Nanovi with Rowena Gates
Today I am chatting with my dear friend, Rowena Gates from Eng3Corp. The Nanovi is one of my favorite pieces of biology upgrading/biohacking tech on the market.
Learn more about the Nanovi and consider one for yourself here: https://eng3corp.com/kaylabarnes/
TRANSCRIPT
KAYLA BARNES (00:00)
Rowena, I'm so excited to have you here with me today.
ROWENA GATES (00:03)
Oh, it's really good to be on your show. Thank you.
KAYLA BARNES (00:07)
You're so welcome. So I just showed my nanovie off next to me. I keep it right on my desk and we were kinda going back and forth like when we both use it. And I was talking about the time that I used it recently right before bed, and I got like over three and a half hours of deep sleep. So I'm super excited to dive really deep into all things Nanavy and what this device is and how it works. So I want to start though, with your background. So what got you into this?
ROWENA GATES (00:36)
Well, I was originally a serial entrepreneur and high tech, all internet based software companies, and I was in international trade and logistics, and I said that I would just help and three, and I never left because nobody in trade and logistics ever said, oh, you changed my life. And so it felt so good to be involved where you could make a difference for people. And so I stayed in it. That was 17 years ago. That was before we had the nanobi product, but it was another wellness product. So it's been a fun area to work in, as you know.
KAYLA BARNES (01:18)
Absolutely. Yeah. Health and wellness and doing things that you can see a direct impact on the quality of people's lives is certainly exciting. So what exactly were you brought in to help with?
ROWENA GATES (01:29)
At first I was just doing a lot of, I hate to say English translation almost because my partner, Han Zhang is German. So that's where nano come from. It's a German engineer and he developed it and his English wasn't as good as his engineering skills, let's just put it that way.
KAYLA BARNES (01:50)
Well, that was a really important role. Thank goodness that you are able to help there. So tell us, what is the nanovy?
ROWENA GATES (01:58)
It is a device if people can't see it, it's about the footprint of the size of a small printer and there's a tube that comes out of it and delivers humidified air and you're inhaling that air. And what's special about it is the water droplets in the airstream have been adjusted by the device in a way that ultimately makes them beneficial for the cells in your body for cellular function. And we can get into all of that later, but just really kind of end to end, you breathe it and then it has an impact on cellular function and after that it's up to the body how that looks. So it depends on a person's condition, what impact is going to be most noticeable to them.
KAYLA BARNES (02:48)
Very interesting. And yeah, just for because you guys can't see it and you're listening. It's an incredibly easy device to use, which I love, because you can do it while doing something else, so you can do it while working, you can do it while watching television. If you'd like, you can do it while doing so many other things. So it makes it really convenient. Unlike some other devices, if you're in a sauna, you can't really be doing too much other than being in the sauna. So that I really love. There's a lot of patents involved in nanovy, right? How many patents are involved in nanovie?
ROWENA GATES (03:23)
I don't know the number because there's a lot of different claims on a patent that have been approved. However, it's very solid patent foundation for the device because it's really innovative and new. And it's actually so new that the patent office used our company to train staff because they struggled with our device and they wanted to introduce their staff to the kinds of new technologies that they have to figure out how to deal with. So it was interesting. We had about 15 patent officers there learning things because they tend to want to pigeonhole a technology with something similar. And ours just didn't fit. So the patent process was quite long.
KAYLA BARNES (04:14)
Wow, that's really cool though. You know, you're really on to something when you have to teach them what you're doing. So nanovie creates easy water, right?
ROWENA GATES (04:26)
It does. The nature of the water it creates initiates easy water in the cells. And so it doesn't just create it at the device and deliver the easy water. And you inhale easy water. It's actually delivering water droplets with water called these coherent domains. And they're clusters within the water droplets. They hold an energy state. And when that goes into the body's, water through the mucous membrane, because you inhale it, that's what triggers the formation of easy water on the surfaces in the body and the cells. And so easy water doesn't just fill up a container. It forms on surfaces and it forms at the site. So if you have a protein or mitochondria or something, the easy water has to form around that particle. And so what we're doing is triggering that formation within the cell.
KAYLA BARNES (05:44)
Interesting. Can you talk a little bit about what easy water is? Because I hear it quite a bit in the biohacking community.
ROWENA GATES (05:51)
Yeah, it's really an interesting area. First of all, we're lucky because we're in Seattle, and that's where Jerry Pollock is and he's a wonderful friend to us and our company. But he's really pushed back the frontiers of water science and he came out with a book that's popular amongst biohackers called The Fourth Phase of Water because we know about liquid, solid and gas. And his point is there's a fourth phase and it's almost like a gel type of consistency. And it's this special water that forms on surfaces. And it's called easy water because it's called exclusion zone water. And it's called exclusion zones because it pushes everything else out. So it excludes anything else in the water. And that happens because the water molecules are very densely packed together, so there's no room for any other particle. They use these little beads that they measure things with, and all of those just get pushed out because the water molecules are so closely packed together. And when it's in that state where it's packed together, that's where it's called easy water. Or it's almost like a gel type of consistency. It's not the same as regular water, although it is water.
KAYLA BARNES (07:21)
Yeah, it's fascinating. When I think of easy water, I always think of the consistency of aloe vera gel. Would you say that or it's maybe less.
ROWENA GATES (07:32)
Important? I think Jerry would say that plants are really great examples. First of all, they have a lot of surfaces in there, in the cells. So there's lots of places that easy water can form. And I think that these kind of really dry climate plants that have gel inside could be considered an example of that. And that's one of the reasons, just as an aside, for all of us biohackers, that's one of the reasons it's better to eat foods that are very hydrating than to just drink water, because the foods that are very hydrating are kind of carrying it further into your system. That's the understanding. Because they carry a lot of water and it's going to be in a different form because of the cellular matrix of the plant.
KAYLA BARNES (08:30)
Yeah, that's a great point. So just to recap on easy water. So the mitochondria would be the surface that the easy water is then kind of landing on.
ROWENA GATES (08:41)
Yeah, any cell component. Now, I want to be clear here, although there's been some research done to show improvement in mitochondrial function with nanobi, really what we've measured and what we focus on is protein function. But the cell has loads of different components in there, and any surface in the cell will have the formation of easy water around it. It won't discriminate and just pick out the proteins. Proteins are by far the most abundant and the most readily available surface for easy water to form on.
KAYLA BARNES (09:18)
Absolutely. So let's dive into that a little bit deeper. So when you say proteins, can you kind of break it down for our listeners? I think when people hear the word protein, they probably think of a steak.
ROWENA GATES (09:30)
I think the steak is actually a really good start. So we eat protein because we know we need it in our bodies. And within the body, about half of the amino acids you need come from your food, and then the other half your body produces. And the body is made up almost all of proteins. All the tissue, all of that is proteins. And they do all the work in the body. Any biochemical process, all of those things are protein functions. And so they're called the workforce of the cell. You can't kind of overestimate the importance of proteins in the body. And so we take the proteins we eat and they get shredded down into the amino acids. That the body can then use as building blocks for new proteins and those amino acids. It's amazing what the body can do, but those amino acids have to be the correct number of them. There's 20 options in the correct order and with the actual correct amino acid used. And your proteins can vary from less than ten to over 10 amino acids in one protein. And just so it's helped. Some are quite a few hormones are proteins.
ROWENA GATES (10:58)
All enzymes are proteins. They're just proteins that initiate things. And then if you think of collagen hemoglobin, there's just endless examples of it that people probably know. They're all just different proteins. And then we hear of some of the receptors. We're going to initiate something or block a receptor with the hope of having a pharmaceutical impact on the body. And those are protein receptors where they're literally trying to override them. And the vast majority of the pharmaceuticals available today are using proteins, are focused on doing something to protein functions in order to influence the body.
KAYLA BARNES (11:48)
And so how does nanovy influence these proteins? Or can you tell us what it could be doing to the proteins?
ROWENA GATES (11:55)
Yeah, so it's interesting because you could think of it as creating a better environment for the proteins to work for. Whatever those proteins need to do, they can do it more readily because you've increased that exclusion zone water that's forming layers. And one of the important parts I haven't mentioned yet is that the protein starts as this chain of amino acid that's called its primary structure. But for it to do anything at all, it has to fold into a very complex 3D shape. And of course, going from unstructured amino acids to a complex shape requires some form of energy. And it's a transfer of energy from the water to the protein that lets it fold. And it's actually called the transfer of entropy. Sort of think of it as from chaos or non chaos to chaos sort of thing. It's shifting how closely organized they are from the water to the protein. And so all that nanophy does is it improves that environment. The necessary energy in the water is more readily available, so it supports the folding, then the protein can work. And what that work is totally depends.
KAYLA BARNES (13:26)
Amazing. So when I use nanovy, I definitely feel an impact on lessening brain fog. So can this you're putting it right into your nose, so how can it correlate to the brain?
ROWENA GATES (13:40)
Well, it's interesting. It won't matter in your system where you put it in the nose and the brain are close to each other or not because of the way the energy is transferred across the water in the system. So it will help your foot as readily as it will help your head. But it's very interesting what you're saying, because there's so many of us that are using our brains. It's good that you're like, challenging your brain and it's also good to get accelerated repair in the brain because you don't want free radical damage, oxidative stress to accumulate in the brain. You don't want it anywhere, but especially in your brain. And so when you've really pushed yourself intellectually, it's similar to pushing yourself physically. You can run a marathon with your brain and therefore you want to recover and restore it. And so the Navy can give almost a little buzz, like a bit of clarity and so on, because it's just initiating the repair. That's what your body needs repair any of that oxidative damage in the brain?
KAYLA BARNES (14:51)
Yeah, I love it for that. So you mentioned free radicals and oxidative stress. Can you tell us what free radicals are?
ROWENA GATES (15:03)
Let's go back a little bit. That they're formed. There's lots of ways that they can be formed, but even breathing creates free radicals. You could think of it. Oxidation is like the exhaust from running the engine of a car. You can't avoid it. And the free radicals are damaging molecules and they can be mitigated, they can be interrupted by antioxidants, so they don't do damage. So you get the reactive oxygen species as they're free radical. If it meets an antioxidant before it damages excel component, it'll be neutralized. But it's never perfect because there's always been aging as long as we know there's always more damage than there is repair. And so that's why you want to amp up the repair side of the equation. Even someone like you, perfectly healthy, but you want to keep that repair up because that's what keeps you feeling great. And if you're already more on the recovery side, you've already have some chronic condition or something, then regaining the repair and improving that side of the equation is going to be incredibly helpful. And then the last group is performance athletes or any kind of high performer where they stress the body a lot with that performance.
ROWENA GATES (16:34)
And then you want to also give it extra repair. I didn't tie it together with nanovie, but when I said with oxidative stress damage, that's one of the highest priorities for your protein activities is to repair damage, especially if it's in the DNA. But it's this ongoing process is your protein function is going to be in there repairing damage. And so proteins themselves are damaged and they also do all of the repair work. And that's why nanophy has such a big impact on oxidative stress damage.
KAYLA BARNES (17:15)
Absolutely. That's another one of the key benefits that I talk about a lot, because especially people, I think, that are really, I don't know, maybe type A and that are biohackers. We want to burn the candle at all ends from working out hard to be successful and performing well in our careers, in our fields. So I think it's so important that we prioritize that recovery. And even some of the biohacks that I do, I know that they can produce some oxidative stress at some point so I think it's okay in manageable levels, and especially if I'm using something like the nanovy to go in and help reduce those oxidative stress levels. So I think that's really interesting. So we talked about the proteins, but what about protein folding? Doesn't it somehow help the protein folding?
ROWENA GATES (18:10)
Exactly, that's exactly what it does. That's sort of our claim to fame, actually, because it's so important that they fold in order to function and also that they fold correctly and don't end up misfolded or left unfolded because those are really like those are at the heart of neurodegenerative diseases. You want your proteins to be working correctly. You can't just let them accumulate in plaques and just problems in the brain, especially as where that's noticeable. And so we really just help with that folding process to get it from the chain of amino acids into the folded shape that can actually function. And then after that the body takes over. And I think your comment about getting deep sleep is really interesting because that's one example of when the body has a little extra help, what's it going to do? And probably in your case, it helps to balance the autonomic nervous system, which is something you can always see with this devices. People will come out of the stress mode and then later with monitoring, later on they start to increase the parasympathetic side. But if you balance your autonomic nervous system calming, then that fosters better sleep.
KAYLA BARNES (19:40)
Great, because that was going to be my next question. I was going to ask, what do you think the mechanism was that was promoting my deep sleep? Because of course, especially for someone like me, once we see that, once we want to replicate it time and time again. And I told you that my friend reached out and says he runs it for like 90 minutes and he is able to replicate that super deep sleep with nanovy, which is definitely amazing. So we've talked about how nanobi can help with the proteins and sleep and kind of brain health, but what about longevity benefits of nanovy? So of course it will be along the same lines, but how do you see nanovy playing into longevity?
ROWENA GATES (20:27)
It's interesting. Longevity is a tricky one of what actually makes you live longer versus what lets you live healthier and more vital and so on. We claim the latter because we can prove that the former. We don't have that evidence and that's still out there. And so that's also something that theme in biohacking. It's like I don't necessarily have to live forever, but I want to feel good the whole time I'm alive both mentally and physically. But definitely with the healthy aging and high performance, we have people that are way too old to be doing what they're doing and performing at the top level. And it's just remarkable what's possible. And I just applaud those people and yeah, keep doing this.
KAYLA BARNES (21:27)
Yeah, I absolutely love that and it's very cool. So what about some biomarkers or different studies that you guys have done with the nanovie? Have you guys done any biomarker testing around? I know you guys have a lot of research. Can you talk a little bit about it?
ROWENA GATES (21:44)
Yeah, we have a lot of research. And one thing is with biomarkers, basically anything you're testing, if you're using blood, urine markers, those are likely to show differences. The bigger thing is whether there are other confounding factors or not, right? Because if your cat died or something, you could have more oxidative stress than if everything was fine. And so those individual biomarkers that people do, those are just more kind of interesting and they're informing the individual, but they're not a study. Like, it's not science. And so we really went on the science side and we verified the device is producing and doing exactly what we say it is with the water humidity that's known to have the impact that we have on the body. So we've tested both the device and the humidity and then the impact on the body. We've had a big study done on proteins showing different types of damage to different types of proteins. And the three areas of damage are either chemical oxidation or heat damage. So they take these proteins injure them, measure their base level, and then they treat them either with a sham device, which is turned off inside, but still produces the exact same humidity and everything, or an active device, which is NANOV.
ROWENA GATES (23:28)
And the results are really stunning. I mean, these proteins do far better with NANOV, and they do it for all types of damage. There is variation amongst the different proteins and also amongst like some things for oxidation. If you pretreat or post treat. That was something they also measured. It doesn't matter. They're both beneficial. So that suggests Natalie's preventative of damage. But with heat, if you pretreat and then you damage the protein by heat, it doesn't help it post treating helps a lot. And so you have to look at it that there's so much complexity in the body. But the study is able to pick up some of that nuance and certainly strong evidence that it has both a preventative rule protecting protein function and also helping to repair it faster so that you get a much higher number of proteins that are viable for the NATO V device versus the sham device. That's the first area. And then the other is with a placebo device with athletes showing that was a university study on athletes where they used an all out exertion test to create oxidation in the system because you're metabolizing so much oxygen that you have oxidative damage.
ROWENA GATES (25:09)
And then they looked at the it was double blind, placebo controlled, and they looked at the placebo device versus the active device. And those results are quite stunning for this study with those athletes, there was 17% less blood lactate when the nano vita was used preventatively before the exertion test. And then they showed that there was a higher immune response. So basically your immune system was kicking into recovery mode, substantially higher with the NANOV device versus the placebo device. And so that's what we want. We want faster recovery. We want that thing amped up. And it's going to be we haven't studied the brain in that context, but it will be similar with the brain, where you want it to recover quickly when you've burnt a lot of oxygen, concentrating so you can extrapolate to that. And then we've also looked at oxidative stress damage. Heart rate variability is standard. It's easy to measure the difference. Heart rate variability is an indicator of the autonomic nervous system. So stress, what do they say? Rest and digest as opposed to stress or stay in play or something? And then DNA study looking at the DNA damage, which is the hard kind of DNA, but damage to fix, which is double strand breaks.
ROWENA GATES (26:52)
And so that was a small study, but it was compelling. The range was between 15% and 34% less DNA damage when the nanovy was incorporated for a week.
KAYLA BARNES (27:08)
Wow, that's incredible. And so in that study, they were doing Nanavy before, after, or both after.
ROWENA GATES (27:16)
And they were all endurance athletes. It was done at an Olympic training center.
KAYLA BARNES (27:21)
Amazing. So when you talk about the heat stress, is that related to an athlete maybe heating up the body internally or is that talking about potentially like the sun heat stress?
ROWENA GATES (27:34)
It could be both. It could be both for an athlete and that's in addition to the oxidation.
KAYLA BARNES (27:40)
Okay, so interesting. So what are athletes using for their protocol then? For the most part, I mean, of course everyone's going to be different, but if you had to have the perfect nanovy protocol, say, I'm actually going to go to the gym after we get off this, after we finish up the podcast, so what would be optimal for me if I'm going to do a hard workout?
ROWENA GATES (28:04)
Ideally, you use it before and after. Most athletes use it after. If you use it before, you can expect better performance. And so that might be more reps in the same amount of time, or more speed or more endurance, or even as simple as feeling better at the end of a routine that you normally do. The guy who used to be the CEO of Upgrade Labs, when it was Bulletproof Labs, he was very keen to make sure nanovie was in the opening of labs because he reduced his hill climbs by 20%. And he had done it for years. He knew his numbers in your bicycle measures it. And so that's the kind of difference that some people will see. And then using it before makes a lot of sense. If you're looking for performance, always after, it is great for recovery. And the research supports both the one exception is for the biohackers out there who are looking for hormonasis. Then what they're trying to do is stress the body so the body ups its game to make it stronger. And in that case, they should wait a few hours before they use the nanovie for recovery.
ROWENA GATES (29:21)
Otherwise it's counterproductive because they're trying to create all that stress. And so then if they wait maybe two, 3 hours, then they help the body bounce back after it's gone through that period of saying, hey, wait a minute, I got to get I got to kick into gear here. I'm not performing at level. Those are very rare. And it was something that was pretty common a few years ago that people would be concerned about, and now we don't hear about it so much. But there are certainly people who are working kind of within that training regime, and in that case, they would delay the use of NANOV.
KAYLA BARNES (30:06)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think that we touched on this before, but I go in the hyperbaric chamber pretty often. I was in there for about an hour and 20 earlier just doing some work. But what is the perfect nanovy hyperbaric oxygen therapy protocol look like?
ROWENA GATES (30:24)
We have a lot of centers using it. They get better outcomes and all, but one uses it after because there's two reasons for that. You've done the oxidative damage because you pressed more oxygen into the system, and so why not address that right away and give yourself a little boost? But the other reason is interesting. When you're in hyperbaric, it can be up to an hour later that your system is going to be flooded with oxygen. When you come out of it, it doesn't just disappear from the system. Well, nanophy doesn't add oxygen, but it helps with oxygen utilization. So when you come out within that hour, if you're using the NANOV, then you're going to get extra benefit from the hyperbaric session. So you can amp up your value of your hyperbaric system without adding more oxidative damage.
KAYLA BARNES (31:23)
Yeah, that's really smart. I'm gonna have to tweak my protocol a bit because I told you I was doing nanovie at night because I want to improve my sleep. But maybe I should start doing Nanavy once after the hyperbaric chamber and then before bed as well. Can you overdo it or no, you.
ROWENA GATES (31:42)
Cannot overdo it, but I would definitely, if you have to choose, definitely use it after hyperbaric. I think every hyperbaric center should have one or many. Yeah, and then at night, I think that's such a great idea. You cannot overuse it because of the way it works. It's not like adding a substance like oxygen or anything that can override the way the body works. It is just playing a supporting role. And so that makes it so that it's not problematic. And it also is what makes it so complementary to virtually any of the other biohacks out there and certainly hyperbarics. It's used a lot in conjunction with cryo or PMF or any of the brain training. 40 years of Zen uses it during their Cap training because they get better performance, people's brains function better for their training and so it's very complementary with the other things that people are doing.
KAYLA BARNES (33:00)
Absolutely. Yeah, I definitely agree. We talked about a couple of protocols, so maybe pre gym protocol, post hyperbaric protocol, but if you're kind of just an average user wanting to upgrade your performance, is there an ideal time of the day? Is it nice to start your day off with it in the morning? Maybe if it's at your desk or obviously if you want to do some end of one experiments and try to up your sleep, I highly recommend using it before bed. But what are your favorite times to use it, or what do you recommend the protocol be?
ROWENA GATES (33:33)
I essentially use it as my meditation timer in the morning and then I have it on my desk during the day and I use it, I just use it whenever. I don't worry about if it's on for a long time. And now I'm going to start doing it more right before bed. But I think the most important thing is that it fits into somebody's schedule and some people will use it on stationary exercise equipment because they're trying to stack things and spend less time. And so my kind of favorites, if you can set it up with your stationary equipment, if you use that, and then if you can use it at your desk doing email, texting, social media, whatever, it's great because it's easy to just add into the day. And those are sort of my favorite times if you can do that. And then aside from that, if you're using it regularly, it's not that you have to use the same time every day or one time of day is going to be a lot better than another because if you're using it daily, it's supporting your system even when you're not using it.
ROWENA GATES (34:48)
And so it kind of carries from one day to the next and you have this ongoing advantage of it. So if you can only use it sporadically, that's when it's more important to use it, like after exercise or however you want to incorporate it to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish.
KAYLA BARNES (35:08)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. So I feel like we've gone over some of my main pillars anti aging sleep, athletic performance, obviously with the nanobi is, and talked about a little bit about easy water. Is there anything else that you think that the audience should know?
ROWENA GATES (35:31)
I actually think we've really covered things fairly well. I feel like I should think of something that we haven't talked about often. People are interested in pricing and it's not an inexpensive machine. Over time it is because you're not paying every month for the supplement or something. So over time, it is inexpensive, but initially there's an investment upfront and for people that we will try to work it out and make it work for people as best we can.
KAYLA BARNES (36:08)
Yeah, absolutely. And I actually have and I'm going to include it in the show notes, but I, of course, have a link with you guys. So eng threeCORP comcalebarne, so I'll make sure to include that. And that has some of the reasons why I love the device, and it has a lot of other scientific studies and data for people interested in really diving into that. But Berwin, it's been such a pleasure to have you here today, and I just am grateful for your friendship and grateful for Nanovie and the whole nine yards. So I really appreciate oh, it's such a pleasure.
ROWENA GATES (36:44)
I love what you're doing, and I so appreciate everything you've built. So we look forward to more great things in the future.
KAYLA BARNES (36:52)
Oh, absolutely. I completely agree.