Shownotes
Wellness has quietly turned into another performance, another set of boxes to check. This episode of Wellness, Reimagined pulls that apart. Host Shriya talks with Bryan Bourgeois, inventor of the DaVinci Orthopedic Pillow, about questioning inherited ideas of what it means to be well, and why something as basic as sleep and sleeping posture is so often overlooked in that conversation.
Bryan shares his own decade-long journey with chronic neck pain, the choices he made to avoid invasive surgery, and how that experience led him to build a product around spinal alignment and better sleep. This conversation is a reminder that real wellness often starts with the basics we have stopped paying attention to.
About the Guest:
Bryan Bourgeois is the inventor of the DaVinci Orthopedic Pillow, a patented support pillow designed to ease neck, back, and shoulder tension through improved sleep posture. He built the product after his own decade-long experience with chronic neck pain from herniated discs.
Key Takeaways:
- Sleep is often the most overlooked pillar of wellness, even though it shapes nearly every other part of how we function day to day.
- Sleeping posture matters more than most people realize, and simple positioning changes can ease tension in the neck, back, and shoulders.
- Wellness culture can turn health into another performance to optimize. Real wellness makes room for being human, not chasing perfection.
- When facing a health decision, getting more than one perspective and understanding all your options is a reasonable and empowering step.
- Everyday basics, movement, time outdoors, and nourishing food, remain some of the most dependable foundations of feeling well.
Connect With the Guest:
Website: https://www.davinciorthopedics.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davinciorthopedics
Episode Chapters:
[00:00] Welcome to Wellness, Reimagined — meeting Bryan Bourgeois (approx.)
[03:00] What wellness means when you strip away the noise (approx.)
[08:00] Bryan's own journey with chronic neck pain (approx.)
[15:00] Rethinking assumptions about health and treatment options (approx.)
[21:00] Why sleep and posture deserve more attention (approx.)
[26:00] What a more human definition of wellness looks like (approx.)
[29:00] Closing thoughts on redefining wellness on your own terms (approx.)
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Transcripts
00:00:08 Shreya: What if wellness was never about the metrics at all? Tonight we are going to question some of the assumptions we have inherited about what it means to be well and reimagine what a genuinely healthy life might actually look like.
00:00:22 Shreya: welcome to Wellness Reimagined. I'm your host, Shreya, and this is the show where we stay curious and keep an open mind about everything we have been told about health and wellbeing. We are not here to sell you a system. We are here to question the assumption and explore the possibilities and think more freely about what it actually means to live well. Today we are re-examining the very idea of wellness, asking where our definitions came from and imagining something more honest in that place. My guest today is Brian, someone with a thoughtful and curious perspective on health and wellbeing who is willing to question the things most people take for granted. So welcome, Brian. I'm honored to have you here on my show.
00:01:07 Bryan Bourgeois: Thank you. Good to be here.
00:01:09 Shreya: Thank you so much. And just before we begin, a quick disclaimer for my listeners,
00:01:51 Shreya: And with that, Brian, first of all, I'm really glad you were here with us. So welcome in our show. And, uh, before we get into the big questions, I want to start with you. Like when you hear the word wellness today, what is the first feeling that comes up for you? Honestly, because I suspect it is more complicated than the glossy version that we are sold.
00:02:15 Bryan Bourgeois: Yeah. Wellness to me is just anything natural that comes naturally or is healed naturally. You know, living a natural way. So kind of, yeah, just, you know, being, having a natural perspective on, on things.
00:02:39 Shreya: That's beautiful. And, I want to start by questioning the word itself because I think we use the word without ever examining it. So, uh, let us pull it apart together. So when you look at how our culture defines wellness today, all the tracking and optimizing and perfecting, what do you think it gets wrong?
00:03:02 Bryan Bourgeois: Yeah. I mean, I'll speak kind of a little bit towards the medical side of that. Um, you know, it's just been kind of this change over the last, I don't know, century really of more focused on treatments and, you know, the medical System basically doesn't obviously focus on prevention, healthy lifestyle, diet. Like they focus on the retroactive type treatments that they can do. Like for me, it was, you know, surgery. Other people, it could be prescription drugs. Um, so for example, instead of, or like people dealing with, um, you know, like, I'll just give you an example of like the pillow that I invented called the DaVinci orthopedic pillow. Like I had a severe issue with my neck for ten years. And the doctors basically said the only way to, you know, get it since everything else failed over the last ten years is to do disc replacement surgery. And then I didn't, you know, obviously didn't want to do it. And then I can't, I came up with a, a pillow, a orthopedic pillow product that has a certain specific design that free floats the cervical spine. And it healed me naturally non-invasively without surgery or prescriptions. But like, for example, again, like when I first had some issues, like with my neck due to a pretty bad injury that caused two herniated discs. You know, it was the same thing. It was like they put you on pain pills. They try to do invasive things. Uh, they don't try to just heal it, you know, naturally. But that's just like across the board from like even it could be like cancer related, like, like people sometimes not all cancers, but some cancers, you know, if you change your diet and change your lifestyle, the cancer goes away, you know, but that's not what the doctors are going to tell you. The doctors are gonna be like, okay, no, you need to get on this chemo. You need to get on this other, you know, medication. So like the wellness for most people is, is seeing through a completely different window than what it should be. And that's just the, a lot to do with that is just how the whole system has been developed and, and kind of capturing the market share, capturing all the profits that are available in the medical system, I could go. I could give you so many different examples. I mean, I, I also was dealing with lower back pain. And like, you know, the doctors wanted to do ablation surgery on me. And I just basically to my, my, my lower spine was just out of alignment. So I had some chiropractic adjustments. I learned some stretches and I was able to learn how to crack my own back. And now it's fully aligned. And I didn't have to get that surgery, but I ended up getting PRP, which cost me two thousand two hundred dollars and is like painful. And it just wasn't fun and it didn't do anything. But the doctors are going to give you whatever they will, that will that will make them money, you know? So, you know, and I have had, you know, other experiences with family members that have have gone through the medical system. And it is like they kind of treat you kind of like a guinea pig sometimes. And it's just, that's just, you know, the way it is. So I mean, there is like the five percent of people out there that have a different perspective. The one that I have, but I would say still the majority of people, and at least in the United States especially, I think it's the worst in the United States. Europe is a lot better. Um, but it's just like, okay, I'm going to live however I want to live. And then the doctors can treat me however they want to treat me. And the insurance companies and all these other people pay all this money and everybody's making all this money and, you know, extracting all the money from the people. Um, one way or another. And, you know, people really aren't actually achieving the wellness that they want through that, you know. So I don't know. I mean, it's a big issue, a big problem. And, you know, I think now though, maybe it's might maybe some of this stuff with all the information coming out there and AI and all this stuff, like people are changing their perspective on it, but it's no doubt, you know, a very, you know, hard system to break and a large paradigm shift for a lot of people to have to rethink what wellness actually means for them and how can they achieve it. And not relying on some doctor somewhere that, you know, may not know what he's doing or have your best interest in mind. So.
00:07:42 Shreya: That is really interesting because so many people feel quite uneasy about wellness culture, but cannot quite name it. But like they sense that something is off, that the policy of being well has somehow made them more anxious, not less. But what you were pointing at is that a definition got hijacked somewhere along the way and turned into a market, a performance. And I'm really curious about your read on this. So where do you think our assumption about wellness actually originated? Like, how much of what we believe we need in order to be healthy was sold to us. And how much of it is genuinely serves us. Like can we can you help us understand the force that shaped the version of wellness that most of us never thought to question?
00:08:35 Bryan Bourgeois: Yeah. So, I mean, pretty much what happened was back over a hundred years ago, the pharmaceutical industry pretty much took control over the medical education system in the United States. And they, over decades and decades and decades, basically brainwashed a lot of these doctors into having a protocol of if someone has these symptoms, you prescribe this or that or whatever it is not other holistic ways of healing. So it's a really systemic an issue that really started to take off once the, you know, medical businesses, once the pharmaceutical businesses, once all the power, like businesses got into that field, they started controlling how it how it works, how you perceive it, what to do. And over time, it, it just progressively worsened and worsened and worsened. And now, you know, a doctor, you know, goes to medical school and they, they get taught all these things, but it's not necessarily the right teachings for like actual, you know, wellness. I mean, there's so many gajillion examples of, you know, even using like, you know, natural methods to, you know, help someone, whether it's like mental health, you know, like you could, they could instead of giving them Prozac, you know, they could, there's like saffron, which is proven to, you know, increase serotonin levels And and like sixty five percent of the people actually responded better on saffron than a very, you know, a drug that's expensive, but it also has side effects and it's just not good to take like Prozac. But the doctors are going to go to like, oh, well, Prozac is how you know what I was taught. And that's how that's what the insurance like. Or the pharmaceutical companies make their money. So that's what I'm going to prescribe. So like that is the system that is what you're dealing against in the medical system. You don't, you know, take any doctor's word for it. If you do have some serious issue, you want to get multiple second opinions. And my only advice to that would just be you got to take all the situation one hundred percent into your own hands, never take the situation and let the doctor kind of run with it because I ninety nine percent of the time, it's not going to be in your best interest. And you should if you look back, you should have been doing something different, you know, I mean, how many surgeries do they have that the person ends up in a worse position than they did when they entered into the surgery a lot. It's massive. And, you know, or the effective rate of like just not even having it work, like the PRP thing that I did, you know, but they'll still, they'll still do it. They're not out. They still get paid. The person gets, you know, has to deal with the situation, not the hospital, not the, the any, you know, anyone else, not the doctor. So, you know, it's really up on the up to the individual to, you know, take control of the wellness, take control of the guidance from medical professionals, and don't assume that anything that you hear is actually the truth and actually is good for you. It may be good for some other person, but take it with a grain of salt because, you know, I have a lot of experience working with doctors in the whole system. And, um, yeah, it just, that's, that's just how it is. But it is good that there is a, a movement going on right now for sure into the natural holistic health and wellness space. Um, and trying to get away from prescription medications and invasive procedures. For so many different things. And that's why, like, you know, I invented the DaVinci orthopedic pillow, which we found out that it not only is the best pillow for neck pain relief and it's being used in the NFL and NBA. But we also discovered in our trials that it's the only pillow in the world that effectively stops snoring. You know, and it's the most comfortable pillow for acid reflux. So like, you could be on a pillow if you snore and then stop snoring on my pillow on the DaVinci orthopedic pillow. But what are the doctors are going to say? The doctors are going to say, no, you need to get a mouthguard that costs, you know, two thousand five hundred dollars, or you need to do surgery that may or may not work. We've had people that have had multiple surgeries and a mouth guard. They still snored and they get on the pillow. They don't snore at all. So why would a doctor say, Hey. No. You should try a natural. You know, a natural way to relieve your snoring. You can try this pillow. It's non-invasive. You just lay on it and it puts you in a posture that makes it impossible to snore. And you won't snore. Hey, there's a two percent chance or five percent chance you may continue to snore. Then we may need to use a Cpap machine or do a mouth guard. But first, try the pillow. They're never going to do that. I've already had the situation because I'm launching that product now, and the doctors are never going to recommend a pillow that actually would help them. They're going to recommend, no, you need to get a Cpap machine. No, the dentist, the dentist are going to be like, no, you need to get a mouth guard because that's how they make their money. So they're not after, they're not they're not looking after you. They're looking after the bank account. And like it is, it is what it is. And like it's one hundred percent fact. So there's like two percent of doctors, maybe or five percent of doctors that are actually kind of holistic thinking doctors that actually try to help patients. But most are just completely brainwashed. And that is a result of over one hundred years of. Lot of what they've been taught and how they've been taught it, and the controlling parties of the universities, of the medical systems and the ones that create the entire thing, they control it to make them more money. So the doctors sell the different stuff that makes them money, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, whatever it is, that's the system. So yeah.
00:14:49 Shreya: That's interesting. And, there is something so clarifying in what you just said, because once you can see where an assumption came from, it loses its grip on you. Like so much of what we treat as obvious truth about health is really inherited messaging. And, uh, now, now let us build something better because, um, so, so dream with me a little. If we set aside the inherited definitions, what might a genuinely healthier approach to wellness look like? Not the optimized version, but a real one. What would you put at the center of a life that is actually well, and how is it different from what we have been chasing?
00:15:39 Bryan Bourgeois: Well, I mean, there's a couple components, I think. I mean, one is sleep is like completely ignored in general. And again, that's, you know, if you don't get a good night's sleep, then your whole day is messed up and you spend a third of your life, you know, sleeping and, you know, the, the sleep really depends on several different things. And one of those main things is how you, how are you positioned? How what's your sleeping? You know, so like, again, the DaVinci orthopedic pillow puts you in a posture that relieves all the tension in your neck, head and shoulders. By free floating the cervical spine, it opens up your airways one hundred percent and sleep apnea. And then, of course, if you have acid reflux, you know you can get off prescription medications and simply lie on the pillow on the left side, at a, at an incline. And that will stop the acid reflux. So like that's, that's part of it is like, you know, getting enough sleep and getting good high REM sleep. And if you're, if you're not, if you're snoring and you aren't or have it treated anyway, eventually it's going to cause mini strokes if it's not already hundreds of mini strokes a night. And that could lead to a real stroke Alzheimer's, dementia, low testosterone, all kinds of stuff. It's like very bad, you know, side effects. So, you know, part of like the whole wellness thing is like, you know, you individuals need to take responsibility for themselves for like getting the right thing to get them, to get them experience, like the wellness that they want. So one of those is just going to be like sleep. Um, you know, the other is, I would say just some type of like, uh, you know, physical activity like yoga or, you know, some other running, swimming or whatever and being outside, um, getting sunlight, you know, uh, eating healthy, you know, and avoiding, you know, all preservatives and just junk food and high carb diets, um, are just, you know, going to cause problems down the road. So, um, yeah, that's, that's what I would, that's what I would say.
00:17:55 Shreya: That is really refreshing because it is so much more human than what we are usually offered. Like what I hear in your answer is a version of wellness that is, uh, spacious rather than restrictive, that makes room for being a person rather than demanding perfection. And this is truly an amazing conversation with you, Brian. So thank you, first of all for joining and sharing all this information with us. And if after this, my listeners want to connect with you and want to learn more about you or about your work, then what's the best place to find you?
00:18:31 Bryan Bourgeois: Yeah. So I'm the inventor of the Da Vinci orthopedic pillow, and we are online at Da Vinci orthopedics dot com or Amazon. Just Google the Da Vinci and it will show up all over the internet and on Amazon. Uh, it's four point nine rated on Amazon. And it is a very like people pillow because it, you know, it heals, you know, chronic neck pain that where when nothing else works, it stops snoring, it helps acid reflux and it's just super comfortable. So da Vinci orthopedics. Um, and yeah, if you're dealing with any issues like that, or you just want to have, you know, get better sleep and feel more relaxed and get better sleeping posture and support, then check it out at DaVinci orthopedics dot com or on Amazon. Uh, it's free two to three day shipping and thirty day risk free.
00:19:30 Shreya: So yes, I will make sure to attach all these details and links below in the show notes so that the listeners can find them easily and get in touch with you. And thank you again so much for joining us. And this, this was exactly the kind of, uh, curious, open conversation that wellness reimagined is here for, uh, and to all my listeners, especially the ones who have been quietly worn down by the pressure to optimize everything. I will leave you with this. Wellness was never meant to be one more thing to fail at. You are allowed to question the rules you were handed. You were allowed to redefine a well, life on your own terms. Real health has room in it to be human. Start there and let the rest go. And do not forget to hit the follow button. Subscribe and feel free to share your thoughts because your ears deserve premium content. Thank you.
