Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life podcast.

Andre Smith [00:00:05]: You got all of this technology stacking each other, whether one potentiate the other. You need electricity, you need blood flow, you need nutrient absorption, you need neurotransmitters to fire, to give signals in your nervous system. There's something I want to come back to that's very, very interesting about the carbonic acid.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:23]: Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist. And I'm passion about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity and beyond.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:43]: So in my garage, in my new property in Idaho, I've got this weird device. It looks like this space agey transport pod. Your head sticks out of it and it's almost like a sauna that you sit inside of with your head sticking out. But there's way more going on than that. There's like ozone and different frequencies and PEMF. And every time somebody comes over to the house and checks it out, I'm like, that's the most probably powerful detoxification tool that is in my arsenal. But in order for me to explain it properly, I'd probably have to have a really long conversation. And I decided to get the expert behind this weird device called the, the HOCATT.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:28]: Hopefully I'm even pronouncing that correctly on the show to talk about what this thing is. That's how you say it. HOCATT.

Andre Smith [00:01:34]: HOCATT. It's perfect.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:37]: HOCATT. Obviously, Andre, a lot that we could talk about when it comes to this, but before we jump in, are you like, like the inventor of this? Are you more of a scientist who understands how it works or where do you fit into the whole HOCATT scenario?

Andre Smith [00:01:50]: Yeah, I'm the inventor of it. I'm the curve, I'm the ball. I'm the founder of the company. I'm the inventor of the therapy and HOCATT. Well, of the technology. And the technology is owned by myself.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:05]: Did you just like see pictures of people sitting in those rinky dink little saunas with their heads sticking out and thought, oh gosh, I could do better than that, or how did you even come up with the idea for this?

Andre Smith [00:02:15]: No, actually when it was, you know, at the time, when we, when, when, when I started at it, there was like dial up Internet that was around about the 2000s, you know, when I started to think about what to do. And yeah, we were busy at, with hydrotherapy at the time.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:36]: So obviously you aren't just like an engineer who invents stuff. You were involved in some level at some kind of like a health clinic or something like that.

Andre Smith [00:02:43]: Yeah, so basically what I've been, been doing. Don't think that I'm a heavy health scientist or whatever. I'm. When I was a boy at school, I was just asking a lot of questions and how it happened was I was involved in hydrotherapy. It was basically a product that you converted your bath into a spa. And I really started to see how people's lives got transformed just with something as simple as hydrotherapy.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:16]: By the way, what is hydrotherapy?

Andre Smith [00:03:18]: Well, hydrotherapy is basically when you use water as an, as a medium to massage the body, but you can also use it to induce cytothermia. You can, you know, it's like a spa bath in this case. So what we were doing basically is to take hot water in there and you can use aromatherapy oils to give you different kinds of effects, you know, and provoke different kinds of physiological responses from the body with different kinds of oils. And the main effect here was to reduce stress and to enhance blood circulation.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:02]: So you were doing that with like, patients or running a clinic or how were you using.

Andre Smith [00:04:06]: Hydrotherapy, selling these devices.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:10]: You were selling them to like, people, businesses, etc.

Andre Smith [00:04:13]: I would literally go, so I wasn't at this stage, I was in Bible school. So in a week I go to Bible school. In weekends I go to a flea market. I have had this whole thing set up and then I, you know, I had a bath that was transparent and I had like a frog swimming in this bath to attract the people's children. And they would look at this semen. They'd be mesmerized with the bubbles because it's, you know, it's really mesmerizing.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:43]: So, so you're like learning how to baptize people via the Bible at school and then baptizing them in a different way.

Andre Smith [00:04:49]: Absolutely. Yeah. So basically I got it at the point, you know, when I, when I saw that. So then, you know, I will get people and I will see what, you know, kind of hear what is the things that they are dealing with. And then during the week I'll go and put this stuff in their bath and I'll, you know, kind of run through their stuff and tell them how it work. And then later I'll phone them up and say, hey, how did things go? And you know, they'll go like, Andre, you cannot believe. You know, I was dealing with this, this, this, this issue. I feel amazing.

Andre Smith [00:05:18]: And kind of through that I was going like, wow, that is absolutely fantastic to hear because it. The kind of results that people got from it was so profound that at that stage then I kind of decided that this is where I'm going to devote my life's work. You know, I want to help people and I want to give them the tools to normal people to help them to, you know, become better and to actually help have this tool to, you know, to sort out some issues and to live a better life or optimal life. Athletes we were doing, I've gone to all the zones, and that was the most amazing thing where I learned a lot of things to work with these people. So I would go there and I will do demonstrations. And then, you know, they were dealing with a lot of issues.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:13]: Mobility and Andre, when you're. When you're talking about doing demonstrations, are you talking about the hydrotherapy still, or had you created something different?

Andre Smith [00:06:22]: No, I'm talking now about hydrotherapy. So I would do the same thing as what I did in the, you know, in the markets. I would basically have this transparent bath. I will go out there and show them how it work. I will kind of show them that how basically just work on a default protocol where you can sit with hot water, you put some different essential oils in there. How the mass. Either heat will kind of, you know, enhance and optimize their hormones, their neurotransmitters, their enzymes in their body. And then, you know, basically with heat, what it does is it will dilate your blood vessels and then it starts to flow.

Andre Smith [00:07:02]: So all of a sudden, when they now starts to, you know, when they now start to spend time in the bath and the heat, and they start thinking about it and they, you know, and they had this massage coming and the blood circulation is enhanced. A lot of the issues and, you know, mobility issues, you know, just brain fog, a lot of stuff was dealt with pain. A lot of people came back and said, you know, I've never slept so well in my life.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:29]: Yeah. And by the way, hot, hot, cold, hot, cold, contrast, you know, hyperthermia and then some type of hypothermic setting that's been used for a long time, you know, as, you know, for athletic injuries, and now increasingly for things like blood sugar and production of heat shock proteins and vasoconstrictive vasodilation. It sounds to me like at the time you were kind of harnessing a lot of the benefits of the hyperthermic component.

Andre Smith [00:07:54]: Exactly.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:55]: It sounds like with things like essential oils, combining that with some of the phenolic compounds, we might find in nature to get a 1, 2 combo of like aromatherapy and hydrotherapy. Kind of.

Andre Smith [00:08:05]: Exactly. So what we, you know, kind of what we wanted to do is a lot of people were, you know, you want to induce their artificial fever. So a lot of people at the time, you know what, we all do it. If you have a fever trying. People trying to, you know, kind of inhibit your fever, so you kind of train your body against itself where fever is your natural mechanism that's placed in your body, you know, to, to kind of deal with immune issues, with viruses, pathogens, or detoxification. If you feel bad, you know, fever is there to ramp up all the different systems in the body. Your blood circulation, your nutrition delivery, your oxygen delivery, your hormones, neurotransmitters, everything work at optimal level when you get around about 100 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:57]: Yeah. I'm glad you specified, by the way, because for anybody listening in, safety factor. Yes. Sometimes a fever needs to run its course to do what it needs to do to clean up your body. But if you're pushing like 104 plus, get to a hospital because that can get pretty bad for the brain particularly. One of the reasons I know this, Andre, is I did about two weeks at a clinic out in the Alps called the Swiss Mountain Clinic. All sorts of different IVs and phototherapies and special diets. They work with a lot of people with things like cancer, you know, lyme mold, mycotoxin, etc.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:33]: But they do hyperthermia there specifically for cancer. Yeah. And I tried it. This was during the heat wave in Italy and Switzerland like four years ago. So it was already, you know, probably about 108 degrees outside. They had me riding a bike for a half hour in a hot room before getting into the hyperthermia unit. A little bit similar to the HOCATT, your head sticking out, but everything else was a little different. You have like a rectal probe to monitor body temperature.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:59]: There's a nurse there dousing your head with icy cold water throughout so that as your body temperature rises, your, your brain doesn't overheat. It was horribly uncomfortable. I mean, for example, we'll explain what the HOCATT is later on, but I'm in The HOCATT like 30 minutes. I think it maxes out at 45 minutes. I was in that hyperthermia unit, which was actually hotter than the HOCATT, for like four hours. Just about passed out in the thing. And apparently they do this with cancer patients on a regular basis. Because of the cytotoxic effects of heat on cancer cells.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:34]: But long story short is, yes, you can. You can induce a fever or allow a fever to run its course, but once it gives above 104, you should probably start to seek out some medical assistance pretty quickly.

Andre Smith [00:10:46]: Exactly. And the reason why it is if you go over 104, most of enzymes start to deform. You know, it loses its ability to catalyze. So deform, you damage it and all processes. I mean, the same goes for hormones and neurotransmitters. It deform and it get damaged permanently.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:08]: Yeah. And it's hard to put an egg back together after you've scrambled egg.

Andre Smith [00:11:11]: Exactly. You can't put that guy back together once it's done. So. Yeah, that's actually one of the main things. I have an interesting story to tell you about. Well, let me first tell you what the. What they're trying to. What's the difference then? If you're talking about that you have done now where they do maybe cancer treatments and where you have hocked, where you basically just an immune modulation, et cetera, et cetera.

Andre Smith [00:11:40]: So what they then are trying to do is they're actually trying to treat an issue through trying to inhibit the tumor growth or trying to break down the tumor, which happened with secretion of too many crosis factors, et cetera, et cetera. But the main thing, difference between that kind of hypothermia and HOCATT is HOCATT is not there to treat anything. It's basically just to get the body all the responses in one time to, you know, to just work together and to. For half an hour you can do more, but it becomes a little bit of a stretch. And just to kickstart your immune system, get everything to work together in harmony, in one at one specific time, so that your immune responses that come from that can work naturally to, you know, create wellness, to create all kinds of physiological responses.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:38]: Yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves here, though, because I want to hear how you went from high. From high, what's it called, hydrotherapy to inventing the HOCATT. So, so how this thing come to be?

Andre Smith [00:12:48]: All right, so basically then what happened is I came to learn about ozone and being in South Africa at that stage, which is in. I'm talking about 2000. 2002. 2000. I started. It started to get onto my radar. And then 2002, I really started to research ozone. And like I said, we were using data Internet.

Andre Smith [00:13:10]: It took me like five minutes just to, you know, change from one site to another.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:15]: Yeah. And if somebody, if somebody picks up the phone in the same house, then you got to start over.

Andre Smith [00:13:20]: Yes. So it took hours and hours to reset research. And at that stage there weren't a lot of stuff on the Internet. And now me being like a normal enthusiast, health enthusiast, that see now people's lives have been changed naturally, you know, with some, with hydrotherapy. I was looking at this and I was just seeing, okay, but this ozone really seems very interesting. And then I started to research how it work. And I wasn't a scientist, so I didn't know how to break all of it down, how to make something of it. But I was just, in my heart, I knew this was what, you know, this is their key.

Andre Smith [00:13:58]: This is what, what's my calling, where I'm going. So anyway, so I'm going through all of this and eventually I think to myself, I need to now learn more about ozone therapy. And if I want to go to learn about it, classes in Germany, which I didn't have the money at the time. And that would be through Renate Viebahn, Dr. Renate Viebahn, her father is Hansler which actually quantified ozone for the first time in the 50s to use it as a medicine. And then There was only two guys in South Africa. The one was Dr. Ford and he was retired.

Andre Smith [00:14:33]: And the other one was Dr. Peter Essex Clark and he was homeopath and he was doing medical home, you know, ozone therapy. So I remember I responded and I said to him, I got him on the phone, I said to him, doc, I. My name is Andre. I, you know, I'm working on hydrotherapy, but I'm actually gin on my radar and I really am interested in it. Can you please teach me also how to do it? I said, I will, you know, work in your clinic for you and you can just teach me and I'll, you know, I'll work for free and you teach me whenever you're doing stuff. And he said, Andre, no, no, no, I'm not teaching. We're busy, you know, we have patience.

Andre Smith [00:15:16]: This, whatever. I said to him, okay, doc, I really need to tell you one thing. You are the only guy in South Africa that's working with ozone that I can find on the Internet or in the yellow pages at that stage, you know, that that can help me. So I said to him, doc, I'm going to tell you what, I'm going to phone you next week again. Please just think about it and don't feel pressured, but I'm going to phone you next week again, see if you can do it. So anyway, I phoned him the next week again. He said, got him on the phone again, said, oh, Andre, you again. I said, yes, doc, as things going.

Andre Smith [00:15:48]: She said, Andrew, yeah, Andrew, listen, I've. I've been thinking about it and yes, I definitely cannot do it. It's just something that we don't do and you know, I wouldn't know how to do, you know, how to train people. And you know, things are just fast paced. So I need to, you know, I. I really need to. I mean I can, but it's interesting that you asked, but no, thank you. So I said, doc, okay, I'm gonna do.

Andre Smith [00:16:14]: I'm actually sir, thank you very much. But I'm gonna phone you next week again and we're gonna ask you again.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:21]: You're reminding me of. My mom always used to tell me the squeaky wheel gets the oil. And that's actually served me pretty well in life. Sounds like your mom told you a variant of the same thing.

Andre Smith [00:16:30]: Exactly, exactly. So anyway, I found him the next week and he was actually quite surprised. So I found him again and said, oh wow, I'm actually starting to really. I cannot be it. So I said to him, so doc, here's what I would do. I will moan the lawn, I will do whatever you, you want me to do. I'll work, I'll. I'll scrape your floors, I'll wash your toilets.

Andre Smith [00:16:52]: Just please teach me, you know, when, when you're working and just teach me the basics of it at least. And he said, Andre, I really, really cannot do it. Long story short, I phone in the six week. And he just gone like he said, Andrew, you know what? You're so persistent. I have decided I'm gonna help you. So then he said to me, sir, all right, tell me about yourself. What do you do? You know, what are you? Are you a doctor? Are you doctor? He said, homeopath? I said, no. He said, so what do you do? Are you nurse? I said, do you have any qualifications? Nurse, Ambulance? I said, doc, I have nothing.

Andre Smith [00:17:31]: I'm like a guy they want to learn about ozone. He says, Andrew, no, no, no, no, no. He says, I absolutely cannot do it. Just go back to your daytime job. And that was like. Actually it was a tear running through, you know, tears was running out of my eyes. But that was when my, when my switch gone on. And then I realized I'm gonna do this if it's so great.

Andre Smith [00:17:55]: Of all the stories and that I heard about it and testimonies that I've seen that people talking about it. Then my partner in a world would be to actually bring this to people doing it at home that can help themselves and to lay it out in a form that everybody can use it where you know, families can use it, mothers can help, can use it to their children, whatever the case might be. Anyway, so that's then when I started to profusely look ways that normal people without a medical degree can administer ozone in ways, you know, that can be physiologically and biologically beneficial. So anyway, so I've gone through the Internet and one day I. I found a guy, he had like a wooden sauna Dr. Don in Mexico. And this guy was he, I mean he had some stuff going on. He already had the allopathic fraternity fraternity against him because he was, you know, doing all kinds of alternative stuff.

Andre Smith [00:19:09]: So I was just looking at this thing and I was just going. And it was just like this is it. And I started to, you know, to learn about. I already knew how essential oils get absorbed through the skin and how things work and you know, transdelivery, it's absolutely sound that you can do it. And then as I've gone and I first made my first sauna in South Africa, it was a wooden sauna. I've made it out of pine wood and you know, like team because I served and I just thought to myself, wow, this thing is. I wouldn't buy it from somebody if it's looking like this, you know, it's not a product.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:48]: Yeah. But anyway, so looks like a real like DIY type of it just didn't do it.

Andre Smith [00:19:54]: You know, you're not going to be impressed when you see might do amazing things. But yeah, it's not a product. Anyway, so I was then looking at all kinds of stuff and I found a person in South Africa that had fiber draw saunas. So we started boiling, breaking and I said to him, okay, I need some molds. And we started making some molds. And I then, you know, found another electro engineer that was making ozone generators at the time. So at this stage, ozone technology and still today, but not as much as what it was back in the days. I mean like you pay 100k 200k euro for you know, ozone generator.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:46]: And I'm assuming kind of like what's going through your head right now is you already knew from your previous experience in hydrotherapy that heat can induce better transdermal absorption of certain compounds. And you also knew that ozone was very therapeutic. So what you're Thinking is, how could I somehow combine ozone with heat to induce like a really big transdermal absorption of ozone?

Andre Smith [00:21:07]: You're absolutely on the money there. And you mailed it. And so this is basically when we have gone. So we've now. So at that stage then, what I've now done is I've now tried to just get the product going so that it worked well. You know, I need to get an Azone generator that is efficient and, you know, effective enough for a sauna. And then I need to get a sauna that, you know, that's working normally so that we can start putting this together. And it was quite primitive at the time.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:37]: Yeah. And by the way, you're also leaving out an important fact. You aren't supposed to breathe in ozone, at least not in concentrated amounts. So there's that piece too. Like, you can't have your whole body inside of a sauna. Right.

Andre Smith [00:21:49]: And to add insult to injury, then you have that problem as well. So now you need to sit in a sauna where you cannot breathe ozone, but you wanted to, you know, to expose to as largest piece of, you know, surface of your skin that you can. So we then had this sauna where you sit in it. We had to close it with towels at the stair at that stage. And it worked quite well because once, you know, ozone gets introduced into the sauna, it bakes down quite fast. So based on to hydrogen peroxide. But you still have this, you know, large quantity of ozone that you have to deal with. So we, we close it up and then, you know, that would prevent you from breathing the ozone, but there would still be some steam.

Andre Smith [00:22:36]: And if you haven't been closed properly, you know, it would be like, you'll get some ozone. And at that stage also with the quantities of ozone that we use was not that high. But, you know, that was where we started and it was quite effective. So anyway, we had that. And then the next step on that was actually to get to controllers where we. I mean, like, I was looking at this stuff and I was just thinking to myself, wow, this is primitive, actually. This is amazing. It works.

Andre Smith [00:23:09]: I mean, like, it gives you amazing responses and you get like, you get a lot more effective wellness responses than what you would get with hydrotherapy, but it's a different kind of a feeling. So everybody is also not, you know, for saunas, some people feel like they already think to themselves they're going to be claustrophobic. So then we would put them in and then they would say like that, hey, just do yourself A favor go, you know, sit in it. I just gonna close it, man. Just see. And then I have their head out and say, oh, oh, oh, yes. I don't feel claustrophobic because my head has been freaking out.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:47]: Yeah.

Andre Smith [00:23:47]: Anyway, so then we just go on and we started to work on the controllers. And one of the things that we have done there is people always worried. When I read about, you know, stuff on the Internet, they always worried about people with, you know, cardiac conditions. And I was in a. Whatever and saunas.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:06]: I'm assuming, I'm assuming they weren't worried about cardiac conditions and exposure to ozone or in response to exposure from ozone, but from heat.

Andre Smith [00:24:13]: They were more from the heat. Because now you're sitting with a guy, you know, there's some Covid problems and we're ramping up his spore straight. And what's more is you have ozone, which is basically breaking up blood clots and kind of, you know, helping your blood flow and everything is very normal. So these have been quite a concern for. Yeah, it is quite a concern for people with kind of issues with thrombosis, etc. So the next thing that we then thought to ourselves is, okay, how are we going to get a heart rate monitor into this thing that if somebody have some kind of cardiac issues that you can work it into your controller where you now can digitally start to set your. And this was back in the days, right? I'm talking like 2002. The first one was only built in 2004.

Andre Smith [00:25:09]: That it was actually standing, you know, standing there. So. And so. So then we started to work on with the found art rate monitors that you can put around your chest. And then later we moved to arthrit monitors. You can put it on the fingers, but you could actually, when you set a certain pulse rate, you can actually switch off the. You can abandon the whole session. And it went outside.

Andre Smith [00:25:35]: Again, built.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:36]: Built in safety mechanism in which if you're sitting inside this sauna, your arms are obviously inside of it, so you're not going to get out of there super quickly. Even though you're typically supervised. If you're using a HOCATT in like a medical clinic, if you're wearing a heart rate monitor and there's any type of complications in terms of an elevated heart rate, there's an automatic switch off.

Andre Smith [00:25:56]: Yeah. You should think to yourself, right? So at this stage, I mean, like I was the first guy on the African continent to ever build something like this, right. When that thing stood there, nobody knew what it was. There was a Dr. Saul Pressman at that stage were in Canada, right? And he was also homeopath and he also had plasma 5 at that stage which was also building ozone sonus which Ivan later found from him. So everybody that looked at this and you know, when I start to go out, I thought to myself, hey, I'm going to heal the world. I'm going to, you know, tell all the doctors I'm about first started with oncologists and they just gone like dude, you are crazy. Do you even know what you are talking about? And I also then went that well verse at stage to even explain the mechanisms, how it worked, the physiological responses, etc.

Andre Smith [00:26:51]: And what it does. So they just gone. And everybody that I've gone to see at that stage, which was not industry or in the medical industry at that stage, were putting the fear of God in me on how I'm going to. Can kill people and you know, how dangerous and whatever. So my focus at this stage because I mean like my focus at the stage was learning to protect people and to build safety into it. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, you know, if it was any normal person with a background that I kind of background that I have, they would have, I mean I could. Would have been sensible to give up. But I had this thing in me and I knew this was what I had to do and my family at this stage, so, so when I've been discovered in this ozone, you could have gone two ways.

Andre Smith [00:27:43]: You can go industrial which have really vast range of applications. You could do it, you know, like in, in water refiners. You could work in factories where you scrub air and pollutants, all kinds of stuff. And it's, it's big bucks because it's new. And you know the, the technology at that stage was you could just make a lot of money in industrial applications. But I just gone like. And I said okay, I'm going to pursue this, you know, using ozone in human well being. No matter what.

Andre Smith [00:28:25]: This is what I. I know this is what I want, what I get to do and I'm gonna do it. So the next thing that I was just was always about safety. How am I gonna make this thing safe? Then you add like steps where you can make your, you know, your scene. But you can take a guy with cardiovascular problems and you can just gradually have your scene come in. So you know, it doesn't induce hypothermia so fast. So you can actually induce it slower and you can just give him a little Bit of a ramp up. And you can see that, you know, his pulse rate don't grow too fast and he can get the benefit of the ozone.

Andre Smith [00:29:03]: He can get the benefit of the hypothermia. And you know, the. Well, in that case it would be a little bit more limited because it's not that optimize at that stage. But he still did the benefit. And as you get the benefit every time you use it, things start to get better. And so I've just gone on and I pushed with this. And then later what happened? Well, I can maybe not front run the story, but I'll tell you what was the next step in that. Okay, so I've gone to.

Andre Smith [00:29:38]: I've seen them virtually in our whole province. I've seen every oncologist which told me, dude, you've lost it, you're gonna lose your money, you're gonna kill people. I've gone to every ignath, they were more open, they were intrigued, but I didn't know how to explain it. So eventually I got to a point there was a guy, he had a company called APS Herbal Liver. And he had like, he was with microcurrent therapy, busy. And he was a guy working at the telcom company, you know, like doing telephone installations. So we started this and he actually created a huge company in South Africa where they do microcurrent, let's say then technology for the purposes of, you know, not saying things that sounds medical. But anyway, he was, he was doing.

Andre Smith [00:30:39]: It was called action potential simulation.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:42]: Yeah, with microcurrents. Those are specifically an electrical frequency that is at a certain frequency that might stimulate certain functions in organs, cells, muscles, et cetera. Like you could run a microcurrent for constipation or a microcurrent for, for you know, for sports performance. Or a microcurrent for recovery from an injury, for example.

Andre Smith [00:31:06]: Absolutely correct. So basically what will happen is with a microcurrent, you know, each, it. It's. Each frequency or wavelength is as a code that you're. That a different part of your body understands.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:20]: By the way, I have to say, as you're about to explain, this is cool because folks, I've been doing the HOCATT once a week and I go into my garage and there's a little booklet besides the unit. And I just, I thumb through these microcurrents. The one, the one I did last week was just like some kind of like a full body feel good sweep. But it is kind of cool because you can see, oh, they got one for, you know, for knee issues, they got one for, you know, gut issues or one for the neck. So it is kind of fun to just like, hunt down some of the ones that. That might be what you need in the moment. So. So it's a cool technology that's built into that.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:51]: But. But go ahead.

Andre Smith [00:31:52]: So basically what my point was then is I thought to myself, hey, this. This guy already had, like, his business set up, and he was very well known. I mean, like, he was actually the business phenomenon in South Africa because it was, you know, a telecom technician working on wires, fixing telephone wires. And he started this big, huge wellness company. I got to sit with him, and I started my whole thing. And I. You know, I talk about doing the world and doing this water, and it just gone like, Andre, you know, what. Do you know that there are so many people that come in here with active oxygen and this and hydrogen peroxide and aromatic.

Andre Smith [00:32:38]: They basically, when I say that they can do this and that and whatever, and. And there's no substantial claim for it, you know, that. That you can do it. And we've gone back and forth, and I said, yes, but this and I can. You know, we. We literally had an hour and a half. And I was just sitting here because I knew this was my last shot that I now know about. I'm gonna actually get this thing to the world to speak to him, because if he's not interested, I don't know where, you know, then it's gonna be kind of, like, difficult to.

Andre Smith [00:33:12]: To get my feet. My feet dug into the ground. Anyway, so I sat there with him, and he just gone to me and said, Andre, no, this is not something that we are interested in. And told him about ozone in one year. Ebony said to me, Andre. And he was looking on his phone, he was saying, Andre, ideally have a meeting where his secretary came in a few times and said, listen, your next appointment is waiting. And I just sat there. I thought to him.

Andre Smith [00:33:40]: I said to him, okay, can I just ask you one question? He says, Andre, I need to go. I said, okay, please do me a favor. Can you give me, like, two minutes? He said, yes, and I'll give you two minutes, but then you need to go. I said to him, do you know how ozone work? And he said. And he kind of, no, I actually don't. I said to him, okay, well, this is exactly the problem. I said to basically, you have three. You have oxygen molecule.

Andre Smith [00:34:11]: It attract extra oxygen molecule with a negative charge. And this extra oxygen molecule is unstable. All it wants to do is it wants to detach from this binding here and it wants to attach to whatever is a pollutant, a virus, right.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:30]: Basically, O3 wants to become O2 and kick off that extra oxygen.

Andre Smith [00:34:36]: O3 wants to become. Yeah. And this third atom is negative charge. So it wants to oxidize whatever is anaerobic. And these are viruses, bacteria, parasites, et cetera, et cetera, fungi, protozoa, amoebas, the whole thing. If it's like paint on the wall, anything, right. It just wants to dust all on anything. So I said to him, so then it will detach from this molecule and it will attach itself, it will oxidize the impurity.

Andre Smith [00:35:08]: And all that you have left is you have the oz, you have oxygen pure. And he going, like he said, Andre, really? I said yes. He says, and I say, and so all that this thing do is it basically clean out all the pathogens and viruses and bacteria in your body and it leaves an oxygen rich environment. It actually oxygenate your blood. Right.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:33]: And then by the way, we should note that a lot of people are trying to achieve this right now with blood like IV based ozone administration with ozone enemas with, you know, less powerful versions. And I do this sometimes ozone water, you know, like ozone bagging for a wound or infection, you know, ozone oil pulling for the mouth. But in terms of something as, as kind of like powerful as what you've designed, usually you kind of have to go to a clinic to do the full ozone iv.

Andre Smith [00:36:04]: Well, let me give you an idea, right? So, so let's talk about something about so what, how people will do it is I would say that you get your, your 10 pass ozone where they basically take between 100 and 200 moles of blood out in a little bottom, the vacuum that isn't it. Then they put it back and they will do this for 10 times. So you can ozonate up to almost 2 liters of blood, right? And then you get ozone hemoperfusion where you literally like put yourself on a dialysis machine, light machine hemoperfusion, they'll take blood out in one limb, put it through a dialyzer which is ozonated, and exchange the ozone into the blood and then it pumps it back into another limb. You know, like when you do dialysis.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:54]: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I've done it a few times and that's very powerful.

Andre Smith [00:36:59]: It's. I would say the 10 pass is probably a better way to do that. Then you get autoimmotherapy where they will take 200 milliliters and you know, in a blood bag, and I'll take it out and ozonate it, and they'll just pump it back. And that's called autoimmotherapy, and that's systemic. All of this stuff that I'm talking about is systemic ozone administration. And they're all very invasive. But then you get another way, which is ozone rectal insufflation, where you literally take a catheter with ozone concentration. You can either suck it in a syringe or you can have a, you know, syringe pump where you can take ozone.

Andre Smith [00:37:40]: You can literally infuse it into the.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:46]: Which, which, which I've actually done. There's been. There's been three weeks since I've had the hawket that I haven't had the chance to do my weekly session. And on each of those three weeks, I did just that. It just did like an ozone rectal insufflation, which is good, but I still think you get less than you get transdermally sitting in a unit for, you know, 30 plus minutes.

Andre Smith [00:38:04]: Exactly. So let me give you an idea. So the rectal insufflation will be like two rectal insufflation sessions will be equally as effective as one autoimmune therapy session. Now, the, the reason why. Well, so we are only talking about ozone now. So how could have obviously, a host of technologies that work in synergy to do it. And I mean, like, there's literally nothing you can compare with it. You know, people ask me about hyperbaric chambers.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:35]: Yeah, because you've got the heat. Right. Which, which I actually do know of a couple companies that are now doing some type of plasmapheresis or blood filtration. And combining that with hyperthermia, the one that I know of is over in Vienna. So those are few and far between. But then you're doing the heat, the ozone, the microcurrents. And we didn't even mention this yet, but I believe there's far infrared PEMF and something called carbonic acid in there as well.

Andre Smith [00:39:05]: Correct? Correct.

Ben Greenfield [00:39:07]: Yeah. Walk me through those as well. I know we still didn't finish up with the story of how this got invented, but I do want to make sure we touch on what each component is or what this thing has become. So you could finish up the story with the guy at the university. But let's say we allow. Let's say or make sure we allow enough time to cover these other therapies that happen when you sit inside this thing.

Andre Smith [00:39:28]: Do you want me to finish first? You want me to cover the therapy?

Ben Greenfield [00:39:30]: Yeah, yeah, go ahead and finish. But, yeah, finish, but give us the slightly shorter version.

Andre Smith [00:39:35]: Long story short. So basically what happened is. So I explained it to him, then I said to him, okay, well, you know, and one thing, what it does is so basically what you're looking at is you're looking at, you know, the most powerful detoxification device at this stage. You're looking at saunas and you're looking at, you know, ozone combined with it. And basically that's a detoxify your body. And he says, okay, so, doc, can I ask you something now? And he said, Prof. Or I said to him, Prof. Can I ask you something? He said, yes.

Andre Smith [00:40:04]: I said, if you detoxify the body, will it help with degenerative diseases? And he says, yes, it will. I said, so will it help with arthritis? Yes, it will help. Will it help with asthma? Yes, it will help. If you detoxify, say so. Will it help you with cancer? Yes, it will help you with cancer if you detoxify. And I said, so. And I gone on and said, Andrew, you're taking it too far. It will help anything.

Andre Smith [00:40:26]: It will help your body if it, if, if you detoxify your body, it will help basically with any issue that you might have in your body. I said, now, Prof. That is the most important thing. That is something that, that we've just covered. Now. This is the most powerful at this stage, as primitive as it was, detoxification device that you can find at this stage. And you're going like under ice. So even when you sit on towel, you can see different colors of excretion that come up, you know.

Andre Smith [00:41:00]: That's good.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:01]: Yeah, I know it's kind of, it's kind of gross. I'm like, I've, I've gotten green and brown in there before. Yeah, it's, it's a little gross.

Andre Smith [00:41:08]: Exactly. You know what's funny? We once got a person with a gray excretion and we were like, never seen it before. And I said, like, okay, so tell us about you. And they were actually in Chernobyl, living close to Chernobyl. There was a lot of radiation.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:25]: Oh, geez.

Andre Smith [00:41:25]: Yeah, back in the day, Sunday. So, yeah, it was. They were then saying that, you know, it's got basically a relation with radiation. So anyway, and, and that's basically one of the things that we will touch on as well, you know, with the fundamentals of hawk it is why actually then hawk it. Why choose this route? Apart from the fact that we were looking for an administration that can be just for, you know, normal people without having to have health professionals to do it. But also, how did everything came about in this sequence?

Ben Greenfield [00:42:05]: Right. And granted, for those of you listening in, it's pretty few and far between those of you who are going to have one in your home. Like, these are big, expensive, fancy devices that usually take some supervision using. You see these in health clinics a lot, though. And I also have a lot of biohackers who are listening and who probably would want one of these for their house. But stepping back and looking at what else came to be integrated into this, I want to kind of lightening around a little bit here. We talked about ozone and the benefits of that, especially for detoxification. A lot of people know about heat, and I've done a lot on saunas.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:38]: Obviously, as we said, when you heat the skin, you can increase transdermal absorption of anything. And by the way, I add essential oils to the HOCATT when I use it just to get that also. But then you've got this CO2 unit mixed, not just the oxygen, but the CO2. It's my understanding that that is for the. Is it the carbonic acid component?

Andre Smith [00:42:57]: So, yes, and that's one of the most. That's one of the most interesting and most important components of what. What makes HOCATT HOCATT. Right. So basically what you'll do is like, carbonic acid is formed naturally in the body. It is when. When H2, a water and CO2 form and you get H2, CO3. Now, a lot of people think that the CO2 in your body, you know, is like a waste product, but actually you will die just as fast with the, you know, with a lack of CO2, and you'll die of, you know, lack of oxygen.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:42]: Yeah. And by the way, I did a big podcast on the benefits of carbon dioxide inhalation and carbon dioxide therapy with Anders Olson. I'll link to it in the show notes, which are going to BenGreenfieldLife.com/ HOCATT Podcast, by the way, H O C A T T podcast. Yeah. A lot of people are familiar with the benefits of ozone, but not the benefits of carbonic acid or carbon dioxide.

Andre Smith [00:44:05]: Exactly. So, okay, so let me clarify. Why say you digest as fast without a lack of carbon dioxide as with oxygen? So when you hyperventilate, what happen is your blood vessels contract and the blood supply to your brain gets cut off and you pass out, you faint. And how do they get you to actually, you know, come by again? They let you breathe into a plastic bag, the Idea behind that is is to rebreath the CO2. So and the reason why that is is that first of all as your so your mitochondria is what you you'll take 1E glucose molecule, 6 oxygen molecules and you're it will go into the mitochondria, it will make you 38 or 30 between 32, 38 ATP byproduct of CO2. Now that get excreted. Excreted and that is carried by a regular cells back to your lungs. Right.

Andre Smith [00:45:11]: But on the way you it's only a very small percentage of the CO2 that's actually get get exhaled. A lot of that gets with through a carbonic anhydrase enzyme will catalyze where you get the CO2 and it will mix the water on the blood and it will form H2CO3. And basically the mechanisms what it does with a carbonic acid, the two main physiological mechanisms that it does is will relax your blood vessels. So it's almost like nothing.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:46]: So so basically H2CO3 generated by carbon dioxide is the molecular form of carbonic acid.

Andre Smith [00:45:54]: Exactly.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:55]: And carbonic acid has a vasodilatory effect.

Andre Smith [00:45:58]: Exactly. So it has a vasodilatory vasodilation to the blood vessels. But it also have a very important function where it has the Bohr effect and how it does that. The Bohr effect is basically where your red blood cells have, you know, these SADS binding sites where the oxygen will bind to the hemoglobin. Right. And what they call is a red blood cell type syndrome. And basically if there's not enough carbonic acid on the red blood cell here, it becomes very alkaline. Now I'm not saying your blood should be acidic that for this binding site it wants to relax and to take out oxygen and it needs to be a little bit acidic with carbonic acid.

Andre Smith [00:46:49]: So this carbonic anhydrase enzymes is on your red blood cells and it catalyzes so that it can basically also regulate the PH of your blood and it will relax it so that the oxygen can get uplifted very easily and then download it easily into a certain level. So it carries it into a cell and then it drops your oxygen and then it will pick up CO2 again and then it will carry it out, bring it back. And carbonic acid is responsible for first of all for the vasodilation bilation, but it's also responsible for relaxing this binding sites on the red blood cell so that it can easily uptake oxygen and downlet and then carry the CO2 and catalyze that with mega carbonic acid, bring it back and then the rest of the CO2 that's not catalyzed to exhale it.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:44]: If I could summarize real quick, what you're saying is that by introducing carbonic acid via transdermal absorption of that while you're sitting in the HOCATT, you're opening up blood vessels, but you're also shifting the tissue oxygenation in such a manner that there is more oxygen leaving the bloodstream and getting delivered to tissue.

Andre Smith [00:48:04]: 100% correct. So let me tell you something interesting. In, in Japan they did a, a study where they actually had people in carbonic acid food bath. Basically what it is is it's got, you know, it's sparkling water food bath at 37, at 98 degrees Fahrenheit. And they would take these guys with diabetic, it was diabetic foot ulcer patients. They'll take them and put them, their feet, they measure with a Doppler the blood flow and they put their feet into the spa boss for three minutes and they will have an increase of blood flow of 257% in just three minutes.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:53]: Wow, that's incredible. I, I noticed when I open up the dashboard on the HOCATT, before I run a session, I can select the microcurrent frequency which we talked about. I can select the temperature, the amount of time, but then there's a screen that says CO2 settings and I can set that anywhere from three to eight minutes. I am assuming that that three to eight minute range that I choose is how long I would be getting the carbonic acid exposure.

Andre Smith [00:49:23]: Correct. So you can, so obviously with a, you know, dilating the blood vessels, if you have somebody that's having low blood pressure, you, I mean like they can faint. That's a contraindication for giving, administering carbonic acid. So you literally will faint because you don't have enough pressure. It will dilate your blood vessels immediately. Your blood, your pressure will drop.

Ben Greenfield [00:49:52]: Hence the option to use the carbonic acid component that you've built in. So you continue to think about the safety piece.

Andre Smith [00:49:58]: Exactly. Everything here is about safety. So you computer, do you have like a long list of stuff? Look, if something, if you have this issue is going on, don't use the carbonic acid, don't use the pmf, don't use the microcurrent and I'll buy whatever the case might be.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:14]: You guys are very helpful at sending me a lot of videos and a lot of manuals and I went through them pretty, pretty intensively before diving in. I want to make sure. I know there's so many places we could go, but I want to make sure we cover some things that I think are just hypercritical here, if you don't mind. No, no, There's. There's a silver knob, I think on the right side that says fir. Now, I am assuming that's far infrared, but if I just turn that up, is it producing far infrared inside the unit during the entire session?

Andre Smith [00:50:45]: Exactly. So it will come through the wall of the chamber in the back. You don't see it. It's a wave coming through. And the reason. Well, that's really interesting. Basically what the. What it does is the 500 component of it.

Andre Smith [00:50:58]: Yeah. So steam will give you a much faster response for core body temperature and pulse rate. Right. Because it's more dense. So it. So if I have to put you into a fine fluid sauna, I can give. I can. If I take the parameters of pulse rate and core body temperature, I can reach it in less than half the time.

Andre Smith [00:51:22]: I can do more with steam than what I can do with fine fluid. However interesting fine fluid does, right, is fine fluid is known to structure water in your body. So. And what that does is it open up the bonding angle of the water, you know, the H2O molecules, so that it can structure the water. And what it does is make this beautiful. Not. It's not clustered anymore. It opens it up and it becomes structured to film like this, hectagonal structures where it can envelope heavy metals, it can envelope toxins or any.

Andre Smith [00:52:03]: Any kinds of pollutants that's in your blood. It can envelope it. It can easily. It can easily penetrate cells, but it can also then take some toxins. And what you call is. They chelate the toxins. It carries it out, and it's easy for your body day to sweat out or to go through your liver, your kidneys, and. And to get rid of that.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:26]: Okay, I'm seeing. I'm seeing kind of. Kind of the big picture here because, you know, I. I have this protocol. I do. Gary Brecka introduced it to me. It's called the Superhuman Protocol, where I actually lay on a PEMF mat. Pulsed electromagnetic currents to open and close cell membranes and improve transdermal, or not transdermal, transcellular absorption across the membrane of the cell.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:50]: I then exercise on a bike, breathing oxygen, and finish with red light therapy. And so you're getting a big increase in ATP production and oxygen absorption. I'm thinking this is kind of similar because I've got the heat, which is increasing transitor absorption of the ozone and carbonic acid. I've got the carbonic acid, which is increasing vasodilation for better delivery of oxygen to tissues. I've got far infrared to actually structure the water so there's better nutrient delivery in and metabolic waste out. And then I've got. We haven't talked about this very much. There's these PEMF plates in there.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:26]: And the PEMF is allowing for the opening and the closing of the cell membranes to further accelerate the process. So basically this is stacking like five different modalities, all of which have a direct impact specifically on detoxification, getting stuff out of the body.

Andre Smith [00:53:42]: You're 100% correct. And basically, I don't know. So Gary uses the HOCATT as well, and he also uses, I think maybe our PEMF mat.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:51]: Yeah, you're right. He is. He's one of the few friends I have who has HOCATT also.

Andre Smith [00:53:55]: Yeah, yeah. So guy is a huge believer in HOCATT and he uses the PEMF and the PEMF. Well, there's some interesting things that we need to talk about that as well. So you have exactly what you. Basically what you're saying, you got all of this technology stacking each other, whether one potentiate the other. You need electricity, you need blood flow, you need nutrient absorption, you need your enzymes to work, you need your hormones to be balanced, you need neurotransmitters to fire, to give signals in your nervous system. There's something I want to come back to that's very interesting. I think you'll find it very, very interesting about the carbonic acid.

Andre Smith [00:54:31]: The other very important thing that make a huge difference between anything else that people know in the ground, this industry is that, you know, when people go to bird, they are tired, they, they go to bed, they get like a good eight hours sleep, they wake up the next morning and they still tired. Right? Yeah, A lot of that's got to do. Okay. There's a lot of different reasons for that matter, but a lot of that got to do with your central nervous system or your autonomic nervous system. Where people are chronically, they, you know, had like suffering from stress. So what happened is they get sympathetic. So your autonomic nervous system got sympathetic and parasympathetic. The parasympathetic is your race and digest part, which is supposed to be dominant most of your day should be rest and digest.

Andre Smith [00:55:23]: And then you have your sympathetic, which is fight and flight. Right. So when you over a prolonged period of time have stress. And it can be any kind of stress. Your, your body doesn't know. Your autonomic nervous system doesn't know if it's your mother, your grand, your mother in law visiting, you know, standing at the deer or if it's a tiger or whatever. They just there and it seems like a real stress and it's over a prolonged period. So now your automag nervous system have sympathetic dominant.

Andre Smith [00:55:53]: Your body cannot effectively maintain or regenerate itself at night when you sleep. If you are now sympathetic dominant.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:04]: Yeah, the analogy I use is try working out with a big meal in your stomach. You're trying to combine a sympathetic and a parasympathetic activity and the two do not combine.

Andre Smith [00:56:13]: Well, exactly 100% correct. So basically what. So carbonic acid is your body's natural mechanism to try and get all of that sorted out. The problem is stress, right? Is when you, when, when you have chronic stress, you, you breathe more shallower, your chest cavity closes and you don't inhale it, you know, properly anymore. So now that's where your, why your blood pressure, you know, increase, it gets higher because your carbonic acid in your body from your breathing got altered because of stress, right? So carbonic acid is actually supposed to regulate it. But if you don't breathe properly, you don't have that mechanism to work. So what, so what HOCATT does is this is why CO2 comes in the beginning. It first of all dilate your blood vessels, relaxes your binding sites, it increase your blood flow.

Andre Smith [00:57:14]: But it now put your sedate your central nervous system. So your parasympathetic meta system come up and your sympathetic come down. Your fight and flight, it starts to regulate it. And papers show that over a prolonged period of using carbonic acid, it will turn that balance back for you. Because if you're a chronic stressor, it doesn't matter. You can see we, we see it all the time where you have people, they, you have two of the people almost with exactly the same issues, right? And you do exactly the same things with them. One guy respond phenomenally, the other guy just, it's not working. And the reason for that is, the reason for that is, is that you know, stress and guilt and all kinds of stuff, you know, that's going on in their, in their daily life.

Andre Smith [00:58:06]: But then when you add the carbonic acid, when you add now the CO2 and HOCATT, you get all those physiological responses. It kind of bring back that it first sought out your autonomic nervous system. So that now tonight, when you see, for the first time, your body is actually able to effectively maintain and repair itself.

Ben Greenfield [00:58:28]: I sleep. I sleep like a baby. As a matter of fact, I, I have a red light, like a red light bed and I go in there, like fall asleep in the red light bed after the HOCATT. I'm like, I, I. And then I've got energy later on, but there's like one or two hours afterwards where I'm like, literally just like zombie mode. And and I should mention, by the way, you just made a very good case also for mouth taping. One of the reasons that mouth taping helps a lot of people sleep is mild carbon dioxide retention during sleep and a little bit of parasympathetic nervous system activation. Okay, so I know we could go on for hours.

Ben Greenfield [00:59:04]: I've mentioned a few times I do this once a week. What do you think about. What do you think about that as far as timing or frequency?

Andre Smith [00:59:11]: You know what I would do? I mean, like, optimally, if you do it twice a week, that would be like really, really great. Yeah, twice a week is really, it's the sweet spot. Right?

Ben Greenfield [00:59:26]: So, okay, okay.

Andre Smith [00:59:27]: People that do more. But I would say twice a week is really three. Three, Three is, I mean, like for some people that really want to, you know. Yeah, for time. But normally what you want to do is twice is perfect and once is for maintenance and it really affects a bunch, you know.

Ben Greenfield [00:59:48]: Hey. So as it turns out, there was some kind of a worldwide starlink outage that forced Andre and I, as we were just getting ready, as you probably heard, to wrap up, to lose each other. So anyways, if you want the show notes, you can go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/ HOCATT podcast. It's spelled H O C A T T. HOCATT. BenGreenfieldLife.com/ HOCATT Podcast and I also have another little message here from Andre. Thanks so much for enjoying this episode. Very curious if any of you get a chance to try this thing out.

Ben Greenfield [01:00:24]: For yourself, to discover even more tips, tricks, hacks and content to become the most complete, boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

Ben Greenfield [01:00:37]: Foreign.

Ben Greenfield [01:00:42]: Compliance with the FTC guidelines. Please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items. But the price is the same for you and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mentioned. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion LLC, the makers of Kion branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support and with full authenticity and transparency recommend. In good conscience, I personally vet each and every product that I talk about.

Ben Greenfield [01:01:27]: My first first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.