HFYH | Optimizing Muscle Health with Suji: Insights from Alex Birks

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:03)
Hi, I'm Dr. Vonda Wright, and this is HOT For Your Health. Join us for conversations on the bleeding edge of science, health and culture as we bring you tech innovators, thought leaders and the movers and shakers who are transforming science fiction into your new health reality.
So, hey, everybody listening to HOT For Your Health. I'm so glad to have you back this week. I'm Dr. Vonda Wright, your orthopedic surgeon and longevity doc. And today, I have with me co-founder and CEO of Suji Technologies, Suji Health, Suji Miracle. And I've known about you for several years now. You incubated your company in Lake Nona, Florida. But really, you're a global enterprise that is really working in multiple areas of recovery, performance, pain relief, using an amazing technology called blood flow restriction therapy. So Alex Birks, thank you for joining me today.

**Alex Birks** (1:20)
Yeah, of course. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm super excited to join the podcast. Obviously, we've worked together, known each other for quite some time now, with us being over the road. And it's been great to have you see company go, Suji kind of go from zero to where it is today, serving quite a big portion of the American sports teams and outpatient physical therapy clinics.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (1:46)
Over 30% of sports teams are approaching 30% of all sports teams using Suji technology in their training rooms. And for a long time in physical therapy houses, it's like the ones that I've been involved with, BFR, a blood flow restriction, was kind of a bulky technology. I mean, it's big units, cords everywhere, you had to have this huge price tag, and you had to have a trained, often doctorate physical therapist to get access. But Suji has solved all those problems. So tell us about it.

**Alex Birks** (2:24)
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the key things, we're kind of shifting towards as well, is a change in kind of referring to it as targeted compression therapy. It's a little bit nicer, I think less draconian for people. Of course, scientifically though, you're absolutely correct. It's known as blood flow restriction training or blood flow restriction therapy. And the premise is pretty simple. You wear a compression garment right at the top of the limb, or limbs, arms or legs, one or two, depending on what your desired outcome is. The compression garment, similar, not the same, but similar to the feeling of a blood pressure cuff, compresses around the limb. And you combine this with very low intensity exercise, often body weight exercise. And the premise is that you can achieve very similar, not absolutely the same, but very similar results to high intensity exercise. It's been used and researched for way over 60 years, but particularly in the last 20 years, it's really been found in the training rooms, in the physical therapy clinics of outpatient physical therapy groups or professional sports teams. And as you just put, the equipment was traditionally very expensive, had a lot of cables coming from it. You're kind of running around the training room with an IV pole attached to you as you were trying to do your exercise. It wasn't super convenient.
And the reason for that was that with the early adoption of blood flourishing contraint, one of the best bits of technology was really at surgical tourniquet. Of course, those are expensive because of the quality standards and the regulatory standards they have to go through. And so whenever I was exposed to it, going through my own physical therapy, following a complete knee break, I snapped my tibia, tore my ACL, pretty bad meniscus damage. That was my experience too. So I had a background in engineering and really just tried to start by solving my own problem, which was I wanted a portable unit that was controlled via my mobile phone, guided me through every session, and really used the device to relieve muscular pain immediately prior to exercise, and then build muscle strength very quickly, but using very low intensity exercise when I had a lot of issues with normal exercise because of my injury. And so that was how Suji started, and yeah, we're now in way over one in four American sports teams across major professional Division I, II, and III collegiate programs and growing across outpatient physical therapy clinics pretty quickly as well.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (4:51)
You know, one of the most common questions I get on my social media platforms when I encourage people to lift heavy, and to jump up and down to build bone, or to not only combine brisk walking with sprinting, is people who already have joint damage, and they're like, listen, I hear you, we want to. Dr. Vonda, we want to, but my knee will take it, or my spine already has osteoporosis. And so, as I'm searching for technologies to allow people to do what I'm telling them to do, Suji technology for targeted compression becomes obvious, right? So, let's talk about my vertical right now that we have partnered on. I filmed a bunch of things for you that we're going to be showing. It's in the app. But my vertical, and then let's talk about the other two use cases that you've developed, because Suji really isn't just for the pro athletes or the collegiate athletes you are already in. We've had a lot of conversations about how we serve the 51% of the population that I, which is women and the people who love them, and people who may be just getting off the couch for the first time since high school, all the way up to your pros, the Frazier people. So let's go with my vertical first.