Oct 14, 2019
What do monks, startup founders, and
Ph.Ds in cognitive neuroscience have in common? They all have a
heartbeat. Today’s
guest, Rohan Dixit, founder of Lief
Therapeutics joins us to talk about how our heartbeat,
can tell us more about our mental health, than any other biomarker,
and how we can learn to use it to self-regulate our mental
well-being.
Rohan explains how Heart Rate
Variability (HRV) data can be used to help us learn to
self-regulate our emotional state by taking biofeedback and using
it to train ourselves to regulate our mental state.
Rohan explains the science behind
it. He has a
degree in cognitive neuroscience from Northwestern and has done a
lot of interesting research around neuroscience at both Stanford
and at Harvard and around the world when he spent a year measuring
the HRV in Monks who have mastered the art of
self-regulation.
You can connect with Rohan and Lief
Therapeutics here: Website, Twitter,
Rohan’s LinkedIn
Some of the things we discussed:
- Rohan Dixit is an expert in
Cognitive Neuroscience and he joins us to talk
about neuroscience, heart rate variability, his startup Lief
Therapeutics, and his story of recovery from depression
and anxiety. He
began his own mental health journey as a teenager. Solving problems in this
space is very personal to him. He talks about how
mindfulness and meditation changed his life by helping him manage
his mental health struggles and ultimately led him to this
space.
- Cognitive Neuroscience is how the
brain thinks and how we perceive who we are. We can use it to help people
who are sick (with mental illness). Rohan talks about having
spent a year studying the biofeedback data from monks and noticing
how masters of self-regulation present when analyzing brain waves
and heart rate variability biofeedback.
- We talk about the
Default Mode
Network, a large scale brain network of
interacting regions that controls our perception of
ego. If
we tweak that network, then some parts of what we think about our
self can be turned off or managed. Rohan explains how using
biofeedback to improve our ability to self-regulate can help us do
just this, tweak our Default Mode Network.
- What is
biofeedback? Have
people been using it for a long time? Biofeedback testing
started in the 1970’s. One of the earliest studies
included a group of students where half were asked to consciously
raise the temperature of their fingertip, and the other half asked
to lower the temperature of their fingertip. If you give those students an
accurate enough sensor, then they could do it. With the right biofeedback,
you can train your body, and your mind. Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
is the best biomarker to use for biofeedback when it comes to
mental health.
- What is Heart Rate
Variability (HRV)? It is the most accurate
biomarker for tracking the body’s response to a variety of mental
states, stressors, and moods. This is all found in the
variability of one heartbeat to the next. You can track this with an
EKG or some very good sensor. If you track it enough and
practice regulating it, then you can effectively manage your mental
wellness by actively controlling HRV. You can practice how
to make that biomarker (HRV) improve through breathing and
biofeedback.
- Why did Rohan become an
expert on HRV? Rohan found relief from his struggles in
meditation and self-regulation practices. He started to have better
emotional responses while engaging in these practices. He wanted to know why it
worked, so he went to Tibet for a year and studied the biofeedback
in Monks who are experts in self-regulation.
- What is Lief
Therapeutics? Rohan aims to integrate those
learnings into the mental health system that is currently failing
millions of people. The system failed him, as he
states. He has
found a way to use science, to measure the effectiveness of a
person’s self-regulation and turn it into something that insurance
companies will pay for.
- Why do biomarkers matter
for treating mental health? Imagine if your doctor was
trying to treat you for diabetes without using any blood
tests. Maybe they
only asked you how tired you were after big meals and diagnosed you
that way. That’s
how we diagnose mental health issues today.
- What about other
biomarkers like voice, facial recognition,
etc.?
Those biomarkers can’t really be called biomarkers. They are behavioral assays.
They are not the best with respect to teaching people how to get
better either, but HRV is, and that’s the focus at Lief
Therapeutics.
Let’s say you use voice to diagnose depression, then you’re telling
people it’s a behavioral issue that’s in your head and if you talk
a little peppier, then you’re well, and we all know that’s not
true. Depression is a physiological problem. It’s not just “in your head.”
HRV is easy to measure accurately. You can teach people to
improve HRV using the biofeedback.
- How to measure
HRV? How Lief
works. To measure it in a clinically accurate way and
provide biofeedback you need hyper accuracy. The only way to do
that is with an EKG. Lief built an EKG smart
patch. You put it
on your body, it’s very discrete, and measures with hyper accuracy.
Then it gives you
vibrations through the patch, that teach you to breath in a pattern
that improves the HRV and in turn your mental health. Eventually, you know what
you’re doing and you can take the training wheels off and not need
the patch anymore.
The goal is to be like training wheels on a bike. Lief teaches people how to be
aware of what’s happening inside them. Lief gives them skills to get
better.
Eventually, people don’t need the advice. The solution is a short-term
training program.
Once you know how to self-regulate, then you don’t need Lief
anymore, and that’s a victory.
Connect with the Stigma
Podcast in the following ways: Website,
Twitter,
Facebook, LinkedIn
You can connect with host
Stephen Hays in the following ways: Website,
Blog, Twitter,
LinkedIn
Feel free to email
us: info@stigmapodcast.com