Smart Rings, Real Data, Better Sex

FirmTech’s mission is  better sexual health for everyone with smart wearables that provide the vital signs of their most vital organ.. The company’s first phase of innovative products focuses on keeping men fit and firm for a lifetime of lovemaking. Men and their physicians need objective and personal data so  men can avoid ED, and if they have it, stop its progression and potentially reverse it. Dr. Justin and his FirmTech team have developed and marketed the TechRing, a transformative erection ring to help men optimize personal “erectile fitness,” and to inspire better erectile and cardiovascular health through engaging with objective data about their sexual health. Urologists call the penis the “canary in the coal mine” of cardiovascular health. 

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What if your bedroom could be as measurable as your morning run? We sit down with Dr. Justin Early, emergency physician turned telehealth pioneer and CEO of FirmTech, to explore how a smart erection ring turns sexual performance into objective data—and why those numbers can double as an early warning for cardiovascular risk. No more guesswork, vague labels, or one‑size‑fits‑all pills; this conversation lays out a clear path to sexual fitness you can actually track.

We unpack why the traditional ED diagnosis fails most people by grouping different problems together, and we look at how short clinic visits, insurance incentives, and subjective questionnaires leave patients without meaningful guidance. Instead, we walk through the core metrics that matter—nocturnal erection frequency, firmness, duration, and detumescence—and reveal a surprising insight from the world’s largest erection dataset: for many men without severe disease, nocturnal firmness holds steady far longer than expected. The real issue for most aging men is blood leak, not lack of inflow. That leads to

Chapters

• 0:00 Mission: Data-Driven Sexual Health
• 1:28 Redefining ED And Its Flaws
• 5:03 Why Doctors Don’t Measure Sex
• 7:28 The Case For Objective Data
• 10:38 Inside The Tech Ring And Database
• 12:43 Aging, Blood Retention, And Rings
• 15:53 Personalizing Pills And Testosterone
• 18:23 Avoid Costly Therapies Without Data
• 20:38 Reinventing Rings For Comfort And Safety
• 22:23 Performance Gains: Rings Plus PDE5s

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

My name is Dr. Early Justin. I'm the CEO of FirmTech and the inventor of the Tech Bring, the world's first smart wearable for men's sexual health. Our mission of FirmTech is better sexual and cardiovascular health for everyone, men and women. How are we going to do this? Two ways. One, we're going to provide men and women with smart wearables and data. Two, we're going to take sex toys beyond toys. We're going to improve the forms that they can really be objectively proven to generate more pleasure. All that's going to happen over the next five years. We're going to solve the mysteries of erectile and clitoral health with smart wearables. As data-inspired care becomes the standard of care, erectile dysfunction, women's sexual issues will become prevented more easily and managed objectively when they do occur. We're not going to be treating people on the basis of conjecture, pharmacy advertisings, one size fits all solutions, take this pill, get a vibrator. We're going to be delivering objective, actionable, and personal data for men and women to enjoy a longer lifetime of love making, the lifetime that we all want. We're going to solve the mystery of nocturnal erections. Women have them too. What turns them on? What turns them off? Imagine the benefit when we accomplish that. There's zero research on that right now. Orgasms. Well, how can we consistently maximize our pleasure? The parasympathetic nervous system turns off, sympathetic nervous system turns off, according to doctors, and then it turns on again. What's turning it on? What's turning it off? With data, we'll be able to come up with solutions that work the best for you. I am confident. I know that men can have more intense pleasure. We'll talk more about that later on. Orgasms are good now, you say, they should be great. Women have vibrators, men don't have much today. No man today is just as good as he was when he was 25 years old. Last as long with no minimal stimulation? Nah. When's the last time you got blue balls? Older men can stay hard as younger men if they have healthy habits. But the interval between climaxes just gets worse and worse with age. What's causing that? How can that be prevented? Using the tech ring, we've tested PT 141, supplements, some pills. We haven't found anything that works yet, but I'm confident that with more data, we're going to figure out what really works. Everyone wants to know the vital signs of their penis and the clitoris. Everyone would like to prevent problems, everyone would like to optimize their performance and pleasure. So come along for the next 20 minutes and I'll tell you what we've discovered and what the future holds for men and women. Who am I? My background on emergency medicine physician. I can tell you that short of a heart attack or a stroke, there are a few things that concern a man as much as a consistent limp penis. I'm also a telehealth pioneer and an expert in road patient management technologies. Four years ago, Dr. Jim Hotelling, professor of urology at the University of Utah, challenged me to come up with a way of quantifying the number of nocturnal erections that men have. Why'd he pick me? Well, he had heard that I tried to actually neuromodulate my sexual performance. Think cardiac pacemaking. I had a urology surgeon implant electrodes by my dental nerve and cavernous nerve, nerves that come out underneath the pube bone, and are responsible, supposedly, as urologists think, are responsible for arousal and climax. It didn't work. It should have worked if what they were saying is was accurate, but it didn't work. So orgasms themselves are a mystery. And I intend to figure that out with data. Nocturnals, interest to me, because they are a leading indicator of our cardiovascular and our sexual health. In medicine, we treat associations, high blood press associated with stroke, LV lip protein associated with athlosclerosis and heart attacks, but they're not predictive. The urologists call the penis the canary in the coal mine of cardiovascular sexual disease. If their number goes down and goes down significantly by about 50%, a man has a close to 50% chance of having a cardiovascular andor sexual problem over the next two or three years. Data, we can see this, we can get signals early and hopefully prevent problems from occurring later. This doctor, Hoteling, was what I call a cock ring virgin, but I'm not. I played around with them for years. So when he told me you want to count them nocturnal erections, my thought was, why limit ourselves nocturnals? Let's figure out what's going on with all erections. Let's first define erectile dysfunction. I'll share with you right away that I think this is an inaccurate definition, and we need it should be thrown out. Why? The definition groups together, two groups of men that don't belong together. You talk about the inability of a man to achieve an erection and then men who can't maintain erection. Well, these groups don't belong together. They're two totally different problems, and they lead to a one-size-fits-all take-a-pill solution that is not actually effective for most men. Then it goes on to talk about satisfactory sexual intercourse. Well, satisfactory to whom? What does that mean? Can we quantify satisfaction? And then we have sexual intercourse. Well, here again, we have this, you know, conventional emphasis on penetrative sex. What if that is not what people's preferred sexual activity is? The academic urologist is a part of the problem because they see the sickest people in their office. They see the men who can't achieve an erection or struggle to attain erection. That is a major cardiovascular or urological problem when those men didn't see a doctor. But the vast majority of men who think they have ED or have been identified as having ED, they get an erection, they lose it. That's not dysfunction. That's just a problem. We don't describe women anymore as frigid, anagasmic, hysterical, cold. Vibrators became popular in the 1980s, and now they're mainstreamed. And it turns out that most women who have been described as being frigid and anorgasmic had a problem that could be easily addressed. They didn't have a disorder, they didn't have dysfunction. They just were getting older. Men are still being shamed of the phrase erectile dysfunction, and it leads to them avoiding figuring out what's going on. So let's stop using the phrase erectile dysfunction and let's try to use data to sort out what's really going on. How is ED supposed to be diagnosed, according to the International Society for Sexual Medicine? Read this. I'm not going to read it out loud. This is a fantasy. Almost no one gets this type of in-depth examination. The average urologist spends seven minutes with a patient, family doctor 10 minutes, and eight seven minutes in heaven. My wife and I have never been asked about our sexual health. There were no questions in electronic medical record. And electronic medical record drives everything today in healthcare. There are no questions there about sexual health. So the doctors don't ask them. They check a box and make some money by asking a question. And taking good sexual history takes about 20 minutes. They don't have the time either. People want to talk about how we're also culture inhibited, about talking about sex, and that's probably a factor as well, too. But we talk about shit, piss, vomit, bad odors, all sorts of disgusting things in medicine, but there are boxes to check. We ask the questions, we get more compensation. On the therapy side of it, they kind of stay in their lane and they take care of people, individuals and couples with sexual problems, often without assessing physical problems that might be leading to the mental problems. Just passing out pills is disservice, and this is how what really goes on. So men have a problem, they're embarrassed about it, and they go online and they get pills. We've had like 25 years of pharma advertising about pills. And I have no problem with some 25-year-old who's dating online, it's confidence issues, wants to get a little more blood into his penis, because that's what they're doing. They put more blood in, but they don't keep it there. I have no problem with a guy going online. But for a man who's 45 years or older, he could be massing a significant cardiovascular or a metabolic problem. He's also not getting the data to help to sort out why he's losing his erections. So they go online, they get pills because they have those online questionnaires, and you're going to get a pill whether you really need it or not. And you're not going to have that those questionnaires are not really going to help you figure out what's causing your problem. Women, well, today women get, you know, the recommendations are hormone replacement therapy and vibrators. I think both based those things are great, but women should also be getting testosterone checked. All men and women over the age of 35 should get their baseline of testosterone and pretestosterone. That way, they're normal. If you have a problem later on, you'll know, you'll have a goal to where you want to restore your health. But we also know that today, a shocking number of men have low testosterone, even in the 30s or 40s. We have a pandemic of sexual function today. By age 50, 50% of men are reporting erectile dysfunction. For women, it's a little bit higher. It goes up 10% per decade. After age 30, I'm 72 years old. By my age, it's 70% of men. And the issues are causes are multifactorial. We have this people are obese, they're not cardiovascular fit, they're slothful. And obviously, you want to maintain your cardiovascular health, and it's embarrassing to both men and women after a few thrusts. We doctors are also prescribing medications that have a negative impact on people's sexual health, certain blood pressure medications and antidepressants. In my mind, we're even worse for women on the medication side because we doctors prescribe hormones to pre-menopausal women and anti-anxiety medications to pre-menopausal women out of all proportion to men. Both those things, hormones and SRSR antidepressants, can have a negative impact on someone's sexual performance. Then there's also the problem I alluded to before of low testosterone, which is being attributed to endocrine inhibitors in our diet. It's kind of hard to avoid them, but uh we should be more careful about eating processed foods. People want to blame porn addiction. It's hard to imagine that porn addiction is causing this really significant problem with dysfunction. And it's also, to my mind, a certain negativity about men. Men like watching porn. And what is addiction? I mean, obviously, if I were talking to you right now and I had a second computer screen going and I'm watching Chimichu high heels standing on some guy's chest, that's porn addiction. But most men are watching porn are not really addicted. They're enjoying themselves. We don't complain about women shopping. Women spend four times as much shopping as men, like getting the same dopamine hits in the brain. Let's stop blaming men and look to root causes. So we need fresh answers to my mind. They got to go beyond scolding about washing less porn, eating less plastic. Biohackers like to say, let's hack it. But you can't really hack it unless you can track it. And with data, you can start to figure out what's going on. There are answers to long-term problems of rectile health. They involve, you know, good cardiovascular health, but there are also short-term solutions and medium-term solutions. And they involve testosterone, vibrators, and the use of rings, and we're talking about that more about that in just a moment. We're all on the road from rectile fitness to dysfunction. And let's focus on fitness and let's stop talking about dysfunction. We all want to maintain our fitness. We're all going down this road, but we don't know where we are. We'd like to reverse course, we'd like to slow down, we'd like to back up, but we don't have a dashboard. We don't drive a car without a dashboard. We don't drive blind, but that's what doctors and sexologists and men and women are doing today. So breakdowns and crashes occur. We need data. We need data that's objective, actionable, and personal, not one size fits all solutions. I'm a doctor. If I were taking care of your heart, your lungs, your kidneys, your bowels, and you had a problem, I would have imaging tests and blood tests, but which I could see how bad that problem is, and then monitor the benefit of any interventions. But it's kind of bizarre that when it comes to sexual health, we have nothing, but now you do. Because with the tech ring, we can actually assess what's going on with the penis. And next year we're going to come out with a critique to assess the health of the clearis. Instead, we tell guys to take a pill. Well, I'll draw an analogy. If you had high blood pressure, or I thought you had high blood pressure, you thought you had high blood pressure, and I just said take a pill and come back in three months or six months and didn't check your blood pressure or get an electrocardiogram, an ultrasound, or get a blood test, you would think, what the heck is this? 1900? We expect care today to be data-driven. Ideally, of course, with data, we can identify issues or even dysfunction when it's subclinical before it becomes overt. So let's maintain our fitness. This is what we had in the 20th century as diagnostic aids for men. On the left, you have the rigid scan, which looks like something Dr. Frankenstein put in your dick and frankly feels about the same. It's fallen out of fashion in the United States. Not because it was inaccurate. It's fallen out of fashion because the insurance companies will no longer bill for it, because their attitude is, hey, doctors, tell men to take a pill. We don't need to look at the causes anymore. It's really screwed up. Then you have the Doppler in office. Well, it's one data point. The doctor gets to check a box, gets to charge you. Some extra insurance companies will charge, make, charge some extra money, but it's only one data point. It doesn't really tell you what's going on at home under real life circumstances. And then there are these subjective questionnaires that frankly should no longer be utilized. They're just not objective. So how can we get the data? Here's the tech ring. Basically, we've embedded the sensors into an erection ring to produce the first smart cock ring. With this device, you can measure the impact of diseases, diabetes, hypertension, athletosclerosis. You can measure the impact or benefit of medications. You can write-sized therapies. It has an easy-to-use phone app. It provides notifications. Right now, they've documented close to 150,000 erections and over 3,000 men. This is the world's largest DIC database. And I look forward to more researchers coming in, utilizing this database to figure out men's sexual health and cardiovascular issues. There are at least nine published papers right now, another five or six papers underway. With this, you can figure out what's the status of your erectile fitness, and you can monitor it to maintain it. Here's what it looks like. It's easy to interpret. There are notifications that you'll get if you're improving or things are getting worse. You can share this data with your doctor. Most importantly, with this device, you can figure out whether your problem with fitness or dysfunction is psychosocial or medical. You also can now compare yourself to men in your age group. For the average guy, 45, 65 years of age, you can compare yourself to a thousand men plus within five years of your age group. But it's not just about comparing yourself to your age group. It's about saying to yourself, I want to be in the top 10%. How can I optimize my performance? This is one of the two big findings with the data. The academic urologists were expecting that as men get older, their number of nocturnal erections will go down, the firmness of their sex erections will go down, and the firmness of nocturnal erections will go down. But we're not seeing really any significant tapering until men in the late 60s or early 70s. Now, for the 10 to 15% of men with severe cardiovascular disease, they do deteriorate. But for the vast majority of men, they're not deteriorating. So why these men who are not truly dysfunctional, why are they reporting rectile dysfunction? Well, actually, they're just aging normally. As we get older, it becomes harder to retain blood in the penis. Every erection ends with blood exiting the penis. What's going on here? Well, it could be confidence, could be alcohol, maybe you shouldn't smoke the entire joint, maybe not getting enough friction, maybe you're bored, maybe medication is the problem. Bear in mind that the PD5 medication, talking about agri and sialis, put more blood in the penis, but they don't keep it there. So why these men are pointing erectile dysfunction? But they're still getting hard ons that just as hard as they were almost as hard as they were when they were younger? Well, the reason is that blood is leaving the penis faster. And the goal of therapy should be directed at keeping blood in the penis. And the answer is a ring. And this is obvious in retrospect. So why do erections end? You know, we think with our data that all men have penis leak syndrome. The vast majority of men will be helped by comfortable and safe erection rings as first-line therapy and erection real in combination, if needed, for optimal performance. You want to rock harder, last longer, put a ring on it and take a pill, because that's what the data shows. Here's a protocol that I use for prescribing PD5 medications, which are predominantly Viagra and Cialis. I want to make this objective. I want men to know am I taking this and just getting a placebo effect, or is it really benefiting me? I want men to be able to figure out what's the right dose. For example, tadalophil or cialis. Is the right dose maybe five milligrams, ten milligrams, twenty milligrams? Let's stop prescribing these pills the way we do blood pressure medications. It's not one, don't prescribe blood pressure medications as one size fits all, one dose fits all. We get blood pressure readings ideally and try to individualize the therapy. Well, we can now do that by getting the data from the tech ring. I know personally myself, I take five milligrams of Sialus every day, Tadalafil. I get no more benefit if I take 10 or 20, but I wouldn't know that without the data. Similarly, we can now make testosterone replacement therapy objective as well. Right now, if a man wants to get tea, he goes to a doctor, and the doctor will ask him, how's your energy? How's your sleep? And how's your libido? Well, everyone wants more energy. Everyone would like to sleep better, and no one knows what the heck libido even means. So let's try to make it as objective as possible. The goal of testosterone therapy is usually threefold. One, I want to retain or gain muscle. Well, you can do that simply for you thought therapy by putting a tape measure around your pecs, biceps, or women said the biceps, they well excuse me, so the pecs, they can put tape measure around their thighs. The other goal of therapy is to increase your nocturnal blood flow, and when you can use a tech ring for that. And the third benefit is libido. We have a lot of men who are low T. I've got several of them in my practice right now, and they're only initiating sex two, three, four times a month. Well, initially asking a man how many times a week he aspires to initiate sex makes testosterone therapy more objective. Obviously, the goal has to be realistic, it's not gonna be 30 times a week, but you can take a man with testosterone from initiating sex two or three times a month to initiating sex two or three times a week. So let's make TRT objective, and the tech ring is an aid in accomplishing that. So the tech ring can be made in the following diagnosing psychogenic versus ED caused by physical reasons, cardiovascular risk, medications. The device can also be used to determine eligibility for shock weight therapy. Before men go out and spend five, ten thousand dollars on shock weight therapy to be needed. If you're having four nocturnal erections per night and they last 30, 35 minutes, the shock weight therapy is going to be benefiting your head. Now, placebo effect is powerful, but that's a lot of money to spend for a placebo benefit. The same thing with all the experimental therapies that are quite costly. P shots, Botox, stem cells. We can add in here penis pumps and penis extenders. What is your baseline nocturnal blood flow? And then when you start this therapy, you can then monitor it using the detec ring. Well, women certainly rule when it comes to sex toys. This is the evolution of erection rings. Contrast this to the multiplicity of sex toys that are available for women from vibrating dildos, palm hell things, you know, et cetera. So on the left, you have your classic O-ring that's been manufactured the same way for the last 150 years. It's made out of silicone, it pinches, it's uncomfortable. The doctors call it a constriction band because that's what it does. You know, if it's maximally effective, a man has to have an erection, then put the ring on. Pinches, it's uncomfortable. It chokes off the blood flow into the penis. You're like, in fact, you're lynching your dick, and who wants to do that? I've never found a comfortable one that I could really want to have on for more than 15 or 20 minutes. And personally, I'd like to make love for 30, 45 minutes, maybe an hour. In the middle, you have giddy. I think there's a singularly uncomfortable plastic ring, closes with these rubber bands. Hey, you got lube in your fingers, they just go flying off. I never could even work, you know, have a satisfactory orgasm with this. And then you have our device. I got into erection rings to get the data, but then I realized that I had solved the cock ring problem, which is they're made out of silicone, they pinch, and they're uncomfortable, and they can't be worn safely more than 25 or 30 minutes. Our rings are made out of a soft elastomer. They allow the arterial blood to flow in, they only constrain the venous return, and they open and close with a hook. So they're safe, they're comfortable, and they'd be worn for protracted sex sessions. Let's just go back to pills for a moment. Dr. Mohi Kara might be among the most famous urologists andrologists in the world. He said Baylor, and he recently said Viagra is black and what was he getting at here? Well, he meant that if 12%, 12 to 50% of men who have difficulties with erectile fitness or rectile dysfunction are have a significant, potentially significant, cardiovascular, metabolic, urological problem by taking pills that they could just be massing it. So I want to remind you, and I remind your patients and customers that pill might be the answer for a 25-year-old. But if you're older, you really want to be thinking about the fact you might have a more significant problem and get data. Here's another advantage to rings. There have been two studies done on detuminescence, which is the time it takes for an erection to go down after climax. So the more blood that's held in the penis, the more sensitive it is, the more satisfying the orgasm, the longer you're gonna last. The ring alone kept men hard for about four minutes after climax. To Dalafil, 10 milligrams alone was two minutes. The ring plus dalphil was over five minutes. The takeaway from this for all men should be you want to optimize your performance and your pleasure, put a ring on it and take a pill. Certain male pride issue involved here. A lot of guys say, well, I don't need that. Well, it's not about want. Do you want to optimize your performance? Get over it, put a ri put a ring on it. Data will allow us to end the confusing conjecture. Brian Johnson's obviously incredibly fit. Guy takes 181 supplements and injections a day. What really works? You've got to take that many? With data, you can start to figure it out. What have we learned so far about supplements and things? We haven't found anything that works. Hornigoatweed, macaroot, fangarwanda, PT-141. We haven't found anything that works. It might work for you. If you think it's working for you, you can now get a tech and get data. But bear in mind the placebo effect is really powerful. I want to again emphasize the importance of testosterone replacement therapy because every man should know what his baseline is. Every man potentially will benefit from this as they get older. But with data, again, you can end the conjectures. I like to say that hopes are for dopes. Men with significant problems will walk on broken glass for a solution. They'll spend thousands and thousands of dollars. And often, and I say often because I've referred this from customers and patients, the solution is really simple. The ring is a profound confidence builder. So let's take erectile health and soon clitoral health into the 21st century. Objective, actionable, and personal care. If you want to take a picture of this, this will lead you to our research folder. Here are five questions or four questions rather that all men should ask themselves. Do you want to rock harder? Of course you do. Do you want to last longer when you want to last longer? Of course you do. Do you want to increase your confidence in your partners? Of course you do. Have an extra drink, dance another hour, be tired, but hey, you get an erection, realize that you're not put a ring on it, you're not going to lose it. And most importantly, do you want to intensify your orgasm? How do our rings do that? The rings are designed to put the right amount of pressure over the urethra to pull on the ejaculatory phase. Our maximum performance ring increases the average man's ejaculatory phase by 50%. My ejaculatory phase goes from four seconds to seven seconds with that. And that's an incredible orgasm. My wife says she's glad the kids are out of the house some noisy for the first time. And I no longer have sex without an erection ring. So it's not about need, it's about want. Four years ago, if you told me I'd be on calls like this or podcasts like this, advocating for erection rings, I would have been like most heterosexual men. I would have said, Well, I don't need that. And now I understand it's not about need, it's about want. But it's also, I want to know about my heart and sexual health. My data's good, but at least I have a baseline. When I go to a doctor for physical and I have a normal electrocardiogram or normal blood test, I don't complain. I'm happy. And also with the ring, I can now see problems before they occur, and that's profoundly valuable. So bear in mind that with data, you're an N of one. You can you are unique. You can now find out what works for you because it might not work for someone else. Your right dose of tea, your right dose of PD5 medication, maybe even a supplement might benefit you and not someone else. Many years ago in the 17th century, the French philosopher Descartes said, Cogato ego sum, I think, therefore I am. I say erectus, ego sum. I am erect, therefore I am. This is true for men and women. The benefits of sex are enormous. Women who have sex every day could cut the causal level up to 50%. That's the stress hormone. Probably true for men as well, too. Couples that have sex three times a week versus less than three times a month have half the divorce or separation rate and much greater personal happiness. There's a huge study out of the United Kingdom showing that men over the age of 70 who had sex three times a week versus less than three times a month could cut the risk of significant cardiovascular event, heart attack, or death by up to 50%. We doctors should be recommending sex to people. We write prescriptions for it. Personally, I think we should aspire to having an orgasm a day. Good for our confidence. It's good for overall health. It's good for our relationships. Bear in mind that while cardiovascular health is important to sexual performance, arousal and climax is largely a smooth muscle function. You can't work them out in the gym. You gotta work them out by having sex and it's fun. We talk a lot today about work-life balance. We should be talking about work-life sex balance. Get your data, put a ring on it. Thank you.