CLICK FOR AUDIO OF PODCAST

Guest: Dmitri Leonov

Release Date: 12/3/2023

Welcome to Trulyfit the online fitness marketplace connecting pros and clients through unique fitness business software.

Steve Washuta : The nanotechnology patch that Novak joke of its claims as the biggest secret of his career is called the towel patch. Today we have on the co founder to break down the science claims and benefits.

Steve Washuta : Welcome to the Trulyfit podcast where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom. I’m  your host Steve Washuta, co founder of Trulyfit and author of  Fitness Business 101. On today’s episode, I interviewed Dmitri Leonov of Tao patch, he is the co founder what is Tao patch? Well, it is a nano technology that combines both acupuncture principles and low level laser therapy.

Steve Washuta : I need you to understand that I don’t promote any particular products or even ideology, or principles on this podcast, I interview people, I give you some information, and it’s on you to do your own due diligence to make sure that this is right for you or right for your clients. It was a great interview. I appreciate Dimitri and all that he’s doing and trying to do for the industry. With no further ado, here’s Dimitri Leonov tell patch to meet you.

Steve Washuta : Thank you so much for joining the Trulyfit podcast, why don’t you give my listeners and audience a little background on who you are your credentials and what you do day to day in the health and wellness industry.

Dmitri Leonov : Thanks so much for having me. So my name is Dmitri and I am a co founder of TaoPatch in the US. So we are a wearable wellness device that combines light therapy with acupuncture and via nanotechnology. And so we’ll we can talk about them more more in detail. Myself, I’ve been involved in what other than a health kind of junkie, just in life.

Dmitri Leonov : I’ve been involved for a few years in the transformative tech space. And so it’s a we had a conference and we’ve organized events around the world. And basically, it’s the kind of the intersection of technology and wellness. So wellness tech. And with top edge we’re really excited to to help folks with just health and longevity as well as performance and recovery for athletes.

Steve Washuta : Whenever you’re in the business of something that’s not standard, let’s let’s call it you know, Western medicine. People are always gonna have questions, right? They probably should have more questions about Western medicine. But they’re always going to question things like acupuncture and light therapy, and they’re going to get the science to back it right.

Steve Washuta : So you guys have that term nanotechnology, what exactly fits into nanotechnology, we can talk about that first, and then we could talk about some of the studies behind your product. Absolutely.

Dmitri Leonov : Well, so what we’ve Annamma technology, so the product itself is a little pea looks like a plastic coin. And it really doesn’t look like much but what it is. So it contains layers of anatomy material that we’ve developed, that has a very unique quality.

Dmitri Leonov : Basically it when you place it on your body, what it does is it captures your infrared energy, so your heat, in other words, and then converts it into a broader spectrum of light. So all the way from infrared, to ultraviolet. And so there’s literally 9700 studies on PubMed on light therapy, in general.

Dmitri Leonov : And we are kind of we’re closer to the the subset of light therapy called low level laser therapy, which is also a very well studied form of medicine. So what normally the issue with light therapy and low level laser therapy specifically, is the devices are quite bulky, they require a connection to an outlet, and they’re expensive.

Dmitri Leonov : And so normally you can apply it for an hour, at best right? hour week. Or if you have one at home, it could be an hour a day. But the issue is, then you kind of go back to your normal life. And it really this, this amount of time doesn’t give your body enough time to kind of integrate this therapy and apply it. And so with this development of this narrow material, we can just stick it to your body specific points.

Dmitri Leonov : And this is where acupuncture comes in it really it’s tied to Chinese medicine. And when this light enters your body, it has a very depending on where you place it in the body has all sorts of different effects. But in a nutshell, this light helps your nervous your central nervous system communicate more effectively with the rest of your body. And the benefit of having it be so tiny. And all this material is that it works for two and a half years without batteries. So you just wear 24/7 and your own body heat powers the effect what

Steve Washuta : is the component that runs out for lack of a better term?

Dmitri Leonov : So it actually it’s not even that it completely stops working after two and a half years. It’s just the rate at which this material converts your body heat into light. diminishes over time. And for two and a half years, it’s 100%. Effective, and then it slowly gets less effective. So that’s, that’s why we say two and a half years kind of guaranteed. And then after that it’s less so

Steve Washuta : is this light? Can you explain the difference between this light and let’s say natural light a light you would get from some particular equipment like one of those light beds? What are the differences in that ranges?

Dmitri Leonov : Honestly, not that might be light, light is light is light. The thing is, so because we, and why is this important? Why is this light even? Why is it working? Why is it helpful? Well, there are two, two reasons. One, our nerve cells use first of all electricity to communicate with each other, but they also use photons. And this was I wasn’t taught this in school.

Dmitri Leonov : But back in the 70s, the, they showed that our neurons actually use photons of light to communicate as well. And so this light is very similar to the to those photons. And so it kind of reminds your your body in a sense, how to communicate naturally, with itself. And the reason this is important is, you know, we, over the millennia, evolved with natural light with the sun, you know, in the morning, which is, is a little bit more, there are a few more ultraviolet wavelengths.

Dmitri Leonov : And then kind of all the way to the evening and the sunset, where it’s a little bit more, a little bit more infrared. And so there’s this whole color spectrum is very important for our bodies to function. And in the last 100, or a couple 100 years, we’ve been kind of stuck inside, right with artificial lighting. And so a lot of those wavelengths aren’t, our body doesn’t really received them.

Dmitri Leonov : And so it’s really important to have the different colors of light absorbed into the body. And so this is what top ash actually does. A lot of the light beds and a lot of other products out there, they do use those beneficial wavelengths. And this is why they work. And it’s why the studies show that they are very effective. Ours is just again, it’s a very unique way of miniaturizing. This technology that allows you to wear it 24/7 Yeah, I’ve

Steve Washuta : seen some pieces of equipment, not only that were, you know, the size of a twin bed, but they cost $120,000. So, you know, being able to put something that’s on your body, that’s a piece of nanotechnology.

Steve Washuta : And that’s significantly cheaper than that with what seemed to be a much better option. Can you speak to, like you mentioned earlier, the placement on your body? Why would you put it on the back of your neck as opposed to your wrist as opposed to your leg? And could you use multiple at one time.

Dmitri Leonov : So yes, you can absolutely use multiple at one time, there are several, several points that we recommend. So first of all, it is really helpful for injury recovery. So if you have a any kind of an injury, just placing it on that point where you know, where it hurts, makes the pain go away. And what’s really interesting is it doesn’t, it doesn’t just mask the pain is to find a painkiller, it actually goes to the root of the problem, it helps the healing.

Dmitri Leonov : So the pain kind of naturally disappeared. And then the second set of points, though, that we use come from Chinese medicine, and this is why we say it’s a combination of light therapy and acupuncture. So rather than applying this life’s kind of like a light that to your entire body. There are specific points where it’s particularly beneficial. And so we there are two points that we recommend for everyone, especially in the beginning.

Dmitri Leonov : And they one of them is on the red meridian. So on your sternum, and the other one is on your spine. And these are kind of two of the key meridians in Chinese medicine. There are two points that we’ve seen over over the years work best for a general kind of balance overall well being and focus proprioception and, and so on.

Dmitri Leonov : And then we have all schools have specific protocols for different things. And they really come from Chinese medicine. So whatever you can use needles for whatever acupuncturist use needles for, instead of needles, we place light.

Dmitri Leonov : Acupuncture is actually really love this because one of one of the key pain points is you know, the patient comes in for an hour and they stick them with needles, and then they leave and you know, kind of their system adjust back to their normal life. And so this is something they could just put on and wear in between the sessions. Yeah, so does that answer your question?

Steve Washuta : Sure. Sure. Certainly does. And then and you mentioned there’s, you know, a lot of these studies over 9000 on light therapy, and I’ve read them and it’s sort of been a fad recently. And it’s really interesting, but what about on your product specifically, have you had enough time to kind of go through the normal testing processes to have these It is.

Dmitri Leonov : Yeah, so we’ve have 17 published studies. And not all of them are double blind, but we have some that are double blind placebo controlled studies. And so there are two groups of people that we’ve been particularly helpful for. And so really what mainly happens, like, like I mentioned, so when this light enters your body, it helps your brain communicate with the rest of your body more effectively.

Dmitri Leonov : The first system that gets affected is your proprioception. And we’ve seen this in studies, we’ll assume this anecdotally, with pretty much every single person that that puts them on, if you put them on ForcePlates, that measure your balance, your like physical balance, how stable you are, there is a test where it looks at your how your center of balance, center of gravity changes over the course of one minute. And normally for normal person, there’s a fair amount of variation.

Dmitri Leonov : So our buddy kind of does these micro adjustments where you move around a little bit, when you put these on. In every single case, we’ve seen that you become a lot more stable, so that your center of gravity kind of just stays stays put, which means there’s less energy being used for these micro adjustments.

Dmitri Leonov : And this is just one. One effect of this, the overall sense of proprioception, your balance, your range of motion, your movement, speed, strength, all of this improves, and we have lots of athletes aware of them. And so we have several world champions, we had five Olympic athletes, a few of them for performance and for recovery. And then a few months ago, Novak Djokovic was was caught on camera wearing it at Rolling Girls tournament.

Dmitri Leonov : And then at the press conference, he was asked, what is the thing you’re wearing. And he actually said that this is the biggest secret of his career. And she wouldn’t be sitting here without it today. You know, his words, not not mine. But then the second group of people that we’ve been, and this has been even even more just encouraging for us, people whose nervous system doesn’t communicate that well with the rest of their body.

Dmitri Leonov : This doesn’t amazing things for them. So people with MS, Parkinson’s, fibromyalgia and other neurological disorders, for them, it’s just, it’s an astounding difference. And if you go to our website, tal bash.co. And you can see before and after videos, and we ask our customers to take videos before and after, and then continue, continue making videos over time just to track progress. But the difference is incredible.

Dmitri Leonov : I mean, you can see people who couldn’t walk in a straight line, start to walk straight within minutes. It’s just astounding to

Steve Washuta : see. Yeah, and someone like myself, who works with seniors, I also work with a lot of movement disorder. So both Parkinson’s and Ms. It’s when there is a fall, it’s sad to see because they deteriorate very fast.

Steve Washuta : Typically the processes you fall in because you’re of a certain age, and because because your proprioception is already lacking, you don’t break your fall properly, which means now you have a serious injury, maybe it’s a fractured femur, you know, maybe it’s a fractured collarbone, whatever it is, then it limits you.

Steve Washuta : And then what happens is you become more deconditioned, because you can’t continue to walk or exercise and do these things because of the injury. And then things spiral out of control. And they’ve done a lot of studies on you know, one fall for somebody over the age of 60, especially with movement disorder.

Steve Washuta : And now you know, now their life expectancy is cut in half almost. So it’s really important to make sure that you know, the proprioception and the ability for people to not get injured. To me, I think it’s almost more interesting for that population than than the athletes just getting that 1% better. To use something like this.

Dmitri Leonov : Absolutely this thing, like, it’s really heartwarming for us to work with athletes and see how it helps them, you know, every, every second every minute counts in that case, but just to see what what a difference, it can make a life of a person who’s, you know, we take these things for granted, because somebody who cannot walk normally, right.

Dmitri Leonov : And we had some patients with Parkinson’s who couldn’t talk. And then after six months, they start talking. I mean, it’s just, it’s just amazing to see. That was

Steve Washuta : amazing. And I will say, as somebody who does, again, work with this population, typically your goal when you’re working with this population is to stay status quo, because they almost never really get better. So, you know, you just you want you kind of want to hold the line and not not regress. So to have something where there’s progress is very impressive. And I’m interested to to look further into that.

Steve Washuta : But now, you know, when when you do work with this population, and you make these claims, I assume that this has to maybe be considered a medical device as the criteria for what you put this out different than let’s say a If you were putting out some sort of, you know, wristband that was a compression wristband or a foam roll or something that has no technology is is the criteria that you have to meet different?

Dmitri Leonov : Well, so really your point, thank you for bringing it up. So we actually are very careful not to make any claims, right. So if what everything I say it’s just kind of his, you know, well, yes, we have studies, certainly. But we’re very careful because it doesn’t work for everyone we have, and this is why we have a money back guarantee.

Dmitri Leonov : So if it doesn’t reach your goals, or even if you just want to return it for any reason, we just simply ask that you send it back and we’d happily refund you, our refund rate is about 5%. So there, there, there’s a certain amount of people who doesn’t, doesn’t help. But the vast majority of the people are very, very happy with the results.

Dmitri Leonov : Now in Europe, we are classified as a class one medical device. So what that really means is, it’s it’s same level of classification as a band aid, meaning it’s safe is extremely safe. So there is no counter indications, there’s really no risk, and it can be self applied by the person. So in the US, we’re in the process of going through FDA clearance, we’re almost at the very end.

Dmitri Leonov : But, you know, regardless, we want to be really careful and to, to not make any claims that we will absolutely and we don’t promise anything, but we do, we do promise you that if it doesn’t work, we’ll happily refund you. And what was the other thing I was gonna say? The A lot of times sorry,

Steve Washuta : hon, at times, that’s an advantage, too, right? Because if you start to make those certain claims, now you’re categorized as something different, you have to meet a whole level of different criteria. I know a lot of kind of, I guess you would say like pseudo supplement companies that go, you know, what we believe our, our, our product is medicinal in how it acts and how it works. But we didn’t want to be classified that way. Because then now there’s more regulation.

Dmitri Leonov : Absolutely, exactly. It’s, and it’s that it’s a, it’s a lot of it’s an interesting space. Because there’s, you know, especially working with Ms. At the mass population, there is, we’re kind of I don’t want to say we’re going against the Big Pharma. But there, this is a very different space, right?

Dmitri Leonov : There’s, it’s a completely different business, and we are in the business of helping people live their life better, we don’t claim that it helps, helps. Heal, right, or cure ms, or Parkinson’s should have seen, we have seen an improvement in the lesions, and some folks. But most importantly, it helps you reduce the symptoms and just live your life.

Steve Washuta : The entrepreneurs, they’re all over the fitness industry, including myself, much like yourself, the the process to start something like this, to go through the, you know, the research and development to design the packaging, to getting it out to marketing all of these things. What have you learned on this journey? If you were to create another product? What would you do differently? Or what did you do properly the first time?

Dmitri Leonov :I think if you ask any entrepreneur that would say, you know, don’t do it. No, it’s you know, I don’t know if it would have done I think it would have done probably a few things differently. I would say, you know, just prepare for for slog, right. It’s a uphill battle with and this is not, not new information, right? I think this everybody, everybody would say that.

Dmitri Leonov : You know, I would say kind of pig low developing a new nanotechnology product is very expensive, takes a very long time. We’re continuously in the process, we’re always rolling out new products as well. I would say kind of piggybacking on existing developments. And if you’re, for example, if you are a coach, if you are a trainer or if you are in the fitness space, we are actually actively building our our network of practitioners in the EU, especially in the US.

Dmitri Leonov : We already have a network of petitioners in Europe, but we’re in the process of rolling it out here. So I would very much welcome anybody to to reach out to us and and work with us and offer this to your to your clients.

Steve Washuta : Lastly, here, is there a patent on this? How exactly does that work? Can you talk about license ship and patents and how that maybe works differently in Europe and the US and and are you nervous about potential copycats?

Dmitri Leonov : Yes or no. So we have a patent that’s in the final stages of approval as well. So it’s been pending for a while and we’re it’s almost it’s almost granted, patents are. You know, it’s a difficult thing because we are we know this is a very, very difficult and lengthy process to go through. And so we’re not so worried about somebody copying this technology.

Dmitri Leonov : Exactly. That said, you know, we’re we welcome competition and there’s there’s different ways of of solving this problem. If somebody comes up with a with a similar way or a different way of helping people. Who really can go really suffering and who can benefit from this, you know.

Dmitri Leonov : The Old better this is a very big market. There’s plenty and especially with the world kind of in a state where state. That it’s in with the toxicity with pollution with the lifestyle. That’s disrupted imbalancing our body and disrupting our nervous system even further. I think this is a very big market for the future. For Unfortunately,

Steve Washuta : This has been great information. Can you point my listeners towards where they can find more about tell patch?

Dmitri Leonov : Sure, thanks. Tao patch.co T EO patch, bh tch.co. On the website we have our social media, we have our email our phone number. So if you have any questions, feel free to call us or contact us on social media or email. We’ll be happy to help.

Steve Washuta : My guest today has been Dmitri Leonov and author CALPADS. Thank you for joining the truly free podcast.

Dmitri Leonov : Thanks for you.

Steve Washuta: Thanks for joining us on the Trulyfit podcast. Please subscribe, rate, and review on your listening platform. Feel free to email us as we’d love to hear from you.

Social@Trulyfit.app

Thanks again!

CLICK FOR AUDIO OF PODCAST