AGEIST
The AGEIST podcast is where we rewrite life after 50. Hosted by David Stewart, founder of AGEIST and Super Age, we talk with extraordinary people—scientists, creatives, and thinkers—about living vibrantly in your 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. From longevity science to emotional well-being, fitness to purpose, we explore the tools and mindsets that help us stay curious, energized, and deeply engaged with life. This isn’t about aging gracefully—it’s about living boldly.
AGEIST
Dr. Mohamed Abdulhamid: Restarting The Mind-Body Connection
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What happens when the body no longer responds to effort the way it used to? Neurosurgeon and founder of Royal Spine Surgery, Dr. Mohamed Abdulhamid joins David Stewart to explain how recovery depends on communication between the brain, nerves, muscles, and joints, especially after surgery, injury, or long periods of compensation. David shares his own experience after knee surgery, when EXOMIND and Emsculpt Neo helped him feel calmer, sleep better, and get dormant muscles firing again. The conversation reframes personal bests as something less tied to youth and more connected to signal quality, resilience, and restoring trust in the body.
Join us at the Super Age Games
Key Moments
“Interestingly, what we really did is what I call ‘bioelectrical medicine.’”
“I would rather call it a neuromuscular reactivation.”
“I look at mental health and mental wellness as something no different than physical wellness.”
Connect with Dr. A
Website: royalspinesurgery.com
About Dr. Abdulhamid: royalspinesurgery.com/about
Instagram: instagram.com/the.dr.a/
Connect with AGEIST
Click Here for the full interview transcript.
Welcome to episode 288 of the Ages Podcast. I am David Stewart. This week, we're going to be talking about something I've had some direct experience with. That's getting the body to work again after it's forgotten how. And as we get into that, it's also it brings to mind this idea of something else, something else we may have forgotten. And that is how essential it is to keep this mindset that we can still do extraordinary things at whatever age we're at. This idea of the personal best and congratulating ourselves for the personal best. And I've seen this with some of my friends, other people I've observed. What they do is they sort of stop the ambition for themselves and they offload it onto their kids, their spouse, their friends, someone else. And this is all great. We can take satisfaction in that. Yeah, it's awesome. You know, we can cheer people on, but it's not the same thing as telling ourselves, we did this. Yeah, you, you did this. And I'm thinking about Snoop Dogg. You know, he got when he got his star in Hollywood Boulevard, he says, I would like to thank me, because I did the hard work. I'm the one who showed up. And that is really true. I think we need to congratulate ourselves for our wins. We need to have an ambition for personal best for wins in the future. And the idea that we cannot do this is just so utterly untrue and so damaging. So our sense of self-worth. Now, I gotta tell you, I'm never gonna run at age 67 the way I ran when I was 20. I'd love to. But that sort of fluidity, that sort of speed, kind of unlikely. But that doesn't mean that I can't do other things at a personal best. There's this woman signed up for the Super Age Games, and she sent me a letter. She was 78 years old, and she wasn't quite sure that she could do this, but she thought it was a great goal, a great thing to look forward to. And she told me that her dead hang time, I think, was three seconds, which isn't too long. But for her, getting a six-second dead hang time would be an enormous accomplishment. And she should give herself a huge pat on the back. And I know she's gonna get there. She's it's gonna go a lot longer than that. I think that when we ratchet down this sense of what we can do, what we have done, you know, and I don't want to keep this just in the physical either. It's like this year, my garden produced the most amazing tomato ever. It was a personal best. It's great. You know, I wonder what else I can do that's amazing like this. We need to keep that point of view. If we start in this mindset of just, it's over, I can't do this anymore, I'm not that person. You know, that, as Carl Lagerfeld said, that is the voice of surrender. And if that's where you want to go, I'm good with it. Whatever you want to do, it's not where I'm going. And it's not where I encourage people to go. I encourage people to understand and to own that you're braver, you're stronger, and you're more capable than you ever thought you were, and to not let go of that ambition for that personal best. It's out there for you. Today, my guest is my new friend, Dr. Mohammed Abdul Hamid. He's a board-certified neurosurgeon, spine surgeon, and the founder of the Royal Spine Surgery in Arizona. His work sits at a very interesting place: advanced spine care, functional wellness, and the mind-body connection. Now, linking into what I said earlier about personal best, I had some surgery. As you may have known, I've had a few surgeries on my knee. And I had this last one back in January 21st. Now, what happens when you have surgery, at least in my experience on knees, your muscles just sort of shut off. There's this neuromuscular protective thing that happens, and I'm not a doctor, but that's it's a thing that happens. Your brain stops firing your quadricep muscles and some of the muscles around your knee to protect it because it feels it's damaged and they don't want to overload it. But what happens is even when the knee heals, it's very hard to get these muscles firing again, especially in a coordinated way that makes the knee functional, makes your leg functional. And it's really not just the quadricep. What I found is it's like everything, the entire chain up that leg and even the other side, because the other side is going to be compensating. So I was really not feeling so great about things because it had been, we were just working so hard to get this muscles working in my leg with my PTs, and they tried a lot of tricks, all kinds of things that they have to do. But then I was introduced to Dr. A. And it was amazing. He helped me to really understand this importance of this nerve connection and the coordination and recovery. So the brain, the nerves, the muscles, the joints, the whole system has to come back online together. So just lifting weights, just squeezing the quad, just using, you know, a tens machine on there to fire the muscles, it's you're working around the edges. You're not getting the entire system. So today, we're gonna talk about a couple of devices that he used on me that I want to bring to your attention just because I think these are extraordinary. And I have, I gotta tell you, I have tried everything that I know of out there, and it's a lot. I have a lot of doctor friends, I've got a lot of people who work in athletics, tried everything. And this was this worked. It was really pretty amazing. Today we're gonna talk about the MSculpt Neo, neuromuscular reactivation, sarcopenia, weight loss drugs, muscle presentation, pelvic floor health, and exo-mind, which is this amazing device that the it's a it's technically a transcranial magnetic stimulation technology that I just found amazing. And I want to bring it to all you guys because as you know, I try a lot of stuff on myself. You know, N of one, somebody comes with me and if it seems reasonable, I'm gonna try it. And I have tried pretty much everything known to man to get my leg back working the way I would like it to as quickly as possible. Because I gotta tell you, after three years of this leg being messed up, I am like done. Patience over. Like, what do I got to do to do this? So, this Exomind experience and the M sculpt, it was really remarkable. So the first thing I noticed was I I slept like a rock that night. The next day I felt amazing. My mood was really great. I had this unbelievable increase in my HRV, which is a measure of how much stress you can take. So it seems to sort of reset the stress in my body, my brain, which sounds kind of crazy until you experience this. You know, the technology seems futuristic. Dr. A told me it's actually been around for about 40 years, but this one company, they figured out how to use it in a very practical way and being able to target different parts of the brain and the body with it. So the goal here is move better, sleep better, recover better, and keep as much useful capacity as we can because, guys, I am not done with the whole personal best ambition. I'm I'm still in it. And in fact, oh, I'm gonna tell you a little thing. This earlier this week, not didn't tell my doctors about this. I didn't mention my wife. She said I was out of my mind. I went down to the local sort of adventure gymnastics center, which is called Woodward here, and it's filled with ages five to 15 going berserk, like jumping on trampolines and bikes and skateboards and all this stuff. So I went in there with my friend Jen Drummond, the mountain climber. And I said, like, I'm gonna learn how to do a front flip. And I did, and it was really scary. Not as scary as the backflip, which was even scarier. So, new personal best for David this week, my very first ever front flip and backflip at age 67. So anyway, there you go. You can still do this stuff. Here are a few moments for our conversation.
SPEAKER_01The fascination with using electrical energy in healing and in medicine actually existed for a long time. The only difference now is we're just able to deliver these energies in non-invasive and comfortable ways. But understanding how the body functioned, that you know, we're we're activating nerve pathways, neuronal circuits that are able to now modulate and activate different muscles. So in this case, I always like to start with the mind because I think the mind is in charge of everything else. I think 45% of people who took a survey a few years ago rated mental wellness as their number one priority, even higher than stroke and cancer. So it fits into this narrative that we need to do a better job in looking into our mental wellness, and now we have tools that are not necessarily chemicals and pills, and you've gone through it. You said it. I wish I could have it at home because it was non-invasive. Laid down, you know, and and and you felt the difference. If you want to stay in shape, you go to the gym and work out and and and stay hell active. What is the gym for your mind? Dr.
SPEAKER_02A, he doesn't treat technology as a replacement for the basics. So this is this is really key to understand here. It's not, here's a machine, now you don't have to train. Like, that's not the point. This is additive, right? So you can take a 12, 14-week PT recovery routine and you can compress it to three weeks. So that means you get nine more weeks of functional life. And it's like fabulous. So the point is sometimes the body needs like you need some help getting the signal back. You got to connect all the circuitry so that the brain knows what to do, isn't scared of activating these muscles, and the muscles actually fire. And the barrier, it's not about effort. It's not about trying hard, believe me. All about this, it's not about effort. It's this inhibition, it's this weakness in the nervous system. And the nervous system is sort of stuck in this wrong gear. It's stuck in protective mode. And that actually feels pretty relevant to where we are here at Aegis. That, you know, we're just endlessly interested in these tools that help us become more capable, sleep better, have better strength, better balance, better recovery. And these are metrics of independence. And we talk a lot about this tech here. And truthfully, like these tools that I use with Dr. A, they're not essential. You could live life fine without them, but it accelerates the recovery process dramatically and can help me live a happier, healthier life for longer. And that sounds like a win. Anyway, that's why I wanted to bring this to you guys. So before we get to Dr. A, quick favor. If you enjoy the Ages podcast, hey, maybe give us a five-star review. I would love that. That would be just do me a personal favor and do that. It helps more people find the show. And I'd really appreciate it. Since we are talking today about strength and recovery and what the body can do when it is properly supported, I need to mention again, I created this thing. It's called the Super Age Games. Yeah, I'm the one who came up with this idea. And we're coming to New York City November 7th. It is the first ever longevity competition. It's built around this simple idea. We're not trying to be younger. We're testing what it means to be strong, vibrant, and capable now. And I like to use this term durable capacity. And what I mean by that is like the important thing to pay attention to, the important thing to strive for is what we can actually do and for how long can we do it? So for me, I want more of both. You can learn more at games.superage.com. I'm going to be there. I want to see all of you guys there. It's going to be awesome. Okay, let's give Dr. Mohammed Abdulhamid a call right now. Dr. Abdulhamed, I'm so happy to have this conversation with you. I'm really excited, and I'm going to tell people about what you've what you've done for me. But but before we before we get into that, why don't we tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
SPEAKER_01So again, Dr. Abdul Hamid is is my name. For simplicity, people know me as Dr. A. Three letters, easier to remember than multiple letters, I guess. A little bit about my background. So I actually uh I grew up in Saudi Arabia, so that's what I did my upbringing. And then after finishing high school, I went to Europe for my medical school training. But I only lasted for a year in Europe. It was just too much fun. So I had to transfer from Europe and I ended up landing in Ames, Iowa, where I went to Iowa State University for my undergrad, getting my biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology degree, and then University of Iowa for medical school. And then I moved to Syracuse, New York for my neurosurgery residency training, lasting for seven years. And then from there, we decided we needed to enjoy some warm weather because everything had been just cold weather. So decided to go to Miami, Florida for my fellowship in spinal surgeries. And then from there, moved out to Arizona, and I've been in practice in Arizona since then in Scottsdale, Arizona. I'm a neurosurgeon, but my main focus in neurosurgery was primarily spinal surgery, spinal procedures, so back pain, uh spine health, uh, so and so forth. Uh I did trauma at some point in time, head bleed. I still see patients and clients who have maybe traumatic brain injury concussion, but prime my primary focus has always been spinal surgery at spine health.
SPEAKER_02Before we get into medical stuff, I just want to know what a nice guy from Saudi Arabia ends up in a winter in Iowa. Right. How did that go?
SPEAKER_01Well, it was definitely a cultural shock initially, especially when you go to Ames Iowa and all you see is just endless lens of uh corn farms. The tallest building at the time was actually my dorm building when I was in Ames Iowa. But it was a great college. I had the best, I think the best education there biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biologists, which is really the foundation of everything that I now use in my my practice as a as a neurosurgeon provider. That built the strong foundation for me, I think. So I give credit to you know Ames Iowa and the cyclones.
SPEAKER_02So Go Korn. I want to give a little background here. So I've had three surgeries on my knee. I'm very familiar with muscular inhibition post-surgery. The last one I had was January 21st, which was the most invasive of the ones that we've done. And in the course of this, I've tried all kinds of ways to accelerate the healing here. And they've tried electro, you know, there's like electro stem they do on this pretty soon after surgery to try and keep the muscle active and going. Tried some other things. But then I had an opportunity to visit you and you use some technology on me. Um you use two pieces of equipment, an exomind and a thing called an M sculpt. And these both work on, I'm probably gonna say this wrong. The exomind is transcranial magnetic stimulation. Is that right? That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I got it. Amazing. Okay, so so I go in and I have no idea what to expect from this. It's you know, I'm sort of up for anything as long as there's not, you know, some serious bad thing. It's like, okay. So you put this wand on my head and you adjust it so that you, I recall this very clearly, I'm sitting in a chair, you have me hold my hand around my chest, and then you're like, okay, I'm gonna direct this beam at the motor cortex. And the way you located the motor cortex is my hand started to twitch. And you said, Okay, great, you've got it. And then you asked me to calm myself, and I said, Well, what is gonna happen here? And she says, Well, you're gonna feel a little sort of like static y thing in your head, and you may fall asleep. And I said, Okay, let's do this. So, my experience of this was I I felt a little bit on my head, and the next thing I know, you're talking to me. And apparently I had completely gone out, and you told me I was fast asleep and snoring, which I found a little embarrassing. I don't think of myself as snoring. I was like, Oh, I'm sorry about that. And then what you did is you put these two large paddles on my quadriceps from the M sculpt machine, which has similar technology, and it started to sort of, I would say mid-range fire the quadriceps. And then I said to you, Well, what's gonna happen? Like you've done these things to me. What's gonna happen to me? You said, Well, you know, you might be a little tired tonight, and then you know, we'll we'll get the muscles going. I said, Okay, well, whatever. So that night, I go to dinner with my wife, and I can, I'm, I'm like non-verbal. Like I couldn't speak. I was so deeply relaxed, and I, as you can tell, I spent a lot of my life in high sympathetic activation. I was just like, I don't think I'd ever experience relaxation like that. And then I go to sleep and I wear a sleep tracker, or I've worn a whoop tracker for five years. When I woke up in the morning, I slept like a rock, but my HRV, my heart rate variability, which is a measure of how stressed I am, the higher it is, like the less stress you are. And it was the historically the highest it had ever been in five years. And I thought, okay, you know, whatever doctor, Dr. A did something here. There's definitely an impact. And then that day I go to physical therapy where they do this same set of exercises on my legs we've been doing for weeks. Okay, fine. Felt I felt a little stronger, but okay. But the next day, I could barely move. Like my muscles were so sore. And you would think this is a bad thing, but no, it's a really good thing because what that means is the circuits had been re-established and the and the muscles were firing. They hadn't been fully firing before there's been all this other compensation to cause these movements, but now they were firing. And that then I was like, okay, this is like people need to know about this. This is I I made a lot of certain, I know a lot about this, and I have never experienced anything like this. And I went into eight hospital for special surgery, like a couple days later, see my keys, and I said, they did this to me, and this is what happened. You know, they all sort of gathered on a screen, they wanted to investigate this and and and see what it is, and they put me on a leg press machine, and I went from it was like from 110 the week before to 160. Like I was like vastly stronger immediately. So this is why I am very grateful to you, Dr. A, but I want everybody to know about this because there are a million operations, one million Americans every year have either a knee replacement or a hip replacement. And every single one of them is gonna go through this muscular inhibition. And it's, as you told me, it's not a substitute for PT, it's not a substitute for exercise, but it is a dramatic accelerant to what goes on here. So I'm gonna shut up and you can tell everybody what you actually did to me.
SPEAKER_01So so you know what? Interestingly, what we really did is what I call bioelectrical medicine. It's just using electrical energy. But if but if you think about it, we're actually electricity is what keeps us alive. What happens when someone hards stop? We deliver an electrical charge to bring him to life. What actually power our nerves? Nerves are just cable electrical wires that are like sending electrical currents to power up our body. Now, interestingly, historically, I think the this is just a fun fact, I guess, that I use with my clients and patients. The very first record we have on using on the use of electrical energy in medicine actually goes back to I think 47 AD, with a pro doctor by the name of Scribonius Largus, who was the court physician for the Roman Emperor Claudius. And what he was doing at that time, which is fascinating to go that far back, he was using electrical rays in eels, and he will have patients suffering from migraines and gouts like put their bare feet on these creatures. And that's their met that was their method of treating gouts and migraines. So the fascination with using electrical energy in healing and in medicine actually existed for a long time. The only difference now is we're just able to deliver these energies in non-invasive and comfortable ways. But understanding how the body functions, that you know, we're we're activating nerve pathways, neuronal circuits that are able to now modulate and activate different muscles. So in this case, I always like to start with the mind because I think the mind is in charge of everything else. I'll use an interesting quote for people that love Ferraris, maybe they'll relate to this. But Enzo Ferrari, the founder, once said, I don't sell cars, I sell engines. The cars I throw in for free because something has to hold the engines in. So if you think about that, what is the engine to our body is the mind. And so I always think about starting with the mind and then work my way down. I might be biased also because I'm a neurosurgeon and I, you know, I start with the brain and the spine and so forth. But that was my philosophy when I worked with you. I wanted to start with the mind first. I wanted to start by creating uh neuromodulation at the level of the core cortex. Because believe Believe it or no, this arthrogenic muscular inhibition isn't just a physical aspect where your muscles are shut down because they're reacting to an injury or surgery or trauma, but there is also a mental component to it because oftentimes what I saw with my own patients, especially after doing spinal procedures, that there is a bit of fear and apprehension that that patient, that individual, almost start to lose the trust and faith in their own body of their ability to do things. They're thinking, Am I gonna harm myself? Sometimes they'll come to me and say, Doctor, the surgery went well, and you're gonna send me for physical therapy. Are they really gonna know what to do or are they gonna re-injure me while doing that? So there is already a mental inhibition that I recognize with these individuals, and I think that's also feeding into their physical inhibition. And that's why I started with the exo-mind, which is the TMS device, to help kind of like, you know, release some of that mental inhibition. And what you described was exactly what I expected: someone who's gonna become fully relaxed, and now you kind of let go of your fear. And we'll talk more about the connection between the cortical system and limbic system and how fear can feed into the cortical inhibition and so forth. But once I achieved that, I was able now to recognize that now I can deliver the energy to your muscles and you're not gonna fight me. Your muscles are not gonna fight the energy we're delivering from the M scalpneo, which is what we use for on your quads, to not just activate the muscles. I don't like to call it a muscular activation. I would rather call it a neuromuscular reactivation. We're really neuromodulating the nerve because the technology isn't working on the muscle alone. The technology is actually working on your nerves, modulating your nerve, and then the nerves are now firing in synchrony, and in doing so, they're able to actually activate muscles in a way you couldn't activate on your own, but also while keeping your joints safe, because you're not putting any pressure, any stress, any loading on your joints. That's Calatino in a simple way the philosophy of this mind-body connection, because I recognize it through my patients, especially after surgery. I always focus on the body part. Let's do the spine surgery, let's do the rehab. But for the longest time, I feel like we ignored the mental component and the mental contribute contribution to their injury, but to their also overall recovery phase.
SPEAKER_02Many things to say. I'm very happy that we've moved beyond electric eels. I think those on my head would be really unpleasant. So a big upgrade. When you were doing this, you were saying that one of the things, the reason for using the exomine and the way that you directed it at a certain part of my brain was to cause neuroplasticity to happen. Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_01So I want you to think of if if the brain was like a forest, right? And and now you have these trees with branches and roots. Some roots are strong, some roots are weak, branches are strong, weak, but but ultimately you need strong roots to anchor the tree and branches for good connections. So what we're doing with the TMS or the Exomind, we're actually, think of it, the Exomind is like this rhythmic. Because there is a rhythm. If you remember, it was like building up and then there's a pause. And I kind of walked you through the phases of how to think your breathing and all that stuff with these with these rhythms. So if you think about it, those rhythms are like rhythmic sunlight that I'm delivering to this forest, to these trees. These sunlights are actually guiding now where these roots and branches need to go. And in doing so, we're actually just guiding the nerves, guiding where these the energy is guiding the nerves to create better connections, while some of the maladaptive connections can actually fade away into the background. And that's kind of what neuroplasticity essentially means is the ability to actually create better, stronger synaptic connections. And it has two components when you talk about neuroplasticity. There is long-term potentiation, which is kind of the positive, the building. There is also long-term depression, where we're depressing circuits that we really don't need. But we actually stimulate circuits that we need. An example of that, for example, let's say a pianist who plays piano. You know, their ability to play piano comes from enhancing certain circuits in their brain that are dedicated to performing that act and they get good at it. But have that pianist, for example, come and maybe play basketball. They might not have those circuits that make them a good basketball player. And so our plasticity kind of like adapts and in some cases also enforces our behavior and our action. If you decided for the next three, five days, I'm gonna like just work on my memory. By just doing that, you're gonna actually help those roots, those trees that are dedicated for memory to actually grow more connection. And when we're using the TMS, we're actually giving that sunlight, that rhythmic sunlight, to guide where these roots should go and make those stronger synaptic connections.
SPEAKER_02And so one of the other things that really sort of struck me was you put paddles on both of my legs. And I said, Why are you doing the like the right one seems to work? And you said, No, the whole system is out of balance. We need to, we need to make, we need to restore balance. What tell me? Because I found this surprising.
SPEAKER_01So one of I think one of the issues that I noticed and the way we practice medicine right now or even rehab is that an individual will come to me or will go to a provider, and the first question is, so what bothers you? So in this case, you might tell me, well, well, it's it's really my quad. And we just jump immediately into just targeting the quad, uh, quadriceps muscles. But in reality, if you think about it, muscles don't behave and work in in separation or as individual group. They work in in a chain, what we're called the kinetic chain. For that that quads to function properly, it still need the support, it still need the help from additional muscles that make that quads perform at its best. And oftentimes when that process happens, let's say in this case the quad showed uh some issues or dysfunction, other muscles now will have to kind of like you know compensate. And that includes the opposite side. So over time, when people go through an injured injury, like a musculoskeletal injury, in this case the quad, that leg now, the kinetic chain in that leg become disrupted. So you might often notice that even though on that left leg in your case, even though the quad is the issue, but you might also notice that there are issues with your glutes. There might be an issue with your calf. So it's not just the quad. It started with the quad, or that's what seems to be obvious. But then over time, when you went through the recovery for these weeks and these months, your body had to like, you know, rely on somewhere else for function and support, and that will be your opposite leg. And that opposite leg will start to compensate over time. And in doing so, we create an imbalance. And me doing the two applicators on your quad for two purposes. Well, for two purposes. One, I needed to identify the imbalance, quantify the imbalance between your left and right. You might have you might recall as we were adjusting some of the settings, I kept asking you if the intensity felt the same on both sides. And in some cases, you tell me no, it feels maybe stronger in one side or weaker on the other side. But that feedback was very important because as I was asking you this question, I was monitoring the intensity, and I can detect now based on your feedback that there is a discrepancy or a gap between your right and left, and which tells me that there is one side that is weak, one side that is overcompensating. So that's the first fault. And the second reason I wanted to do that is now that I know there is that gap, I now need to like engage more muscles. Now, obviously, we just did the, you know, that time we just did the quads, but in a full treatment plan, we won't just target the quad. I think you had the second session for the glutes, but now we start to engage the rest of the kinetic chain to create symmetry between right and left, which minimizes the risk of injury or re-injury in the future, but to also activate the kinetic chain so we can actually recruit more muscles and allow your muscles to act in synchrony versus I'm just dependent on the quad here or over dependent on the hamstrings now because the quad is weak, the hamstrings I'm gonna utilize more hamstrings and so forth. So we're trying to create now balance between the two sides and then activate the kinetic chain together on both sides so your muscles can work in synchrony rather than in segments, which increases the risk of fatigue and pain and be injured.
SPEAKER_02Was it you who came to understand how impactful this technology could be for rehab, or did somebody else do that? Like how did who put who connected the dots on this?
SPEAKER_01So this is this is gonna be an interesting story because you know everyone hated COVID. No one wanted, you know, to, you know, it was a bad time for all of us. But COVID actually was a blessing in some ways. So I can tell you how all this started. It was 2021, and I got to this point in my career where I recognized there is something different. I mean, I do surgeries the same way, the patient response to the outcome to the surgeries differ. And like, how is it different? If I'm the same surgeon, I do the same thing, it's the same condition, same technique. Yes, there is a genetic component and behavioral lifestyle issues. But then I started paying attention to something on their MRIs of their lumbar spine, and that became evident to me as I started diving into the research and literature that those patients who struggled with the recovery and maybe had delayed outcome were patients who had more fatty infiltration into their spinal muscles. Those who had fatty infiltration in the muscles seemed to actually have longer recovery versus the one who had lean muscles. And then I decided I'm gonna send my patients like you've been doing. Every patient had to go for physical therapy just to rehab after any surgical procedure, special spinal procedure. But during COVID, no one wanted to go to physical therapy because of exposure risks. So they said, you know what, I would appreciate the input, just do the surgery, but then that would compromise the outcome for me, and I didn't want to do that. So I just went on a Google search, literally. And I said, is there anything that I can maybe use in my office so I can avoid this whole issue of sending them off somewhere else that helped me build muscles for these patients after surgery and speed up their recovery? Google came back with M.sclopneo, which I never heard, I didn't hear about M.sclopnea until that point. So I started doing more research and digging into it, and they realized that the whole science behind it was about building muscles and reducing fat. But yes, it was primarily on the sculpt, the aesthetic sculpting world. But then me as an anatomist, neurosurgeons, thinking, well, skeletal muscles are skeletal muscles. If it's gonna work on the abdomen, it should work on the glutes and thighs and back and all skeletal muscles. So I reached out to the company and I had this idea of saying, listen, uh, has anyone been doing it for rehab? And they said, no, it's it's a sculpting device. I say, what if I'm the first one to try it out? I mean, it was COVID. I was like, well, what are we gonna lose? You know, just get it and try it out. So I got the device for the purpose of rehabbing, understanding the science behind it made sense, even though there was no FDA clearances at the time for recovery and functional, but the premise of using the technology made absolute sense to me as a neurosurgeon. So I got it in my office and I started just do using it on my patients. And I did that for the first two years, collecting enough data. And through the data that I collected, I was like, oh, this is amazing. It's actually doing exactly what I thought it was gonna do. And then I worked with the manufacturer, BTL, and and then we this we decided we're gonna do uh an IRB-sponsored study across different locations. And so we didn't finally get an FDA clear in 2024 and an additional clearance in 2025. But that's how the journey started. It was just through observing how patients were acting differently, behaving differently after surgery, and I decided there's gotta be something beyond just me doing the surgery that makes the difference. And that led us to this. And then from there I was like, okay, well, what is the mind connection now? Because we ignored the mind, because if you look into the definition of pain, it's an unpleasant emotional and sensory feeling in response to actual or potential threat. So the definition already tells me it's an emotional and sensory. Well, the sensory is more of the physical thing you know that we experience, but the emotional that points to the mental aspect of pain. So any person who suffers from pain, by definition, they're having an emotional mental component to their pain, in addition to the sensory-physical component. And for the longest time, I recognize I've been just focused focusing on the sensory physical and not paying much attention to the emotional mental, and that got me to the TMS and exo mind to better tackle the issue of chronic pain with a lot of the patients that are suffering from these problems.
SPEAKER_02And I recall you telling me that now this technology is being used with professional sports teams.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Now so so again, and you think about it. So here's interesting. You've experienced this technology yourself, right? Let's talk about DMS cult neo, the neuromuscular technology, right? When we put that device on the muscle group, uh, let's say we put it on your abdomen, during the 30-minute session, this device has delivered enough stimulation that will be the equivalent of 20,000 sit-ups. Right? So it's creating what we call supramaximal contraction. You, as someone who actually went through the treatment, you could not voluntarily fight it. It essentially took over your nervous system and started activating the nerves without your own control and causing muscle contraction. You're just watching your muscles contract and you can't do anything about it. Even if you try to fight it, you couldn't. So now imagine when you're an elite athlete who needs to have that muscle strength. But more important, I think, than just the strength, being able to develop, optimize the resilience. Because the thing that wins championship for elite athletes is their ability to make sure that they're available throughout the season, which means minimize injuries and speed up recovery. Those are the two things. That's what's going to win championship. Teams that are able to have their elite athletes recover fast and minimize injuries are going to be available throughout the whole season and help them win championship. And so during the training, during their recovery, the idea with this technology is to affload any stress on joints. So knees, hips, ankles, and so forth. So having you experience 20,000 squats by putting this device on your legs without having you actually stress your knees and hips and ankles doing the squat is huge. Having you recover after surgery in a speedy window, like maybe like three weeks versus maybe taking three months, is huge because now as an athlete you're able to return back and perform on the field. And the part that was also interesting here, or the part that we start also adding to that is the mind aspect. Because also elite athletes, they they have to be mentally resilient. They go through a lot. The training, this the travel schedule, the different hotels, the media, the fans, uh, social media, all of it. You have to have that mental resilience. Be focused, concent, you know, have the focus, concentration, the drive, the clarity. And and most elite athletes that I talk to, they all share the same thing. What help us like stay in the game is having optimizing our mental resilience. And that's where ExoMind, for example, becomes a good tool. And I've had you know the privilege of using it on a few of these elite athletes, and and some of them fell asleep just like you did during the treatment.
SPEAKER_02I for maybe three or four days after that, I felt amazing. I just was like, and I I thought to myself, like, if I could, I would just like I want an eczema mind in my home. Like I just want to like, every day, I just want to feel like this. This is great. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's a fantastic device. And and and a lot of uh my clients and patients, they they actually enjoy it. Yeah. But also outside of the recovery and healing and all the stuff, I think I think if you think about also some other statistics that are alarming as a surgeon, as a provider in America. Like I look at these statistics and I talk to other providers across the country. 50%, up to 50% of healthcare providers suffer from major psychological distress. And burnout is on top of the list with almost 45%, 46% of the healthcare providers that are burned out. So it has a big toll. And it's interesting to see how when we're actually doing these deli doing these treatments with mental health, that we're able to actually give people, you know, a better control of their mind, of their mental wellness. You know, it's not so much mental health because that makes it look like it's just you know dedicated to people who suffer from mental illness. But I look at mental health and mental wellness as something no different than physical wellness. Like, you know, if you want to stay in shape, you go to the gym and work out and and and stay active. What is the gym for your mind? Like, you know, doing puzzles, solving you know problems, sure. But is there a specific gym? Do we do have anything that we we can use to keep our mind sharp and in focus? And do we really promote this notion of mental wellness to patients, to clients, to physicians across the country? So is it went from just you know pain and recovery to now understanding there is actually a bigger picture, which is mental wellness should be on the top of everyone's priority list and concern, whether from the healthcare providers, patients, clients, and everyone. Uh I think 45% of people who took a survey a few years ago rated mental wellness as their number one priority, even higher than a stroke and cancer. So it fits into this narrative that we need to do a better job in looking into what mental wellness. And now we have tools that are not necessarily chemicals and pills, and you've gone through it. You said it. I wish I could have it at home because it was non-invasive. Laid down, you know, and and and you felt the difference.
SPEAKER_02You know, I want to go back to something you said earlier in our conversation about the forest and using the examine to essentially prune the things that are not serving you well and then increase the things that are serving you well. And I found that as I look back at this, after the treatment, I wasn't ruminating. Not that I'm a big ruminator, but like there was just a certain amount of static that wasn't there. Kind of great, Dr. A. It's kind of great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you know what? When when we first started using Exomind in my clinic, this was almost two years ago, I actually had this habit because we I wanted to get people organic experience. So right as the treatment nearing uh to finish, I'll have my phone ready and they finish the treatment. We remove the applicator, they're not strapped down, you know. You remember there was no strapping or anything. And then I have him sit up. So literally within 30 seconds or a minute or so from finishing, they just sit up on the table and I have this camera video, and I say, so tell me how you felt. Because I'm trying to see. And we get these, we have these beautiful, amazing responses from people just within 30 seconds to a minute of the treatment. And most of them, as a matter of fact, they struggle in coming up with words to describe how they felt in terms of this made me feel, but they all felt positive, felt good, felt focused. One of the best, I think, uh description I had from one of my clients, he said, Well, Dr. A, maybe to draw an analogy, it felt like someone hit the restart button on a laptop that was acting slow because of all the junk, all of you know the files that are adding up. And when you hit that reboot button and the restart, and now wow, everything is now running smooth again. Uh and and that's that's that was his description, which I think that that's probably very accurate for a lot of the clients and patients who've tried it.
SPEAKER_02That sounds about right to me. I want to ask you about other possible uses for this technology. So I have a little bit uh a central tremor, and uh as you were explaining to me, this is a very Just me wanting to move my hand is a very complex chain of things that need to happen in order for me to move my hand at all. And I asked her, I said, well, if we're sort of like shaking the snow globe and removing the static, the only treatment that I'm aware of for a central tremor is are beta blockers. And, you know, if you're going to exercise beta blockers, it's not such a great thing. So I mean they work, but I don't know. So I'm wondering your thoughts. Have you seen any research on this? Would that be that be a possible usage for XOMind?
SPEAKER_01I can say, well, let's go back up a little bit just to explain the tremor and then see how the XOMINE may or may not fit or TMS in general. So it's something like tremor, like we talked about earlier, you know, intention it's like intentional tremor, what happens when you're trying to move or do something with your hands. That movement is very complex. It's like think of it like there's a symphony with multiple, multiple individuals creating this musical piece together. So in this case, if I said, David, please left, you know, grab the pen with your right hand. That's a verbal command that went through your ears and from the ear went to like the language area processing. It helped you understood that language, that command. And then this had to go now to the decision-making part of your cerebral cortex. Would you obey or would you actually say no? This is a command that is simple. Didn't ask you to like put your you know hand in fire, for example. So now you have to like you know pre-plan that movement and execute. That's gonna come from your cerebral cortex, because that's involved in the pre-planning and then the decision-making and execution. But once that command is now you uh you gave it the green light we're gonna execute, that information that is now traveling from your brain to your hand has to be now fine-tuned. Because otherwise, if it's just coming from the cerebral cortex alone, it's gonna be very like gross, chaotic, not smooth, not artistic. So you're gonna have input from basal ganglia, you have input from your cerebellum to fine-tune this movement to make it look beautifully executed, and it doesn't look like there is tremor with it, right? So, when we talk about tremor, it's a more complex issues. So if we're talking about using TMS or exomind, to the question should be what are we targeting? Where do we think the issue of dysfunction is coming from? Is it coming from the cerebral cortex where is you know you're making the decision and executing? Is it coming from the basal ganglia? Is it coming from the cerebellum? The pathways that might be fine-tuning your action, your movement. And depends on the region, we have to decide can the technology, can the energy reach to these areas effectively? Now, there are some studies, and I think there's some experimental research and some research that are going, where maybe looking into like you know, cerebral cortex and cerebellum, because the energy can get to those areas of the brain easily, then let's say driving energy into the deeper layer where the basal ganglia reside. So as it stands now, you know, obviously I can't say that, yeah, let's let's use the examine to treat tremor, but maybe it can help with the cortical regulation modulation, which is really, if you think about the hierarchy, that's where things will start. That's where the the decision making is happening. And then it goes from this, if this is the upstream, everything below that becomes downstream, and you're getting more input to influence that that movement. So if we're talking about the higher order, which is the upstream cerebral cortex, then there could be a role for it that could be explored. But this is what's fascinating about neuroscience and brain and TMS, is that the sky's the limit. And the question that you brought up now is a fantastic question. Because for me, it'd be like, why not? Let's look into it. Let's discover maybe there is something there for us to investigate and and work on. That's what I love about being neurosurgeon and the neuroscience is that there are a lot of mysteries, and and we constantly and daily learn more and more about how all of this worked together. Like the brain is just a fascinating organ. I mean, I had the privilege as a neurosurgeon to actually touch it. And when in surgery, you'll be actually touching someone's brain, and you in at a moment, sometimes you just stop and just wonder like, wow, this this is the tissue that makes this person who they are. This is the tissue that allows them to walk, talk, you know, and and just be a functioning human being. It's just very fascinating.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I encourage you to do some investigation with this because it doesn't seem to me like there's a lot of possible downside with this. It's like, okay, well, let's target this part of the brain and see if anything changes. Why not? I mean, I I just know I actually know a lot of medical professionals that have tremor. And it's it's very difficult for them. I have a good friend who's an anesthesiologist, and so he has to he's on beta blockers five days a week because you can't be having a shaking hand and putting a needle in someone.
SPEAKER_01So well, absolutely. It could be career-ending. I mean, think about like, you know, uh surgeons, for example. I mean, if if a sur a neurosurgeon has like tremors and they're trying to do this microsurgical procedure, I mean, it's it's it's a challenge. Or a dentist, for example, who might be having tremor and they're trying to do like a root canal or you know, it can be career-ended. You're absolutely right. It has a very impactful, it's very impactful. It can impact a lot of physicians and providers, absolutely. It's not fun. But you know what? I'll talk to these guys and say, listen, hey, David wanted us to look into this and see, you know, I mean, it's so one thing about the company, I guess, BTL, they have the last time I checked, or is it the last record, they had six hundred dedicated engineers. All they do is figure out how to take ideas like what we've been talking about, and see how they can create like science, technology, devices that can deliver, you know, that energy based on ideas. So out of those 600, there's probably a handful that might get excited about this idea and say, you know what, why not? Let's look into it.
SPEAKER_02I'm not a scientist, I'm not a doctor, so I have no idea what it works, but it seems like based on my personal experience and my tremor, I it's like one of the first things that came to my mind. It's like, let's see, let's see if there's something we could do here. I wanna, I know that your your time is valuable and we're coming up on the hour here. Is there is there anything you want to leave my people with that you feel that they should know?
SPEAKER_01Well, I I I think the two things I would say, the main thing that I probably tell a lot of people is that this might be more gears to like, you know, the physicians and the providers, but also maybe to the patients and the clients to some extent. So I think we we've gotten to a point in healthcare or in medicine where we're very crushed for time. And I feel a lot of our patients, as a patient myself or any of my patients, the one thing they're always patients are always asking for is education, clarity. Can you help me understand this? And and I know in the constraint of time, you know, we we might just jump into this is my recommendation and you make a decision. Which is unfortunate because I don't think any of the healthcare providers don't want to spend the time to educate and go over, you know, spend enough time with the patients. We were educated before we're providers of physicians, and patients really want to like know what's going on with them, have a better understanding. So I say this because oftentimes I get patients inclined that they show frustration on the healthcare system. And I I saw Dr. So-and-so, they didn't spend enough time with me, and I try to always remind them that's not because they're bad people. They're just in a situation in a system in a setup where it just doesn't allow us enough time to take care of very complex situations. So I would say if you're a patient and you're looking for an answer, tune in to like, you know, Calcutta Podcast, where there might be, you know, very helpful information for them. Because you might not have an hour with a provider to go over certain topics, but find like, you know, very good resources. Uh it could be like, you know, your podcast show, where you know, we have this luxury of spending an hour and talk about these things, right? In in clinic, I might not have it. So do your due diligence, look at things. Medicine has evolved. Yes, we don't use the electric eels and rays anymore, and we're using these non-invasive technologies. So I'm I'm very like optimistic on the way what medicine is gonna move towards technology and maybe AI integrations. And like you and I, we're all wearing these devices that are now allowing us to monitor our bodies in real time. So as we move along, I think in the next few years, I think things are gonna get better and easier for us. Technology is gonna really take us to the next level. And if you're if you're seeing a surgeon, this is I guess maybe my my last thing that I'm gonna leave off with is please do not assume that if you're you're asked to see a surgeon, including myself like this spine surgery, that that means if I'm sending you to see a surgeon, that means you will have surgery. Just because you're seeing me doesn't mean that I'm gonna tell you you have to have surgery. But I might just educate you on why you don't need it. And statistically, 80% of patients that I see with back problem, spine problem, they're not surgical. They don't need surgery. But that doesn't mean they don't have pain. That doesn't mean that we can't help address their pain. It just means that they don't have a surgical pathology. So don't make the assumption which now create fear. I don't want to go see the surgeon because if I show up, they're gonna tell me you have to have surgery. No, most surgeons are actually they know when to operate and when not to operate through years of training to avoid doing inappropriate surgeries. So just don't make that assumption, because in doing so, you might be limiting yourself from options that could be beneficial to you.
SPEAKER_02I want to thank you for your time and I want to thank BTL for making this connection and for introducing me to this technology, which I feel like now that I've experienced this, everybody should know about this. It's amazing. And just lastly, Dr. Ray, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you directly, what would they do?
SPEAKER_01A couple things. I mean, you know, you can you can go to uh royalspinesurgery.com, that's the website. You can also call the office 480-424-5255, or you can just uh go to Instagram at the dot dr.a. D dot dr dot a. Send a message. Uh if I can, you know, be of value and give some advice or information, I'll be happy to. But I think those are quick ways to try to like, you know, find this. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02I'm very grateful for your time today, and I'm especially grateful for you switching on the muscles in my legs, which were not working. It was just uh miraculous. So I appreciate all of that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, my pleasure. And I'm glad I'm glad we were able to connect, and and I think, you know, come to Scottsdale, come and visit me here.
SPEAKER_02Before I we came on, I just was telling my wife, like, we should go to Scottsdale because that's where Dr. A is, and he can probably do things to my brain, which would be great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we'll be happy to have you here, you know. Uh Scotzel is a fun place, you know.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much. I appreciate your time today, Dr. A. Take care. My pleasure.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thanks, David. That was Dr. A, otherwise known as Dr. Mohammed Abdul Hamid. So after my knee operation, I I just assumed that this, you know, the path back was mostly going to be about these endless exercises being consistent and just waiting for my body to catch up. And yeah, this stuff matters. And, you know, it does work. But what Dr. A helped me see is that the body is this communication system that that pairs this all this collection of parts together. So, you know, I could build the muscle, but if the signal's poor, it's not gonna fire correctly. The coordination isn't gonna be there. I'm probably gonna hurt myself in some other way because I have these sort of systemic signaling imbalances. I want to make sure everybody's clear about this. We tend to think of weakness as inevitable. And I'm sorry, it's not. Or we blame ourselves for not working hard enough. And I work harder in the gym. I work harder on my body than probably anybody I know. And I can tell you all that stuff is great. We need to do that, but sometimes there's more. We need some other help there. And sometimes things are not connecting correctly. My wife would probably say that's often the case with my brain, but okay, that's not a matter. So we need to like bring in this idea of the nervous system. And my own experience as Exomind made me even more curious about this connection between stress, sleep, mood, and the body's ability to recover. We like to separate this mental health from physical health, but you're all one thing. They're just components of you, your body. And, you know, there's that book, The Body Keeps Score, like all of this stuff. This is all so true. So I thought Dr. A was really interesting how he got into this about how we need to focus on the mental health part of this, the mental component to it. And that leads to systemic response, you know, how well your muscles work. So I thought that was like super interesting. And it's just, I can't tell you how it felt like the next day, two days later, when the muscles in my quad were clearly switched on. And I didn't even notice it before because it had just been so long. But they were, they were starting, they like they worked, like they should work. So anyway, I'm gonna try and think less going forward. I think we all should, in terms of these isolated fixes and more in terms of the whole system readiness. And we at super age, we talk about this idea, the whole human. You're a whole human. And it's not just your biomarkers, it's just not how strong you are, it's it's so much else. That's kind of a side tangent. So you want to ask yourself like, is your body ready to train? Is the nervous system calm enough to recover? Are the muscles actually firing? Are they doing what you want them to do? Or is it some other set of muscles that are compensating that are actually going to cause you some trouble later on? And is your sleep doing what your sleep is supposed to do? So taking this connected system approach can go a long way. And I'm I I love Dr. A. I feel like, you know, remember that was it, Aesop's Fable is the fable of the lion, and somebody pulled a thorn out of his foot. Like, that's how I feel about Dr. A. Like, friend for life, like you switched my leg on. This is really awesome. So I mean, I will be staying in touch with Dr. A and see how he continues to evolve in this field. That's it. Long winded podcast this week. I don't know. Everyone, stay strong, stay vibrant. We'll see you next time and go get yourself a personal best in something this week because you deserve it. And when you get it, pat yourself on your back. Take care now.