Biohacking Your Brain: How Vagus Nerve Stimulation Can Help You Manage Stress with Jon Hacker

In this episode, I sit down with Jon Hacker, CEO and co-founder of ZenBud, to explore the science of biohacking, mental wellness, and the powerful role of the vagus nerve in regulating stress. Jon shares how his personal journey with OCD inspired him to create innovative neurotechnology designed to help people better manage anxiety, improve nervous system regulation, and build healthier daily habits.

www.zenbud.health

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Good morning, everybody. Today is Wednesday, July eighth, two thousand twenty-six. And this is your morning tea with Coach Kennedy. Last week we learned about the Happy Matt with Kristen Fiondock. This week, we're going to learn about another tool to help regulate our vagus nerve. The Zen Bud with John Hacker. Stay tuned. On today's episode, our guest is John Hacker, the CEO and co-founder of Zen Bud. Hi, John. How are you today?

SPEAKER_00 1:44

I'm doing lovely. How about yourself, Sarah?

SPEAKER_02 1:46

I'm good, thanks. Would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you created a Zen Bud?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

For sure. So I think one of the big things to note when it comes to myself is I kind of like am doing, are you with like biohacking and hacking when it comes to the body and the mind, Sarah, at all? Sorry, what was the question? Are you familiar with biohacking or hacking when it comes to the mind at all, Sarah?

SPEAKER_02 2:12

No.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Okay, cool. It's really just optimizing different processes and different parts of the body for doing what you need them to do. And I sometimes introduce myself as John Hacker, the neurohacker or biohacker, because you know, I was born with that last name. Might as well use it. I think like one of the biggest things when it comes to what we do and what I do is I'm really passionate about helping liberate people's mental chains, so to speak. I tear up L C D growing up, and so it ended up being a really big drag on my ability to think and be who I wanted to be. And I'm really passionate about helping other people not have that same problem. And that's kind of like everything I do is to that end. Um I think we've made a lot of progress with that, and I'm really excited about what we've built as a team. So yeah, that's long and short of it, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Very cool. How or what challenges did you face developing a health-focused technology and a profit-driven system?

SPEAKER_00 3:12

So that's a great question. I think there is um we'll do a little bit of an overview here because I think like this is always a very fascinating topic. But when it comes to the healthcare system, and I'm gonna include the wellness system as part of this larger healthcare ecosystem, there are there's a massive incentive for building the highest margin products, for trying to include subscriptions wherever you can, and really pushing things that don't solve the base issue but or root causes and really just kind of treat symptoms because you make more money that way. I'll be honest with you. That's the business model. The business model is to keep you on a subscription for certain services in the industry, whether that's a drug or otherwise, and to have you keep coming back and paying over and over and over again. Insurance is its own subscription model, too, and that's a whole nother conversation, Sarah. Like we could go down in the depths of that. But I think like that that's always difficult for building anything in this industry while keeping ethics in mind and actually trying to build for people, is that there's so much pressure to, you know, not do that. You have to be really like, you have to be really you have to stand up as you have to be you have to stand up as a nail. That's not the right way of saying it. Oh, there's a now there's a metaphor there, but you have to basically be the nail that stands out if you really want to do anything with people as an orientation and really trying to help people because people will talk about it. Like the amount of fakery in this industry, too, is just it's silly to me. I mean, this goes both for health care and for wellness, like this across the board, and because there's a massive incentive for people to sell to you. So a lot of people are just really fake about what they say. It's a lot of woo-woo sometimes, or alternatively, it's just people lying to you. So you have to be really careful in this industry, especially. At the same time, though, there's a lot of things that we can do and we need to do to help take care of ourselves on a daily basis, and doing nothing is far worse than at least giving things a shot. Okay. That's I guess that's its own topic. Uh, where do you want to dive in? Where do you think your listeners want to dive in on that, Sarah?

SPEAKER_02 5:05

Well, actually, I was going to add a little bit to how the wellness industry likes to keep us hooked on like medications and stuff, because I recently have visited the doctor for an issue that I was experiencing, and then I said, This is my issue. And instead of just listening to where I think it's coming from and doing the necessary tests that I'm asking for, they just said, Well, here's a band-aid. And this this will take a this will cover that, this will make it bearable. And I'm like, no, I don't want it to be bearable. I want it to go away.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

So that's you want to solve your problem. You don't want to just like keep putting a band-aid on the wood. You actually want to stitch it shut, hopefully. Maybe sanitize it. And like, yeah, no.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

And and so, so then I decided that I'm going to do research. And I've been I ironically enough, some ads have been like coming up for this thing, and it's kind of like sending, kind of like, hmm, maybe this is what's going on with my body. And so then it I'm going to dive more into it and try to heal my own self rather than doing. I mean, I did what the doctor told me to do, and it did take care of the issue temporarily, but it still resurfaces sometimes. So, yeah, they definitely just want to keep you spending money on the medications or whatever they're prescribing physical therapy or yeah, whatever keeps their bills, whatever keeps them afloat.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

I mean, like, and let's be honest here, everyone has a financial incentive. Everyone has a financial incentive.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

I have a financial incentive too. I'm not gonna lie to you on that. Everyone does. And you have to be your biggest advocate, or you will get screwed by anyone and everyone that's trying to make money off of you. That goes just as much for business as it goes for daily life, as it goes to your health. And that means you have to do your own research, even though it's really, really hard. One of the things I am hopeful about, there's a lot of problems with AI and how it's developing right now, but one of the things I'm hopeful about is that it's making it easier to do that research in some ways. Like there's a actually great app that our team has been using recently, which is a consensus.app. It compares a bunch of the stuff in the literature, peer-reviewed science, and then gives you the summaries, which is really cool. But there's there's a lot of promise out there for being figuring things out. But I also get like as someone that has looked at this industry from like a user standpoint, this goes for both pure medtech and medical and pharma and for health and wellness. It's both sides. There's so much just like BS in this space, and there's a really a lot of conflicting opinions and valid conflicting opinions. Like one of the things that was crazy, like I got started in neuroscience really, really young. Uh, neuroscience is the study of the brain and the body, and uh building technology neurotech is building technology around that. And when I first got into this field, I started going diving into the literature, and the crazy thing is, is I was so confused because you'd have these scientists that were arguing and saying the exact opposite thing with well-powered studies and controlled studies. And I'm like, how is this possible? Based reality can't be that, but it turns out that science is not nearly as clean-cut as you think. And very frankly, we're getting into is anything true dimension very, very quickly. So I don't I know that's a little bit of a existential piece there. Uh, I think I think the best thing, the biggest thing that you gotta do is you have to advocate for yourself, you have to do your own research, you have to determine, and frankly, you have to do your own testing. And like I think that's the core of what biohacking is is you try things out, you test them, you see if it works for you. If it doesn't, you stop doing it. You try something else, you rinse, repeat, try to control as many variables as you can until you find a routine that works for you. And that's the way to be your own biggest advocate, at least in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

So I guess I've decided to biohack my own self. Yes, you didn't self-without even realizing what I was doing. How do modern industries benefit from keeping people in chronic stress and how can we break that cycle?

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Oh, this is a it's it's a great question. So breaking that cycle, I'll I'll do our plug here. I think that Vegas Earth Simulation does a really good job of getting people out of a constant stress or sympathetic state. Actually, I'll do our plug after I talk a little bit about the state of where we are right now. The fact of the matter is, like I said before, everyone has a financial incentive. And the fact of the matter is that the biggest financial incentive is to get you to buy things. And you know what the thing that helps you buy things more than anything else? Putting you into a sympathetic state thinking you need that thing to get out of it. Very frankly, a lot of industries will use sympathetic states in their advertising, which sympathetic means fight or flight, which is that stress state, and they will constantly push for that to try to get you to do things, whether that is click on the link and then purchase the product or otherwise. It's very common, it's across the space that goes for both magic. This is the reason why patient ads are so big as well, as they try to they again is trying to push you into that state, and this is why it works so well. It there's a ton of benefit of getting you in a stress state because you're easier to sell to when you're stressed. That's the fact of the matter. And one of the things I do like about vagus nerve stimulation and the vagus nerve in particular, and the vagus nerve is you can think of it kind of like um you can think of your body like a car, right? You got a gas pedal and you got a brake pedal. Now, a lot of these incentives, they want you to be in a constant gas state with your foot to the floor, go, go, go. You're either working on your job or when you're back at home, just in a constantly state where you're more susceptible to things because you never have a chance to go take a rest or a break. I look at the Vegas nerve as kind of like the brake pedal. And there are plenty of ways to try to stimulate and try to activate that brake pedal. A lot of it centers around self-care, but I'm the kind of guy that I try to be realistic. I wasn't able to activate that brake at all when I was having problems with OCD. And I don't think a lot of people are very easily, especially when you have so many stressors day-to-day life, and there's such a strong incentive for folks to keep you in that sympathetic state, and there's being billions being spent on keeping you that with that break with that gas pedal to the floor. So I really look at the vagus nerve and directly activating it, which is what we do at Zen Bud as a solution to getting yourself out of that constant gas pedal to the floor, tapping the brake a little bit, you know, slowing down a little bit so that you're able to recover and relax.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

How does Zen Bud work exactly to calm the vagus nerve?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

So, what it actually does is it activates the vagus nerve. Because your vagus nerve isn't your gas pedal. Your gas pedal is your sympathetic or fight or flight system. So when you're in fight or flight, your body's kind of like a bear strain you eat you right, you're about to run over a car, or you spend some time on social media. The fact of the matter is, is when your body is in a highly active state. And if you're constantly in a highly active state over time, your body will slowly, slowly, slowly decay. And what Zimbabwe actually does is it activates a branch of the nerve that's located in the ear. It's actually the auricular branch of the vagus nerve. And that will then feed along the pathways and actually interact with something called locus aurelius. I won't get too technical here, but essentially what it does is it helps you press that bake pedal by using ultrasound to stimulate that nerve. And that's why we call it ultrasound vagus nerve stimulation, because we're stimulating the vagus nerve, that brake pedal, we're activating that brake pedal with ultrasound.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

So is it like an earbud that goes in your ear?

SPEAKER_00 12:42

It's a headset. So you wear like a headset, you wear it five minutes a day. If you go to our website, zimbut.health, usually we have a couple pictures of it up uh so you can see it. And honestly, I usually wear it while I'm brewing my coffee in the morning. It's a bit of an ironic thing because coffee is meant to put you in a sympathetic state, but I find it helps even that out quite a bit. And really the key here is it's almost like a training for that vagus nerve. Over time, as you consistently use it, there's a concept called heavy unlearning, where the more you use something, the stronger the system gets. So you constantly, once you start learning how to hit that brick pedal, you start learning how to use it more, it becomes you easier, and then you can do it without wearing a Zenba, which is the whole point. The point is to have you wear the Zenba to eternity. I mean, maybe you'll need to do touch-ups here and there, depending on your lifestyle. The point is to train your vagus nerve to be active when you need it to be. Uh, and so they're able to switch between that sympathetic and parasympathetic, or fight or flight, or gas on the floor, uh, and rest and digest or brake pedal when you need to. Which is, but you're supposed to be, you're in a car, you're supposed to have access to both the gas pedal and the brake pedal. If you only have access to one, if you only have access to the gas pedal, it's a very big problem. If you only have access to the brake pedal, you're not going anywhere. So I would really call us, we're we're doing brake repair on your mental health. That's literally what we're doing. And on your physical health too. We're helping you get access back to your brakes.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Yeah, access to brakes. It kind of reminds me of a story when I was driving a go-kart once at a friend's house and the brakes actually went out. And the only way that I could stop the go-kart was crashing it into the fence.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

And then they ran over and like, are you alright? Like, that was awesome.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

I I that's such a great it's it's such a great example, though. It's a great analogy because like that is the only way to stop if you don't get access to your brakes again is to crash. And I I don't like, I mean, it was a good I'm glad I had a good time, but I have a person that I don't like to crash.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

I guess that's why it's called crashing out now. Like if you get overly stimulated, you're like crash out.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, and the thing is, is like we're highly resilient creatures, us humans over here. We we are very, very resilient on a lot of things, but abusing our bodies consistently for a very long time and not listening to them is a great way to uh decrease their performance with time. It's kind of like if you don't take care of your car and you don't change its oil, it's not gonna work as well. Uh certain cars will work longer, but all of them need to get their oil change eventually. All of them need maintenance. You gotta do maintenance on yourself too. You're not you're not a car, but you're like a car in that way. Kinda. Kind of. I kind of. I mean, like a car is uh fueled by explosions and we're fueled by uh glucose, but you know, all the same.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Well, we can look at our fuel as water. The water could be our fuel.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah, water's part of our fuel. What water, glucose, and really building out ATP. I I don't think people signed up for a biology course. Listen, I'd be happy to do one. I uh I love talking about this stuff. And it's it feels like it's been too long since you know I talk about like base biology with people. But it is it is really fascinating. Like the more we talk about, the more I'm like, yeah, you know what? People may just beat cars, you know, that that's that's all we are.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

So I think we touched on this a little bit, but I just want to know exactly what inspired you to create Zen Bud and how does it differ from traditional neurotech?

SPEAKER_00 16:20

So traditional neurotech, it's a great word. Traditional neurotech really has two big big sides to it. There's a side of it that is completely out of the hands of the public, you're never getting access to it, and you won't for another 15 years because it's so in research and development, and very, very early. That's fact the matter. And then there's a side of neurotech that is in people's hands, and some of it is quote-unquote neurotech, and some of it's real neurotech, based on if they've ever done research with it, which a lot of companies don't. Like it and some of them fake that they have, and that's just crazy to me. Like, there, I've seen examples of companies, even in the Vegas nerve simulation space, faking studies. And I've just been really surprised by that. I mean, like, people do your own research. Any AI will pull up which company I'm talking about right now. Uh, I'm not going to for liability reasons, but it's just we've done our research from the start. We started out with the intention to, we actually started out as a transcranial ultra town company back in the day doing brain simulation. And then we transitioned over time, seeing that vagus nerve simulation needed some sort of innovation because the standard has been shocking yourself to do it to this date. Like we didn't come up with Vegas NERS stuff. Vegas nerve has been around for like 20, 30 years. Uh, VNS has been around. It's either been invasive or now shocking you non-invasively. And like, that's a terrible experience, to be honest with you. And I wasn't able to keep with shocking myself daily. And I had a very strong incentive to. So we said, okay, how can we do this without, you know, shocking ourselves? And how can we really approach these disorders that we wanted to treat? And so we said, okay, here, ultrasound seems to be the way to do it. And here's the thing like, I started on this neurotech trend when I was 11, so I was very young. And I came up with whole new ways of stimulating the nervous system. And they all were way worse than ultrasound, to be honest with you. I spent years on this problem, and ultrasound just does such a better job of it. Uh, it's kind of crazy. And we could talk about that as well if you'd like, but it is it's a really interesting field. I like to think we built something that can really help people. We have a number of clinical studies that are out now, um, and we'll continue to publish and do research because that's part of our ethos as a company.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Yeah, I am kind of curious how how at 11 years old, that's really young.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

I had an existential crisis. I was had a very stressful home life during that period. It wasn't super fun. And I had OCD, and so I chose something that I wanted to do to try to escape that, and that was neurotech for me. That was my obsession was the mind, the body, and trying to find ways to interact with it. And it started about virtual reality, but that shift over time when I realized what was actually driving me to do this, which it turned out was my own mental health problems. And once we ended up like middle, like I can talk to gosh, there's a lot we could go over with this, but this reminds me like having a high schooler go to a neurosymposium was a hell of an experience. I've been told a little bit about it from a third party, but it's been a hell of a journey. But the goal has always been to try to get people control back of their nervous system because it really sucks when you can't control it. When you don't have access to your brake pedal or your gas pedals, actually, really, either, it really sucks. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

Did you know did you know what you were doing with Neurotech or I was fully aware?

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Yeah, oh yeah, from the start. From 11. I dived into the literature at 11, man. I got very confused for a while. Dang. Because again, people were disagreeing with each other. I didn't understand. I'm like, scientists must know the answer, right? How could they disagree with each other? And then over time I learned, oh, that is what science is. It's disagreeing with each other vehemently and trying to prove each other wrong and prove each other right over time. That's literally what science is. But anyways.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Dang. That that that's actually like really impressive that you were that young when you first started Neurotech. What advice do you have for entrepreneurs building science-driven, purpose-led companies?

SPEAKER_00 20:16

So I don't know how many are going to be tuning in on this, but I'll give some advice that I think is super relevant. Anyone that wants to do a venture in general, you gotta like be the nail that sticks out. It's not comfortable. I know. But if you want to do anything with purpose-led, driven led, you have to be very, very, very stubborn. And you have to have be very urgent and move fast. I think those are the two big things. If you can move fast and be stubborn, you'll get there eventually. And you'll have a long time where you're making a lot of big mistakes and you have no idea what those big mistakes are, but you'll learn from them. You just have to be stubborn, adaptable, and fast. I can keep adding to this list, Sarah. But as long as you're stubborn and you're driven, that's like the number one thing. And then the speed is the number two thing, and then the adaptability is the number three thing. As long as you're stubborn, you'll get there eventually. Just a longer timeline if you're not fast, and a much longer timeline if you're not adaptable. Uh, if you have all three, then you're in a really good place to do some true innovation. And you can develop all three. Like, this is not, these are not involuble character traits. These are choices that you make on a daily basis. That's the thing, too. Like uh when people say, Oh, this is my personality, I'm like, no, it isn't. You're making the choice to act like that on a consistent basis. If you change that choice, your personality changes. It's who you choose to be. Who do you want to be tomorrow? You don't find yourself, you build yourself into who you want to be. And in doing that, you will find yourself. But it's much better mindset to say build yourself. Because otherwise, if you're saying find yourself, you remove all agency, you remove all control over your life, and nothing feels real. So you build yourself. That's what you gotta tell yourself, at least. So that's my advice.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

That's very good advice. Is there anything else that you want to add before we say goodbye?

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Well, I mean, if you want to see what we're doing, you can check us out at zenbet.health. I'd I encourage you to. I mean, we've been working pretty really hard on it. And I really hope that all of your listeners are able to do their own piece of biohacking as in finding the right ways to interact with their body. Like, it's it's the term has gotten interesting over time, but I really think that the core of biohacking is doing your own experimentation with your routine and what you do on a daily basis to find what works, because be very realistically, a lot of the science is paid off and influenced massively by the funders, which usually are the companies that are pushing the technology. Very rarely are good independent studies done. We have some of them, it's hard to do in the current ecosystem. So you kind of have to do your own testing with anything. That's like everything, and then be willing to shift things if things aren't working. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat until you find a routine that works for you. And hopefully, vague nerve stimulation is part of that. I do think that's an important part. Again, I am motivated to say that, but I also really do think it's an important part of that routine.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

I actually think that it's a very important part of the routine as well, because it helps with your anxiety mostly for me at least. Because it's it's very, very calming once you're able to just tap on their brakes, and it's you can self-regulate your emotions so much easier when you have access to that.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Yeah, 100%. And I think like one of the big things that people make a mistake on. So I was talking about the decision stuff. There are things that influence what decisions you can make, and some of that is having access to your different parts of your car. Like the gear, the brake pedal, the gas pedal. Uh, there is a massive limiting factor there. Fix that if you can, and you'll have a lot easier time making whatever changes that you want to make to the frame.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Yes, exactly. Well, John, I thank you so much for your time today. It's been very interesting learning about Zen Bud and the Vegas nerve. And I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your day and take care.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

You as well.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

Thank you. Bye. And there you have it, folks. If you want to learn more about Zen Bud or what John does, feel free to check out his website at zenbud.health. And for more coaching tips and tricks or to work with me one-on-one, feel free to check me out at Guiding Pathways on Facebook or Instagram. Until next week, everybody. This has been your morning tea with Coach Kennedy. Take care. And for my subscribers out there, don't forget to tune in on holistic Wednesdays. Bye.