATP through cytochrome C oxidase.
Speaker:You just don't want to use too much of the infrared range because the heat can be damaging.
Speaker:Your testicles are hanging outside of your body for a good reason.
Speaker:And also decreasing your sperm as well, too, with too much heat.
Speaker:My personal experience with red light therapy was I was approached by,
Speaker:I'm not going to nickname the company because they're in the market right now,
Speaker:but in the beta phase, I was approached by a company out of Los Angeles,
Speaker:and they had a red light device that went over the penis.
Speaker:And I did my baseline testosterone level. I did my baseline using our device,
Speaker:our baseline internals and duration and firmness of nocturnals.
Speaker:And I used the device for six weeks, and it had no impact whatsoever,
Speaker:except my testosterone level went down significantly.
Speaker:So I decided not to invest in this company or market their product.
Speaker:But they're in the market right now, and they're making claims.
Speaker:I would urge people, if you're going to use an untested therapy like red light
Speaker:therapy, that might not be benign.
Speaker:If you took macaroon, you're not going to harm yourself. But red light therapy
Speaker:potentially is harmful.
Speaker:I understand the hypothetical benefits on the mitochondria, but
Speaker:I have the specific indication we're talking about improvement and
Speaker:these guys claim the testosterone level goes up with red light therapy in
Speaker:terms of that i it was the reverse with me would it
Speaker:be the reverse with you if you tried i don't know but now you can get objective
Speaker:personal data and see what's going on with
Speaker:you as opposed to just believing someone else's claim yeah i
Speaker:mean in the end we can have all kinds of opinions but now we
Speaker:have means to test things and figure out and
Speaker:that's the the parking ethos is n is one and you have
Speaker:to take your subjective opinions and objective
Speaker:data and in the end you have to test things on yourself
Speaker:like what works and what doesn't so what has worked for you you mentioned exercise
Speaker:like briefly you touched that works for me is like a bunch of things one i have
Speaker:cut back on my nighttime drinking because i see the impact i might not kill
Speaker:the rations so i might not have the discipline to be celibate or to be much
Speaker:practice absence but But you have to discipline to cut back on alcohol.
Speaker:So it's not just your auroring, but your cockering that makes you aware that
Speaker:it's going to affect your sleep. Correct. That's right.
Speaker:We used to take, especially if I was traveling internationally,
Speaker:I would take a Zolpidem for sleep, but it wipes out my nocturnals.
Speaker:So I don't do that anymore.
Speaker:I just go without it. What's worked for me, though, is actually our product
Speaker:we call the Maximum Performance Ring, because as an older man,
Speaker:I will lose my erections faster.
Speaker:Rock hard for me is the same as it was when I was your age, same as it was when I was 14 years old.
Speaker:I found respect for Brian Johnson when he claims he has the penis of an 18-year-old.
Speaker:It's not about the hardness.
Speaker:I have five to seven nocturnals a night sometimes. And I'm not in his condition.
Speaker:It's not about the number of nocturnals, it's about the interval between climaxes.
Speaker:What distinguishes an 18-year-old from a 70-year-old is the 18-year-old can
Speaker:have two or three orgasms an hour. I can't do that.
Speaker:And we're actually, we're playing around with PT-141 peptide next week with
Speaker:six men to see if that can decrease the refractory period, which would be interesting.
Speaker:But what works for me though is actually using an erection ring and I use our
Speaker:product called the Maxx Performance Ring.
Speaker:It was tested on 11 men here in Montana between the age of 27 and 70,
Speaker:and it puts pressure over the urethra to prolong the ejaculation.
Speaker:By prolonging the ejaculation, we increase the power of the orgasm.
Speaker:So my ejaculatory phase goes from four seconds to seven seconds,
Speaker:and that's a more profound orgasm, and I could not achieve that on my own without
Speaker:this mechanical enhancer of pleasure.
Speaker:If I have a ring on as well too, I can now last longer, and that's been a game
Speaker:changer for me and many of our older customers. If men are concerned they're
Speaker:going to lose their erection, they get anxiety, they can lose their erection even faster.
Speaker:And so a ring produces confidence, both the man and their sexual partners,
Speaker:because you don't require as
Speaker:much direct stimulation and sustained stimulation or sustained erection.
Speaker:So there's not a lot that works in my experience, but there's the ring and then
Speaker:there's avoiding certain, avoiding excessive alcohol use, avoiding certain medications.
Speaker:So peptides and all of that is still experimental.
Speaker:We'll see juries out on those. I've also read articles on stem cell makeups.
Speaker:I think Ben Greenfield, one of the biohackers, he speaks highly about his penis
Speaker:after stem cell therapy.
Speaker:I don't know about that. Some biohackers are, by the way, they are injecting their
Speaker:prostates and penises with plasma, but also methylene blue.
Speaker:Can you imagine? like i've never heard of
Speaker:that i don't know about that methyl blue
Speaker:is toxic anyway they believe it's great i
Speaker:have people who i have a couple people i know who are injecting botox
Speaker:into the penis to increase blood flow again i'm agnostic about these things
Speaker:i urge people to test it make it objective as opposed to just making a claim
Speaker:make it objective precisely yeah like none of these experimental stuff is by
Speaker:the way medical advice for anyone this is we're on that territory now and that
Speaker:that whatever you do to your penis, it's your business.
Speaker:But be very careful with that. You have only one boner.
Speaker:Yes. It's not like your kidneys. You can lose one. You can lose a kidney.
Speaker:Life goes on, but you lose your penis.
Speaker:Yeah yeah it's a disaster it is absolute disaster
Speaker:for sure force you to become a monk now in
Speaker:terms of this kind of technology where do you see
Speaker:this going people are living longer the rejuvenation therapies
Speaker:are of great interest health and well-being and like
Speaker:sexual function is a growing issue globally we don't
Speaker:fully understand all the physiological psychological mechanical
Speaker:problems but some of it you're doing all
Speaker:these tests and you find out that there are
Speaker:things that don't work quite a lot of it and it's quite
Speaker:individual also what works and what doesn't and then there's
Speaker:the whole stigma thing that it's like products like this i've
Speaker:seen even you go to amsterdam you go to sex shops it feels
Speaker:like you're not really going to some dark alley there's some
Speaker:hairy dude behind the counter but it's like those are like
Speaker:high class high level clientele and
Speaker:really cool environments and i've seen a lot of in
Speaker:the biohacking community also these vibrators that have
Speaker:trackers on them and gamification of sexual performance
Speaker:is nothing new it can be even done with a phone app so there's
Speaker:some of that out there for tracking your thirsts and
Speaker:noise levels and whatnot with your phone so is this like turning all of this
Speaker:into entertainment almost like a that's inevitable and especially women too
Speaker:are competitive about their sexual health and who's firmer finns or estonians
Speaker:you'll be able to who's is it because a lot of swedes firm than the danes or
Speaker:what about about the Norwegians.
Speaker:People will actually be able to say which soccer team is the firmest.
Speaker:It's inevitable that people will gamify this. And we have men right now who
Speaker:will take our devices on weekends to Las Vegas with their friends and who had
Speaker:the most erections over the weekend. Who was ours over the weekend?
Speaker:I would love to see carnivores versus vegans fighting this off.
Speaker:I would be on the carnivore camp and say that the vegans, they are too fragile
Speaker:to even raise a hand, so why would they raise boners?
Speaker:We'll see about that. I've seen some documentaries which claim that nighttime
Speaker:erections go up by using more olive oil instead of saturated fat.
Speaker:I don't know if that's true. I would love to see this becoming more objective
Speaker:so that we can actually test things out.
Speaker:That's my goal too. I want to provide men and soon women with actionable data,
Speaker:personal data about their sexual health so they can ideally then track it,
Speaker:hack it, enjoy a longer lifetime of lovemaking.
Speaker:And then you make an integration with Tinder and women will figure guys out
Speaker:who don't have enough nighttime boners and their sexual function has been reduced.
Speaker:Or that's a fantasy of a man, right? So maybe that's not so much of a big deal
Speaker:for women, but we'll see.
Speaker:I think that women actually do care about this. Actually do care.
Speaker:And now that we're developing this, I think women care even more than men do.
Speaker:I'll put it that way. We just don't know yet. Or they should care more.
Speaker:And why is that? Well, post-menopausal women have all the same problems that
Speaker:men do with diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, obesity.
Speaker:But pre-menopausal women take hormones for birth control, and they take esterite
Speaker:antidepressants five or six times more than men do. And those things have a
Speaker:significant impact upon their sexual health.
Speaker:And also, women more like to take action about their sexual health or their
Speaker:health in general than men are.
Speaker:So I'm pretty certain that... They already use ways to train their pelvic muscles.
Speaker:And they use all kinds of things from yoni eggs to whatnot, claiming that it's
Speaker:a way of improving your sexual health.
Speaker:And if women are doing it, why not men would have retreats where they put cock
Speaker:rings on and practice some boners? So not the target audience,
Speaker:personally, for that kind of thing, but I would be in the target audience for a device like this.
Speaker:I would be curious to see the data and trying to verify what you said on different
Speaker:supplements and technologies and see how even an hour reduced sleep might affect,
Speaker:which I feel like is a big contributor to my own.
Speaker:If I don't sleep enough, I'm not going to get a boner. So that's just a big
Speaker:deal breaker for me is sleep. So then you can actually see how big of an impact
Speaker:stuff like that is, and you can become concerned.
Speaker:Wonderful. All right. If people want to know more, myfirmtech.com,
Speaker:that's the website where there's a bunch of science and the different products
Speaker:out there from the firm Tech Ring to the Performance Ring that he also mentioned.
Speaker:And yeah, this seems interesting. If our audience is interested in doing a No
Speaker:Fap February kind of thing,
Speaker:but maybe not February, but some other month this year let's see if we can get
Speaker:some more objective data sets out there and yeah and then we could have a Fap
Speaker:Friday so get the data in on like training for these kind of things and see
Speaker:what happens definitely biohackers are consistent and interested in
Speaker:Measuring things like this. And yeah, sexuality shouldn't be a taboo.
Speaker:We should be concerned about sexual function and figure out together what works
Speaker:and what doesn't. Don't you agree?
Speaker:100%. I think, again, my goal is to provide people with data that will allow
Speaker:them to have a better, happier life and address issues of cardiovascular health
Speaker:and sexual health, address the problems before they become apparent to them.
Speaker:So, for example, we've had two men who have gotten back to me saying that they
Speaker:saw a decline in nocturnal erections. They went to say cardiologists,
Speaker:but they got cardiac categorizations.
Speaker:And did I save their lives? No, probably not. But did they find out important
Speaker:information that prevented them from having a major health catastrophe?
Speaker:Yes. The youngest person who reported to me to evaluate the data was a biohacker.
Speaker:He's a 26-year-old guy who was having difficulty conceiving and getting erections.
Speaker:He was in extraordinarily good health, but it turned out he was only having
Speaker:one nocturnal erection per night and was weak. He turned out to have an adrenal problem.
Speaker:And he eventually eventually went to an endocrinologist and had that problem addressed.
Speaker:So if you want to hack your body, the penis is a good place to start.
Speaker:That's a good point. That's a good place to end.
Speaker:Thank you, Dr. Elliot Justin, for this insightful journey into boners and getting
Speaker:us out of the stigma of measuring our important jewelry and what they're capable of.
Speaker:And hopefully, this provided a lot of good information for people.
Speaker:Is there any other websites and things that you want to mention in addition to MyFirmTech?
Speaker:Yeah. If people want to contact me personally, you can find me at elliot,
Speaker:E-L-L-I-O-T at myfirmtech.com.
Speaker:I answer things because I'm interested in this. So people have a medical question
Speaker:or they think there's something that works, they want to test something,
Speaker:let me know and I'll help you out. Wonderful.
Speaker:Thank you much, everyone. Now remember to stay hard and stay erect.
Speaker:Music.
