The Untold Science Of Vibration Therapy & The “BioDrive” Breakthrough That Regulates Your Mind and Body, With Dr. Mike North

Ben Greenfield (0:00)

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast.

Mike North (0:05)

But then it really got into creating just the right type of vibration. And it turns out there are just frequencies that are very well suited for the human body. These cavities resonate at different frequencies, and you wanna hit those resonances so that you're actually communicating not just at the skin level, but all the way through to all the different organs.

Ben Greenfield (0:26)

Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond.

Welcome to the show. Juicy Show notes are gonna be a bengreenfieldlife.com/shiftwavepodcast. This one is an incredible discussion with a scientist, engineer, guy named Mike North. And I hope you enjoy it. Here we go. Mike, I just met you like an hour ago. I know, at least from my notes here, that you are a four-time Discovery Channel host, including this show, Outrageous Acts of Science. You've taught at US Berkeley. You've published in the journal Nature. And you're the CEO and co-founder of this company called Shiftwave. You just got done running me through this crazy Batman pop-up lab in my home studio, where you had wires sticking out of my head. And if you're listening or watching right now, stick around because towards the end of this episode, the scene will shift and you'll be able to see what Mike did to me. The stupidly comfortable stuff he did to me at the testing sequence for making a custom Shiftwave protocol, which is probably putting the cart ahead of the horse because, before I hear a little bit more about you, what's the 30 second elevator pitch on what the Shiftwave is?

Mike North (2:03)

Yeah, and Shiftwave is very difficult to explain, as you know, because it's so experiential. And what it does to a person, something that you've really never felt before. So, we really do struggle to explain it to people, and the best way is just to experience it. But the way I like to put it is, it is the reset button for your entire system. You know, your computer's not running well, something's going wrong, what do you do? You just reset it, and it's the same thing here. By reset, I mean regulate you mentally, physically, and emotionally simultaneously. And it does this on demand and very reliably. And the way it does this is by regulating your nervous system, and your nervous system regulates the rest of your body.

Ben Greenfield (2:45)

I was gonna say it's the chair that vibrates and makes you feel good.

Mike North (2:48)

Yeah.

Ben Greenfield (2:50)

It's like my 10 second elevator pitch.

You were much more precise. And I wanna dive into something just like the engineering behind this and why it does what you just said that it does. But besides the little bit that I know about you, can you tell people how you like got into the whole like, I'm gonna make a chair that vibrates and makes you feel good?

Mike North (3:13)

Well, you know, it didn't start out as a chair. Okay. It actually started out as a 3D printed cast that used vibrations to help my leg heal faster.

Ben Greenfield (3:24)

Really?

Mike North (3:25)

Yeah. I mean, it's a long story, but you know, oftentimes great things are born out of tragedy.

Ben Greenfield (3:30)

Yeah.

Mike North (3:31)

And I lost my best friend, my soul brother, the person that I've connected most with in this world. He was climbing Mount Everest when an avalanche took his life. And that was devastating for me. And then at his memorial, all my friends knew I was hurting, so they all piled on top of me to give me a big bear hug, as friends do. And my foot rolled in a hole and it broke my leg.

Ben Greenfield (3:53)

Oh my gosh.

Mike North (3:54)

So here I am, broken leg, dead friend.

Ben Greenfield (3:56)

You cannot make stories like this up. Oh my gosh.

Mike North (3:59)

And he would always say, there's no problems in life, there's just opportunities. So kind of when I was wondering, well, what's the opportunity here? One of my dear friends and a mentor and even kind of a father figure in my life, he sent me some research on using vibrations to help bones heal faster. And I read the research papers and I was compelled enough to then get my doctor to cut my cast off. And then I made a 3D printed cast that had transducers in it.