Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey everybody.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Dr. Ben Edwards here. Welcome to another episode of youf're the Cure. Excited about today's show shifting gears a little bit from what we've been tracking lately. I like to highlight when good things are happening, especially in our community. Here in Lubbock, Texas, we've got a new business coming to town this summer that I think is going to benefit the health of this community.
And we're going to talk about that. And this particular business is in other communities too. So it's not just for you Lubbockites, but you might have a osteo strong in your neighborhood. And we're gonna get into this in a minute. Osteoporosis, bone health is what we're talking about today, guys. And you know, this really lines up in so many ways with just the chronic American condition of we're super sick, dying younger than anybody else. But even, even in this scenario where standard Americans sit all day, eat pro inflammatory foods and don't get enough sunlight and all the basic things that we teach you to, to avoid the standard American life, even in that, we still live to be about 76ish years old.
And what I used to tell my patients in post in my old conventional practice, but still to this day tell my patients in my new integrative practice is what's going to put you in the nursing home in those last slowly, you know, slipping into that grave slowly over those last few years is more related to strength, mechanical. Your muscle mass, your lack of coordination, lack of strength, not picking up your feet, shuffling across that threshold and tripping and falling and breaking a hip.
But a lot of hip fractures actually happen first. And then you fall, but it's falling. It's this weakness, it's this just deconditioning.
And what do doctors have to combat that? Not a whole lot in America anyways, because doctors are taught to use a prescription pad and a pen or an EMR these days. But pharmaceuticals, that's what we have to go to.
And one of the top things that puts Americans into the nursing home and assisted living centers is what I just laid out. And it's related to deconditioning. But bone health in particular, these bones will just snap on you.
You fall, hip fracture ends up in the hospital. Then a UTI sets in in bed, sore, set in. Pneumonia set in just from being in bed too long. And a lot of people don't survive that annual one year anniversary of their hip fracture.
So we want to keep our bones healthy and strong. Can you do that? Is there a way to do that besides the pharmaceutical approach. Real quick, before we bring the guys in to talk about this, I want to quote from this article I found and I think I've talked about this before when it comes to corruption in medicine. But it's specifically related to osteopenia and osteoporosis and hip fractures. And this is from 2022, the calcification tissue International Journal.
The name of this study or this article communicating absolute fracture risk reduction and the acceptance of treatment for osteoporosis.
So that sounds like a real intriguing article there. But let me, let me point out the highlights here.
Quoting from the article in the context of osteoporosis. Wait, before, before I quote with from this. Let me tell you real quick guys, because we're going to talk about a drug. Remember, all doctors can do is give you a drug. That's all we're trained to do. Here's the drug results. I'm about to quote our stats on these bisphosphonates. So what a bisphosphonate drug does. So that's Boniva, Fosamax, et cetera.
It's telling your bone building cells to wake up and start.
Excuse me, I got that reversed.
There's osteoblasts. These are cells in your bone that build. Cells build bone. There's osteoclasts. These are cells that go into that bone and they chew up your own old bone. Bone cells age like every other cell and these old bone cells get brittle, they break easy. So this beautiful design is we have cells that go build and lay down new bone. Osteoblast, the builders. We have cells that come in and chew up the old bone. Chew with the C. Osteoclast. That's the way I remember it. So it's this beautiful symphony and this perfect balance. And it's awesome because you need to clear out the old dead stuff.
So what do doctors do with their pharmaceutical prescription pad? They throw in these drugs that shut down the osteoclast, the ones that are chewing up the old bone.
So what's that translate to? You still have a bunch of old bone cells in there. So when you go get a scan like a bone density scan, it actually can look better, your score can look better, you can look thicker because you still have that old bone still in there because you shut down your osteoclasts that were chewing up the old bone.
But what we didn't realize is we often don't unintended consequences from pharmaceutical alone treatment.
We didn't realize that although the bone density looks better, did that really translate to a whole lot of reduction in hip fluid fractures? That's what we're really after, right? We're not just after some number on the paper, kind of like with our cholesterol. Who cares if your cholesterol is high or low? Does it translate to reduce heart attack risk? Same thing with bisphosphonate drugs for osteoporosis. It may translate to a better score on your scan. But did it translate to stronger bone and therefore reduce hip fractures? Well, here's the, here's the data on what's the reduction of risk in the context of osteoporosis. Many bisphosphonates, those are the drugs, reduce the relative risk of hip fracture by 40%. 40% sounds really good, guys, but relative risk, we're not going to take a deep dive in this, but you got to understand that's a key phrase. Relative risk reduction is 40% compared with placebo.
Although this sounds impressive, the absolute benefit in terms of hip fractures prevented in osteopenic women in this study corresponds to a reduction from 12 fractures per 1,000 women treated for six years to eight fractures.
So the placebo group treated for six years, they had 12 fractures total in six years out of 1,000 women in the treatment group that eight fractures. So there was a little tiny bit of reduction. Four people different out of a thousand over six years. When they do the math on this, guys, what gets advertised to the doctors is called relative risk reduction. 40%.
Now, where I grew up in the math class I took 40% would be 40 out of 100 women didn't have a hip fracture on this drug. And that's not the truth. I just told you what the truth was. It was four out of a thousand over six years.
It's called a absolute risk reduction versus relative risk reduction. It's a statistical game gymnastics formula. So they can mark it a really good looking number, but the truth is 0.4%.
But the point of this study, and I'm going to quote, participants were less likely to accept treatment when it was presented as 0.4%. Imagine that as it, when it was presented as absolute risk reduction.
While presentation of data as absolute risk reduction more accurately reflects individual benefit and helps facilitate shared decision making, clinicians should be aware that this will lead to a proportion of patients with lower fracture risk declining treatment for osteoporosis.
That was a lot, guys, and I hope you're tracking. But the main point of that is the best doctors have direct American doctors who are trained in pharmaceutical symptom treatment, the best they have to do with their prescription pad is to offer a medication that gives you a 0.4% reduction of risk. So there was some reduction from 12 to 8 in a thousand people over six years. But that's very, very, very minimal. And we're not even talking about the cost, the financial cost and the side effect costs like osteonecrosis of your jaw where your jaw bone dies.
Not going to get into all that right now. I'm just saying, as with most pharmaceutical regimens, whether it's Alzheimer's, heart attack prevention, stroke prevention, you name it, we're around a 1% absolute risk reduction across the board. And osteoporosis, hip fractures is no different than all the other chronic diseases we talk about on this show. So what do we do about it?
That's the question and that's what we're going to talk about today.
And there's a lot to do about it. We're going to hone in on resistance training, loading that muscle because that stimulates the builders to get up and build, build, build. It's awesome.
Want to eat a low inflammatory diet, good rich mineralized food, or supplement some good minerals, not just calcium, guys, that's another. We've talked about that before, but today, honing in on resistance training, but a very specific type of resistance training that has a lot of scientific data behind it, a lot of engineering, a lot of thinking this. And that's what we're going to talk about today. And there's an opportunity for people to sign up and participate in the, I'll call it a treatment. I don't know if we're allowed to say that. We'll, we'll ask the guys here in a minute. But when this article said when you present this data, be careful, your, your patients may decline treatment. Well, they should have put an asterisk on that treatment. That's a very narrow treatment. That's a bisphosphonate drug. There's other, I'm going to say treatment. I'm a doctor, I think I'm allowed to say that. But there's things you can do to build strong bone that, that get you a, I'm gonna say better than a 0.4. I don't know if I can quote some randomized control trial to tell you that based off the mechanisms we're going to talk about in the show today. But I'm going to highly endorse resistance training in general. And you'll hear why I like Osteo Strong so much. Specifically, in just one second, we've got Mike Brock, a local Lubbock native, opening a business here in Lubbock. And we've got Kyle Z.
Not even gonna try to pronounce that.
Yeah, I'll let you tell your story. We're gonna start with Mike, because Mike's. I'm excited, going out on a limb here, starting a small business, but he's backed by already a proven model and a great, great formula and a technique and a. And results. And I'll let y' all get into all that, Mike. But first, Mike, introduce yourself to the audience. And. And why are you opening an osteostrong in Lubbock, Texas?
[00:10:37] Speaker C: Well, Dr. Edwards, you're the first reason, actually, because about a year ago, when we moved back to Lubbock, where we're from, we spent about 17 years in Austin, and my wife was visiting with you as a patient, and she told you the two things that she missed about from Austin. We don't miss the traffic. We don't miss the burn orange.
We missed. She missed the healthy restaurants. And she said, osteo Strong. She was part of Osteo Strong in Austin.
And so. And then you said, well, you've been. You've been interested in that, trying to get it there.
I think you said you'd do it yourself if you had time. And so I've been a business owner a couple times before we wanted to get back into Lubbock, where we're from.
And so I've been researching, read Kyle's book.
And, you know, my wife and I are very active.
We were in our 60s, but we both play pickleball.
I still play basketball. We water ski, snow ski. I was snowboarding last week, and I know that. That the impact, the loading on the bones actually works because I'm 62 years old, and I go out and play basketball, and I've never broken a bone.
And so when I read about, you know, what Kyle and Tony Robbins and other doctors have said about loading the bones, you mentioned loading the muscle, but it's actually loading the bones that actually causes that growth to take place.
And, you know, for years, it looks like the science was there's not much you can do about bone growth after the age of 30.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: And Kyle and others have proven that you actually can.
And so we're excited to be part of that. And, you know, a lot of people out there, they're not going to be water skiing or snow skiing or playing basketball in their 60s and 70s, but they want to, still want to be active, still want to play with their grandkids.
There's some people just trying to be independent and go to the bathroom by themselves without breaking a bone. So we want to help them do that. And it's a proven franchise. I really like the method and it's really coaching the individuals and setting goals with them.
You know, what do you want to do in your life? What do you want to play with grandkids? You want to not break a hip, you want to, you know, play pickleball, what is it? And so we'll have coaches there ready to walk them through that. And you know, it's not an overnight fix.
You don't get here overnight, you're not going to get out overnight. But it is a proven fact, effective method to do it. So we're excited.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Awesome.
Thank you. Mike and Kyle, let's just jump right in, kind of introduce yourself to the audience and then let's talk about how you got into this science of building bone.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Sure. My name is Kyle Z, but some people call me Zagrodsky. So Kyle Z is good.
It's great to be here.
I'm what you would call a bootstrap entrepreneur. Have been my whole life, which is to say that I get an idea for a business and I will self fund it.
And the businesses I've self funded in my life have generated well over $220 million now in over 20 countries around the world.
And of everything I've ever done, the thing that I'm most excited about is Osteo Strong. And it's because I've been drawn to concepts that really improve the human condition. I really like helping people. I hate suffering in others and I just want to do something about it.
And so it's one of my just life missions. And I'm a builder and I'm a creator and I just look for things that I could do to make things better. And, and I like unique things. And so when I stumbled across Dr. Jaquish and looked at his prototype of what he had done, I was shocked as watching him give a lecture. And I'm timing how long it's taking him to take people through sessions and it's like five minutes and it's one day a week is what he's saying. And it gets these results. And I'm thinking, okay, I understand the basic science of this. It's interesting to me, but no one's going to believe this, that you could do something one day a week for less than five minutes. You're in and out of the center and let's say 15 minutes. But the session on the equipment that we, we designed eventually is about five to seven minutes.
And you aren't breaking a sweat. You're not getting sore the next day. And so when I looked at his prototype, I felt both fear and love at the same time. I love what he created, but I was afraid that if I didn't do something about it, it would just end up in the dustbin of him, in dustbin of history, because no one is going to believe this.
And so I took him out to dinner and I said, how many of these prototypes do you have out there? And he says, about a dozen. I said, okay, I'm going to go on a limb here. And it's my hallucination that after a month, no one actually uses the device you sell them. He says, what, are you reading my emails? And I said, no. I said, no one believes it.
Even if they're getting results, they're going to attribute it to anything else. Because we've been so trained as a society to believe that, you know, you, you have to do all these different things to get a physical outcome. It was kind of like one of the things you were saying, doctor, earlier about people who take a bisphosphonate. They're. They've been trained to get a good score on the test because the test, a DEXA scan, is showing you that you've got low bone density. So, okay, if I could take a certain type of supplement, say strontium, or I can do a bisphosphonate and, and it will increase my test score, ergo, I'm healthy. And both those things couldn't be further from the truth. They're not actually addressing the root cause. So I thought, okay, if I was older, I may not have started osteostrong because I knew that we were essentially creating an industry and have to do a lot of education in the public as to, hey, we can affect this. This, this condition of low bone density. We can't say treat. You could say treat, doctor. Because the FDA has very strict guidelines. We can't treat, cure, prevent, mitigate a disease because we're not a doctor.
However, we can say we can increase bone density and we see people reversing their own osteoporosis.
But I can't say we had anything to do with it.
So we set out to go start this process, and it was very challenging to be in the years. I mean, the skepticisms and the raised eyebrows, we were getting like, going, okay, this is going to be harder, I thought, because honestly there was when you're starting a brand new industry from ground up, you, there's not even a standard way of explaining it, right? So if I want to become a doctor or sell insurance or get into the hospitality industry, all the terms and everything is how these businesses run. They're understood by both the consumer and the entrepreneur. So it's easy, it's just, you know, do it, do it, do what's been done better or really good and you'll be fine.
And so I'm like, I don't even know how to describe this thing.
But the crazy thing about Osteostrong and what it does, because you're absolutely right, the one of the number one things for longevity is muscle strength and bone strength.
There have been archeological studies and longevity studies done on, on different civilizations over the years and the ones that live the longest are the ones that had bone and muscle density that was superior.
We also see this. I saw an interesting correlation between bone density. There's been studies on this bone density, muscle strength and dementia, type 2 diabetes. Your immune system, your hormonal health, your sexual function and libido. Bone density and muscle density is where it's at. And there's a lot of things you can, you can do to affect those things. Things. But bone density is the easiest one in my opinion. And strength, because Osteostrong does not only bone density, but physical strength, bone density, balance and joint and back pain simultaneously. And so I'm my own testimonial in all of those. But the one that really impacted me was, was chronic joint pain. I had a lot of it. I had a really bad neck injury and probably at about 19 or 20 years old from sports related accident and I almost broke my neck. But ever since that day I was, I had migraine headaches every other week for 20 years.
Probably took 15 or 20 Advil every week for 20 years. It was the only. I went to chiropractor once or twice a week, massage once or twice a week and those would help, but that was always there. And so I lost my ability to really exercise effectively because it went in a migraine headache. I couldn't sit down for long periods of time and then as time went by my knees would crack more. My, I had problems with my right shoulder, my right elbow and my right hip and they would get out of disjointed and that was me at like 40 years old. And and so I was about 25, 30 pounds heavier. And I started osteo strong.
And the very first session I did, I legitimately was. Was afraid because I thought, if this hurts me. I had a wife and three young sons. I'm like, I still got to be Kyle Zagrodsky. I still got to show up and do my thing and take care of my family. I can't risk making myself worse. But I did a session, didn't hurt me. And then it was about five or six sessions later and all my joint and back pain was gone. Didn't have any more headaches. And so I was like, what is going on here?
And my knees stopped cracking as I went up and down the stairs and went. And then I could start throwing a football with my son when he was in elementary school. I was like, okay, this is wild.
And then my strength started returning. So then my outlook changed, and then I started taking care of myself more.
And I think, what in the world am I bringing to the world here?
And then we start seeing people seeing incredible increases in bone density. And it's not just bone density, but it's their, their gait, their balance, their posture, their physical strength.
And it's wild that you could have this kind of outcome from doing something that doesn't make you tired. You're not going to break a sweat, you're not going to get sore the next day. You could come in your everyday clothes and you're there for 15 minutes. If you're in a hurry, you could be out in seven.
You're doing it one day a week. But that was kind of how I started. And, and now we're, we're in, we'll soon be in 15 countries, but we're in 14 countries. We've got about 207 locations open now. And so it's, it's been, it's been a journey.
There were a lot of challenges, a lot of difficult times, but each of them, those things and in retrospect, really increased my faith, helped me to trust God more. I didn't realize I wasn't trusting him enough. But going through those things, you're kind of like, I think I got a lot more to learn here. This is why God put me here.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Yeah, amen.
[00:22:10] Speaker C: He says, step out and do something that you can't do.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Oh, I'm always fighting above my weight class.
Yeah, he always has me. It's not about that. It's just, I'm gonna put you through some fire to see how hard you're willing to live. Lean into me.
[00:22:25] Speaker C: Yes, exactly.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Trust in your own strength or rely on his.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a hard, that was a hard one to learn for a guy like me.
It really was. Yeah.
[00:22:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: You know, we're all going through it. It's. It's a journey. It's. It's called sanctification. And I don't like going through it, but I've, I've never, I've always liked what was on the other side of it.
One of my sons asked me the other day, says, dad, if you can, if, if you can, if there was anything, what, what, what thing in your life would you wish not had happened to you? And I'm like, I, I can't say that I would, I would have to say nothing. I would take it all on, I said, because each, each terrible thing I've been through has made a better, better version of myself. And God made me go through it for a reason. So who. I've. I came to a realization a long time ago that I'm not God.
And if you had me go through it, there was probably, probably a reason for it.
[00:23:21] Speaker C: Yeah. One of the things that I, I started saying, took me 20 years to learn, but I said, you know, I'm self, I'm kind of independent thinking, I'm pretty self disciplined, but I'm not the smartest guy in the world, which means I can do the wrong thing for a long time before I figure out it's the wrong thing.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: So that's why God gives us one life to, to deal with us dummies out there, so.
[00:23:49] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well, we're all being conformed to the image of his son. And as we're all going through this maturation.
Yeah, exactly.
You can keep running straight into that brick wall and learn the hard way.
[00:24:05] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Well, that's awesome, Kyle. Thank you for sharing that.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Running to the brick wall will help you build bone density. That's the good things.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: Always a silver lining.
We'll talk more about maybe the history of the technology.
I mean, we'll get into exactly what these machines are doing in the method or even some of the science behind, you know, the bone strengthening.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: That's a really good question. So how, how in the world does this work?
And so we have known that the way that you, the way you build bone has been known for a long time. In fact, fact, the 1890s, there was a guy by the name of Dr. Julius Wolf, German surgeon that conducted a study and he was called mechano transduction, a fancy word that basically means if you put enough force on the musculoskeletal system, the body will respond by making bones stronger. In fact, it was such an impactful study that it's still taught medical schools. Chiropractors learn about this. It's called Wolf's law.
And not very many things in medicine are referred to as a law.
But there was one thing he could not answer in his research, which is, what is the minimum dose response? Or to put it differently, what is the amount of pressure required to trigger osteogenesis or the development of new bone?
And there was a researcher by the name of Dr. Kevin Deer that decided he wanted to answer this question because technology got to a point where he could, through a type of blood test called a P1NP blood test. And what that blood test does is it measures a specific and unique type of collagen that enters the bloodstream shortly after your body transitions into bone building mode. And so you could very easily detect whether or not this is happening. So what he did was very clever. He had over 700 subjects that he attached accelerometers to their hips and had them experience high impact activity. And then he would measure the amount of their P1NP blood test to measure that specific type of collagen to find out if whether or not they were in osteogenesis or not developing new bone. And what he found is what I call the boiling point of water when it comes to building bone. And that is that subjects could not trigger osteogenesis unless they experienced 4.2 multiples of their own body weight. And those that even got the 3 point or 3.9 experienced no osteogenesis. And so this was interesting because what it told us is that really, weight training and running were insufficient activities to generate osteogenesis.
So we're very excited about that. And if you look at different classes of athletes around the world, it's the ones with who experience high impact force have the most strong bones. In fact, pound for pound, they're the strongest athletes. And you could look at a gymnast, for instance. I mean, they're stronger than any other athlete given their size. But it's not because they're working out harder than other athletes. It's because of the impact force. When they go spinning through the air and hit the ground, they can experience 9, 10 times their own body weight. And so they just develop superhuman strength. But the challenge is, is that a gymnast at the age of 19, which is the average age that a gymnast will retire, the ones that stay with it have a higher incidence of hip and knee replacement surgery compared to other Populations of people.
And so, okay, great. Impact force is really good for building bone, but it's not so great for joints. We also see this with runners, too, have a lot of joint problems. So, okay, impact bad for joints.
Impact good for bones. Great. Basically told me nothing here. Well, Dr. Jaquish had this really interesting idea.
His mother had osteoporosis in her early 70s, and he's like, okay, I got to help my mom. She didn't want to take the medications for some of the reasons you had mentioned, Doctor. And so he read a study in Brazil that found out that, like, say, for instance, a bench press, when you're pushing on a bench press, when the bar is on your chest, that is, we call that your weakest range of motion. You have the least amount of leverage, and you can. You don't. You're not. You're not imposing very much force. But as you push the bar off your chest, just shy of the apex of your push, you are seven times stronger than you were when the bar was on your chest. And so he had. He had a brilliant idea. He's like, well, if I could put somebody into their strongest range of motion in a static position, they would be able to push substantially more weight. So he ended up building a prototype. And after his mom expressed that she did not want to become a gymnast in her 70s, she agreed to use this device.
And after a period of time, a year, she had like, a 7 or 8% increase in her bone density, and she continued to do it and eventually no longer had osteoporosis.
And so that was really the first test that he had used of this device. And we see this going on all the time now. But it's just the. When you're going into an osteostrong, there are four devices that are.
They look a lot like gym equipment. They're manufactured much differently because the. You'd be. You'll be shocked at how much force your body can make in the strong range of positions. So there's a lot of steel in these machines because you'll get some really strong people in there sometimes, but they will get you into your most biomechanically optimal position. We call that your impact force position. So you're basically where your body's strongest, and it will lock into position.
And given the machine, because there's four different machines, each one. Each one focuses on a different part of your body, you will either push or pull as hard as you comfortably can for about 10 or 15 seconds. So in reality, you're doing about A minute of effort when you're at Osteostrong. But the goal being to hit a level of force that is sufficient to trigger your central nervous system to automatically go into the bone building mode. And one of the things that we found, which is quite shocking is, is your strength goes up a lot when you do this. It's both neurological and muscular, is that your central nervous system will never allow your bones. It will never allow your muscles to expand, exceed the force, a force that will injure your bones. So your bones become a limiting factor in how strong you can get. Now what was interesting, I was going
[00:30:54] Speaker C: to show just an example of one of the machines because the way you described it, yeah, it looks a little
[00:31:01] Speaker A: bit like gym equipment. And you're looking at a screen. It's giving you a real time feedback of your. For how much force you're producing.
And you've have a robotic arm in there that will, that will move the machine into position. Thank you, Mike, I appreciate it. I can see it just fine.
And you gotta interrupt my train of thought.
[00:31:21] Speaker C: Oh, sorry.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: What we see is this increase in bone density and strength.
And what we found is. I'll tell you about a very interesting study if you want to hear about it. It's not a very efficacious study, I always tell people that right up front. But there was a woman by the name of Dr. Ann Sung and she was a contractor for NASA and they had her do a study on Osteostrong.
They end up publishing the aerospace in this, in the Aeros, their, their journal, the Aerospace and Medicine journal and in 2021.
Now what makes this study interesting? It was a pilot study and she was the only subject in the study. Which is like, okay, normally no one would give it any credence whatsoever. But it was a fascinating study for two reasons. It was fascinating because a human being will reach what's called peak bone mass at the age of 30, meaning that's as strong as your bones are ever going to be. And then people will start to slowly decline it, decline and then it increases to about 1% per year. And then women go through menopause and they can lose it faster and all that.
But this woman who, Dr. Sung, she was at the publishing her study. She was a 31 year old professional powerlifter, meaning that she was at peak bone mass and she had been lifting the maximum amount of weight that she could lift as a function of her sport. And she was a professional. So she's already at the peak.
And what she did was she was Testing both bone density increases and strength increases. So if you're a reason why I talk about this is because if you were going to select a subject for a study on whether Osteostrong worked or not, that would probably be the worst subject you would pick because she's at peak bone mass and already terribly, incredibly strong. She's, she's incredible.
So she was, she measured her bone density to begin the study. But the other thing that she did before her study was that she tracked the rate of increase in five different competitive lifts that she would see monthly based upon her regular workout regimen. So she knew, like, okay, in my deadlift I will, I would increase by about a pound a month. And in her different, like there were five different lists. I can't remember the name of all of her competitive lifts, but she has it. And so she knew the rate of increase.
It was a six month study. Two things happened. Her average bone density went up by like 6.98%.
Her strength gains were so substantial that she saw in just one month, four sessions at Osteo Strong that she saw the results of what it would take her in a year in the gym. So basically she achieved in one month at Osteo Strong, which would have taken her a year to achieve. Now, I talked to her face to face and she told me after the study, she said, had I not done this study myself, she goes, I would have never believed the results.
She goes, now, now Osteo Strong is just part of what she does all the time because of the incredible strength gain she's seen. And we've seen this with swimmers, professional swimmers. We've had Olympic athletes win multiple gold medals. It's hard to get them to talk about it because sponsorships and all that stuff, they're expensive.
We've had triathletes and ironman competitors set world records, set US Records after six months after adding Osteostrong. So this works for the elderly, the strength gains, the chronic pain, the balance.
There was a study that was published, and I believe it was in 2020, 23 or 2022 by Bloomberg, published this study.
And they had over a thousand people around the age of 65. And they had them stand on one foot at the beginning of the study. And, and then they waited for 10 seconds and they waited 10 years. And at the end of the study, what they found is those that could not confidently stand on one foot at the beginning of the study for 10 seconds at an 82% higher mortality rate than those that could, Osteostrong dramatically Affects balance. In fact, so much so that we test people's balance at the beginning, right when they come into Osteostrong, we'll have them stand on one foot. We'd have them different, different type of balance test, won't get into all of them right now. But one foot, that's an easy one to understand.
And we'll measure how much time they could do it.
We'll have some time because we get people in their 70s, 80s and 90s sometimes coming to Osteo strong who you can imagine can't stand on one foot for more than a few seconds.
After four or five sessions, they're standing on what foot solidly for 20 seconds.
And so it's like, okay, how much, how many people have avoided death because of that one thing alone?
When you, as you mentioned earlier, you know the, if you fracture a hip, it is, it is a link in the chain of many things that have gone wrong up to that point. It is neurological, it's muscular strength, it is bone density, it is a, a metabolic dysfunctional chain of things that have happened for a long period of time that lead to a fractured hip. If you, if you come into Osteostrong, the benefits that you're going to get are going to infect your, affect your entire system because it's, it's foundational strength, foundational bone, it's elimination of chronic joint and back pain, it's, it's improved metabolic function, it's going to be improved hormone function, it's going to be improved memory and brain function just by doing this one simple 10 minute thing that you're not even going to break a sweat doing once a week. Now here's the wild thing, because I used to own a whole bunch of gyms with my wife in, in the gym industry.
We had, we did all these things to make our gym fun and interesting and cool to do. And it was a herculean task just on our busiest day of the month to see maybe a third or 35% of our members a month. And the reason for that is human beings at their foundation are pleasure seekers and pain avoiders. And since we're not no longer a hunter gatherer culture, it takes a willful energy to go out and exercise that goes against our biological DNA of being calorie conservers and calorie consumers if we don't have to hunt and gather our food. And so people don't like to work out. But at Osteostrong, one of the things that we see is 90 to 100% of our members worldwide coming and doing their sessions. And I think the reason for that is not only do we have great owners, and it's. It's a. It's a. It's such a welcoming, easy environment to go into. It's not intimidating, and it's short, but you don't really burn calories because you're just not breaking a sweat, but you're. You're triggering this metabolic.
Re. Establishing activity in. And then your body does all the work. It's like one of the things. I was listening to one of your podcasts, doctor, and you were saying about, you know, we. We want to do all these things to naturally affect somebody. And, you know, we can't say that we're curing a disease or reversing it, and truth be, we're not.
All we're doing is we're. We're triggering. Creating a. A system where your body just is triggered to do what it already knows how to do. You know, it's like, oh, okay, I'll do this now. And that's it. And you just go home. You're like, oh, I feel like I did something today. But people. Other people will start to notice that you're moving differently, you're walking differently. You picked up more bags of groceries than you ever did.
Like, wait, whoa, whoa, what are you. What are you doing? Like, I. We had one. I was getting a lecture at one Osteo Strong center in New Mexico a number of years ago, and this woman came in. She did medical massage was her thing. And she's like, I just had to come here because I. A lot of my.
The people that I see, the patients that I see are the elderly. And she says, the ones that come here feel differently. I can tell that structurally they are changing.
And so I see you. Strong is great. And obviously, I'm very biased, and I talk about it from that perspective, but honestly, I look at it as an idea whose time has come, and I'm really just selected to steward it.
And so I have a big job to do because I know what it means to get this out there. And it's something. If I fail at this, I failed humanity.
And I look at it that way because there's. There's been a systemic decline in bone density that's been trackable since the 1900s. But more and more studies have been done. In fact, I read a study that teenagers today.
Was this a night in, like, 2020.
Have 14% lower bone density than teenagers in 1980s.
And if you look at peak bone mass, that Means their peak bone mass 14% less. They'll have the bone density of like a 50 year old in their 30s. That's teenagers today.
And if that happens there is going to be a metabolic collapse in this country. And what that translates to is high incidence of type 2 diabetes, incredibly low birth rates.
That, that people in their 40s are going to start looking like they're in their 60s and 70s. Not as good as you Mike.
I'm not 60 yet but I'll be there in a few years.
But they won't look good, they won't feel good. The, the. It is a.
I did the math. In about 2050-2070 we, if, if that trend contends continues it'll be a society ending event.
We won't be, we won't exist. You can't, you can't exist. So I've got a huge job to do to try to fix this problem. There's so many other problems too like this. This is the one I could handle. Right. Lead people to Jesus and strengthen their bones. That's what I think I can handle that.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: That's right. What's all members of the body doing what we're each individually called to do that corporately. It gets it done. So there you go. It's awesome.
Well talk a little bit about just on the business itself. When did it actually get established, become a thing and the growth of it and the impact that you've seen. You mentioned you're in I think about to be 15 countries and 200 plus centers. But what kind of time frame are we talking and kind of success of that?
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it's taken me longer than I thought.
The, the and everything always does. But I started the original first location I opened up in 2011. I started franchising in 2012.
At the very beginning of 2017 Tony Robbins invested in Osteostrong and he allowed me to speak on many of his stages around the world which, which really did help. That's why we have the international footprint that we do and that really helped us get going and there were many challenges along the way as well that slowed us down a lot.
But covet being one of them. But that was one of like 50.
It's called the life of an entrepreneur.
But we are in a really good spot right now. We, we are actually in May of this year 2026.
I'm, I've written a book, co written a book with the president of Oshdio Strong, Dr. Jimmy Youngblood. He, he and I wrote a book called the Bone Betrayal and so that will be published, coming out in May or June. You know, we're trying to get some final edits and all that stuff done. And then we are.
We are going to start guaranteeing all the members in the. Every country we can, but definitely in the US that they will see an increase in bone density in 18 months or we will refund the bottom price of their membership, because we are that confident with everything. We've just got stacks and stacks of pre and post DEXA scans showing the people getting results. Now.
I don't like DEXA scans.
I think it's just the. It's like they were. It's like they were invented to sell bisphosphonates, drugs.
That's why I don't like them. All you really need to know is your. What I call functional bone performance. Meaning. And how do you. What does that even mean? Like, how do your. How could your bones function under stress?
Well, the best test for that is Osteo Strong, because we measure the amount of force that your body will allow you to impose on your skeletal system. And if it's really low, then you got bad bones, but we increase it dramatically and quickly, and so you'll have good bones. And, and one of the things.
So when somebody, When I first started the company, somebody says, oh, should I get a DEXA scan? Or blah, blah. I'm like, why?
I mean, I, I'm. I understand why the people are doing it. They've been trained to do it and all the things, right? So you've got to deal with that, that.
That social proof and paradigm that's been established in society of what I. What. What's good, right? Oh, well, good T score good. Bad. T score bad. There, go.
[00:45:24] Speaker C: And doesn't the DEXA scan pick up things that. Other than bone as well?
[00:45:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the problem is with the Dexes. I mean, it's the best thing we have. And the good news for a DEXA scan is it does show that we give people that result, that they've been measured, measuring so fine.
The reason why I don't like the DEXA scan is twofold. It often doesn't account for people who have naturally thin bones. So if you have like a, you know, a short Asian female and she's going to have naturally smaller bones, but you know what, she's also carrying around a lot less weight, so she doesn't need as much bone density.
But the other thing is too, there's this thing called a bounding box. Right.
And so what that means is on a Dexa scan, you're lying on a table. It's a, it's a very non invasive event. And even though it uses two different types of bands of radiation to measure the density of your bone, it how you it. So it uses about as much radiation as you would get from eating a couple of bananas.
[00:46:31] Speaker C: So it's at the rim. Is that the rim?
[00:46:33] Speaker A: There's a rim says no. A RIMS does not use radiation. So RIMS uses ultrasound technology. I'm not gonna get into geeking out on that unless you want to geek out. I could geek on anything you want to when it comes to bone.
But a DEXA scan, which, which you will find in doctor's office is much more ubiquitous than a RIM scanner. There's not very many RIN scanners in the United States.
But the DEXA scan, if you're just slightly down like a quarter of an inch on a DEXA scan table than you were last time, you got to get got a scan, you're going to get a different scan because it doesn't know.
And so the like you got to kind of take the result with a grain of salt and you got to look at did did and you have what you have to wonder whether not using the exact same DEXA scan machine as you were using before too. That's why I just say okay, like for our guarantee we're going to use DEXA scan as a baseline because that's what people have been trained to look at for do I have healthy bone or not?
Fine, we'll do that one. We'll do RIM scan, whatever.
But in reality it's, it's your functional bone performance which osteostrong test by virtue of doing a session.
So we, we are actually creating a white paper on functional bone performance and in our goal is for Q4 this year to launch the largest bone density study in the history of the world where we're actually going to be testing tens of thousands of people on from different populations, whether taking supplements or bisphosphonates or not doing anything.
You know what is actually affecting all their longevity metrics? It's not going to be just bone density, but we're looking at other things as well.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: That's awesome. And I did want to point that out and, and Kyle's talked about it that this, this bone strength, bone health and the muscle too is so correlated with longevity decrease, Alzheimer's, decrease of pretty much every chronic disease I've looked at, but just overall longevity, lifespan, quality of life, all that kind of stuff. Super important.
Which goes to my next question, Kyle, you know, obviously people listening are probably thinking about postmenopausal women who are thinking about their, their thin bones and osteoporosis. Maybe they're already diagnosed. Maybe some pre menopausal women are thinking about it because they've been educated to, you know, try to build your bone before you hit menopause. So there's obviously that group.
What other groups? Men, younger people, athletes. I mean, you mentioned gaining just strength like the lady from the NASA Aerospace Journal.
Are there other populations that might look
[00:49:18] Speaker A: at doing this all now? We do all populations.
So our primary marketing that we do is for postmenopausal women because they are the ones that are most educated on bone density.
Women, their OB gyn, they've got their own doctor their whole life.
And when they get to menopause, that doctor is like, okay, let's get a DEXA scan. And, and that's generally why women are more, more educated on it.
And because they also lose a lot of bone density through menopause.
Everybody should be doing it. And that will come across as being biased because of who I am and it's my company. But let me put it this way.
We are seeing people in their 30s and 40s with full blown osteoporosis now. And they're healthy. There's like nothing wrong with them.
The societal decline in bone density, strength increases in metabolic dysfunction across all populations are absolutely real.
The quality of your life, the functioning of your immune system, your brain, your longevity, your sexual health, your, your hormone balance is tied to your bone. And if, if you have an immune system, an endocrine system, muscles, bones and a brain, any one of those things, you should probably go to an osteostrong of, of and I, and I, and I'm kind of like you doctor, like you like.
Look, you, you get it, right?
I love it when it, when I come across a, a functional medicine doctor who is embracing what is happening with longevity and wellness outside of the medical paradigm. It's, it's, it's a growing trend, but it's still not as big as it needs to be.
So thank you for doing what you do the you you want.
There's a lot of things you can do to improve your health. Okay? And I'm not going to say just do osteo strong like I, I do multiple things too.
It is the easiest thing that you can do outside beyond just going outside and taking a walk on a sunny day with as few clothes as you can legally wear in your neighborhood or standing on the ground, barefoot. I mean, that's pretty. It doesn't get any easier than that. But as far as just implementing a strategy that has such an incredible impact on your, on your life physically, like, yeah, this is, this is a big one.
It's a big one. And so, so everybody should be doing it. My. I'll tell you a quick story, just a fun story. You want to have some fun?
So my kids did Osteostrong.
And you know, I had equipment at home. I don't right now because we use it for skunk works and tearing it apart and put it back together. So about two months I'll have it back. So I haven't been doing my sessions, but when my sons were young, they were doing Osteostrong. And my oldest son, I would take him on Tony Robbins events with me and I would give him a hundred dollars if he would take people through sessions and explain Osteostrong. And he would get really good at it.
And when he was like 16 years old, he would look like he was maybe 20, 21, because he was really tall and broad shoulders and all that.
But he would have guys come up to the booth and they would start talking to him and he's, and he would sometimes get these big muscle bodybuilder looking guys come up to the deal and he, and those, those guys just generally don't listen.
You know, what are you gonna. Well, they don't listen because they already fit. Like, what are you gonna tell me about. What are you punk kid gonna tell me about strength training? And so they would do a session. And when you do a session, each device is capturing the highest amount of force that you're generating. And so here's some like 27 year old guy, built like a Greek God, coming and doing a session. And then my son would just say, you know, hey, let me show you this real quick because I, I want you to really understand how this could affect your athletic performance. And then he would destroy their numbers on how much force he can produce. Then when he went into high school, at a new high school in his junior year, he's all, you know, he's making some friends and he, during lunch, the football playing team, the football team says, hey Austin, come over here.
They were doing arm wrestling.
He beat everybody on the football team in arm wrestling one after the other. He's like, I was getting really tired, dad, you know, and he beat the biggest guy on the dream. Then he joined the team and they made him team captain and the, the, the, the, the football coach Was trying to get him to go first scholarship.
[00:54:11] Speaker B: He didn't.
[00:54:12] Speaker A: He's like, I like football, dad. I just. Those guys are trying so hard, and I just don't want to get injured. And like, I'm never going to be a professional at it. So if I go to college, I'm just going to get injured, risk injury. I don't love it that much. I like watching it and playing it. So he didn't do it. So I tried. I tried with many young athletes that do that kind of thing. And if you've got young kids that are teenagers, I mean, it's the best time they should be doing it because they're just packing on bone and muscle. Even if they just did it for a couple of years, somebody, at the rate that they're growing bone and muscle tissue, you could add. They could add 10 or 30% bone density to their bones in a couple of years.
If that's all you did for them physically, they may never get osteoporosis when they get older because their peak bone mass is going to be so high at 30, they could be fine. They may never have to do it again.
So, yeah, you want, like, you. You want everybody doing this. If somebody's doing in their 30s and they just did OSHA strong for four or five years, they may never need to do it again.
[00:55:18] Speaker C: Can I ask a question from the book? It sparks up because you talked about how the brain will send signals, like when you get into a new environment, when you get into a workout gym.
And for me, my personal story was I didn't like to work out growing up, my older brothers would tell me they couldn't get me to work out and coaches couldn't get me to work out. Well, in college, I decided I was going to go work out and I. And I just on my own again, independent. 15 minutes a workout. And that's all I would do. Well. My brother who played football at Texas Tech, he said, what are you doing?
You know, how long are you working out? I said, 15 minutes. He said, that doesn't do anything. Well, it created a pattern in my mind. I said, I'm going to be somebody who works out. So I increased, I increased, I increased, but it was a mental thing that happened from 15 minutes.
So.
And you addressed in the book, but just the habit of going in somewhere for 15 minutes?
[00:56:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, fitness is a tricky one.
And I touched on a little bit earlier.
I mean, Osteo Strong is. It's not even a habit like when I first started this company.
The one of the guys I had hired as a vice president of operations, he had a, his, his, his entire experience was steeped in the fitness industry. He was an executive with World Gym. He owned like 20 world gyms. He'd done all this different kind of stuff. And he kept referring to osteostrong as a lifestyle business.
And I said, stop calling it that. Like that's what you call the gym industry because you won't stay with it unless you make it your lifestyle. Like the point you're making. I said, we're not a lifestyle business. I mean, they come in there for 15 minutes one day a week. They're not breaking. I don't want to, I don't want to change anybody's lifestyle. All we're doing is enabling you to live whatever lifestyle you want. When it comes to fitness, like, like going oxy strong, it's not about creating a habit. Like it is so easy to do.
I mean, you can go in the amount of time it would take you to order a latte from a coffee restaurant and leave. You could do an Osteo Strong session and you're not getting fatigued. Now when it comes to fitness, fitness is, it's like really important. Like I'm not an anti gym guy like you. You should do exercise.
It is what is the best longevity hack you could ever do outside of Osteo Strong.
But it is hard because the bet the best fitness is the one that fatigues your muscles. Lifting heavy has more effect on longevity than anything else. You want to not get dementia or Alzheimer's disease. You want to. One of the number one things that will be the best indication of whether or not you're going to get or are susceptible to Alzheimer's disease is leg strength.
The stronger your legs, the lower chances you're going to get Alzheimer's disease.
So you should probably now osteom will give you really strong legs too.
But that's probably something you should do if that's something you would like to avoid.
But it's hard because it goes against your DNA to fatigue your muscles and lift heavy things. I, I, I, I believe that physical fatigue creates fear at a primal level because that is when people are most vulnerable.
That's why people don't like fitness.
It is, it's not just pleasure seekers, pain avoiders, but the pain you're avoiding is the fear of being vulnerable. And so that's why I think people don't like it. It's, that's why gym, gym industry is kind of a failed industry. And I hate saying that because I love fitness and what they do, and I know of a lot of amazing people in that industry, but it's failed because it doesn't address the one thing that it can't, which is how do I get people to want to fatigue their muscles? They don't want to do that. And so the beautiful thing about short workouts is, a, they cause less inflammation. B, they've been shown to be actually more effective than long workouts. So you can get them over with, but you just want to, like, lift as heavy as you can, fatigue the muscle and then be done. So one of the reasons, like, for fitness, I really like the X3 bar system because it's one rep to failure, one set to failure of a muscle group, and then you're done with that muscle group. It's not about creating a lifestyle or all these things. All I do is like, all right, is 12 minutes too much?
[00:59:58] Speaker C: No.
[00:59:58] Speaker A: Okay, fine. I'll do a 12 minute work.
Oh, yeah.
[01:00:03] Speaker B: Well, it's been awesome to hear your story and the impact you're making on so many lives, and I'm excited about Lubbock, Texas, being able to offer this to the public here.
[01:00:15] Speaker A: You know, I'm legitimately excited about you and what you're doing in Lubbock because, like, honestly, thank you for doing what you do and helping people in the way that you do that. You're. You're not. I'm like, I'm not anti pharma, but it's a last resort.
The. You just have to know what the body needs to heal itself, and you're doing that and. And love it. And people. People are used to finding people like that in big cities.
You don't think of Lubbock, of having a guy like you. You're a gift.
So thank you for what it is that you're doing. And thank you, Mike, for opening up a center in Ash and of Asia. Strong out there. Like, I'm super grateful to both of you guys. And so anything I could do to support either of you, let me know.
Because, you know, it's like what you said. We're all. We're all members of the body, and we all have our job to do. And so I'm just sitting here in my office outside of Nashville trying to evangelize, rowing with you guys, not against you. So thank you both and for doing this. And I know, Dr. Edwards, you got other things you could be doing than doing podcasts, but, you know, educating people on what is it that's available to Them, that's simple. That could heal them and give them an incredible quality of life. Because when your energy goes up, your outlook improves and then your future improves because you don't. There's no growth without anticipation and you don't have anticipation if you have low energy in a, in a poor attitude and, and being physically unfit and unwell or in pain or sick all the time. It's real hard to have a good attitude when you got those things going against you.
So keep up the good work, sir. And thank you for inspiring Mike to bring Osteo Strong to love Big. I, I hope he's able to bless so many people there.
[01:02:05] Speaker B: Well, thank you, Kyle. Thanks for those kind words. It does take the whole body for sure. And Mike, appreciate you stepping out on a limb, but I don't think it's too, too risky of a limb because it's such a great and obviously needed therapy here. So we got to wrap it up. We're up against the hour. But I want to give you the last word on how do people get in touch with you or Osteo Strong here locally in Lubbock wins grand opening. How do people sign up? Just all that stuff.
[01:02:35] Speaker C: Yeah, we are actually got a great facility on 54th and Slide just north of the mall.
It's on the west side in Sagewood shopping center.
Nice big facility.
You can go to Austrostrong me don't go to ostrichron.com go to ostrichron me and then also Ostrich Lubbock Facebook site.
You can catch us there too.
But we will start having classes I'm sure next, next month.
It should be open full blown in June, June 2026.
[01:03:14] Speaker A: We're excited for you, brother. Yeah, you guys, please those who are here in this locally in Lubbock, just go support him. I, you won't regret it. You'll absolutely love the experience. It's simple, it's easy. You're not going to break a stage sweat.
Just come in your everyday clothes, give it a go and you're going to notice.
Amazing. If you have chronic pain.
Most people who have chronic pain, it's one to 12 sessions and it's gone. There's a cute few weird off deals where people had screws and replaced hips and things like that that were having problems with it that took them a little bit longer. But almost everybody, it's gone. So strength, balance, pain, all that, you'll, you will notice a big difference in a short period of time. Bone density takes a little bit longer because it's a denser, slower growing tissue.
But you need all of those things. And so Mike's a bless blessing us, blessing you guys and, and take advantage of what God has put in front of you.
[01:04:11] Speaker C: We're also going to add, we've got red light therapy, we've got hydro massage, compression legs, PMF mats and also cryotherapy. So there'll be a lot of restoration, you know, type body ministry going on there as well.
[01:04:32] Speaker A: Brilliant.
[01:04:32] Speaker C: So not, not just the spectrum machines but, but these others as well.
[01:04:37] Speaker B: Awesome.
Well, thank you Mike. Look forward to coming over there and checking out your place everybody. Y' all go to Osteostrong me and check it out for yourself and get signed up and jump in there. Start in June of in a couple months. June. It'll be here before you know it.
[01:04:54] Speaker C: Well, we'll do sign ups this next month. We'll have some founding member discounts so they can take advantage of that next month.
[01:05:03] Speaker B: Brilliant.
[01:05:03] Speaker C: In April.
[01:05:05] Speaker A: Thank you Mike. Thank you Dr. Edwards. Appreciate you both.
[01:05:07] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you Dr. Edwards. Appreciate it Kyle.
[01:05:11] Speaker B: Thank you all very much. Appreciate you all being on. Guys. We'll be back next week with another great show. I'm Dr. Ben Edwards. You're the Cure.
