We hear a lot of information out there about how technology is impacting our performance
sometimes in a positive but mostly in a negative way.
Especially technology and the impact of things like blue light from screens on our sleep.
Today on the firefighter craftsmanship podcast we're talking about positives with technology
and some pretty cool new adoptions or new implementations of technology from a company
called XTI who's developed what they call POS, Pulse Alternating Wavelength System
where it's using light in a positive fashion.
So without further ado let's jump into firefighter craftsmanship podcast episode 35 using technology
for performance and recovery with XTI and Jason Suntich.
Welcome to the show Jason we're very excited to see your smile and face.
Thanks for having me.
Appreciate the opportunity.
So what are you guys up to over at XTI?
I mean where did XTI even come from?
What does that even stand for?
XTI is Ziant Technologies Incorporated and Ziant is a playoff of a xanthrophil which is a
photoreceptor in plants and that's where this technology all got started was in plants
and as we've moved forward into other agricultural and animal and human markets we've found
it much easier to just call the company XTI.
I would agree with that and as you're talking about plants like instantly I'm thinking about
Adam Sandler and chloroform and all that right?
So yeah good choice and maybe changing the name to just XTI makes it easy for everybody.
Good.
So what are you guys up to over there?
What are you guys over there at XTI?
What are you guys up to?
We are extremely busy right now.
I'll give you a little bit of background just so that some of this makes more sense but
we've been in business since 2014 and we've really spent the last 10 years in the R&D
phase of this technology.
And like I said it started off in plants, we spent the first two years proving this out
there and then with the understanding that the same sun controls us all moved into poultry
and then into large mammals.
So dairy cattle, beef cattle, race horses, rodeo horses and in the midst of all of that
have had a number of people using this technology I'd say over the last eight years myself being
one of the first early adopters.
And the focus at this point because of the benefits that we're finding on the human applications
have really driven us to focus on the human applications and we're finding really outstanding
results in a variety of different applications such as collegiate and professional athletics
and have more recently started working with first responders and we're incredibly excited
about the potential as well as the first kind of feedback that we're receiving from the
first responder community regarding the benefits.
Yeah, absolutely.
So kind of pull the cloak off so you mentioned the sun is controlling all of us and then
we're getting performance.
So what is XTI's technology founded in?
Is it light or what's the basis?
So to kind of frame the conversation about why our technology, one is needed and also
how it works.
You have to look at human evolution over the last seven million years and over that seven
million year timeframe we were all programmed to wake up with a sunrise that has very specific
wavelengths and then go outside and work during the day as hunters and gatherers, predominantly
blue wavelengths and then at the end of the day we'd receive a sunset which gave us different
wavelengths and the importance of that is that all of those wavelengths inform our body
in terms of entrenching circadian rhythm and producing different hormones at different
times of day and long story short, Edison invented a light bulb 147 years ago.
If you put 147 years on a seven million year timeline, 147 years doesn't even show up as
a dot but yet we've completely changed our relationship with nature in the fact that
now on average we spend 92% of our lives indoors so we no longer are receiving those natural
inputs that we need for our body to create all kinds of different hormones and neurotransmitters
I think melatonin would be the most obvious one where melatonin is created before you
go to sleep it really starts that chain reaction of getting you to sleep.
A lot of people think of that as being a hormone that's truly what keeps you asleep but it's
not it's really the first in a chain of cascading hormones that allows you to get to sleep.
So what we've looked at is the are all of the increases of neurological and inflammatory
diseases over the last 30 years and a lot of those are well over a thousand percent
increase so you have to beg the question why is that and we think that a contributing factor
is the fact that now we spend more time not only indoors away from the inputs from the
sun but we predominantly sit in front of blue screens and the average time in front of a
screen whether it be a cell phone, a computer screen or a TV is now seven hours a day for
the average human and all of those you know we're typically using at the wrong time of
day when we're trying to get to sleep we're giving ourselves predominantly a blue input
which is telling our body to produce hormones that are contrary to sleep.
This technology that we've come up with is called POS or Pulse Alternating Wavelength
System.
The easiest way to describe that is if I shine a bright red light at you that light
goes into your eyeball hits molecules in your retina called chromophores.
A chromophore accepts light and gives off an electron down the optic nerve.
When that happens goes into your vision centering your brain says I saw a bright red light in
this location but we all know if we look at a light long enough or if it's too bright
and you look away you see a white spot.
The reason for that is that the chromophores that accept the photon of light they're like
a single shot pistol.
Once they've fired off their electron there's a rearming process that's actually a chemical
process and is a 14 step process that takes time for that white spot to go away.
Where our technology comes in and what's differentiating about it is that when that molecule is unarmed
we can instantaneously rearm that molecule with a new electron by pulsing and alternating
wavelength for a different energy of light into that molecule make the white spot go
away then we can shine the red again.
Now imagine that we do that firing and re-arming process about 250,000 times a second.
We're driving far more information into the biology than a constant on light and so what
we're really trying to do is to drive light information down the optic nerve in the way
that the body can handle that light and as it turns out we found that our most efficient
recipes the lights are only electronically on 9% of the time they're off 91% of the time
and but when you look at our lights you don't notice that they're pulsing it's because they're
pulsing so quickly that we don't have the ability to perceive that 91% off time it just
looks like a dim light and the reason for that again is we're trying to give the biology
only what it can use when it can use it to make that system be as efficient as we possibly
can and I think the other overlying premise of this that's really important for people
to understand is that the optic nerve actually crosses over under your brain and so the right
eye information goes to the left side of your brain left side left eye goes to the right
side of your brain and at that optic chiasm or the optic nerves crossover a portion of
each optic nerve actually splits off and is not for vision at all that innervates into
a anatomical feature called the SCN junction and the reason why that's important is that
that information from the SCN junction then directly goes into the hypothalamus pituitary
and pineal gland for hormone creation so again looking back at that evolutionary model
when biology starts creating anatomical features that's a really good indication of how important
these different wavelengths of light during the day are for us to sense our environment
to get a sense of not only time of day but even seasonality you know you look at different
animals and you know when they grow hair before winter for example or you look at a tree and
the fact that the leaves change color all of that is based on light a lot of that has
been thought to be based on temperature but in fact it's based on light and that organism
sense of the different wavelengths of light and also the ratios of sunrise versus sunset
versus blue during the day is really good indicator of what season that organism is in and therefore
it builds its own hormones based on what those inputs are so what we're trying to do is in
a very artificial environment that we all live in now you know most people when you're
sitting indoors you're under a white light that white light is just completely devoid
of any light mount light nutrition that you need and so we're really you know lining this
idea up with calling it light malnutrition in the fact that we're no longer receiving
those inputs that we need from nature.
My head is spinning right now with so many questions I've been writing down questions
all over the place so I think it's a good time for me to interject here real quick that
none of this that we're going to talk about today with Jason or really anytime in the
firefighter craftsmanship podcast should be construed as medical advice and we'll kind
of talk about what that means a little bit further but you know there's lots of information
out there on XTI on your guys's webpage as far as peer reviewed studies and things like
that and so none of this is is medical advice by any means and do your own research and
talk to your primary care physician if you feel so desired to do.
So let's dive into that so I mean it's really really important you made some good correlations
there of well that's cool that I'm getting these things blasted into my eyeballs and
across the optic nerve right and so like how's that usable and then I think you tied it in
really really well of tying into things you know different glands and different hormones
different neurochemicals that are released as a result of the information that come in
through our eyes and so for us in the fire service we can relate to this very very simply
by when you went through recruit school or you're a trainer right and we stair step recruits
up hopefully we're stair stepping them up we're not just throwing them in the pool and hoping
that they don't drown essentially right is when we teach them search training we don't
initially teach them the techniques and how this is going to go by taking their vision
away but as that module progresses in the fire service and you're training them how to search
without the lights on because that's the environment essentially that we will work in when we're
out there on a structure fire once we take that away you know and it's what 60 to 80
percent of the information that we process is actually coming in through our eyeballs
when we take that away we watch people's brains completely pooped our pants you know and so
we already understand in a different connotation the impact of vision optics like actually
processing information but there's a game behind the game as there's always the case
with the human body and so the optic nerve is actually really really important and the
type and the flavor and the frequency of light specifically ties back into things that you
don't even know that your body is reacting to and processing creating defenses for or
capitalizing on different environments can you speak a little bit more to that yeah absolutely
I think that's a great analogy I think we just have lost track of how important these
natural keys are for biology and without a doubt I believe that that's coming with some
real repercussions again like I said at the beginning of our discussion we spent 10 years
proving out this methodology in a number of different animal species and we've worked
with some amazing universities like Colorado State University Purdue University and being
able to prove out in animal models how important light is not only in terms of neurochemistry
in terms of beneficial hormone creation and things like melatonin but in actual behavior
of animals based on light inputs we've done some really incredible studies in terms of
fear response and anxiety responses in animals based on conventional lighting which again
is very similar in an animal environment to the white lights in our office versus animals
that are under our lighting and we've seen really discrete differences in terms of benefits
to those animals in reducing anxiety and reducing fear and just generally reducing that fight
or flight response which I think all of those things are very directly applicable to the
human model as well.
Absolutely and we've talked at length about on this podcast hypervigilance the window
of tolerance between you know with the autonomic nervous system where we have the sympathetic
nervous system which is fight or flight we have the parasympathetic nervous system which
is typically termed rest and digest and for us in emergency services and really if we
look at just the human especially in the United States of America everybody's window of tolerance
is really really tight right and some of that has to do with social media some of it has
to do with the algorithms and what we are clicking on and then we're getting fed more
and more and more and if you're clicking on or you're consuming negative content it's
going to feed you more negative content right so I say it all the time stop watching the
news right they make their money on eyeballs they know for a fact that negative news gets
more eyeballs than positive news does so they are in the business to make money which means
they're feeding what gets eyeballs which is negative stuff so what you put in is what
you get out and so this is where a technology like this that is just something that you're
exposed to you don't even actually have to do anything to be exposed to this technology
which we're going to talk about here shortly it's actually a positive input in a world
and an environment of negative stuff and this has nothing to do with running a nasty 911
call this is just the typical environment which doesn't even have anything to do with
watching the news or looking at your cell phone it has to do with what light bulb is
in your light in your house in your in the apparatus in your fire station in your police
car in the jail whatever and those things can actually create a negative stress response
to us that we really have never really known about until you guys have kind of pulled the
curtain away a little bit.
Absolutely and I think it's great that you brought up hyper vigilance you know extremely
high cortisol levels that never come down all of those are a byproduct of our environment
that you know whether that be lack of sleep whether that be lack of circadian rhythm regulation
or whether it just be a constant stress response that is very difficult to come down from when
you're really trained over a career to have that stress response so that the sleeping
with one eye open analogy I think is really applicable to first responders because you
are somewhat always sleeping with one eye open and I think that this technology really
is a potential game changer for the industry in terms of trying to re regulate those circadian
rhythms in terms of trying to bring down those cortisol levels that all generally lead to
better health and it is interesting how we ended up getting to the first responder application
we actually started off our first human application we went met with New Orleans Saints in August
of last summer so all of this is fairly new the New Orleans Saints tried our technology
out that they are in the midst of renovating their entire strength facility and as a result
of the positives that they saw for their athletes in using our technology in the weight room
they are integrating this technology throughout the weight room and also will be doing their
training camp in California because of the renovation of the weight room and while they
are there they will be putting players in hotel rooms utilizing our sleep lights to
get players really used to using those before they go back to the rigors of their day to
day with family in the house and all of those types of things.
The next evolution on the sports side we worked with the University of Houston basketball
they did a multi-million dollar renovation of their training facility all based on sleep
and recovery improvements and they built in sleep pods for the players so between classes
and sort of walking back to their dorms or going to get fast food they are expected to
come back to the training facility and they actually have these pods that our technology
is integrated into so if a player wants to take a nap again keeping those cortisol levels
down just de-stressing they are finding major benefits with that and then next application
was with Colorado State football we let the entire football team last season and when
I say that every player on the team actually had one of our sleep and recovery lamps in
their dorm or apartment and they were asked to utilize those here is the other benefit
of the technology for 45 minutes before they go to sleep so when you are using the sleep
and recovery lamp you can still be watching TV you can still be doing homework you can
still be on a laptop for example you just need to have these lights shining into the
periphery of your vision just like the example of the benefits of sunlight you don't have
to stare at the sun to get the benefits of the sun our technology is very similar where
it just needs to be no more than a 45 degree angle to where you are looking directly and
so you are receiving this light information so these players utilize this technology for
45 minutes before sleep we did a study with WOOP the wearable device the measure sleep
measures recovery and what we did in that study we had 40 players wearing a WOOP device
for a week to get us baseline data and then we asked the players to utilize the lights
for 45 minutes before sleep for the next week of time and what we found via that study was
that we improved recovery by 13 percent we increased heart rate variability by 12 percent
decreased resting respirations by 2 percent and resting heart rate by 3 percent and in
my opinion those are really extreme moves for young healthy athletic people and we're
continuing to see very similar results in a number of other users of technology including
we have a member of the US Olympic rugby team who has seen a 25 percent improvement in his
recovery scores month over month after starting to utilize our technology so I was fortunate
enough to have one of the captains of the fire authority who was knowledgeable about
our technology through a family member of his and he had a very positive response to
the technology himself a guy that's in very good shape and health is at the forefront
for him and so that led to a meeting with the leadership and we are trialing the technology
there and then are also doing the same thing with another local fire department and have
had two other introductions to other northern Colorado fire departments so it's been really
reassuring to me just with the firefighter and first responder community how the word
about this technology has spread without us having active marketing or advertising to
get these introductions and we also are seeing some really incredible results back from another
three to first responder being law enforcement we're working with the law enforcement local
sheriff's department and working with their entire leadership team and we're seeing really
spectacular results in terms of ease of getting to sleep the improvement of the quality of
sleep and also the increase in focus and concentration during the day all of these individuals
who fill that questionnaires and on all of those measurable subjective answers we're
seeing improvements north of 75 percent in every one of those categories so I think really
strong indications of how this can benefit the first responder community and have been
extremely excited to see the open mindedness of the first responder community in terms
of something that can benefit health via improved sleep.
It's amazing stuff you have amazing testimonials you've worked with some heavy heavy hitters
you right I mean you talked about professional multiple different sports and we know when
we look at like from a sports psychology realm or just sports in general all the way down
as you're talking Division one only programs right now like especially the professionals
but even D1 that's a high level athlete they have insane skills right off the bat they
have an insane level of fitness you know especially in relation to their specific sport but they
have neurotic staff members like strength and conditioning coaches that are tracking
every single metric we could argue that's a positive we could argue that that's a negative
but the fact is is they know where you Jason if you're playing ball they know right they
know what you can back squat they know how many hours a night you're sleeping they know
what your optimal nutrition is everything is customized to you and when you see numbers
from high level 18 to 22 23 year old male college D1 athletes that have recovery scores
13% HRV 12% increase that's an insane number right like we're talking trying to move margins
get 1% better every day you're talking I can get you 12% better and you didn't even change
anything other than the type of light stimulus that's entering their eyeballs and they're
not I think it's important to notice or to mention that you don't have to stare at this
light right you're not like up close it doesn't it doesn't interrupt anything that you're
doing right those collegiate athletes are still playing Madden at night time I mean
that's what I mean they're studying right but they're they're seeing these benefits
even under high stress because this was conducted during season.
Yep and the other thing that I'll say is if anybody has interest in learning more about
the user experience in the CSU football example we actually have some testimonials on our
website with coach Narvel the head coach coach Simmons the head strength coach and Tori
Horton who's a standout wide receiver for the team and this was about nine months into
utilizing the lights I think it's always stronger to hear from somebody who's not a co-founder
of a company in terms of what the benefits are but I think what you just pointed out
is is really critical to this and that is that you don't have to change what you're
doing during the day.
The other thing that we're finding is that the combination we have two recipes and we
haven't talked much about what that means the recipe is just the wavelengths that we're
using what the reset wavelength is and the timing of how we're pulsing these different
lights but for human application we have two recipes the first is sleep and recovery the
second is a performance light and I'll tell you the feedback that we receive from the
performance light is really outstanding we're actually working with another it's a big 12
team currently and they have integrated this into all of their academic facilities because
of the increased focus and concentration of student athletes in that academic setting
and that's where they went first as opposed to using this in a truly athletic setting
such as a weight room but another great example of CSU all of the players last season only
use the sleep light the coaching staff use the performance lights and the sleep lights
based on the benefits that they saw with the combination we're now going to be outfitting
the weight rooms we're going to be outfitting training rooms we're going to be outfitting
meeting rooms so that players get the benefit of the performance lights during the day and
then they will have their own sleep light that they can use prior to going to bed and
in my opinion you know the benefits of the performance light are great during the day
benefits of the sleep light are great for sleep but it's kind of one of those cases
where one plus one equals three when you combine the performance light during the day with
the sleep light at night I think that's really where you get the most bang for the buck.
Yeah and then you have it stacked that with quality hydration nutrition good mental health
good mental wellness processing stress in a positive way imparting stress on purpose
like tactical fitness routines on and on and on and now now we have an exponential increase
in performance and happiness right like and so we say here at firefighter craftsmanship
the goal is to kick ass on calls right that's what we signed up to do and that is the expectation
we should have extreme basic skills and be able to implement those in varied environments
that we can't predict what necessarily what's going to happen we certainly can't predict
what call is coming but the goal really is to retire happy healthy and strong and this
is a this is an intervention that can really really help that I have no doubt about it
and I've personally been able to use these lights and that's why you and I are having
this conversation because very very quickly I was like all this first off these guys are
on to something but okay great I'm very very excited for them especially as a Colorado
based company go get it right but it's helping me as a as a member of the fire service for
over 19 years to instantly help with things like sleep and somebody who's very very focused
on this sort of stuff I instantly noticed a difference by just using the simple technology
and I changed nothing else I didn't change what type of workouts I was doing what kind
of food I was put in my face it was just the light and I could instantly notice something
and and when you hear other testimonials that's just not a placebo right that's just not a
placebo effect and I really appreciate that feedback it's that's the other thing it's
been so exciting for me with every I would say small scale trial that we've done with
first responders we're finding positive results and I would say it's the other thing I'll
throw in is it's it's been a little bit interesting looking at the questionnaire results from law
enforcement versus questionnaire results from firefighters and I'm not really surprised by
this but what we found is that in the fire service we're seeing about a 15 to 20% drop
off in terms of the effectiveness of the technology versus law enforcement that was in the first
week but then what was interesting was week two and week three we're seeing a ramp up
where the fire service is catching up with the responses that we're seeing from law enforcement
and the way that I make that makes sense is law enforcement doesn't work a 4890 set shift
they all go home to their own bed every night and so sleep while still difficult because of their
profession and they still may be called out in the middle of the night for example on a SWAT team
they get more together sleep than the fire service does but what's really I think exciting on the
fire service side is that with consistency and using the lights over a period of time
we're seeing the same level of results it's just not as instantaneous for a firefighter
as it is for law enforcement so as we get more and more information I think this is going to
become even more compelling and as we get more testimonials from users in the first responder
communities I should add that we just started our first sleep study with the Colorado State
University sleep lab so we will have data I'm thinking either end of August beginning of September
straight out of the university sleep lab on people and I think that there are also a lot of
opportunities within the fire service via annual physicals for us to look at blood samples on people
and then compare those after a firefighter has been able to use the lights let's say for a month
go back in and take those exact same tests so that we can show biologically if we are truly
changing things like corazon yeah great stuff and I think it's really really worth pointing
now to that the research that's being done or has already been conducted by XTI or on behalf of
XTI's technology is peer reviewed studies it's not just Jason and his homies out there like
collecting data quote unquote and writing a blog post about it these are from institutions like
Colorado State University one of the highest funded research universities in the country from
Purdue like big time schools that have critics that are embedded in these things that they make
sure that these studies are conducted appropriately that the the population sizes are a valid study
and things like that so it's very very important I think for us to kind of point that out is while
you guys are heavily involved potentially in the study at least at the very forefront of the
the technology part of that but these are studies that are being conducted by outside organizations
and then they're showing some pretty amazing results and how many studies have you guys been
involved in including all the animal studies and things like that do you have a general idea
you know I should have an absolute number to that question but I can tell you that that is the only
function that we've had for the last 10 years so there are a lot of research studies out again on
the animal model in Paul point out again as you did at the beginning of the podcast we have not
done FDA studies so we're very cautious to make any type of medical type claims that's not the
intent here what we do know is that in animal models we are having very substantial changes in
things like serotonin dopamine norepinephrine epinephrine and again doing this solely using
visible light we're not using anything in infrared or UV this is solely within the visible spectrum
I think it's also important to point out that in all of the animal research that we've done to date
we've yet to find a negative side effect I've been using the technology personally for the last 8
years I'm at the point now where all three of my children are utilizing the sleep light at night
they all play competitive sports they're all using the performance light prior to competitions
or working out so hopefully that gives an indication of how safe I believe the product to be
and then we do also have certifications of safety in terms of photo biological safety so you know
any risk to skin or retina or anything else we have certifications of safety regarding all of
those types of things so I think what is really important to convey is the fact that my brother
and I being the co-founders of the company we wanted this to be led completely by science
this is not a new gadget it's not a new gimmick this is something that we truly believe can
fundamentally help not only animals but people in terms of creating again our own beneficial
hormones to improve quality of life great stuff really really really exciting things here you
know and you mentioned earlier you know that there's been a thousand percent increase in
neurological disease you know since really we've been kind of tracking those numbers I don't remember
what that time period was but can you talk about what that time period was for that data as well
as like what would define one of those neurological diseases that you've that you're speaking of
sure so you know the thousand percent would be kind of putting a blanket over all of these diseases
if you look at them individually you know obviously there are varying rates but things like
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and MS all of these types of diseases are really going out of control
over the last 30 years and what's interesting is if you look again on that timeline of evolution
versus technology the last 30 years that coincides with when the first cell phone was invented
also probably pretty closely to when the first early video games started to come out and so
you know do we have direct scientific proof to say that absolutely that's the correlation
no surely nutrition has changed a little bit environment has definitely changed in terms of
being indoors but I think there is a lot of reason to at least dive deeper and get a better
understanding of how important this light net nutrition is to a healthy human the other thing
it comes to mind to point out is you know a lot of people are familiar with red light therapy
for example and if you go to try to find the research on red light therapy it is very limited
there aren't many studies on the benefits of red light therapy I think a lot of people have found
that it's efficient for them but yeah I think it's also important to point out while we have a technology
that emits a red light we're very different than red light therapy red light therapy is a localized
solution so you got a sore back a sore knee you can go in and use red light therapy which is localized
to improve circulation to that area the difference with our technology is we're truly targeting
the only organs in the human body that are made to receive light and that is the eyeballs and the
optic nerve and the direct path to the brain for these different beneficial hormones and and being
able to create those well thank you for clearing that up that was on my question was so fantastic
stuff so just to rehash just so I understand red light therapy is typically like at that specific
pain point or something to increase circulation or whatever I don't know anything about red light
therapy but XTI's red light is just the color spectrum of light which is being processed
through the optic nerve and has neurochemical interactions with the the different glands is
that correct yep absolutely we think that there's probably some benefit of receiving our technology
through the skin because there are photoreceptors on the skin but we also believe that well over
99% of the benefit is really receiving this through your eyes and your optic nerve awesome
stuff okay so let's talk a little bit about your history you know so are you an emergency
responder I'm not so my brother and I both have an interesting background we're both you know we're
small town Wyoming guys from Riverton Wyoming my brother went to school at the University of
Wyoming I took a different path and went to a small school in the Bay Area in California
both with the biochem major and my brother went on to work at 3M after getting into the
to work at 3M after getting his undergrad at the University of Wyoming he was called back to the
University of Wyoming to do a master's thesis based on the work that he'd done on his undergrad
and that was using laser light to listen to plants breathe which he will tell you have
has absolutely no practical purpose whatsoever but interestingly that's where this idea came from
he found that by pulsing light to a plant and only giving it a plant what it could use when it
could use it that you remove that extra light stress from the plant just like us if you put us
out in the desert without sunscreen we're not very happy plants devote a huge amount of their
energy from photosynthesis to protecting themselves from extra light so his idea was by
pulsing light to a plant and only giving it what it could use when it could use it that you got
exponential growth out of the plant with a fraction of the power inputs and so I somehow put my
background in biochemistry to work in large finance firms for 10 years working in fixed income
and municipal bonds and in 2009 came back and joined my brother's engineering company we also
own an operated company called national analytics which is a test measurement automation engineering
firm we do a fair amount of department of defense work so for example when a plane lands on an
aircraft carrier and catches the cable that's the arresting gear system historically that's
always been a steam driven system the USS forward which is the most recent version of carrier in
the fleet we designed and manufactured the 22 data acquisition cabinets that control what is now
an electromechanical system instead of a steam driven system so it's a kind of an interesting
combination between two brothers between finance biology and engineering that I think has really
availed us to bring an idea like this to the market and really think outside of the box in
terms of how we can use engineering and biology to affect a really spectacular whistle for animals
plants and people well we love nerds here on the firefighter craftsmanship podcast I think that
it qualifies without a doubt I should also mention that you know it's been it's been exciting to me
because we are absolutely not experts in poultry we're not experts in dairy cattle we're not experts
in beef cattle I don't think I mentioned the fact that we're now lighting race horses in four different
states and seeing really spectacular results in taking a hot blotted animal and getting them to
just focus on the race it is really incredible what we're seeing in performance equine but we've
never been experts in any of those fields what we try to do is to dive into those fields and work
with the experts and learn from them and so we're trying to do exactly the same thing with the first
responder communities in fact I had an amazing opportunity to do a 24 hour ride along with
food or fire and it's those types of engagements that I think allows us to understand the world of
a first responder in a way that we can't look from the outside looking at and don't get me wrong I
don't understand the life of a first responder from a 24 hour experience but I think being able
to be in that environment and look at the environment in terms of how can we apply this technology
again again in a way that's not disrupted to the day so that the firefighter receives the benefit
and I think what I've learned so far is that there are definitely opportunities within engine
bays within common areas of a fire station where we can apply for example the performance lights
during the day there are also opportunities I believe to again bring down that I guess cortisol
level and general anxiety level of going out to a big call first thing you know if you're asleep in
the middle of the night you get a call it's interesting to me that every fire department
that I've been in so far you're woken up by a red light that's contrary to everything that we
understand about how our brains react to light when you're trying to be absolutely your best
be clear thinking and be fully functional you want to go back into that hunter-gatherer phase
of a 24-hour day as opposed to you know the hanging out in the cabin reading a book on by a candle
so one of the things that we're proposing is we think it would be very interesting to wire our
systems into the alarming system within a station and start with a dim blue light bring that up over
a short amount of time so that you're truly getting out of that slumber and fully functional to go out
on a call and then the converse is true once the call is complete we think there's an opportunity
to put we have small 12 volt lights that we could put into engines where you could actually put those
back into sleep mode and start bringing down those cortisol levels bring down you know everything else
that's going on in terms of the adrenaline that is associated with the call so that when you get
back to the station again we would implement a high bay solution to go along with the white lights
when you're prepping the truck for the next call and everything else you do before you try to get
back to sleep and then back in the bunk room or the individual rooms to have our sleep lights there
to help you get back to sleep so and then equally important from what i've learned so far i think
is maximizing that 96 hour off time so that you're truly recovered so and ready to go back on your
48 hour shift you know i think that transition has to be incredibly difficult especially when you
think about getting off work at 7 a.m and you go home and you have a long list of things associated
with family and your house and everything else that you better deal with if we can provide a
technology that helps a person to get through that first day after they get off of shift and then get
a really good night's sleep that night using a sleep light i think those are some examples of
applications of how this technology can really play an important role but not be something where
again going back to red light therapy you have to go to a provider with this you know
a certain piece of equipment this is just something you're going to use in your everyday
life that's really just a supplement great great tie-in yeah really really really important
information and it's also important to realize too you know where like i talk about working
the 4896 or that's the organization that you got to see a 24 hour out of a 48 shift but a lot of
organizations work 24 48s where they come for a day they're off for two and then they're back and
this is just that cycle right the gold standard now is 24 72s but even somebody that's working at
24 72 you still have that transition period and when we talk to chief mike west on the podcast
and all these resources will be linked in the show notes of course where they started implementing
a 7 p.m shift change to help with that transition when you get pummeled on a 48 or 24 or whatever
your shift is if you're a police officer and you're working at 12 and you work nights and you're
trying to reintegrate for a little bit with your family before you have to go to bed or before they
go to school or whatever your world looks like there's there's that transition phase there and
i think that that's really where a lot of us struggle when you're in the game for more than
12 minutes is your uniform life and your not uniform life and that transition phase is really
really hard and for a lot of us especially in the fire service that are fortunate enough to have
quality home environments and you have children and things like that well there's a phase when you
have kids where they're really really little and they don't care what happened to you at work they
need a provider to be with them all the time and so if you've been up for two days straight and you
come home and it's you know your partner high fives you and says hey it's your turn i'm out of
here because i'm going to work or i need a minute um you're up and so you might have to try to quote
unquote survive for eight to twelve hours within that or if you have a side job or anything like
that and so a technology like this might be able to help with that transition there and really
let's talk a little bit about the affordability of this stuff it's not an insane amount of money
and we know that people spend an exorbitant amount of money in the united states on health and fitness
supplementation um all of those sorts of things and so you know the lights are i mean let's talk
about how big are the lights roughly how much do they cost we're going to talk about ways to maybe
um get a discount here in a second but um what does that look like so that way can i maybe have one
at the let's talk the fire service to have one at the station and have one at home so i'm not
bringing it back and forth and explain that a little bit absolutely so retail cost of our
current product is three hundred dollars for either recipe and our product as is you either
purchase a performance light which is intended for daytime or a sleep and recovery light intended
for nighttime each one of those is three hundred dollars and we are actually going to be launching
a new product at the end of august which incorporates both recipes and is android and iphone enabled
so that you can just get on your app and choose which recipe you want which allows you to only
have one lamp instead of two and our anticipated msrp for that will be four hundred dollars
because you're incorporating essentially the value of six hundred dollars of the current product
and then there will be an ongoing license fee depending on how long you
prepay um if you prepay for a year it's five ninety nine a month so fairly nominal amount
and then as you said kevin um we definitely would like to extend a discount to any listener to this
podcast of 15 and we'll be providing a discount code for anyone that wants to purchase a light
after listening to the podcast awesome thank you very much for that first off um but yeah
really cool things that you've already done um really really easy to move these lights around
I have both the sleep and recovery and the performance light and very very simple you
don't need a special lighting apparatus um it screws in just like a regular light bulb does
um and so easy to bring it around but I think Jason and I were talking offline about well
when you start using sleep and recovery lights at home specifically and your the other members
in your household start to also uh enjoy the benefits of that very quickly are you not allowed
to take that thing with you to work especially if you're in an environment where you get to
sleep at work potentially like in the fire service so um I think that there's some exciting things
here for sure it's funny you mentioned that it's interesting in the the small trials that we're
doing with the two northern colorado fire departments I've had exactly that feedback
where their spouse has seen the benefit of the sleep light and next thing you know that sleep
light is not going to the station anymore because the spouse is seeing benefits um you talked about
the transition between and whether it's 24 and 48 or 48 96 that transition in going back home
I think a great example of another application that we've used this in that I think is directly
related in talking with the staff of the New Orleans Saints um I was told that they absolutely
hated Thursday night games and the reason for that they go and play the game then they get on an
airplane and they fly back to New Orleans they typically get in at two or three in the morning
and are expected to be back at the office at 6 a.m and so those Fridays are days that the entire
staff dreaded because you knew you'd be dragging all the way through the day what they have found
is that in using the performance light during the day on that Friday that they're getting through
that day just fine as if they was any other day in the week and so I think there's a it's a really
good analogy looking back at first responders and making that transition if we can help you to be
more functional during that transition back home in a way that you truly stay awake for that day
you're going to get a much better night's sleep especially if you can do combine that with our
sleep light to go with it but just again in training that circadian rhythm I think is really
so critical for that recovery phase whether it be 48 hours or 96 hours that recovery is so critical
for health that that's where we see you know probably the largest benefit for the first
responder community. Yeah absolutely really good stuff and so what what sort of creative options
do you have right we have listeners here that are motivated folks and they're maybe lower in the
chain of command but they are willing to do the hard work to try to create positive organizational
change and luckily we also have some very engaged leaders that are at higher levels in the chain
of command that listen to this show that might be able to have some impact organizationally
where they can implement some of these systems using budgets and things like that so what sort of
creative options do you all have at XTI that can help organizations I mean you can sell
one-offs very very easy and and that link in the show notes as well and you can enter Firefighter
15 as a discount code and check out and get 15% off just simply Firefighter 15 and the checkout of
XTI's webpage there but if they're looking at maybe more than a one-off or a couple lights at a time
is XTI willing to work with organizations and help them out? Absolutely so I can give you
along put names with this but we are working with two different departments on quoting out what it
would take to cover a station in each of these different departments and so what we're putting
together is a must-have list and that must-have list would be lighting for the common areas
lighting in each one of the individual bedrooms or bunk rooms depending on the setup for the
department and trying to make sure that we have that cover to have the station and then also
quoting out you know however many members there are within that department for them to have a
sleep and a performance light at home and we're applying a first responder discount along with
a volume discount for those departments in a way that then they can visualize what this would
look like in terms of a rollout across the entire department with multiple stations but
we're really we're finding some success in looking at this on a individual department basis
just so that you know this is a new technology and so that there's a better understanding of
what those expenses are. I should point out we have three different products one is the Edison
base screw end product that we've been talking about more for individual use then we also have a
four-foot linear product really is you know made to emulate kind of a fluorescent light installation
so that would be more for a high bay engine installation or a common area of you know say a
TV and a common room and then we also have a low profile we call it a puck light and it is a 12-volt
powered solution so that's what we would be looking at for you know any command vehicles
fire engines you know for back seaters where you could utilize this technology either going to calls
or coming back from calls we definitely have heard from some battalion chiefs that there's
that there's interest in their individual vehicles where they're commanding a fire to have this
essentially operate as a dome light with the performance light just to maximize their focus
and attention to you know whatever the issue may be so I think it's going to be individualized
depending on the department depending on budgets but we truly see this as a market that we want
to be involved in we'd love to be doing our part to be able to assist first responders and you know
the thing that always catches my eye is just looking at statistics within the first responder
community there has to be a way that we can positively affect a lot of those negative
statistics that are associated with with the business I'll also point out we're really excited
we actually are working with the National Park Service and are outfitting our first hot
shot crew and that conversation is around placing lights in the buggies that they use to transport
between fires as well as having performance and sleep lights for those hot shot crews when again
they're trying to get recovery in between fires and during the offseason so that we can maximize
health for those guys. Really exciting stuff that you all are doing indeed how can people get in
touch with you or learn a little bit more? Absolutely so our website is xti.us I'll also put
my email out there it's just as easy as my first name Jason JASON at xti.us and if anybody has
interest you know on a personal basis or a department basis I absolutely would welcome an
email from you and would be more than happy to get together with you give you a presentation
regarding all of the research that we've done the success that we're seeing in different athletic
organizations as well as you know all of the animal research that we've done to date to really show
that we are this product is led by science and we're really excited about where we're going
with the human applications. Yeah great stuff and to rehash again it sounds like xti is absolutely
willing to work with your organization figure out what your unique needs are regardless of what
space you're in you don't even have to be in the emergency response space right you could be in an
office environment or in emergency response and in an office environment we need high performers
in those circumstances too and we need people that go home happy healthy and strong and they're
valuable assets and members of their community regardless of what your occupation is right this
is just about human performance and increasing wellness happiness scores like all of the metrics
that actually matter in life and so you know reach out to Jason lots of resources in the show notes
heal for sure lots of resources at xti.us on their webpage and really really exciting stuff
and and really you can be on the forefront of this technology and have have the opportunity to talk
with one of the co-founders here before they completely explode and it's going to be hard to
have the minutes in the day at some point right so a really really cool opportunity here to call Jason
use the resources that he currently has and and from me personally I can speak to his
very humbled nature of hey I don't know but here here is a medical director for our company that
you can talk to or whatever and so he is able to answer most of the questions but if he's not he's
not going to blow smoke and it's going to be like all right you need to go talk to this person or
very clearly I've asked him some questions where he's been like we don't know but we're waiting to
track and we need organizations to be involved to figure out you know the impacts of melatonin
wall on a 4896 and things like that so really really exciting stuff that I think this community
is 100% into kind of help it out and dive into some of the science behind some of this stuff
really appreciate all those points you just made we do have a internal medicine doc who is our
chief medical officer and absolutely he can answer a lot of the more clinical type questions
in addition to that we're building out what I think is an outstanding group of people who
have had very positive experience in utilizing the lights even over the last two months within
the first responder communities that are willing to have conversations with others within the
first responder communities so if that's something that's of interest get in touch with me and I'll
be more than happy to put you in touch with others that have already experienced this for a period
of time and are seeing really significant results yeah absolutely and I'm certainly one of those
people as well so if you're comfortable reaching out to me versus Jason then by all means hit me
up at firefightercraftsmanship.com and you can reach out you can reach out to me specifically
and I'm happy to help you however I can because this technology is great it's a great group of
people over there it's a fellow Colorado based company which we're super excited about what
they're doing legit stuff with peer reviewed science and they're moving the needle on our
behalf which is absolutely amazing so if you're interested in more check out all of XTI's resources
all those links will be in the show notes as well if you want to buy one of these lights you can
use the code firefighter15 in your checkout and that will give you a 15% discount or work directly
with Jason on a bigger implementation or at least just answer hey what might this look like for an
organization of our size whether you're a single company house or you have 1300 members it doesn't
matter they're able to accommodate that with all the different various forms of technology that they
have thank you again for the opportunity to speak with your audience we are very excited about
the implementation of this technology in your industry I think one we have an opportunity to
move the needle to it is the stories from first responders that we're receiving that really feels
the fire and kind of gets us motivated every single day we want to be able to help people we know
that the success of our technology is going to be predicated upon results and those results absolutely
matter yeah we appreciate it and we appreciate the support so thanks for listening to the fire
fighter craftsmanship podcast you can find us on social media on instagram facebook and you can
hit me up personally kevin hausey on linkedin please feel free to rate review and share this podcast
that's how we get this thing into the ears of more listeners and we can really continue to move the
needle and an overall emergency responder wellness and humor performance specifically stay smart