Longevity, Rehab, Recovery with KAATSU and Steven Munatones with Linda Kreter
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Welcome to Wise Health for Women Radio with Linda Prater. Women are pressed daily to give more, learn more, and be more, often at the expense of mind, body, or spirit. Each week with intriguing guests and topics, we'll bring you fresh ways to view your limited time, encouraging a shift to new, healthier perspectives. Wise Health for Women Radio, helping women thrive. And now here's your host, Linda Prater.

Good morning and welcome to Wise Health for Women Radio. I'm Linda Crater and I am here today with someone who's at the cutting edge of vanguard medicine, if you want to call it medicine or therapy or wellness, and I'll call it all of those things. Something to help your performance, your fitness, your health, your health care, your health care, your health care, your health care, your health care.

Your ability to build muscle at any age, he will tell you about people building muscle at 100 years old. So I read in another book of another guest who will be on at some point where she said –

If you want to be vintage and vital, you need to take care of the normal things like good nutrition, movement, exercise, and take advantage of some new therapies that you may not have even heard of. And that's what we're going to do today. We'll be talking with Stephen Munitones about Katsu, which is a very specific therapy.

What should we call it? It's a body pressure. Yes. And it goes in four different areas, longevity, rehabilitation, recovery, and athletic performance. So, Stephen, welcome to our program.

Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure. I'm stopping using the word therapy because really what we're focused on here is health span, staying healthy, staying vibrant as long as we possibly can. And too many people find, quote, exercise too difficult or going to the next level. Gosh, I don't know what to do. Does that mean I just incline my treadmill? No.

And in many ways, it's those things, but much more, including your mindset. So can you tell us how you started even finding out about Katsu and Dr. Sato?

Yeah, so I actually met Dr. Sato in 2001 in Japan, in Tokyo. I'm a lifelong swimmer, and it just so happened that my high school coach became one of the Olympic coaches for the Olympic swim team, and they were having a world championship.

in Japan prior to or just after the Olympics. And he asked me to go because I speak, read and write Japanese. And I went and I saw these Japanese athletes with these bands around their arms. And I went up to them. I asked them what it was. And long story short, I met Dr. Sato. And it was like on Golden Pond when I went to go visit his clinic.

And he had a bunch of, I mean, he must have had 30, 40 people, Japanese older people waiting in line, waiting to see him. And I stood at the back of the line and finally it was my turn to see him. And he did Katsu on me. I was immediately, immediately, um,

taken by this. It was nothing I'd ever seen before. And my first thought was, well, I'm in line with all these older people. At the time, I was in my 40s. These people were all above 60. And I thought, this would probably be good for my parents. At the time, they were also in their 60s. And so I asked him, Dr. Sato, how can I learn how to do this? I'm from America. And he points up to his forehead and he says,

It's all in my head. And I said, okay, well, you know, how can I learn that? He says, well, I've been waiting for someone who speaks English, who lives overseas, so I can teach them or you how to do Katsu and share it with the rest of the world. I said, sign me up, doctor. And 13 years later, literally 13 years later, AfroKatsu,

after he had mentored me, after he had taken me to hospital wards, he had taken me to sumo dojos where the sumo wrestlers train. He took me to the professional baseball teams, Olympic teams, people who are quadriplegic, amputees, had MS, you name it. And he taught me

how to utilize Katsu on all these people, obviously in Japan, in the Japanese language. So during all those 13 years, I was documenting everything, putting everything down in English. And then in 2014, he said, okay, you can, I think you know enough now, go out and share Katsu with the world. So long story short.

Yes, but that's a wonderful story. And I apologize for not mentioning your immense physical fitness yourself and knowing what you can do. You also have...

been enabling baby boomers and older to be able to increase blood circulation and muscle tone. But tell us about in 2016, you used it as a cardiac therapy for yourself, as fit as you were. Yes. Again, I've been a swimmer, a long distance swimmer. So I swam across channels and lakes and you name it.

throughout my life. And I thought I was physically fit. And I was physically fit until I took three trips from California to Tokyo in 11 days. Oh, my gosh. And that was way too much for me. And on the third trip, my vision as I was coming out of the airport in LAX, my vision narrowed

I, my wife met me at the airport. She said, you look terrible. You need to sleep, you know, no more business trips for you. And so I, I went home. I slept the next morning. I came downstairs. I face planted and my 17 year old son gave me hands-only CPR. He kept me alive. They took me to the hospital where I had a stent placed in my

left ascending artery. And yeah, they call that the widow maker. Right. And when I woke up, I think I woke up seven on the seventh or eighth day, I woke up from that induced coma. And when the doctor explained to me what happened, I, my first question was, can I do Katsu in the hospital?

Now, prior to that, in the 13-year mentorship under Dr. Sato, I was trained by a team of cardiologists at the University of Tokyo Hospital, and

precisely how to use Katsu with people who had a cardiac event, you know, heart bypass surgery, heart attack, stroke, et cetera. So I knew what to do. I had just always done it on other people, not myself. And so I used our own therapy to rehabilitate myself and it worked

worked as advertised. And of course my own cardiologist who hadn't heard of this therapy or modality warned me, no, don't do that. I actually took the equipment in. I had my, actually I had my wife take the equipment into the hospital and he

And he says, no way, you're not putting that on your arms or legs and not doing that in this hospital. And so, you know, I was in shock because I had the widowmaker heart attack, but I did follow instructions. But as soon as they released me and I was home, I started to apply the

Got to. Got to.

He is a convert for me. I still have to, you know, it's conventional medicine. So it takes a long, long time. And I'm an N of one. So one of his patients has used this. And I say, doctor, I'm not a miracle. What I am is a Katsu user. And so that's my own personal rehab story.

Well, but the good news is that you were not stopped from doing this once you went into rehab or were released to go home. But the funny thing is there's such a nice mix of Eastern and Western medicine that can really help us all. And cardiologists are known to be some of the most educated but also the most rigid protocol-ridden group.

So I'm not at all surprised that they didn't want you doing that in the hospital due to risk. And I have air quotes around the word risk. Um,

But it worked, didn't it? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I wouldn't be alive if the doctor had not very quickly put a stent in my artery. So that Western medicine acute care was, I mean, for my case and for millions of others, it's life-saving. Thereafter, what I was doing was I was using the Eastern approach of really how do we take

this individual who went through a very traumatic event in his heart and allow his vascular tissue, my vascular tissue, to become more resilient, more elastic in order to prevent that from ever happening again. And I knew that is exactly what I had studied and

under the Japanese doctors. So I simply, instead of applying Katsu to patients, I was simply applying Katsu to myself. And I was very much willing to take that risk because in my mind, there was no risk. There was only upside. Well, you'd seen it happen for so many people. And some people have to see to believe. Other people don't.

just won't embrace something if they've made their mind up against it it's very very difficult to change someone's opinion if that's what they believe to mean but can you explain the mechanism of how katsu works i i actually have done this so you have bands that go on your upper arm and various places and on your legs and tell how the mechanism works and why it works

Okay. So think of a blood pressure cuff. A blood pressure cuff covers your upper arm and it's very stiff. And we all know when we take our blood pressure, it squeezes our arm very, very tightly. And then we actually feel the pulsation, that dun-dun-dun-dun, as the healthcare professional is taking our blood pressure. So put that in

image in your mind. Now take that blood pressure cuff and make it very, very narrow, about maybe an inch and a half in width. Now that...

That band that we call a katsu band, we put it on our upper arm or upper leg. And that band inside has a pneumatic or it has an air bladder. And that air bladder is shaped in the shape of a U. It's actually oval shaped. And what that does is when a blood pressure cuff, when that cuff is inflated, it squeezes the entire arm and then the blood is inflated.

is cut off momentarily. In Katsu, when that U-shaped, oval-shaped air bladder

is fully inflated, it applies only a gentle pressure to the arm that allows what we call the arterial flow or the flow of blood from our torso out to our hand to continue unimpeded. So blood continues to pour into our arm as normal. When that oval shaped bladder is inflated, what happens is the venous return or the flow of blood from our hand back to our torso is slowed down.

And that is the only thing the Katsu band does. That's the only thing the equipment does. What the body does in response is what Dr. Sato, the inventor, was speaking. And that is when the band is inflated for 30 seconds, that venous flow, the return blood is slowed down, and then your arm or your leg gets engorged in blood.

And when our arms or legs, the muscles of our arms, the biceps, triceps, and forearms, or the muscles of our legs, the quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, when they get engorged in blood, the body, the brain thinks it's working out. It's actually moving.

In this case, we're not moving. In most cases, I should say, we're sitting, we have bands and they're inflating, deflating, inflating, deflating. The body, the brain thinks we're actually doing vigorous exercise when in fact, all we're doing is engorging those major muscle groups in blood. When that happens,

And that's a natural act. It's what the body has evolved to do. Then that mere act is the catalyst, the kickstarter to a bunch of biochemical reactions in the body. All natural. This is what every human body does. And that includes biochemicals.

producing nitric oxide, vascular endothelial growth factor, growth hormone, beta-endorphin, and I can go on and on. But how you use the band, how tight you put on the band, how much air you put in the bladder, and how long you have it on

are the differences between are you using this for longevity, are you using it for a broken bone, are you using it to increase your vertical leap? And those are all the different protocols that Dr. Sato and his team of cardiologists developed over the decades. And that was the stuff that they were teaching me

So I could take it and share it with the outside world of Japan. I love hearing about all of this. And it's a nice segue into our sponsor for today's show. Today's show sponsor is BetterHelp, which is an online resource for online therapy for families, couples, teens, etc. And along with our physical health program,

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Visit BetterHelp.com forward slash wise today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com forward slash wise. May your path ahead be smoother. And Stephen, isn't it true that when your physical health is improved, so too often is your mental health?

Oh, absolutely. One of the very first things that literally the first thing that Dr. Sato taught me is when we do katsu on someone or we do it on ourselves, we want to achieve what he calls the katsu smile. He said, if we haven't ended a katsu session with a smile, then we either haven't done it. We haven't done it properly or we we've done it incorrectly. And so he, he,

always said when all his patients came to visit him, he said, I had to end the session when they had a smile. It could be a small smile, more likely it was a broad smile. And why did that occur? Let's say they had, they came in with a pain and he was able to reduce the pain. Let's say they had a question and he was able to explain how, and he said, it's very, very important to, to,

to achieve that smile. And I think that's exactly what you were alluding to. And that is a concrete expression of the very positive,

psychological situation that we find ourselves in. It could be someone said a joke. It could be we saw a newborn baby. It could be we saw a rainbow, whatever the case is. When humans smile, we know that inside there's a lot of good, positive vibes going on. And actually, you know, biochemical, literally elements are flowing through the body. Right, right.

Right. Liquid sunshine, as they say. I've got a specific question for you about one of the four areas that you're talking about. People are wanting to live longer, but they want to live longer healthfully. So how does Katsu help with longevity, healthy longevity?

So those two things were exactly what Dr. Sato set off to achieve. And the reason why is he was in a unique situation in Japan, the oldest society in the history of mankind. Right now, there are more older Japanese in any country.

any other society. Location, right. Yeah, everything. And so, and with AIDS, you know, that that comes with disease, it comes with chronic pain in general. And his goal in life was, how do I actually, and this may sound strange, but he wanted us to

die without pain and without illness. That was his goal. Now, of course, that can't be achieved by everybody, but that was his goal. Same as you end each session with a smile, we want to pass away without that kind of pain that we know of all these chronic diseases. So how do you achieve that? In his world, he understood how the human anatomy, how the human physiology works.

exists. One of the critical things is good blood flow, good blood circulation. We know that, you know, when we have an injury, when we have a bruise, when we have neuropathy, when we have cold hands, cold feet, you name it, we, we,

innately understand that the blood flow is harmed, reduced, somehow it's not optimized. Katsu, when we engorge the limb in blood, arms or legs, this actually improves the blood circulation. It actually makes the vascular tissue, our

capillaries, veins, and arteries more elastic. And elasticity, what does that mean? That means it's more pliable. That means when we're a baby, when we're in teenagers, when we're young adults, our vascular tissue is very soft and pliable. And as we get older, especially if we lead a sedentary lifestyle, then that elasticity increases.

lessons a lot. And if we have some kind of diseases or illness, it could be smoking, it could be obesity, et cetera. These things start to impact the blood circulation. And so Katsu, one of Dr. Sato's two pillars was actually, how do I create something that improves that blood circulation? So that's one. The second is the

regular hormonal response that we normally have. Now, whether we're male or female, we actually go through life cycles, whether that's puberty, menopause, et cetera, where the body naturally goes through these cycles. We go through the cycles in the decades of our life. And then we also go through our daily cycle, the circadian rhythm, if you will. And so those people who are healthy are

have a robust hormonal response because they're active, because they're eating well, because they're sleeping well. So in other words, someone who eats well, who gets adequate exercise, who sleeps well,

You know, they're the amount of growth hormone, the amount of beta endorphins, the amount of things, you know, as esoteric as plasmologen, ceramide, et cetera. They're regularly flowing through the body. And Dr. Santo understood these very fundamental building blocks of our hormonal secretion and blood flow circulation. And he was trying to think of how do I get how do I achieve that with blood?

some modality and his modality, his answer to that was Katsu. And those are the two pillars that he's looking at. So when you do Katsu, you're continuing that blood, the good blood circulation that we had in our, in our youth. And we're continuing the regular, robust hormonal responses that again, we had in our youth. And we just

want to continue that literally until we're 100 years and older. So elasticity in the arteries, veins, etc. Does that come over time?

If you haven't done ever anything, so say you're 60 years old and you're just starting Katsu, is there a time period? I mean, should you not rush it? Like all things, if it took you 60 years to get there, it's not going to happen overnight. So what's a good rule of thumb for expectations? Because you know how people set goals these days. They set unrealistic ones and then are disappointed when they don't achieve it.

Yes. We say six to eight weeks. Okay. And that is whatever stage in life you are. And that is the reason why is, again, if you live a sedentary life with

let's say poor nutritional habits or, you know, off and on sleeping cycle, it's going to take time for that vascular tissue. Think of it. Think of your vascular tissue as a balloon, like rubber in a balloon. Yes. You know, if we leave a rubber balloon out on the sidewalk in the heat of summer, it's going to get very brittle. Mm hmm.

if we keep it in the shade, keep it moist, et cetera, it will retain its elasticity. We want to take that very brittle balloon on the sidewalk and regain its elasticity so it's that

new kind of rubber. That takes time, but it takes gradual increase. So a lot of the people, when they first try Katsu, they go, I don't feel anything. And yes, they do not feel anything psychologically in their head, but their capillaries absolutely feel something. And how we explain it is if we take all of the capillaries in our body and lined them up end to end,

for one human, that would wrap around the earth two times. That's amazing. That's how many capillaries we have. And that is the beauty of Katsu. It's working on the capillary system. And most of the blood in our body is not in our heart.

Most of the blood in our body is not in the very large veins or arteries. It's actually in the very, very small capillaries. These capillaries are so small that one blood cell and some of them, one blood cell is flowing at one time.

And so we want to increase that elasticity of the very, very small capillary tissue that is actually a large part of our human body. We just never think about it. We don't. No, not at all. Even if we take a biology class in high school or college, we often see this illustration of a human and quite often have a heart. All the spider webs? Yes.

Yeah, it'll have the red lines that indicate the arteries and have the blue lines that indicate the veins and a few liver, pancreas, bladder, etc. But in reality, if you did an illustration that was anatomically accurate, that illustration would literally be all red because the capillaries are so much, so ubiquitous.

I work a lot with veterans, and I know that those with amputations have a hard time with circulation, summer and winter. And would this be something that could assist them in greater movement, flexibility, or just health and well-being in terms of strength?

Yes. So our biggest non-civilian customer is the U.S. military. And unfortunately, we do have a lot of men and women who have lost a limb, either in training, war, what have you.

Yeah. So those individuals, unfortunately, they feel a variety of pain. They have neuropathic pain. They have phantom pain. Right. And when we put the katsu on their limbs and again, we've worked with people with no legs and one leg.

arm and they may have a residual limb you know what we call you know quote a stump if you will even if they have a very small residual limb we put the katsu bands on that residual limb and what happens is the ultimate in the katsu smile the ultimate in the katsu smile because quite often what they're feeling is that neuropathic pain or that phantom right

And then all of a sudden you see the end of their residual M get very pink.

you see it actually twitching in most cases, twitching quite like they're literally moving the arm. And suddenly what's happening is that peripheral vascular tissue, the very small capillaries, are sitting next to a bed of nerves. And suddenly the vascular tissue is engorged as if the individual had a limb and was moving the limb.

And then the individual, you see this huge, broad smile because many of them, unfortunately, they're on all kinds of pain medications. Sometimes they take illicit drugs or drink, I mean, anything to dull the pain and they

you know, those are the individuals that we'd love to help. And those are the individuals why in the U S military, they've been recommending Katsu. It's, it's you were mentioning in, in,

in the show that, you know, the importance of self-care. And this is something where the soldiers can, can take the, they take the units back with them. They, they, they travel with them. They take them to work, they bring them home. And when they start feeling that phantom pain or the neuropathic pain, they put on the bands on their arms or legs. And they, they have relief. And, you know, as everybody knows, when we,

When we can relieve pain, obviously that's a huge relief. There's often a smile and sometimes there's laughter just because, okay, how is this happening? And then what we do with the soldiers or amputees, we just explain physiologically what's happening. They look at the residual limb and then they start to, you know, okay, I never thought of the human anatomy and human physiology in this way. Sure.

And, you know, those are the kind of people, those in quadriplegics and paraplegics, I mean, those are the people that when they have a huge conscious smile, we have a huge smile ourselves. Well, you're giving them a sense of empowerment. That's why I brought it up, because I saw in your bio that you have long worked with the military and the SEALs and special forces, et cetera. And it is.

It often is the case that big medical systems like VA don't often have all of this cutting edge stuff. But what you have is something that they can self-administer and they can feel empowered in their own care, which I think is so important to not only the self-care, but to the mindset. Because these are warriors.

And they're always going to be warriors, but they're not always treated that way. And so I wanted specifically for you to mention that here's where we are able to tell people where to go to get more information on both you, the team, and Katsu. And that's by going to Katsu, K-A-A, two A's, T-S-U dot com.

Again, that's Katsu, K-A-A-T-S-U dot com. And Katsu Global works around the country and you have many options. Is there something you'd like to add about what they can find at the website so that they will learn more and get the most out of this?

Yes, we have two consumer units. They're both handheld. One has connector tubes, which is our most popular model. It's very, very easy to use. A touch of a button here, a touch of a button there, and you're off and running. It runs automatically. Because most of our civilian users are over the age of 50 all the way up to 98 is our oldest American user,

He's the last living World War II aviator, in fact. These people just enjoy the simplicity of what we call the Katsu C3. C stands for cycle. 3 stands for third generation. And then we have our B models. That's B1, B2. Those B stands for Bluetooth. This is a model that does not have tubes.

and that you utilize it using an app, your smartphone. Some people like using a smartphone, other people prefer not. And so we offer two different versions. The advantage of the C3, the connected unit, if you will, is its simplicity.

The advantage of the Bluetooth version is that you can actually share your data with your healthcare provider or with your coach or with your spouse. And it's very fascinating in...

information that we've gathered. For example, women love using Katsu on their lower body, their legs. Men love using Katsu on their upper body. I can just imagine the typical Katsu male user is working on his biceps, his biceps, his chest. The typical female user is working on her hips, her glutes, and her legs. I mean, it is so stereotypically true.

But that's what the users want, and that's what we aim to provide. You know, Stephen, thank you so much for sharing this process, the whole thinking behind it, the empowerment that comes with it. Because Katsu really...

really makes sense. And I'm just delighted that you shared with us. So thank you for your wisdom today. And don't forget, go to Katsu, K-A-A-T-S-U.com for more information. We'll have another great guest next week. Make it a great week. Thank you for tuning in today. You can find more shows at wisehealthforwomenradio.com.