Peptide Therapy Round 2 BPC-157 and TB-500
February 26, 2021Dimensions of Chronological and Biological Age
March 7, 2021Apollo Review
I originally wrote this article back in September, but then it was put on the back burner due to my series on COVID-19, articles about clinical research, and the, in my opinion, more urgent and important subjects regarding hydrogen water scam products. When I started this project, I was intent on doing a three-part review; part one would focus on my subjective experience with the Apollo Neuro device as well as my recorded sleep data using the device for 30 days against a 30-day control period. Parts two and three were to deal with claims from their research and athletic recovery and stress reduction, respectively and involved a deeper objective analysis with controls. For the device I purchased to track anxiety and stress reduction, the “mood metric” proved to be quite erratic and unreliable, so I axed that portion of the analysis. A lot of wild, inaccurate data does not a good analysis make. After that change, I shifted to writing one review, encompassing a mix of subjective experience and recorded outcomes for sleep and athletic recovery.
I chose to critically review and assess the Apollo Neuro band for a couple of key reasons. First, upon a cursory glance of its website, it seemed to be committed to validating its technology clinically. More on that later in the post. The second key reason is its popularity with some of the most widely known biohackers, with its founder having been featured on both Dave Asprey and Ben Greenfield’s podcasts.
Apollo Neuro: Value and User Friendliness
It is important to note that, when I purchased the Apollo neuro device, I entered a 15% off coupon and it did not register the discount. I tried another that I found, and that also did not work. It appears the company deactivated some, if not all, of its affiliates’ discount codes. So be prepared to pay full price, which came to $391.65 USD after the delivery fee.
The Apollo neuro device does come with two straps, allowing users to wear it on either their wrist or their ankle. I preferred the ankle option and did not find the Apollo Neuro device to be at all annoying or uncomfortable to wear.
What I did find annoying was the Apollo Neuro’s battery life and alerts to advise when to charge, or rather, the lack of either. The Apollo Neuro’s battery life is absolute garbage and is not a fast charge, with a 4–5-hour battery life while in use, but inconsistent. Sometimes I run for 30 minutes and it loses 3% of its charge. Other times I run for an hour and it loses almost half its battery life. There are no alerts when it is running low or out of battery, and it takes roughly an hour to fully charge. On two occasions after the battery ran to 0, the device would not reconnect with the app, and I was forced to delete the app and download it again. This is a major user-friendliness issue that Apollo Neuro should look to address soon.
How Solid Is the Research?
I will discuss more the currently published clinical research in the sections devoted to that area. As for the new research efforts, I received this email below. It seems Apollo is taking a page from OOLER’s book and scraping the bottom of the barrel concerning its clinical research standards by recruiting current, presumably happy, users.
Join the Apollo + Oura Ring Sleep Research Team Do you wear an Oura Ring? If you do, we’d love to have you join our current sleep study through Dr. Dave Rabin’s Oura Ring group. As a member of the study, you’ll share access to your Oura Ring sleep data with Apollo Neuroscience’s research team. You snooze, we study. Deal? We’re really excited to have you join! Your data will help us improve our ‘Sleep and Renew’ mode and develop new sleep features. By joining our research team, we will grant you first access to these new features! Just click below to join the research team! Note – you need to have an existing Oura Ring account to participate. A note on privacy: We take privacy and confidentiality very seriously. We will never share or publish your data. |
Join the Apollo + Oura sleep study |
My Experimentation with the Apollo Neuro Sleep Device
Energy and Wake Up
From Apollo Neuro:
“Energy and Wake Up” mode is designed to improve wakefulness and attention by combining frequencies of vibration known to gently elevate heart rate[41-47] with those vibrations shown to improve physical and mental recovery from stress, as measured by HRV[2, 48-54]. Apollo users typically use this model in the morning and whenever they need a burst of energy.
I used the Apollo mode for “energy and wake up” only at times when I was very tired and run-down, giving it the best opportunity to succeed if there is a mechanism of action while simultaneously mitigating the chance I would decide to “pick up my pace” and get back to work, so to speak. I found no benefit in energy or wakefulness upon 10 attempts. I tried while burnt out after a long day, while fighting off sleep too early in the morning, when waking up exhausted and run down, and even when hungover. Not even one of my 10 tests led to anything resembling a boost in energy or wakefulness, subjectively speaking.
1 NO (early evening of a long day)
2 NO (early morning after a poor sleep)
3 NO (hungover)
4 NO (mid-afternoon on a day I was tired)
5 NO (early evening of a long day)
6 NO (hungover)
7 NO (tired after a workout than a 2-hour hike in the hot sun)
8 NO (tired after a long day of meetings)
9 NO (early morning after a poor sleep)
10 NO (mid-morning, still groggy)
Calm (Relax and Unwind)
1 YES
2 YES, was stressed and burned out, 10 minutes in got up and started doing chores and turned on music
3 YES, “red” with anger, within 10 minutes was completed relaxed
After three experiences that I would subjectively describe as incredibly effective, in conjunction with my wife attempting to annex the device for her own use, as she felt it worked remarkably well for her own stress and anxiety, I decided I needed to evaluate this feature more objectively. Upon attempting to do so using the “mood metric” and realizing that the novel wearable was not giving consistent readings allowing massive swings second to second, I scraped the more thorough and objective analysis. Subjectively, it has worked for both my wife and I for relaxation.
Apollo Neuro: Sleep Quality, Latency
The first paragraph on the Apollo Neuro website reads:
“Apollo improves your body’s resilience to stress, so you can focus, get to sleep, and stay energized.”
Sounds good to me. Anyone following my writing knows that I am extremely interested in improving sleep quality. The questions become:
1. Do it have any evidence for this claim?
2. Does it work for me?
In trying to read through the website, I find its evidence on improving sleep to be tenuous at best. The home page has a couple of testimonials on improved sleep, and its “Science” page has this explanation:
“IT’S ALL ABOUT BALANCE
Apollo isn’t just about relaxing, and it isn’t just about performing. Apollo is about physical and mental balance and we’ve designed each set of modes to help your body gently transition through your natural response to touch.
How? We combined frequencies of vibration known to change our energy levels by increasing or decreasing parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system activity[41-54]. Modes designed for rest and relaxation contain more slow-moving gentle frequencies known to increase parasympathetic activity, the branch of your nervous system that is activated when you meditate, deep breathe, and sleep [2, 9, 14, 27-31]. Modes for energy contain vibration frequencies known in the literature to increase heart rate and blood flow for increased energy and alertness[2, 41-54].
Every single Apollo mode, whether it is designed to increase wakefulness or to help you fall asleep, is designed to restore your body by improving heart rate variability (HRV).”
So, the claims come down to reduced stress, both physical and mental. Sounds great — improving stress resilience should lead to improved sleep, if its tech actually does this, and if I see a result. As previously described, I used multiple settings every day for 30 days. I used the wakefulness setting 10 times, I used the recovery setting after every workout, I used the relaxation setting every time I was feeling stressed or angry, and I used the sleep setting for 120 minutes each night before bed. In fact, I used the longest time settings each use to ensure maximal benefit.
This is the data I recorded:
Abbreviation Meanings
Active Calorie Burn: Amount of energy burned in addition to resting metabolic rate
HRV = Heart Rate Variability
RHR = Resting Heart Rate
RR = Respiratory Rate
REM = Periods of Rapid Eye Movement Sleep
Deep = Periods of Deep Sleep
Latency = The elapsed time it takes you to transition from being fully awake to the beginning stages of sleep.
Data |
Active Calories Burned |
Sleep Time |
Sleep Score |
REM Time |
REM % |
Deep Time |
Deep % |
HRV |
RHR |
RR |
Body Temp |
Latency |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Control |
938.67 |
415.4 |
77.73 |
74.2 |
17.97 |
125.1 |
30.17 |
85.27 |
42.13 |
14.34 |
-0.12 |
12.63 |
Apollo Neuro |
897.03 |
429.47 |
76.17 |
77.2 |
17.53 |
129.43 |
30.73 |
73.2 |
45.17 |
14.56 |
-0.02 |
12.67 |
Winner |
N/A |
Apollo |
Ctrl |
Apollo Neuro |
Ctrl |
Apollo Neuro |
Apollo Neuro |
Ctrl |
Ctrl |
Ctrl |
Ctrl |
Ctrl |
I’m not sure about anyone else, but I am not seeing any sleep improvements during my Apollo Neuro 30 day test against the previous 30-day control. In fact, if the Apollo Neuro strap worked as advertised one would expect to see an improvement in multiple parameters. However, all measured outcomes see either a significant advantage to my control data or negligible changes. Namely: heart rate variability, resting heart rate, respiratory rate, body temperature, and latency. In none of these areas was there any improvement with the Apollo Neuro device, and in fact, there was a regression, with outcomes being generally negative.
Alcohol, diet, exercise, and activity were all controlled fairly well, and the Apollo Neuro was added “in addition to” the rest of the interventions I used, all of which were consistent for both 30-day periods. In short, there were no confounding variables in which I could say the data from Apollo Neuro could have been compromised.
Athletic Recovery, Its Clinical Evidence, and My Attempts To Replicate
Apollo Neuro for Athletic Recovery
Apollo Neuro claims it has a study showing recovery following exercise. Very oddly, it does not link to the actual study or provides sufficient details on the study design. By its explanation, it seems to be an open-label study (non-randomized or placebo-controlled, non-blinded), conducted by a happy customer.
I set out to replicate its claimed results.
My Design
Used the 30-minute recovery session.
All workouts 32.5-minute heavy bag workouts, 5-minute rounds with 30-second breaks
5 minutes before baseline measurement allowing to wipe off, drink some water, etc., and reasonable time to set up BP and Biostrap.
BP and HR from OMRON
HRV from Biostrap
30-minute recovery spent sitting on couch responding to emails
Biostrap reminds me of why it is a useless piece of garbage. It intermittently takes up to 30 minutes or more to give the HRV data, rendering the reading useless, as I have elapsed the retest time. Sometimes it takes moments, as in less than a minute. Sometimes it fails to give a reading after a significant amount of time, meaning the entire workout has to be scratched and redone. Redoing this over and over was completely frustrating. I cannot state enough how useless I feel the Biostrap is. It is the worst wearable device I have ever owned by an exceptionally large margin.
Workout |
Base HR |
Post HR |
Base BP |
Post BP |
Base HRV |
Post HRV |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Apollo 1 |
98 |
69 |
140/72 |
128/68 |
9 |
32 |
Apollo 2 |
110 |
78 |
140/77 |
120/76 |
9 |
21 |
Apollo 3 |
103 |
77 |
147/81 |
127/76 |
9 |
28 |
Apollo 4 |
107 |
77 |
160/74 |
160/77 |
10 |
29 |
Apollo 5 |
106 |
82 |
143/69 |
123/71 |
6 |
16 |
Control 1 |
84 |
74 |
118/65 |
122/70 |
9 |
100 |
Control 2 |
111 |
77 |
153/71 |
128/78 |
8 |
25 |
Control 3 |
114 |
83 |
149/80 |
128/76 |
8 |
25 |
Control 4 |
115 |
70 |
146/86 |
131/84 |
9 |
30 |
Control 5 |
107 |
87 |
143/80 |
136/82 |
6 |
21 |
Workout |
Base HR |
Post HR |
HR Drop |
Base BP |
Post BP |
BP Drop |
Base HRV |
Post HRV |
HRV Gain |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Apollo Average |
104.8 |
76.6 |
28.2 |
146/74.6 |
131.6/73.6 |
-14.4/-1 |
8.6 |
25.2 |
16.6 |
Control Average |
106.2 |
80.2 |
26 BPM |
141.8/76.4 |
129/78 |
-12.8/+ 1.6 |
8 |
40.2 |
32.2 |
Control 1 is a significant outlier, so I corrected data to remove control 1.
Workout |
Base HR |
Post HR |
HR Drop |
Base BP |
Post BP |
BP Drop |
Base HRV |
Post HRV |
HRV Gain |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Apollo Average |
104.8 |
76.6 |
28.2 |
146/74.6 |
131.6/73.6 |
-14.4/-1 |
8.6 |
25.2 |
16.6 |
Control Average |
111.75 |
79.25 |
32.5 BPM |
147.75/ 79.25 |
130.75/80 |
-17/+ 0.75 |
7.75 |
25.25 |
17.5 |
As you can see, if anything, my control data showed better recovery aspects. I did not see anything suggesting beneficial outcomes from wearing the Apollo Neuro to improve athletic performance.
Conclusion
The Apollo Neuro is an expensive, trendy, biohacking device that doesn’t seem to live up to the hype — at least not for many of its claimed outcomes. I do believe the calming aspect may work. However, I would want to see some hard data to rule out the placebo effect on my wife and I. If you’re looking to purchase this device for sleep improvements or athletic recovery improvements, I would personally suggest saving your money.
4 Comments
“That was a good read. Thanks Alex.
As you know I’ve been using your H2 tablets for many years. Love them.
I’ve recently invested in a PEMF therapy mat and accessories.
I’m really happy with the results Ive had, especially improving my sleep pattern.
Friends I’ve lent this PEMF mat to have said the same
Thanks again “
“Thanks Chris, I haven’t tried the AquaCure. I have a design on an inhalation device I’d love to get made that gives what I believe to be the most effective dose while staying safe and legal for sale, but the pandemic has shut down a lot of new manufacturing possibilities.
We actually have multiple ongoing studies exploring sleep right now, a couple that are using OURA rings. Seems there could be something here.
I’ve seen the NanoVi but haven’t dived deep into them yet. I try to keep my reviews fair, and it isn’t fair to use baseline data from before time change/rainy season to evaluate a device after time change/rainy season. Basically, from April-October I tend to walk 1-2hrs every evening through rainforest parks near my house, 5+ days a week. In the “”dark months””, on top of the already established health consequences, holidays with more alcohol and worse food, etc, walking reduces.. my walks end up being 15-30 min in the evening through my neighborhood, usually in the rain, and longer ones just weekends. This can dramatically impact health markers (even a rise from ~40 RHR to 44, and a drop from 100 HRV to 85-90 is quite significant and unfair for a device to try to overcome)
As such, I will start reviewing different biohacks shortly, and will run through a number more in the coming months. I’ll take a look at the NanoVi, pricing, claims, etc, to see if I can fit it into what I have planned this year, so keep posted. “
“Alex, thanks a lot for this article! I’ve been considering trying it out but now probably won’t. I really dig all the articles you write. They’re incredibly helpful and, more importantly, based on hard evidence.
Also, love your H2 tabs too. In conjunction with my AquaCure (have you tried it?), I’ve noticed a fair amount of health benefits, which confirms what I’ve heard that H2 has different effects depending on the route of administration, i.e. inhalation vs drinking. Also had a positive effect on sleep according to my Oura Ring.
I recently started using the NanoVi, and it’s honestly helped with stress and anxiety. I tend to tense my shoulders. My scalp also tends to gets itchy when I’m anxious. Both are now noticeably less pronounced. Apparently they’ve also done placebo controlled, double blind, cross over studies on various biomarkers. I’d like to know your thoughts on those studies and experience using the device if possible.
Thanks again for all the thorough research you do man. Keep it up. I also wish you well, I know you’ve struggled a lot.”
Your review fits in pretty much with my experience with the Apollo. It is collecting dust as it is just one more device that requires charging and doesn’t actually do what it claims.