The Longevity Formula

How Shockwaves Can Heal What Time Can't

• Dr. Brandon Crawford • Season 1 • Episode 31

Share episode

Send us a text

Dr. Crawford and Warlick discussed Softwave Technology on the Longevity Formula podcast, highlighting its applications in stem cell activation, pain relief, and tissue regeneration. They also explored its journey from treating kidney stones to broader medical uses with FDA clearances. Warlick elaborated on its positive effects on cellular functions, chronic conditions, athletic performance, and men's sexual health. The conversation emphasized the transformative impact and promising future of shockwave therapy in various medical fields.

Products


Learn More
For more information, resources, and podcast episodes, visit https://tinyurl.com/3ppwdfpm

Voice Over: Welcome to the Longevity Formula with Dr. Brandon Crawford. Let's explore the new era of wellness. Hey 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Today we're going to be diving into some really groundbreaking technology. I've got John Warlick here joining us today. The brain behind this technology that we're going to be talking about we're really going to be exploring something called soft wave.

Soft wave technology was something that my medical director, Dr. Madera actually brought to my attention. She said, Hey, Brandon, you know, we're using this in various ways mainly in regards to stem cells. And she said, you know, with your demographic of patients, with everything that you guys are doing, you really need to look at this.

So I did. And I'm always really cautious and usually pretty methodical about how I review things. But this technology was something that I decided to quickly adopt. So, I actually did, did, you know, review tons and tons of research. And that's the great thing is that there is. Is tons of research behind this technology.

So I was really readily able to quickly ascertain that this was absolutely something that could benefit not just my patients, but myself, my family everyone around me. So, John, Mr. Warlick, thank you so much for joining us today. 

John Warlick: I'm glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Absolutely. So, I think the first thing to understand is, you know, really who you are, where'd you come from?

Why are you here? What's going on? So if you don't mind, if we could get a little bit of background on you you're not a clinician, right, but you've really spent a large part of your life developing this technology. Can you give me a little bit of background on yourself, please? 

John Warlick: Yeah, one, our legal team will make me give a 30 second disclaimer.

I mean, we are very cautious with the FDA, but we have multiple FDA clearances and they happen to be for acute and chronic wounds. They happen to be for connective tissue activation and most people would ask you what that means. And when I asked the FDA what that means and we got our first FDA clearance, they said, don't ask, but it seems very important.

That was our first FDA clearance. We also have it for acute for blood supply and for heart disease. pain as well. We have a half dozen other indications in the pipeline, including E. D. For non healing bones. Ah, real exciting ones about to be FDA approved. Our first FDA approval through affiliate of ours, Dr Tom Lou in San Francisco at UCSF, and that will be for stress incontinence.

He showed a dramatic a reduction in leakage at 16 weeks in a clinical trial that we had 20 of the most prestigious U. S. medical centers. But, and then also so a lot of stuff we're talking about, although there's a ton of research on it, we may or may not have FDA clearances. However, that connective tissue activation gives us a lot of leeway as, as well as pain and blood supply.

That, that, those are the most frequently used clearances when we're doing our research. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Sure. That makes sense. And I definitely understand the whole FDA navigation, not to the same degree that you do, but with our you know, lasers that we've developed, we've had to really navigate that we're still navigating it.

And, you know, it's kind of a bit of a mess kind of a game that you got to play in that FDA world. So I totally understand that. And a lot of what we're going to talk about may be off label use. So just so the listeners understand that I am a clinician like I said, Dr. Madera, she is a clinician so clinicians are allowed to use things off label in various ways.

So, so a lot of the discussion may revolve around that. So absolutely. And a lot 

John Warlick: of things internationally, we have a whole lot more clearances and approvals than we do here in the state. Just the Europeans have been using this standard of care for 30 years so Literally tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of cases for each of these indications we're discussing.

However, just not yet possibly clear in the U. S., but we will be pursuing the vast majority of the things that we're talking about. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Absolutely. So, so going back to who you are. So who are you, man? Where'd you come from? Why are you here? 

John Warlick: Wow, that's a tough one. You know, I think I think you gave me a couple questions introductory.

The first thing was initially How did you get involved? How did you get involved in shockwaves? And the simple answer was vacation I was working for lockheed selling spare parts. I sold the two hundred thousand dollar coffee pot I sold the twenty thousand dollar hammer. I was selling spare parts first job out of college and that was a great job preparing you for medical technology because when I went looking for my second job You Dornier Medical Systems which was the founder, everything we're talking about all goes back to Dornier.

All this goes back to shockwaves for kidney lithotripsy. That was the first shockwave use in the United States. However, leaving Lockheed at a time selling spare parts, I went looking for a job because in three years, I never had one week of vacation. Dornier was advertising six weeks of paid vacation in year one, plus every known holiday that you can ever imagine, something you've never heard of.

So that attracted me as a young man and and this and I essentially said in 1987, they had an office with about 10 people here in Marietta, Georgia. They had just got FDA approval for the kidney lithotriptor. It was about a 3 million device that took up a room, oh gosh three rooms the size of my office here.

It actually had a, a bathtub where you had to submerge the patient and then a high energy shockwave device that you would target a patient's. their kidney stone and you would dissolve it after about 3, 000 shocks into sand and you would pass it in your urine. But everything that we're talking about today goes back to that.

And so I was with Dornier for about three years and after three years I learned that the Germans aren't very good at customer service. So I lost my first. competitive company. And I've been in shockwaves ever since with my own technologies. I did take one company public, which was Healthtronics in the 1990s.

We got the first FDA clear, actually approval for a non kidney stone related product. And that was for the Ocitron. And we got it. It was a kidney stone like machine machine using high energy shockwaves to treat plantar fasciitis, as well as the tennis elbow and, and, and golfer's elbow, all the tendinopathies.

So I've been pursuing this ever since, but every bit of research can all go back and be thankful for Dornier for starting this whole technology back in 1987. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: That's great. And when did you actually get involved with soft wave rather than shock wave, because there's, we're going to get into some differences in that.

So we may not want to do that now, but I'm just trying to get the progression of like how you got here with this amazing technology. 

John Warlick: Well, what we discovered in 2004 was really the breakthrough. I mean, in 1987, we knew high energy shock waves would destroy the Conquerment. In about 1986, before even offering that the first time, Dornier.

Because essentially we had an ellipsoid about this big in a, in a shockwave that, that focused about 16 centimeters in the body. So it's this huge fixed ellipsoid. But somewhere in that pattern, your ribs and pelvis were gonna be, and they had, they were concerned that if a shockwave was destroying a concrement, what would it do to a bone?

Because, you know, some of it was passing through the bones. They were worried about that and thought that might be, you know, prevent them from selling the device for safety issues. But they designed a study to target bone with high energy shockwaves. We're talking about shockwaves 30 times higher than the levels that we're using with softwave.

But they, the first time the, the aha moment happened is after this study at about six weeks, they noticed that the iliac crest was Thickening and, and the bone that they had targeted. And they also noticed that the bone densities were increasing dramatically. So that was the first time that somebody noticed a biologic effect with the use of shockwaves.

And so they saw that it wasn't a problem. It wasn't gonna be breaking the bone, it wasn't gonna be causing fractures. And so that gave them clearance in the comfort to start offering that in the United States for, for, for kidney stones. But that was a very breakthrough moment because as the first time somebody goes, there might be a biologic effect associated with shockwaves, but.

The difference being from 1987 until 2004, when we formed Softwaves, there are about 20 companies pursuing Shockwaves. Dornier evolved into Siemens, then to EDAP, then to Medstone. There's 20, 30 companies. Woof, storts. And up until 2004, everybody thought that the mechanism of action was trauma because that's what we were associating with kidney stones.

We realized that when we were targeting the plantar fasciitis, we thought we were breaking up the calcium deposits. We thought by breaking up the calcium deposit, they were causing the pain and that it would be almost like a kidney stone like response. But we found out very quickly that when you target the plantar fasciitis with a high energy shockwave under anesthesia because it's so painful, although it was amazingly effective on day one, the pain was going away.

But if you looked at the x ray, the calcification. Was unchanged but then so that's the light bulb went up what's going on here It's not what we think but up until 2004 everybody thought the mechanism of action for even non kidney stone related, pathologies Was based on cellular destruction and trauma.

We thought it was a hot poker theory in surgery We thought that non invasively we are causing micro fractures and micro bleedings and the body had a neovascular response to that But only in 2004 after I came out of retirement for five years after selling health products aft had discovered in that in it was you did not have t trauma to have a biologic shodden.

Our medical Austria. He discovered in four year window while he was treating osteomyelitis patients. They have non healing fractures, like a tibial non healing fracture, and they had like a skin defect associated with that. And by, and he was treating that with high energy shock waves, and he realized that the skin defects were going away, the wounds were going away, they've been there for years and years.

And the light bulb went off and said, These skin defects are being treated in the unfocused low energy portion of the shock wave. Maybe our mechanism of action is not what we thought it was because the skin defects were healing within days even after having been there for years and years and then also the non healing fracture would go on the healing at 12 weeks but almost immediately he would see the the wound become disinfected.

He see the wound become pink and healthy and in weeks it'd be perfectly healed. So then he hypothesized that it was not requiring a traumatic effect. He recruited me out of retirement. We got together our old medical team that had formerly been with healthronics. We brought them all back together and we started this company called soft wave TRT.

And it was predicated on the hypothesis that you do not need high energy focused shockwaves that are painful and destructive to have a biological response. He had the it was beautiful cause he's working with the Austrian government and they're essentially a single payer healthcare system over there.

And they have a law. that says the most expensive pathologies have to have research associated with them. So as an insurance company, it's like Blue Cross Blue Shield trying to find a cure for, for, for spine trauma and brain trauma. They do it because it saves lives and money and because they're the single payer.

So they want to know how we can help reduce these pathologies, make them, make the patients better, faster. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: So he had 

John Warlick: access to all of that research team. So he very quickly started doing all the basic research. And very quickly, we proved that he did not have to cause a traumatic response to have a biologic response.

The shockwave itself was putting shearing forces on the cell wall. It was compressing a cell, then expanding. And essentially, the exosomes are cascaded network. You know, there's microvesicles are shedded. Essentially we're fooling the body into thinking it was injured with the shockwave itself. It did not require a high energy focus shockwave That's painful and destructive.

We everybody else until 2004 and even now they're using an ellipsoid a reflector So all this energy goes to a spot you put the pathology in that spot trying to cause micro traumas. Yes, that works Except it's painful traumatic. It's one step back two step forward by making a parabolic reflector The same amount of energy or less is spread over a much wider area.

It's almost painless or much less painful, and you can treat larger areas faster, and you're not causing cellular destruction or death. Our box has been tuned down to a level of 0. 2 millijoules or less, and it's impossible to cause cellular trauma at that level. Anything higher than 0. 24, you can cause cellular trauma and death, and all the other technologies are relying on the mechanism of cellular destruction, one step back, two step forward, where we just learned it's the biologic.

We fool the body. this, that shockwave itself, but shearing forces on the cell wall of the cell thinks has been injured and it starts a biologic escape. Essentially the same thing happens. When a body's injured naturally, we're just extending that by another 12 weeks, essentially. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Can you actually do us a favor?

Can you tell us what exactly a shock wave is? 

John Warlick: Well, one, this whole industry's sound waves, okay? It's, it's, it's, even ultrasounds gets looped into this. Universe of sound waves on. We all know their continuous waves like this, and they generate heat, which is good and bad. But shockwaves of this whole universe are tiny little slice, and they reach a certain definition, primarily about the speed of sound and and reaching certain peak pressures very, very quickly over time and dropping off dramatically.

We're talking about millions of seconds. So it is a very technical definition of sound waves. Of what a shock wave is, but of this entire globe universe, the shock wave is a tiny little wedge of the sound wave universe and soft waves, a tiny little wedge of the shock wave universe that makes us unique.

But primarily, it's about the peak densities of the pressure. And the sound at which the the sound travels. So, but it's, it's very technical definition, but everybody loves to call themselves shockwaves because a lot of great shockwave research, but they're really just sound wave machines trying to catch on, you know, catch the coattails of the very specific shockwave definition.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Gotcha. Okay. Well, that, that makes sense. Thank you for that explanation. 

John Warlick: Yeah. I mean, as you see in a shockwave, have you ever seen a, I can send a picture of two, there's a jet as it passes through the sound barrier, it caused an expanding plasma bubble. That's a shockwave. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: That's what it is. It's a very 

John Warlick: visual response of what a shockwave is.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: So that's literally, so if you, cause I, that gave me a really good visual actually. So if you can imagine. My plane 

John Warlick: passes through the speed my good, our medical director was he's a back seater of that was F 16s, the two seaters, he said, when you pass the speed, you could actually see that plasma bubble.

Come off the jet. Oh, that's cool. It's really cool. , that's a shock. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Wow. Okay. 

John Warlick: And that's a lot of energy is moving really fast and it has certain, you know, physical densities and capabilities, but that's it. Just look at it. And also, you know, it's you know, thunder and lightning. I mean, there's, there's certain things that are shockwaves and certain things that are not.

So 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: yeah, 

John Warlick: the most visual is a jet passing through a sound barrier creates a shockwave, very visual. Very dramatic. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: I have a, a patient from Australia that when we would use the softwave on her, she would say, it's the thunder, it's the thunder and lightning. So, so we actually call it the thunder and lightning now.

So 

John Warlick: I like it. I mean, if you go back to old timers over in Europe, for instance. They would only pick mushrooms or the best time to get, Oh, is after a thunderstorm. Okay. Thunder does things. I mean, there is a certain, there is a physics to it you know, that, that it makes things grow. It makes things happen.

I mean, it's, it's true. It's not this old wives tales, but thunder is very beneficial. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Awesome. So then to take that conversation a little bit further, so you get this this, this shockwave. You know, produced this plasma bubble, et cetera. Right. So when that hits the tissue, how is that shockwave actually like, is it just going straight into the tissue?

Is it being converted to something else? Like, how does that actually 

John Warlick: the mechanism of action? If you wanted to study what the, the, how do you translate biologic energy? No, I mean that no physical energy into a biologic response is mechano transduction, right? 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Gotcha. The 

John Warlick: mechanism of action that you can pull up a nice little screen has a beautiful, I can never explain it, but this is mechano transduction.

It's converting energy into a biologics, you know, in the biologics system. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Okay. 

John Warlick: And most times pathology or disease states, it's lack of energy. I mean, we're just putting energy into a biologic system. It's just a efficient way to do it. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Gotcha. 

John Warlick: This is like, we take an astronaut for instance, okay. If they're up in space.

Three to six months, they come back and their bone densities decrease by, I'm making this up, 50 percent. It's known when they're stepping off a space shuttle, they can have an acute fracture just because their bone densities, okay? So the only way to do that is to put energy into a biologic system. That's about all those vibrating plates.

We're the perfect way to put energy into a biologic system. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: So if, 

John Warlick: conceptually, if you could use this in space, the astromauts could come back with higher bone density than when they left. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Wow. 

John Warlick: Okay, because you get enough energy into a biologic system that it maintains the mass. That's all we're doing.

And as you get older, the less energy is being, you're not walking as much. You're not making contact. So we're just putting energy into a biologic system in a very efficient fashion. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: So literally the discussion around E equals MC squared, energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. So you're actually having an influence on both the energy side and the light side.

Side, right? Because my big thing is, you know, you, in order to change matter or mass and or energy it's a light discussion, right? So we control light and we influence different wavelengths of light, but then also the timing of the light and all these different things. So you actually have light, but then you're also creating this plasma bubble, which is on the energy side.

So you're influencing this equation at two sides, if I'm understanding correctly. 

John Warlick: Boy, you just went way over my head. Yes. That's a cool discussion. But yes, that's 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: cool. That's cool. That's amazing. 

John Warlick: I should be interviewing you next time. More 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: So I'll be honest, whenever, you know, this was first brought to me, right in the first mention of shockwave really shut me down because I had I'll just say an aggressive salesperson back in, you know, several years ago come in not associated with you guys at all.

This was a whole nother company purely just selling the mechanical. Shockwave devices. Right. And they came in, they're like, we're going to cure everything under the sun. You know, give me anything that hurts on you right now and I'm going to make you feel better. And I was like, all right. And he starts hammering, you know, with this thing.

And I say hammering because it was like, bam, bam, bam, bam. It was, it was intense. And I wasn't even that hurt. But when he started using that on me, I wanted to punch this guy in the face. It was painful and I was like, stop, stop, stop. And he was like, no, no, no, it has to hurt like this. So it heals faster.

And I was like, well, it just, I was like, just shut this down and get out of here. I'm not, I'm not going to torture my patients. Like get out of here. And so that was my first and only experience with shockwave up until that point in time. But I say that because this is really going along with what you're bringing to the table now is that.

It's not just about that trauma component. There's so much more going on and that's what soft wave is leveraging. And that really is what got me super intrigued is that this does not have to hurt in order to get the type of responses that you want to get. So. If it's not the trauma response, I understand where we're somewhat fooling the body into thinking, you know, there was an injury and that's setting in motion this cascade of healing events.

But there's so much more going on there, right? With soft wave. And I guess it goes back to, you know, really. I guess we could have a discussion about like what's really causing pain, dysfunction, underlying health conditions or diseases or whatever. And I think a lot of that can be you know, tied back into inflammation.

I mean, we can talk about blood flow. We can talk about so many different things, but if we really want to talk about, you know, what's driving a lot of this, it would be the inflammatory response, specifically the chronic inflammatory. responses, right? In my world, we, we talk a lot about photons, electrons and frequencies.

And another thing that I was really intrigued about software was that there's actually a light component. So, I was very, very intrigued at how you're producing the shockwave by using lights that then transfers into sound. And then that energy is you know, pushed into the body. So, I know that you gave me an acronym the other day and it was HEAL, H E A L.

What did that stand for again? Can you walk us through that? 

John Warlick: Well, it's sometimes a little bit corny, but it's but it's true. It's, it's, it's, we produce four kinds of energy. There's a heat component, there's electromagnetic pulse, which is usually beneficial as you see from all these PEMF devices.

There's, then also we have the acoustic component, which is we believe the most important component, but also there's light. So if you just take the first letter of all that, I think I found it, you know, this stumbled on when we actually trademarked it. It's, it's so heat, electromagnetic, light. If you take it at up the heel, But those are all four types of energy that we produce.

Whereas the PEMF device only has an electromagnetic component, and a lot of these other technologies have one or two. Our technology is unique in that we have all four of those types of energy. It's, it's, all four play a vital role in healing. I, I can't make a living saying PEMF. They all are useful, but we just have the benefit of they're all in one package.

We have a huge electromagnetic pulse. I mean, we undirect. We underestimate the value of that because when we did our first FDA study for the ossetron When we had to do a randomized control, we only shielded and blinded the component to the acoustic energy. We'd put some styrofoam over the bellows and the patient couldn't see it.

So we treated the patient, but we had these, even with non healing fractures, 20 years old, we were getting. In the, in the placebo group, we were getting like 40 percent healing. In the shockwave group, we were getting 75 percent healing. But we had projected 5 percent for the placebo group, because they're 20 year non healing fractures.

They're not going to get better. But what we didn't realize is we weren't blinding for the electromagnetic pulse that we did. And so it made our study went a whole lot longer, because we didn't randomize correctly for a number of patients. But at the end of the day, we got, you know, we proved in a randomized clinical fashion that we have a dramatic improvement for bone healing.

But we also prove that electromagnetic pulse, as we all know, also is usually beneficial for that. So it's a nice little package that we just got lucky. We didn't know this when we started the technology, but we've now stumbled on the fact that all four of those energies are beneficial. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah. Well, and, and I've definitely felt it.

I mean, it's, it's quite amazing. I'm going to go into some of my experiences here in a little bit, but before that, you know, we've talked about how amazing this technology is and how it differs, but can you walk us through? Because when you look at it, I'm sure people are going to, you know, go online at softwave trt.

com. They're going to, and I got that website, right? Correct. Softwave trt. com. They're going to look at it and be like, what the heck is going on here? So if you could walk us through, so there's a generation of plasma, right? And then that's transferred through some fluid. And then can you walk us through like how this is so, you know, just did the technology itself.

John Warlick: There's several different types of shock waves. Okay. And we just got, we got lucky. We weren't smart back in 2004. We got lucky. This whole business, we got really lucky. We, cause one, we picked the most expensive. Shockwave technology in the world to make. It's the most expensive. But that's what we did back then.

We, and we knew it was better, but we didn't know that all the advantages of, but we essentially underwater evaporate two electro tips, almost like automotive electrode spark plugs surrounded by fluid. We discharged it up to 20, 000 volts across the gap and it evaporates a small amount of water very quickly causes an expanding plasma bubble on the leading edge of the plasma bubble.

What also makes us unique is that essentially is a shockwave. Okay. And it's in a millionth of a second is passing through the cell. So what it does is put shearing forces, put compressive forces and it expands. But the other beautiful thing that we did that 90 percent of the other shockwave companies don't do, we put it with a lens so that every bit of energy that we discharge, Can be pushed in one direction.

90 percent of people call these things radial ballistic devices. They're two metal pistons that bang together and they cause a pressure wave, not a shock wave, on the skin's surface. But they have to, it goes spherically in 360 degrees. And so only that tiny bit of energy that's pointed at the pathology is beneficial.

And you're wasting about 99. 9 percent of energy. So you have to almost like a mini stick of dynamite on the skin surface to get enough of that sphere directed in the right direction to have a beneficial biologic response. But because we chose a parabolic reflector, every bit of energy can get pushed in one direction.

But it's all about the plasma bubble, the leading edge of the shock wave that you can shape with the lens. And literally like a millionth of a second, it passes through the cell wall. Causing, you know, fooling the body and things have been injured and starting a body logic cascade 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: And and what I was reading is that this is has been measured to go up to 12 centimeters into the body Is that right or did I get that wrong?

John Warlick: That's probably the number i'm the probably the most guilty person in the world of that because we always talk about depth of penetration And we were always saying we have more than they have but it's really not true I mean, I have to throw ourselves, you know, call it call a red flag on ourselves every shock wave or even sound wave regardless of How weak it is, passes through the body, hits air, turns around and comes back.

So every, every shock wave goes all the way until it hits air and comes back. The key about when you're talking about depth of penetration or the, or penetration depth is having enough energy at depth to have a biologic response. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah. 

John Warlick: All of these 95 percent of machines sold out there very inexpensively are ballistic radial type devices.

They're massagers essentially. But they, even though they generate a huge amount of energy on the skin surface, which is very painful at one centimeter. Anything after one centimeter, they don't have enough energy to have a biologic effect. Okay, but the key is by having the lens and the electro hydraulic, which is a much more, uh, efficient form of the shockwave, you could, we have enough energy at 12 and 14 centimeters to have a biologic effect.

The only reason you turn up the energy level to higher levels is so you have more energy at depth. Even at our lowest energy levels, that shockwave goes all the way through the body, turns around and comes back. So it's yeah. So that, that's just one of what we're guilty of mischaracterize that as well, but a shockwave will go all the way through, but the key is having enough energy at depth to have that biological.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Gotcha. And that's the same thing with, with light, like that's the same thing that we understand with photobiomodulation and that there's primary, secondary, tertiary, like there's all these different types of effects. It's a cascade response, right? That you're setting into motion a whole series of events that may even transfer through the entire body.

You know, in photobiomodulation, we even have studies where. You laser the hindquarters, I forget the animal, I don't know if it was a rat or what it was, but they lasered the hindquarters and they had changes in the blood brain barrier in the brain. So we know that, you know, we can set in motion different biochemical biological responses that can have a full systemic response, but a lot of times in research, they like to really just quote that primary effect, which, you know, maybe that goes once in, you know, once in a meter, 10 millimeters, you know, however we want to talk about it like that.

So I definitely, you know, am privy to that and understand it, I, I would love the conversation around plasma. We didn't talk about this before, but plasma is something that really, really intrigues me. I love that your device does produce this plasma plasma in and of itself has this, this intelligence in it.

And plasma is what makes up. You know, from what I've read from what the, you know, physics people know, the majority of our universe and it's very interesting how plasma can actually interact with the body. And now we're, we're actually understanding that a lot of the cell to cell communication is actually plasma related.

So this is like some of the leading research right now. So. I think it's really interesting that, that your modality produces this plasma effect. And, and I'm not going to say that, you know, you're shooting plasma into people. That's not what I'm saying, 

John Warlick: but it's interesting though, because two years ago we never would have mentioned it.

However, what you just said Three years from now, we might coming back and saying, what were we thinking about sound waves? That all was about the plasma. It's funny how we've evolved. Our descriptions of the mechanism of action are still evolving. You know, three years ago, we, all we focused on was stem cells.

Two years, all we focused on was exosomes. And last year, the new, Phraseology is micro vesicles and shedding. It'll change next year because we know it works, but describing how it works is still a work in process. Yeah. And we will be learning for the rest of my life. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yep. And that's how you know when you're on the leading edge, right?

And that, I think that's important for, And that's really what we're trying to do is we want to talk with the people at the leading edge and we have to be okay with the science and the knowledge evolving if you're at the leading edge. And, and so, you know, I applaud that. I think it's fantastic that you guys are open to those conversations and, and willing to listen to the new information coming out.

It's quite amazing. It's probably 

John Warlick: the one other I probably should have put back. I mean, the most exciting thing about our technology. is we've been doing this since 1987. Okay. At energy levels, at least 10 times higher, typically 30 to 50 times higher focus shockwave in the kidney. And we're doing averaging about 3 to 500, 000 treatments in the U.

S. Alone since 1987. And every one of those treatments, you're treating an internal organ at incredibly high energy levels, and you could put an ice cube in a focal point and it would shatter the ice cube, 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: okay? Wow. 

John Warlick: And however, we've been doing that, and every time you're doing it, you're treating large blood vessels, you're treating nerves, you're treating skin, you're treating everything, and nothing bad has ever happened.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah, 

John Warlick: that, so the most beautiful thing about a shockwave now, you know, divide that by 30 and it's do the most important thing is do no harm. It's really inconceivable of how you could hurt something short of dropping the 50 pound box on your toe, right? The good news is if you do that, we can fix it. We make broken bones go away,

So, the, the, the mo the reason I'm have a certain comfort level talking about these things. is that we know from years and years of experience and tens, if not hundreds of millions of treatments, that it's a do no harm technology. So sometimes we sound a little bit cavalier about doing some of these things.

This because Everything we mentioned here has been treated in a certain patient cohort somewhere in the world and they're comfortable talking about it. In the States, we're regulated by the FDA, as we should be, but it's important, though, is do no harm. That's the most important part of these discussions is it's really hard to hurt yourself.

With shockwaves as generically and more specifically soft wave, which is a tiny little wedge of the, of the shockwave family. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Well, I definitely know it works. I mean, my, my own personal experience, you know, so I've had I've actually had two back surgeries. I do have a torn meniscus. I have a a torn MCL as well in my knee.

Obviously, I'm, A laser guy. So I use lasers. I do things like cold thermogenesis or cold plunges. I do various types of things to keep myself working. And I've never had a knee surgery, but I did, I have had two back surgeries. I actually had my wife use the Softwave on my back. And I will tell you, I have never actually felt that much relief.

It was like, I had better mobility. The pain was like non existent. I typically have this like area kind of around the right shoulder blade area that just feels like someone's stabbing me in the back. That was completely gone. And the weird thing is it's like one of those pains that I just was used to.

I just walked around with that. I didn't even really realize it. But what was really interesting to me I like to run. And so I, when I go for a run, I'll usually run about four miles. My pace, depending on how I feel is usually around 10 and a half minutes a mile till about around 11 and a half minutes a mile.

I'm not like, I'm not running a race. I'm just running for fun. After my wife did this to my back later that day, when I ran, I ran at a nine and a half minute per mile pace, and I was like, Hmm, that's cool. I mean, I don't typically run that fast, but it was just a good day or whatever. And so fast forward she did it again and this was, I don't know, maybe a few weeks later, same thing happened.

Right. So she did that treatment on my back that day. Again, I ran faster. I was like, wow, this is because we've had conversations about. How this could be like the ultimate biohack, you know, and that's one thing that I really want to do is I want to develop like a biohacking strategy with this too, not just for pathology, but how we can you know, stay optimized and really keep our body healthy and functioning best we can.

So, and then my knee too, right? I would usually, when I start running, I really have to push through the pain with my knee. And after about half mile to a mile, I'm good. But if I shot, if I soft wave just right out of the gates, my knee is good and I don't struggle with any kind of knee pain afterwards either.

So that was me personally, my youngest son actually he'll get a migraine from time to time. And he actually came home. He, well, he came, came to my office. My wife had to go pick him up from school. And he was, you know, had a migraine and I said, well, typically, you know, we would put them on lasers. We would do Vegas nerve stimulus.

We would do these things and that helps, but I thought, well, let's, let's try this shot. The soft wave did the soft wave and it was immediately gone. His migraine literally, I'm sorry. 

John Warlick: Where'd you pause it? So he, 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: he gets this migraine behind his left eye. So I literally just said that left frontal lobe area and in other 

John Warlick: way, most frequently it's applied.

They will apply it there because people are. They shouldn't. Well, because of the FDA, maybe they should be. But very frequently for migraines, it's at the base of the skull. In vasodilation, it seems that there's a lot of reports. I've seen papers on that. So that's very interesting. And then also, if you really want to go out there, we've seen some really cool case reports for migraines.

if you're trained in eastern medicine and, and, and believe which I do in reflexology, replacing the reflexology, the pressure points, you know, the manual pressure points was with soft waves. We've seen some amazing relief by treating the fingertips for the For the brain as well. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: So I'll tell you, I'll okay.

So here's, I wasn't going to talk about this, but you bring that up. So it 

John Warlick: makes me sound crazy. No, no, 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: no, no. That's really good. So, so we do a lot of primitive reflex work in our office, right? So we're working on developing the brain growth and maturation. A lot of that means we have to, you know, work on primitive reflexes.

And so, What we're doing now, right? So this is just some work that we're, we're trialing. We're doing some some pilot studies and whatnot, but basically if you have the sensory motor loop that develops the brain, well, my whole thing is, okay, if we can put energy into that to help convert muscle spindles faster, we'll develop the brain faster.

And so now what we're doing is we're using it. almost like we're using our laser at times as a, as an adjuvant to actually increase the muscle spindle conversion to actually integrate primitive reflexes faster. So far we are seeing that that is successful. So again we're in early days. This is just something that we're just now trialing, but there is definitely this connection with using it on the body and having this greater, you know, far reaching effect, whether it be the energy systems, like you're mentioning, or literally just you know, developing 

John Warlick: earlier that we were spending a lot of time.

We're not talking about it a whole lot because it's people feel uncomfortable with it, but it's we noticed in our first non union study, people who had, for instance, they might have had bilateral tibial non unions. And by treating one nonunion, we actually saw improvement in the other. So there is a systemic effect.

It's always been under related, under reported, and we're really starting to focus on that. There's some really cool stuff we're doing just by treating the hands and, and blood, quite frankly. There's just some, it's, that's the next frontier is the systemic effect of this. It's not localized. You, you hit on it with the lasers too.

It's that might be the most important thing that we do. Our ability through mechanotransduction to affect. The systemic information, for instance, just by treating a localized information, it's really underreported and we're spending a lot of time and money researching that right now. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Absolutely. Well, I mean, so another thing I was going to mention was my father in law actually had.

What appears to have been a gout flare, right? And he's never had this before. I went through all the differentials. We had, you know, x rays. We, you know, I've tried to rule out everything I can, but just in the middle of the night, his ankle just lit up, just started hurting. Like he said, it was like more pain.

He's not a, like, he's a really tough guy. He, like, pain doesn't really affect him. So for him to be like hobbling and like really complaining about this it was a big deal. And so. It does appear like it was most likely a gout flare. And so the very next day we used the soft wave and lasers on him. That literally just knocked it out.

I'm talking, knocked it out. 

John Warlick: I love the combination. That's really, like I said, 10 years ago, I'd like to argue with you, but now every modality out there is that the combination of this really nothing's perfect, but the combination of one, two, or three, really. is important for folks not to argue among each other to say that every one of these technologies is beneficial.

And when you combine them with something else, it's one plus one equals three. In my experience. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. 100%. I want to go 

John Warlick: back one thing. Promise me. When you say it's your back, typically People say it's the back pain. It's not the lumbar sacral spine so much as SI joints that are usually highly inflamed.

And you'll find, and it's funny, it's not the same spot every time. But when you find one, most people say, Oh, I have this horrible back pain just on the right side. And you'd go over to the lumbar sacral spine. It doesn't really hurt. But when you go to one SI joint that they say it hurts, the flank, it lights up like a firecracker.

It's very uncomfortable for a bit. And then the pain goes away pretty quickly. But what they don't realize it's always bilateral when you go to the other side and do that it's they're gonna say Oh, no, it doesn't hurt over there, but it does hurt over there So you have to treat both sides, but more importantly though that if, especially if you're a runner, I will promise you, in addition to treating the SIs, roll over and treat your, essentially the hips, especially the abductors, this is over the entire area, and that'll be three times more painful than your SI joint.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah. It leads to much more longer lasting pain relief in the back. It's the hips that are causing the vast majority of time, especially in women, it's the hips that are causing the back pain. It presents in the back and also the pelvic floor. But I mean, as an aside, I just had a, one of the most prominent urologists get up in front of the AUA he's probably the expert on orcalgia, which is men's testicular pain.

And because of what I just told him about sports medicine, about how the hips and the lower back present to the pelvic floor. He is now treating orcalgia by treating inflamed hips and lower back. Okay, so that's all he does. He doesn't even treat the genitalia, no pharma anymore. He makes, oh, but just by treating hips and back, and the women have the same, a condition called PGAD, Persistent Genitalia Arousal Disorder, a high incidence of suicide, just by treating the inflamed hips and back, you can modulate that, make it feel so much better.

Long story short, you'll get more benefit for your running. by treating your hips, especially the abductors. You'll see it's incredibly painful, but it presents, you think it's your back, but you have to treat your hips to get the full benefit and a much longer lasting because you're just treating the symptoms in the back that's being referred most times from the hips, from the hips.

The other thing I'll give 90 percent of the time, if somebody walks into my office, It says they have horrible neck pain. Unless they've had a, you know, a car wreck or something like that, it's coming from their shoulders. And physical therapists understand that. That's the whole thing about referred pain.

That's probably what we do best. Anybody can be good with soft waves in a day or two, just by treating the pain directly. But if it comes back, you've missed spots. There's been trigger points, or fascia that's been damaged somewhere else. And all of that, physical therapist out of this is being referred from somewhere else.

But for your personal biohacking, I promise treating your hips is going to be more beneficial than treating your back. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Perfect. Okay. Well, I will do that. I have not gotten into the hips. So that is definitely, 

John Warlick: I'm warning. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: So, so just to clarify, right, because we've talked about how this is not painful.

The soft wave has, you have the ability to turn the energy down. So it's not like 

John Warlick: he, as you diagnosed on high, you find it because if you just go over real low energy, you won't find the spot. Okay. Cause it's, it's, you have to have that depth of penetration. So I dialed up to mid range. I say diagnosed on high.

Treat as the patient allows. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah, 

John Warlick: so I'll find it quickly at level 10 or 11 and hit me Oh boy, that hurts and the neatest thing is I can be a quarter inch away from your inflamed spot And it doesn't hurt at all. You move that quarter inch you go. Whoa, and then okay. Well, you say I'm not here to hurt you Okay, we found the spot.

Let's turn it down to where it's tolerable. They go. Oh, that's fine I can feel it But also I have to tell them that if you can't feel it it's not helping and the more pain you can tolerate the The quicker and better you're going to heal. So they know what they have control of, well, that feels good. And then you treat for 100 shocks, go up level one, go up level one, but diagnosed on high treat as the patient allows you.

But I meant to correct you too, it's not painless, but it's a whole lot less painful compared to anybody else. And we can turn it all the way down. It doesn't have to hurt at all. But it might take four or five treatments instead of one or two treatments if the patient will allow you some that it's going to be uncomfortable and the more discomfort they accept.

The better and faster they're gonna heal, but your hips, the first time you go over it, you can go, whoa! And then now you found it, turn it way down, work it back up slowly, and you'll be very comfortable. But but we have to find the spot by finding the pain. That's the only difference. We have it at a level to find the pain, because the neatest thing about this technology, I've had hundreds of people MRIs and say, I, I've been to Mayo Clinic and here's this, you know, MRIs, three different ones and can you fix that?

I go, it's probably not that spot. And so I'll put the probe on that spot. Doesn't hurt at all. But I'll go three inches away on a trigger point and they'll go, wow. And when that trigger point's healed, the pain in your neck, for instance, goes away. It's a very important concept about referred pain and physical therapists are the best at this.

It's so intuitive to them. They know about it. They always know about it. You're all just not so much. They have a hard time. Telling their patients that I'm getting rid of your testicular pain by treating your lumbar sacral spine. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. 

John Warlick: They're, they're, they're coming around.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: That's interesting. I will say I had a CRPS patient, so chronic regional pain syndrome. It was mostly situated in her lower extremity. It was full body, but it was mostly lower extremities and she did actually have a lot of like pelvic inflammatory things. She would have pain radiating through her perineum into the genitalia, et cetera.

And so I remember you telling me some of this, right? And so, we treated her with this and she was in for a little bit and we've made progress on her before and she had come back. And I worked on her sacral plexus area. So the sacrum, the pelvis. The hips I, I did do both legs. I didn't, I didn't go into the genital area.

I did. I mean, that's, you know, we didn't really think 

John Warlick: you don't have to. Yeah. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: And, and so she came back the next day, like elated. She said she woke up for the first time with zero pain. And then on an average for that day, her pain was down by about 50 percent and that was just after one treatment and that was CRPS.

I'm not talking about just like a, you know, someone that just has random pain. I'm talking about years and years and years of suffering. That's what I'm talking about here. So it's amazing technology. And with that little segue, I mean, we've talked about all these different areas of the body. I mean, what?

Okay. I'll say, I'll say this way. Transcribed In your opinion, what has been the most fascinating you know, area of the body or thing that you've been like, Oh wow, I didn't realize that this could help this area of the body. Now let's go look at that. I mean, I, I know there was a paper on cardio that came out.

I know there's a lot of urology, sexual health, all these things. Like what's the most exciting in your, in your mind? 

John Warlick: The frustrating here, we are guilty as charged is that when you understand the mechanisms of action. Okay. If I go, Well, if I talk to your all just he wants to talk about heart disease, every heart surgeon wants to talk about erectile dysfunction.

I mean, it's hard to stay focused and we're unfocused parallel waves. When I try to focus on those few seconds a day is when we talk about the mechanisms of action that are proven, they're proven at the highest level. I mean, there's, there's randomized controlled data on every mechanism of action. One of the first is the stem cells.

Tom Lou at UCSF. Many others have proved that the mitochondria and the resident stem cells light up within seconds and they go to work to their stem cell migration within hours and differentiation within days. So the stem cell mechanism, it's a, it's incredible, ultimately leading to a 300 percent improvement blood supply at 12 weeks, small, medium, and large vessels in the ischemic heart.

Okay, that's, that's the most important mechanism. We bring long term blood supply, new blood vessels, small, medium, and large. The second and the most talked about Especially for pain is our ability to modulate inflammation. Okay, we used to say for years we're reducing inflammation, but that's not true because when we treat a non healing fracture, somebody can have a 30 year old non healing fracture.

They have no inflammation. Inflammation is not bad, but too much is a good thing. So we're actually on a non healing fracture patient. We're wanting to turn on the inflammatory pumps. We've actually had a patient who had a 30 year non healing fracture in his tibia. We treated that one day and turning on the inflammatory pumps, but because he'd been on crutches for years and years, his shoulders were horribly inflamed.

And we treated them. And then the shoulders were turning down the inflammatory pump. So we're ability to modulate inflammation is the key buzzword. We can turn it up or down. It's a smart response. And then third, most important thing is we're usually anti bacterial, anti infectious. We are treating infected, knee implants, hip implants.

At Piedmont Hospital, we're treating there was a small series where they treated infected LVADs, left ventricular assist devices. And if they, if you can't, this was after they failed everything else. And if we hadn't got rid of the infection, they would have had to remove that. And that's catastrophic because that's keeping the patient alive.

So our ability to destroy bacteria is, might be the most important thing we do. And we've proven it three different ways. One. A ton of papers showing how we disrupt the biofilms, mechanically. So the body's own blood supply can get there. Two, we, there's a peptide called LL37, which is upregulated several hundred percent, it's the most antibacterial peptide, it, it, it, it activates in mass with shockwaves.

But most importantly, once again, is our ability to immediately bring blood supply. So your body can, you know, bring us helper cells and permanently at 12 weeks you know, 300 percent blood supply probably is the most important thing that we do. But knowing these three mechanisms. It's so hard, I'm gonna challenge you, name an indication that would not benefit either from stem cell response, a bit of modulation of inflammation, or anti infectious bacteria.

That's where we get in trouble, because if people said, does it work, I go, well, yeah. I can't, you know, it was not, it's, you know, it's not FDA approved, however, there's a half dozen papers for it. And why would it not work? Because most importantly, when you said the most exciting thing, it's is we this study took over almost almost 25 years.

The European Heart Journal. This came out is we've been doing this for years and years with the Austrian health care system, but finally got published. It should have got published in Lancet. One editor pushed back. Everybody else said yes, but Lancet turned it down by one vote. But it went to the European Heart Journal.

When they crack the chest during bypass grafting, if you've had a heart attack, you have a scar on your heart. Okay. And your ejection fraction, we were trading only patients with like 25. On average, I think it was 28 was ejection, which is very low. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: So at 28 percent ejection fraction, you're actually in heart failure, right?

John Warlick: Yeah. That you're on oxygen to get up and downstairs. Right. You, you can't walk a hundred yards. It's quality of life is shot. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Right. And so what were the results after applying softwave to these people? 

John Warlick: Well, the Europeans, because they're not good salesmen, they tell everybody that they raised the ejection fraction an average of 12 points.

Okay. 11, if you take the most conservative and I, and that, and that does, doesn't sound very good, but when you take 11 over 20, it actually was 38 points. Okay. So your ejection, and that's a single treatment at 12 weeks the ejection practice and the BBC did a 30 minute special on us. They interviewed the patient a year after his treatment and he was running in a 10 K race that the BBC interviewer, how's it help your heart?

And he's just sort of looking at it. I'm running a 10 K. What do you think? 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: That's a dramatic 

John Warlick: improvement in lifestyle. And but the most important part that I did not even published, which really is the most exciting thing about our technology. They never could have done it here, but in human clinical patient in German, Austrians, when they cracked the chest, they took a biopsy of the ischemic heart immediately when they opened you up.

Then they applied 15 minute soft wave treatment. Then they did immediately a biopsy again, and they were able to show all the known genes responsible for tissue regeneration. lit up like firecrackers. We are able to turn on all the genes responsible for generation in a matter of 15 minutes. And that's what, why this is really biohacking.

We are now having a genetic response. We are turning it on and off the genes responsible for tissue regeneration. That's why we're so excited. This one study single handedly, because also if you're now treating the energy level, I use like 0. 37 millijoules in the heart focused with our old focus probe, but that's because the study started before we knew any better that unfocused work better.

But they had to continue the same energy settings or they couldn't use the data because it lasted over 20 years. But they showed even with high energy focus shocks directly on the beating heart, we were able to have this huge, you know, improvement in the ejection fraction, as well as what you see with the genes being responsible for generation lighting up.

And the data was accepted and peer reviewed, showing that. That the 300 percent improvement in blood supply in the ischemic heart at 12 weeks. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: That's, that's just amazing. And so, so a lot of, I'm 

John Warlick: excited about everything. What does not benefit because in leading into your segue one, we don't have any FDA clearance for the brain, but my number one most exciting thing that I'm spending my time on is the brain and Alzheimer's dementia, Parkinson's.

Cause We don't understand that, but we know we modulate information. We have 300 percent improvement blood supply. Another example I give, we have pictures of people who've had tummy tuck surgeries 10 years ago. You know, it's a nice red and raised scar. We treat half and it's 80 percent reduced to 12 weeks.

So we can remodel scarring, even old scars. Okay. And so, and we have an amazing effect on the lymphatic system we've proven, you know, or the glymphatics as they're in the brain. And a lot of people are starting to think as to glymphatics that are, you know, responsible that you're not draining all the toxins out of the brain.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Right. 

John Warlick: So any of the theoretical prop known causes of all these brain indications we've proven. That we can be very, very useful for managing each of those. So why would you not try that? So we're going to spend the vast majority of our time and research by exploring the human brain here going forward, based on all that we know about the underlying mechanisms of action.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yes. And that's obviously what really excites me. And that's where we've been using. The soft wave quite a bit, honestly, more than anywhere else as far as like where we're applying it on the body we're doing it on the brain and we're doing it for brain rehab, right? So we're actually folding this into.

Our neural solution methodology where we're actually using soft wave, even with our visa procedures for the, the functional medicine side, we're using it to increase stem cells and then to actually use the soft wave after the procedure as well. And we're seeing better results that way too. We love 

John Warlick: the combination with, with stem cells is so that that's the most exciting thing because the knock on stem cells.

I'm just making this number. If you inject a couple million in the ischemic heart, ischemic heart probably is the most studied stem cell model ever. That, and they showed a nice improvement over time, but the knock on them is some studies will show most studies will show is the stem cells don't know to stay there.

So you have to put so many in to get enough to have an effect. But if you do soft ways, First, you're sending out signals saying, come here, help me. Essentially, stem cell attractants are produced. So, not only for your own body stem cells go there, that as you age, you have less and less, but any of the other biologics that you, you know, injections or however, they will know the home on that device.

So, the combination of stem cell therapy or PRP therapy, any biologic plus SoftWave is amazing. Once again, One plus one, I used to say three, but I think it's 13 or 30. I mean, the combination is amazing. Introducing biological assault 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: is 

John Warlick: our signaling effect that we can cause the pathologic tissue to say, because after 12 weeks, up at the body thinks it's healed itself.

Right. So if you're dealing with, you know, a chronic pathological tissue, the software say, Hey, I'm injured. Come here now. So that's a big advantage in combining these technologies that we're really excited about. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Absolutely. And I think, and we haven't talked about this, but a big thing that I think Softwave is helping with just like photo by modulation.

A big focus of mine is on mitochondrial heteroplasmy. And heteroplasmy is when the respiratory chain in the mitochondria, so you have the electron transport chain complexes, one, two, three, four, and then you have the ATP synthase pump. But basically as they swell, as they get further apart, you lose the efficiency of how those electrons go through the electron transport chain to produce your exclusions on water and ATP.

So I, I do believe, because, because how else could you be affecting all of these genes? How else could you, because you know, that, that's where my mind is going is that, okay, if we're really having an influence on the genetics, epigenetics if we're really accelerating how something heals, if we're really doing that, it doesn't matter the modality, but specifically with soft wave and with my background in photobiomodulation, we have to be influencing.

The mitochondria, but specifically the story about mitochondrial heteroplasmy which ultimately I believe is where you know, healthcare innovative healing strategies are going. And I think that that's going to probably be a conversation. Maybe your researchers will get into, maybe they already are, I don't know, but, but I think that's the big part, right?

I believe that you're having a very positive influence. on mitochondria, mitochondrial DNA and, and the respiratory chain in and of itself. Tom 

John Warlick: Lou would agree with you. That's, he's spending a lot of time at UCSF on that and his research. And that's all way over my pay grade, but I do want to send you two pictures.

Really the first pictures that influenced me back in the late 2000s I guess 2008, nine, we got pictures of you can fluoresce stain Mitochondria, and they got picture before and after immediately before and immediately after shockwaves and under floret and they just light up Just the mitochondria this light up perfect It's just when you have that screen if you had to have one poster as What is representative of the power of this technology the mitochondria off the mitochondria on immediately after treatment?

I think and We didn't pay any attention to that for 20 some years, but now we're going back to that and your conversation really makes me want to go back to that. And Tom Lou is encouraging us to go back to that. Something we discovered early, you know, 2000 mid two thousands that we should have been focusing on that all along and we haven't been.

So once again, we're probably going to rewrite the known mechanisms of action to include that, because that's, that's brand new out there that you just, I think you know more about it than I do. And, but just based on your other research from laser. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Right. That's 

John Warlick: new to us. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Well, it, I believe there's, there's a lot to explore there and I would love to, I would love to see the information you just mentioned that that's really exciting just to be honest because I mean, that's really showing that, Hey, we're getting down to the subatomic level of healing, right?

If you can affect heteroplasmy rates, which ultimately I would argue that this is even a big, a big cause of autism and neurodevelopmental disorders. Because of mental health issues, but basically as our heteroplasmy rates is increasing we're giving birth to children with this higher heteroplas, heteroplasmy rate and ultimately at some point, you know, there's going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back and you're going to develop this, let's call it dysfunction, disease, state, whatever you want to call it.

This imbalance. So if we can find a way to reverse that, it's huge. That's what I was so excited 

John Warlick: about. You hit the word, the magic word is balance. I think that's all we really do is bring things back into balance. Right. At a certain level. And how could something on the, on the cellular level, I mean, it's, as a simpleton, what you, what you were saying, we have to affect it on the cellular level.

We have to, on the subatomic, I mean, you can't have healing one without the other. I don't think, but it's so hard to validate that's, that's the challenge. Yes, it 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: is. Cause you're talking about quantum physics at that point, there's 

John Warlick: something going on. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah, absolutely. 

John Warlick: Well, I would have told you, of course the genes were turning on.

How else can you get, you know, original tissue? I mean, pink, healthy, they had to turn on. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Exactly. Well, man, this was, this is just an amazing, I mean, we could, we could talk for another, you know, couple of hours. I, I think, I mean, you're just a wealth of information, but before we kind of wrap things up, is there anything else that you'd like to communicate to the world?

Is there anything that we didn't touch on that you'd really like to tell the audience? 

John Warlick: No, I mean, it's the most important thing we do is patients have hope. I mean, chronic, chronic pain is horrible, wears people down, just knowing that there's something out there. Don't give up. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know there's going to be a lot of people listening that are thinking, man, whether they're a provider, there's someone at home suffering, something like that, they're going to be thinking.

I got to get this technology. 

John Warlick: That's the challenge and I get in trouble every day because people want to call me and say does it work? But I think rehearsing was not FDA approved for this and how I answer it is if it was my daughter or son I would do it. I do it myself. I treat my forehead and basal skull.

I've had 20 concussions in my life So we're doing some concussion research. It makes all the sense in the world you know, my dad passed because of he had multiple concussions. So It's going back. It's safe. However, I still can't make certain claims. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah. 

John Warlick: Why not try it? We're doing hospice, but you know how we do it with all the time under compassionate use when they've given up all other hope.

Why not try? 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah. 

John Warlick: And more often than not, you go, wow. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Right. Yeah. 

John Warlick: And, and, and, and, you know, and, and then, then, then we got to say, well, gosh, how do we not tell people about this? 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Exactly. It's 

John Warlick: a challenge. The FDA is, If they have a jail, I'm going to end up there one day. I'm asking, it's hard to share, you know, knowing as safe as it is, it's hard not to share the story.

And now that our company is so valuable, it didn't used to be. So I didn't mind, you know, I had nothing to lose, but now all of a sudden I have lots of shareholders and we'll have to be much more careful, but it's, it's, it's really great. Well, and you've seen it yourself. I'm you're comfortable after this reading, you saw that it's safe.

You very quickly got beyond, you know, the concern factor. And really the only risk isn't that I must tell anybody we're not going to cause any injury, however, but when you're treating somebody with Alzheimer's, they're not healthy people. Okay. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: And 

John Warlick: I've had this, I've had this happen. I've had an amazing recovery on a friend and family at, you know, they had been in communicative for years.

had an amazing 90 day recovery, and then they, for some unforeseen reason, they had a seizure, okay? And if they weren't I don't have any research to show that it doesn't cause seizures and Alzheimer's pain. I don't have it. There's never been an effect that's caused seizures anywhere. However, because of lawyers and things like that, you just have to be cautious because these are unhealthy people.

If coincidentally something happens to them six months after you've done a series of treatments, And we don't have any randomized control papers that it's, it's, it's intimidating because you know, you have to protect yourself. So you have to have other releases, the compassionate use, because it's so tempting to do something so easy and so beneficial, but make sure you cross your T's and dot your I's and protect yourself.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Right. And yes, you're, you're right. I mean, I can speak a little differently because. FDA is not monitoring my scope of practice. They're, they're more, yeah, exactly. So, so I can be in, you know, I can be here saying, look, we're treating it, you know, we're doing the brain, we're doing this, that, and the other that's off label use that defers to scope of practice, et cetera.

Totally different, but but I know that, you know, people are going to be searching for providers that are using this technology. I believe you have a list of providers on your website. 

John Warlick: Yeah, if you just type in provider search upper right hand corner and top 10 closest providers. But but if you have any doubts, call me because, you know, some indications should not be handled by certain specialties in some right.

So it's we, you know, it's I know those folks who are doing. things outside the box. I'd be happy to point you in the right direction. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Perfect. Yeah. And then, you know, we specialize in complex neurological disorders like the really tough, like difficult things. And that's what, you know, myself, Dr.

Madeira, like that's what we do. So, but then there's going to be providers, there's going to be late people that want to purchase this unit after listening. So you said we can have a referral code, we'll put it in. In the notes. So we'll put that in the show notes for all those people that want to go out and acquire this amazing technology, which I fully support.

I think is, 

John Warlick: and this given my phone number, so it doesn't get confused in the pipeline. 404 402 6844.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: You're bold giving your phone number out. 

John Warlick: No, I'm good. That's what I do. I hate, I'm the worst manager in the world. All I do is like talking to people. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Oh my goodness. We may have to edit that out my friend. 

John Warlick: Some of the most famous people in the world own our machine. Yeah. And we don't talk about it because it's, it's, I mean 7 million men have been treated for rectal dysfunction.

Okay. So it's. It works. And, and, and if you're wealthy, you don't want to go stand in the office, stand by stare at you. So it's not that expensive. And after a year, you can resell it for about 90 percent of your value if you want to. But 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: you're 

John Warlick: going to fall in love with it. And 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: I totally understand that, you know, just, just to be honest.

I mean, so, so you, you told me about the studies with orcalgia and testicular pain and all these types of things. So. I mean, just to get a little bit personal here. So I actually have some orcalgia. I have a varicose seal in the left testicle, right? So I've got this, you know, it's basically a varicose vein that causes pain and whatnot.

They've said, Hey, we need to operate and all this kind of stuff. And I'm just like, no, no, no, I don't want to do that. So I will say, you know, I've used it I guess three times now on the testicles and the pain is gone. Like I, the, literally the pain is 

John Warlick: gone. The problem comes back though, it does in a short term basis for testicular pain directly.

We did it for years. It'd make pain go away. Nothing else could other than meds. Okay. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah. 

John Warlick: And so people have been doing it. However, it would come back, that's when we discovered the lumbosacral spine. And that would be gone for longer, then it'd come back. That's when we discovered the hips, especially the where the IT band joins.

And then also the you know, the, the, the abductors and this treat the entire hip plex. Yeah. And you'll find the pain when it goes away, your pelvic floor relaxes, the pelvic pain goes away. We're, we're doing all the best denia, we're doing all the, you know, women's. painful intercourse stress incontinence.

The women's pelvic health is what we're most excited about because nobody's spending any time or money on it except us. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Right. Well, I wonder if maybe. 

John Warlick: 10, 000 machines sold for men's sex health and like 10 for women's. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Oh wow. 

John Warlick: It's horrible. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Wow. Yeah. I didn't realize. Well, maybe that's why my pain isn't coming back.

Your 

John Warlick: hips are going to be, it wouldn't surprise me that the, that it's just, if you're a runner, there's a huge correlation between activity and the more you abuse yourself physically, the more likely you are of archalgia. So do your hips. That might be even more beneficial longterm. Treat it directly as you have.

But also you would notice if you were to take a testosterone test at 72 hours and like two weeks, it temporarily goes up when you treat your testicles. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Well, 

John Warlick: and funnily enough, it's, it's actually painless because that's the, that's, that's, that's the stem cell response. You're not treating an inflamed area typically, if it does hurt, you stop.

But like, when you're treating ED, it's certainly, it's totally painless. When you treat any acute injury, it really hurts for a minute until you turn the machine down and work your way up slowly. When you find it, you're first, oh, that hurts, but you turn the machine down, work up slowly. But there should be no pain when you're, for ED and that kind of thing.

And the last pitch I'll give, probably the most commercial thing that we do, and it has not even been it's not reimbursed yet, is But when you, for Ed, which does have reimbursement code and a lot, most insurance companies are paying now you, you're treating the shaft left and right. You're taking the base of the penis left and right, and then you treat the perineum, the whole area.

But during the perineum treatment that in the direction of the prostate, a hundred thousands of men have reported that if they had frequent nighttime urination got up 3, 4, 5 times a night. Within 24 to four eight hours, it's reduced by at least half. Wow. Okay. Because it seems to have that, that that's the inflammatory response.

It modulates the inflammation immediately you get a symptomatic relief. And quite frankly, I think more men would rather sleep through the night and their wives too. You know, not waking them up four times a night to go pee. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Right. 

John Warlick: With an immediate benefit after one or two treatments instead of six or eight treatments for erectile dysfunction that may or may not, you know, be successful.

Sure. So the, the nocturia thing is probably the most commercial thing. We're really pushing that because, well, that's a big deal almost immediately. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah, it's a big deal. I mean, that disrupts circadian rhythms and all the things, so I'll Yeah, if 

John Warlick: you don't sleep, everything's effective. But yeah, it it's been a pleasure.

I really, and if you ever got, you know, anybody got any questions, I'm happy to talk to folks or, and if. And once again, I'm not a clinician, but I can point you to somebody way smarter than me, has a whole lot of research and 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: I'm going to probably sell a ton more machines for you right now because I'm going to continue the story.

I didn't plan on doing this, but I'm just going to go ahead and tell you. So treated the testicular pain, right? So I think I've done it three times and I'm thoroughly convinced. And I asked my wife, I do believe that there's been some hypertrophy, meaning they're bigger. Is that something that you've seen?

John Warlick: Oh, absolutely. No, that's, I didn't mean to bring that up though. I treat 80 year olds all the time. They, they, they just, they look at their maze. It's, it's, it's regenerative. I mean, you're the 80 year old man looks like the scrotum. It, you see amazing within six or eight weeks. I don't want to say nor you're not 21.

Okay. But it's a dramatic appearance and that's why the market that we, if I had to do all this over again, One, I wouldn't be here because I'd be a billionaire, okay? But one, we started out 20 some years ago trying to do diabetic ulcers against the advice of probably the best wound care guy in the world who said, you're not big enough company, you're never going to do it.

He was right, okay? And we almost bankrupted ourselves trying to do it, but what we should have done is gone to statics. Because our competitor was a company called soliton from texas. They just sold the abbey and all they do is treat cellulite Not cellulitis cellulite and also they accelerate when you do tattoo removal, it's a burn.

Okay You can do tattoo removal more efficiently less painfully. That's all they did and they sold for 550 million dollars cash 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: goodness gracious And, 

John Warlick: and, and we all know we can do fine wrinkles. We just don't have the probe for it. We all know that we, it's anti aging. I mean, of course it works on skin.

We've made the mistakes of proving it on heart and brain when the most obvious thing in the world when people pay cash, which we should have just focused on that originally would be the aesthetics applications of this. And so, yes I've had dozens of men tell me that when they've treated their testicles, it's dramatic appearance in a matter of six to 12 weeks.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yes. Yes. Well, I can attest to it. I did not expect that. And I was like, wow. Okay. That's that's interesting. That was a very 

John Warlick: positive 80 year old man, and I do have some 80 year olds doing this, Reedy, the first thing they report is at six weeks, the girth and the size, it's not bigger than it was, but it's bigger than it is.

Right. I mean, you don't go to it at 21. It is new blood supply. What doesn't benefit from a 300 percent improvement blood supply? Exactly. The other thing, the one anecdote I want to share on this that really makes us unique, from some of your notes that you gave me. We have a database in Austria of we still don't have FDA approval for non healing fractures because FDA still considers it class three, which is nuts.

Okay. Because it's the safest thing to do. We have the best research on that and about five to 10, 000 cases in this non healing database. In Austria, we've treated with shockwaves and we have 85 percent success with a single treatment at 12 weeks if you had a 30 year non union or a six month non union, it's all the same.

It's also the same if you're 85 year old smoker or 18 year old athlete. So, it's, it's, it's, it's, 85 year olds have the capacity to regenerate. I can give you two phone numbers to 90 year olds who've been treating there. And they will tell you it's, it's, it's. I mean, it's not like it was, but the appearance changes, including, you know, the, why would you not have the same effect on the shaft as you did on the, on the scrotum?

And you would. And then finally, the proof of stem cells, the worst case I've ever seen, Oh, I can't even remember. It's essentially gangrene of the testicles. Urologist would know who it is. Okay. You don't see a whole lot of the cases, but we European urologist said, I don't believe this stuff. And our doctor said, what's the worst case that you've ever seen in your life?

And it's called something, something gangrene. And, and before it's horrible, you can only imagine, but they did the whole series of shockwaves. After about 12 weeks, it came back and the tissue had been totally, Necrotic. Okay, this is not only on the shaft, but on testicles. When they came back, the pictures are on the scrotum.

You have the wrinkly skin of the scrotum. Perfectly healthy. And on the shaft, you have that fine skin. Perfectly healthy. So I mean, if it's not stem cells, what else could be? How could you take necrotic tissue that totally pink, healthy? It's a different story. 10 skin textures and types. So that's what made this urologist a believer.

He came back. He's now doing it for everything. We're doing infected penile implants now. Nobody's ever done that because now you have to take them out, which is horrific for the patient. If you had a penile implant and it gets infected and you have to take it out, it's horrible. So now they're treating those in situ and having dramatically improvement.

They don't have to take them out just like doing infected LVADs and hip implants. So the antibacterial part of this is usually, It's exciting and we haven't talked about that and something else we'll talk about another time though. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: That's amazing. Well, you got me 

John Warlick: on my soapbox. I'm excited. So yeah, absolutely.

I 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: mean that, that's why I wanted to talk with you and you know, you're passionate about it. You want to help people like this is, this is just amazing, you know, so, do 

John Warlick: not try it on hair growth.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: For those of you not looking at the video, he says that cause he does not have any hair on his head. Oh man. Well, John Warlick, I, I really do appreciate this conversation. I appreciate everything that you've You're bringing to the world, you know, you're really helping people that have been suffering immensely.

And I've seen it firsthand, you know, people suffering and literally the suffering stops in a very, very short period of time, but it's not just symptomatic. It is restorative, regenerative 

John Warlick: Next time I'm going to, there's a paper it's about to be published. Dr. Justin Marchegiani about extending the length of the telomeres under the influence of shockwave.

Soon to be published paper for anti aging. When you said the biohack thing, I thought that might be useful. That's amazing. I'll have that publication here next time we talk. That should be really exciting. Perfect. Thank you. And like I said, if I've done a better job the world would be a better place ten years ago.

But I guess I'm lazy. So I started this in 2004. It should not have been a 20 year journey, but FDA, when we started, we were all class two. Everything I talked about was class two kidney stone treatment, class two, because we got lobbied against in 2008. We finally committed, submitted our class two paper thinking we'd get a rubber stamp.

They said, policies change. You're now class three. There's only 30 to 40 FDA approvals each year. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: And 

John Warlick: they're almost always by billion dollar companies, never by small companies like us. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: So, 

John Warlick: so as soon as this became class three, it became a 20 year journey instead of a three year journey. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah, I totally understand that.

So 

John Warlick: now they finally are reclassifying and it's exciting time for Shockwave, my two competitors. There's a $13 billion sale to j and j and a 500 million to AbbVie, to Swiss Pharma company. So, hopefully, you know, the resources will come our way and everything we've just talked about a few years from now will be standard of care.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Absolutely. I, I, I thoroughly believe that. That will come to flourishing. So 

John Warlick: I can't wait to come meet you down in Texas. So I'd still want to come have a training day with you. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah, man. Can't wait. So, well, everyone, if you're listening and you think that this can help someone that you love or know that is suffering, please share this information.

In the meantime. Thank you again for listening and we will talk to you next time. John, thank you so much. 

John Warlick: And do not send pictures. You should see all the pictures.

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Oh my gosh. I can second that notion. Oh man. 

John Warlick: A little text is fine. I don't need the pictures. 

Dr. Brandon Crawford: Right. All right. Thanks everybody.

Voice Over: We hope today's episode has inspired you to take that next step toward your best self. Remember, the path to longevity is paved with small, daily decisions. Your journey is unique, and every step, every choice, brings you closer to your ultimate vision of a healthier, happier life. For more insights, tips, and resources, visit drbrandoncrawford.com.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Dr. Brandon Crawford

Host