Wireless Smart Bandages w/ Dr. Jiang | Woke Education w/ Priscilla West | Stephanie's Recovery

♪ ♪ >>Welcome to American Medicine today. I'm Kimberly Bonati alongside Ethan Youker. Exciting show lined up. Let's get straight to it. A new type of bandage combines wireless electrical stimulation and biosensors to bring hope to patients were slow to heal injuries. Joining us to discuss is Yuanwen Jiang, engineer at University of Pennsylvania, who helped develop the smart bandage. Welcome to the show. Yuanwen. >>Of course. >>So can you explain what chronic wound is and why they're so hard to heal? >>Yes. Well, so obviously for chronic wounds, normally for normal people. Right. We feel like we have a cut during a couple of days. But for many people, this suffering from chronic conditions, especially diabetic patients, and because of the high blood glucose level, they are not going to have a rapid metabolism like how about like normal people works? So for these diabetic patients, it's extremely difficult for them to have a wound to heal by itself, especially those on the on that foot that's constantly under pressure. >>Tell us about these smart bandages. And they've been called an engineering marvel. And by what I've read, they certainly are. >>Yeah. >>Take it away. >>So obviously. Right. So we all know why we have some wound on the body. We want to put on a bandage. So a bandage has been around for hundreds, not maybe even thousands of years, just to cover ourselves, to protect the skin from the kind of environment. But it's quite interesting that even with the rapid development of modern technologies, right, the bandages and using nowadays in 2025 is probably the same as the one that was used in 1925 because the bandages are just some physical barriers. They don't have any active functions or anything to help us being like telling us the stage of the wound or like accelerating the healing or whatsoever. >>What does this look like when you actually put it on the wound? Is it is it thin? Because we're hearing it's almost like a coat of latex paint, this electrical layer. >>Yeah, it's So explain the layers, because the fact that you can get all of this, you know, technology in interesting things that are reactive into something that thin is, again, a engineering marvel. >>Yeah. Well so thanks to again, the the the parallel efforts of all this semiconductor manufacturing. Right. We have this very advanced manufacturing capabilities that now actually being able to make electronics as thing as a piece of paper and as flexible as a as it were can be. And now we could actually layout some of the circuitry on top of that and design a more advanced functionalities, like putting some biosensor in it, put in some stimulators for the treatment, and you can even use a smartphone to communicate. >>So there's supposed to be going to be, I'm guessing, moving ahead like an app that you can use to monitor that. >>Well, obviously, yes, exactly right. So you want to like use it as something for example, what diabetic patient has been already using continuous glucose monitoring. Right. So where you can tap your phone and get the current information of your wound, whether it's being healed, whether it's infected, like the risk level of getting infection. So you can have proactive treatment before anything bad that happens. >>Wow. So this can actually send the treatment to heal the wound right. And keep it sealed. >>Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. So besides just being able to monitor the wound, right. What we care more about is how you can make it heal better. So in this particular case, we use electrical stimulation to to do the job. And apparently right schemes are not just like that tissue. They are very active, consisting of all kinds of cells moving around and under the proper guidance of the external electric field, the cells can migrate along the gradient, just like finding their like the past to move around and that that can with the proper guidance of that direction. Right. So you can imagine cells can be pushed to the right place and also because we're constantly stimulating them, the cells are few more energetic in terms of their activity. So you can actually turn at the status of a cell otherwise maybe like cause inflammation, but in this case causing the regeneration or regrowth of the skin tissue. >>We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more of the smart bandage. You were watching American Medicine today. Revolutionary in his field, Dr. Bonati created, perfected and patented the Bonati spine procedures using his genius. Bonati invented the precise tools necessary to minimize surgery, scarring, anesthesia and recovery. So successful are the Bonati spine procedures. They consistently reflect 98.75% patient satisfaction. 80,000 procedures have been performed exclusively at our location. Nearly half our patients have suffered from failed back and next surgeries at other facilities. Bonati succeeds where others fail. Welcome back to American Medicine Today we're continuing the discussion on the intriguing smart bandage. >>Talk a little bit about what's called hydrogel. I had never heard of this and I guess it's what's used to seal the wound. And then my next thought was when I was reading this whole article about this, and again, most of it was way over my head. But I thought I thought So they use this hydrogel and then how do you take that off? Yeah, because it's like ripping a Band-Aid. Yeah. So explain what it is. >>Yeah, that's a great question. So hydrogel is something like our tissue, like skin tissue or like, whatever. Muscle tissue. It's like a it's a dense mass, but with lots of water in it. So the hydrogel can contain up to, like 80% of the water in it. And you can hold it. It can be squishy. It can be adhesive, depending on how you designed it. And in this particular case, we use a hydrogel as a way of attaching the electronics, which is usually dry adhesive to our skiin. Right. So you can have the hydrogel to be very adhesive and also at the same time to be electrically active. So you can send signals from the electronics to the body and also read out the signals. And you also mentioned. Right. So it seems like, oh, yeah, you have a very adhesive material, very sticky to the skin. That's great. But we all know, right, what you're trying to peel off a bandage from your wound in skiin. That's got to be pretty terrible. So in this particular case, we introduced a way of changing the adhesion or stickiness of the hydrogel material with the skin. So at the body temperature, it remains extremely sticky. Right. It's very important for us to make that bandage to be attached to the wounded skin, but we just need to heat it up a little bit to about a 105 degree so that the hydrogel will completely lose it. So the heated and you can just like easily put it off without causing any kind of changes to underlying. >>Skin when it comes to length of time that this hydrogel, this product would be on the wound. What is that healing process, time frame Are we talking days, weeks. >>Forever? >>Well, yeah. So for now, we did experiments, obviously not our human yet, but we did some animal experiments and we were able to show that we could accelerate the healing by about like shortening the time by about half. So we're not we're not we're trying to push it to further. So obviously, we want to maybe accelerate the healing by ten times, ten times faster. But that's also up to how the cells would respond. But we're not thinking about, you know, maybe on the other side of the face, but we can do the standard of care changes things for our like this kind of easily removable on and removable mechanism. >>Now, this is just proof of concept, correct? >>Yeah. >>Okay. Which means it's. >>Not going to be available for some time yet. >>Mass production or anything. Yeah. >>Yeah. Well, so yeah, obviously this is in the research stage because we are trying to troubleshoot all the, the best sensors we can get and the what's the best stimulation protocols. But fortunately, all of our manufacturing processes are already compatible with other industrial industrial scale. So, so scaling up, it's not going to be a problem. It will be more about fine tuning the parameters of every little details. So make sure we can produce the best product possible. >>Okay. Is this something that, once it's fully developed, is that going to be in stores for the average consumer to buy, or would this be something just located in doctors offices? >>Exac What my question is going to be you read my mind. >>Well, we are hoping for oh, I hope you've got like this thing can be directly readily available on the consumer markets. It will be similar to things like our you are trying to use electrical stimulation to relieve the pain or like do some electrical massaging of your of your of your muscles. So we're hoping to have it available just in the local retailers rather than having to be prescribed by the doctors. >>That's incredible technology. Thank you so much, Yuanwen jiang, for being on the show engineer at University of Pennsylvania who helped develop the smart bandage. Thanks for joining us. >>Thank you very much. >>Well, that's all the time we have for this segment. Make sure you stay tuned. We'll have more after the break. You were watching American Medicine today. >>I'm a physician. I'm a cancer specialist doing radiation oncology, working full time. I'm a person who really likes to exercise and take care of myself. Health is very, very important to me. >>Stephanie's active lifestyle was threatened after an injury to her lower back. >>I left with something very heavy and I herniated a lumbar disc and I went for six years getting various treatments. Finally, I went to Johns Hopkins and I had a lamenectomy and a spinal fusion, and I did physical therapy. I got a lot better. And then I exercised. I did everything I wanted. I had that pain a little bit above the area where I had the spinal fusion. And over several months I developed some numbness and tingling in my legs, feeling that my legs were actually weak. I felt like I was walking through molasses and I had numbness and tingling. I'm telling you, I couldn't do very much. I was extremely disabled. I was very, very worried. And my husband tells me he was worried I was going to end up in a wheelchair. So I had MRI's and they told me that I had some spinal stenosis, Lumbar three, which is above the area of the Fusion. >>Desperate to avoid another spinal fusion. Stephanie tried a number of conservative treatments to relieve her pain. >>I had the epidural injections which only worked for a short period of time. I went for physical therapy, which did nothing. Actually, it made me worse. I went to chiropractors, which didn't work. I had acupuncture, which didn't work. I had radio frequency ablation which didn't work. I took pain medicine, which was really only a Band-Aid, and it was really not a good answer because it wasn't solving the problem. So my husband brought me a newspaper article talking about minimally invasive spine surgery at the Bonati Institute. >>After learning about the Bonati Spine Institute, Stephanie scheduled an in-person evaluation. >>So I went there. Everyone was very nice to me. They took a lot of time reviewing it and they said yes. At the lumbar three level. They thought that they could help me and that it wouldn't be a long recovery time. I might only have a day or two off work and the post-operative recovery time would be very minimal. So I decided that I was going to do it because I really didn't have many other options. And I thought, Gee, the other procedure took me seven weeks to recover from, and I had metal plates and screws, which I absolutely did not want to go through. So this sounded like a really, really good option. >>The exclusive Bonati Spine procedures utilize Conscious IV sedation. This keeps the patient comfortable while awake during the procedure in order to communicate with their surgeon. The instant the pain that brought them in is eliminated. >>I remember actually getting on the operating room table, and then I remember the anesthesiologist being there and them giving me some light anesthesia. So I sort of in a twilight kind of a sleep, but I could hear what they were saying. And then I remember Doctor Bonati talking to me specifically telling me what he was doing, you know. Well, I am now here at the lumbar three area. This is what I'm seeing. This is what I'm doing right now. I'm removing the bone from this side of it. I'm going to this side and removing some bone. I'm seeing some scar tissue. I remember him going through that. I felt complete trust. I mean, obviously he was an expert. He developed the procedure. I didn't have any anxiety or any problem with any of the procedure whatsoever. >>Like many patients, Stephanie were surprised by how quickly she was able to be up and walking so soon after surgery. >>I had the procedure and they wanted to get me up right away. And I was thinking getting me up right away. I mean, this is very quick, putting my legs down and starting to walk. I didn't have any of that feeling of the syrupy, feeling that my legs were weak, that I couldn't lift them. No pain, actually, no symptoms. It was like a miracle. I had no symptoms whatsoever. I could not believe it. I'd never expected to have a complete relief of all the problems that I've been going through for four months, possibly up to six months. It was it was I actually called it a miracle feeling. I had no pain whatsoever. And I just had so many things to look forward to, like a normal life. It was just like doors were opening up. It was a wonderful experience. >>Now a decade has passed and Stephanie is still enjoying her active lifestyle, pain free. >>I'm someone who likes to be very, very active. I know from my experience it gave me a new life. This is ten years after my surgery. I still have no problem. I think that somebody should definitely consider this. It's not going to interfere with your life. The recovery time is extremely minimal. There was really no pain involved. And who wouldn't? Rather have something like that than a major operation? And I think it was 100% successful in me. >>To see more stories of recovery just like this, search for the Bonati Spine Institute on YouTube. Rumble. Apple's App Store. Google's Play Store. Roku and Amazon's Fire TV. Welcome back to American Medicine today. I'm Kimberly Bonati alongside Ethan Youker. Now a blistering new book, Tears into the multibillion dollar education system and lays out just how to fix it. Joining us to discuss is Priscilla West, education researcher with the Government Accountability Institute and author of The New Face of Woke Education. Welcome to the program, Priscilla. >>Thank you for having me. >>So, Priscilla, can you explain what this social emotional learning is and what that's really about? >>Never heard of that until now. >>Really? Not at all. Okay. Well, it's been around for 30 years, but a lot of people haven't heard of it, which is a little bit by design, I think. If you start with the surface level definition, it's about teaching kids soft skills. They call them soft skills in the schools. Empathy, kindness, collaboration. These types of things. More recently, it's you hear a bit more about resilience, managing emotions, all of these types of areas that seem maybe whole. That sounds nice and fuzzy. Yeah, but if you take it a little bit deeper. So many things. It has been hijacked by activists and it is being used to advance a globalist worldview and has been highly politicized. It's all about this oppressor oppressed narrative. The critical theories. Yes. So that's where all of this is really being injected into our schools. >>Oh, they're white privilege. Yeah, part of it. >>Yes. >>Well, here's exactly here's my thing, Priscilla. That's been in the news quite a bit lately. Maybe not mainstream news, but, you know, we I, we tend to watch conservative outlets and the big take away from what's going on with the education system nowadays is that these especially they're trying to go into college. They they have almost nonexistent knowledge. They don't know, math. They can hardly write, you know, they don't know anything about science, but they know about feelings and resiliency, as you were saying. >>That's right. Title means an opportunity. There's an opportunity cost for everything. So for all of the hours they're sitting in circle time talking about your feelings, you are not learning algebra. >>What is circle time, by the way? Because I saw. >>Oh, gosh. >>I saw that, too. And then that's another new term to me. >>Well, and you know, a lot of the people involved in doing this, I have to say, they are believers in it. And, you know, I don't want to say that everyone, every teacher out there doing circle time is doing something nefarious. But when you really take it all the way up to the U.N. directives on doing this, they are very explicit about circle time needs to be confidential and what's happens in the circle, what's set in the circle stays in the circle. >>Is the classic Vegas all of a sudden. >>Gets it's they want it to be more authentic. Right. So it definitely you have so when you have activist teachers who are given this framework and these permissions from on high, they have now a legitimate or legitimized, I should say, way to inject all of their ideology. >>This is insane. I mean, we did it to our kids. Right. So they're trying to rewire their brains to adapt to this filth. And as parents, we teach them. If somebody tells you, don't tell your parents, those are the ones you should run, run and go tell an adult. And mainly your parent. >>The red flag. >>Yeah. >>Is terrible. So if you think of SEL as the operating system, SEL being social emotional learning, the very boring sounding acronym that we've never heard of. SEL is the operating system. And then each of the other acronyms, the ones we have heard of, DEI, CRT, the Comprehensive sexuality education, all of these different things, those are the apps that are running within this operating system. So it goes as far back actually as Common Core Core in the Common Core Learning Standards. Yes, these two things were developed in parallel. So in the Common Core Learning standards, they were inserted these funny little soft skills, the words like collaboration or persistence, and these little words that didn't seem like that big of a deal at the time while we were busy freaking out because we could no longer teach our third graders math, right? Well, we were all busy focused on this. The standards had these little words in there that open children up to psychometric tracking analysis of all of all sorts. >>Wow. So tracking apps. So there were actually trying to track their feelings, how they feel about certain situations. >>That's right. That's right. There are dedicated SEL software platforms. Many of us who are active in the parental rights movement have have been talking about these platforms for a few years. It seems like lots and lots of variety, but they were all doing the same sorts of things. And they are gathering data and some of them are journaling apps. Some of them have like a daily mood check in. There are computerized versions of these things. Now, for high schoolers, there are mental health check ins. >>What's the end game here, though? You know what I mean? Because the the tinfoil hat person in in me behind hearing all of this stuff is kind of like, yeah, what are they trying to do? You know, like with the recent launch of the Blue Origin rocket that's sending probes to Mars. I was I was listening to reports on that and they were saying what our institutions of education here in America need to be doing are producing more engineers and more stems. More students need to be studying STEM rather than this circle time confession B.S. Like, why? Who's like, who's behind it? Who's trying to undrmine... >>And they will be you know, they will be studying STEM. I have no doubt that this system that is being created will produce highly skilled workers because that is in the interests of the very same corporations who are producing this software. However, the SEL component of all of this, it's they it's marketed as empathy, but the end goal is equity. >>I don't know how I feel about this topic. >>And where are you on the mood scale right now with. >>Yeah, I'm I'm on the angry scale right now, but all these teachers as unlicensed therapists talking to our children, telling them to keep secrets from their parents, what a dangerous slope that we're on. >>As dangerous as dangerous as that is. Now, imagine these teachers being replaced by software and AI bots and chatting with the children about their moods and their feelings and flagging credentialing, tokenizing their every thought, their family values. You know, we see these risk surveys in every state where children are asked if their parents have guns in the home. >>Wow. These questions exist on statewide children risk behavior surveys, and these are computerized now. So where is that data sitting? >>How can this possibly benefit anyone moving further into their life? If you just think about the normal business atmosphere, thoughts and feelings don't factor in to doing your daily activities. They just don't if you don't feel like it. I'm sorry that you have to do it, but it. >>Has nothing to do with thoughts and feelings. It's it's you know what? It's about production, right? You know? Right. That's the society. A capitalist society we live in. >>The parents who do know about this, who are aware, are outraged. But it is it is very hard to get the word out there. And when you do begin to attempt it, you will be attacked as a Luddite or a prude or, you know, all of all of the usual. So these are massive corporations. We're talking about the U.N. and all of the WEF member corporations. It's a very much David versus Goliath situation. But that's that's the purpose of the book, is I really want parents to start seeing sort of a pattern recognition type thing, you know. The book takes you through lots of different curricula and different programs that all embed this social emotional learning data collection. Yeah, right. >>So socially and I mentioned. >>Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. One world that is social media. Social emotional learning. >>Patty cake for mayor in Seattle. Yeah. Socialist mayor in New York. Yes. There's a group called Castle Ants, the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning. And they've been at this for over 30 years. They invented SEL out of whole cloth in 1994, and they have been working very hard to embed it in everything your child does inside and outside of school. >>Maybe we can shout from the sidelines and possibly this administration will take notice and put the kibosh on it. This is insanity. Thank you so much, Priscilla West, education researcher with the Government Accountability Institute and author of The New Face of Woke Education. Thank you for this earth shattering, eye opening look at what's going on in our educational system. >>Well, thank you for having me. >>Well, that's all the time we have for this episode of American Medicine today. If you would like to see previous shows, you can download American Medicine today to your favorite streaming devices. If you have any comments or questions, contact us at the numbers below or you can tweet @drBonati using the #AmericanMedicinetoday or #AMT. We would like to hear from you.