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ICONS UNCOVERED with Stefan Garlicki
ICONS UNCOVERED is where sports, health and performance meet. The podcast is hosted by Pro Mountain biker, Stefan Garlicki. He has conversations with Iconic figures from around the world with a main focus on sports, health and performance. The goal of this podcast is to inspire and educate people to make the right choices to be successful in their sports and careers but also keeping health and longevity in mind. NEW EPISODES EVERY SATURDAY
ICONS UNCOVERED with Stefan Garlicki
What's REALLY Causing All Modern Diseases? Dr Nathan Bryan
Dr. Nathan Bryan, a renowned doctor, author, and researcher, delves into the remarkable role of nitric oxide in the human body. He discusses its critical functions, such as regulating blood flow, circulation, oxygenation, and mitochondrial function. Dr. Bryan also highlights the connection between nitric oxide production and age-related diseases, as well as its impact on athletic performance and recovery. Through his journey in academic medicine and research, he shares insights into the development of nitric oxide-based therapies and products. Key takeaways include the importance of diet, exercise, and avoiding substances that inhibit nitric oxide production. Additionally, he touches upon the benefits of red light therapy, fasting, and other bio hacks for improving overall health. This episode aims to educate on the foundational importance of nitric oxide for health and longevity.
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Right, Dr. Nathan Bryan, thanks for, uh, coming on the show and making the time. Well, thanks for having me. It's great being with you. You are a doctor, author, researcher, um, and I think you are most known for your, your knowledge about nitric oxide. Um, for those, for those people that don't know, maybe you can explain what nitric oxide is and, uh, why people should be concerned with it.
Yeah. Look, as you know, in any career, you know, sometimes we wear multiple hats and it's a journey, right? 25 years in academic medicine and research, basic science and also clinical research. But really studying nitric oxide, and this is a fascinating molecule because it's, um, it's a gas, it's naturally produced, primarily in the lining of the blood vessels, and it's this single molecule that regulates things like blood flow, circulation, oxygenation, mitochondrial function, mobilization of stem cells.
So it's really a foundational molecule, uh, the older we get, the less we make, and that's what's responsible for many age related disease, and obviously it, it predicts performance. Your ability to produce nitric oxide predicts performance. How well an athlete you become. So really for the past, you know, 30, 40 years, we've tried to understand, you know, this new paradigm in cell signaling by a gas.
Uh, and so really my work has been focused on number one, how does the human body produce nitric oxide? We have to get a clear understanding of how the body makes it. And then secondly, once we understood that we got to figure out what goes wrong in people that lose the ability to make nitric oxide through both of these.
And then we, we started to have a clear understanding of what symptoms manifest as a result of this early loss of nitric oxide. And then once we understood that, and only then could we start to develop rational therapies or product technology that could enhance or restore and actually prevent this age related loss of nitric oxide.
So those were really the, the strategic kind of milestones we had to hit at each step of the way. In order to deliver eventually safe and effective product technology. It's interesting. Cause I think when, for most people, when you mentioned nitric oxide, the first thing they're going to think of is like fast and the furious or something like because like a lot of, I mean, I didn't know until not that long ago that that's something that's actually produced in the body.
Um, you know, so that's nitrous or nitrous oxide, right? So that's low and that's a dental anesthetic. It's used. As a fuel and high performance cars. But what we're talking about is nitric oxide or N O one night. So they sound very similar, but biochemically and from a physical chemistry standpoint, they're completely different.
So nitrous, it's a dental anesthetic into, uh, nitric oxide is in a one nitrogen. But I guess, uh, well, in a way having similar effects, just one in the body and one, uh, one in a in a machine. Well, their performance, right, their performance boosters and in, in every, uh, you know, meaning of the word. That's, that's what they did.
What, uh, I mean, what was the main reason that that led you in this direction specifically to, to have this focus? You know, I think God has a way of playing tricks on us sometimes, you know, when I was an undergrad at the University of Texas and I took inorganic chemistry and then eventually physical chemistry.
You know, I swore to myself, I never want to deal with nitrogen chemistry again. You know, it's a very complex molecule. It's five valence electrons, eight different oxidation state. And so there's a lot of different chemistries that can go on with, with nitrogen containing molecules. And once I got a degree in biochemistry from university of Texas at Austin, I went to LSU school of medicine and I was working on a PhD in molecular and cellular physiology, and I was introduced to this new science around nitric oxide.
A Nobel prize had been awarded in 1998. This was a couple of years after the Nobel prize. Uh, and it was a fascinating time in science and medicine because the, the, the, the identification of a gaseous signaling molecule that could penetrate cells kind of, uh, uninhibited that could really modulate and activate many different important biological pathways, uh, and signaling events really fascinated me.
And so I've had a chance to, to meet one of the guys who won the Nobel prize, Louis Ignaro back in probably the year 2000. Uh, And it was fascinating, you know, we knew nitric oxide was an important molecule, but we really didn't understand how the human body made it. We didn't under, we certainly didn't understand or have technologies or the information to develop nitric oxide based product technology.
So I trained under a pharmacologist, uh, Martin Feelish, uh, who had been studying nitric oxide for the previous 20 years and they were dating back to the 1980s. And he challenged me or tasked me with developing, you know, methods where we could detect and quantify this molecule in biological tissues that we call nanomolar or femtomolar concentrations that's produced naturally in the human body.
And so we developed that, we kind of solved that riddle and developed, you know, technologies that we could detect really low amounts of this in tissues and identify it in blood vessel strips and isolated aortic rings. And so once we figured out how to measure and detect this and quantify it in different tissues and different disease states, we really for a short time had keys to the kingdom.
We were publishing, you know, 10, 12, 15 papers a year on this molecule and making some really seminal discoveries. And that really, you know, I made a name for myself early on, uh, as a student, then as a cardiovascular fellow at Boston Medical Center. I was recruited by one of the other gentlemen who won the Nobel Prize, Fred Murad, to start my independent research career as a professor of molecular medicine at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston.
So this whole, you know, these series of discoveries and really it's, you know, just like anything, it's not, sometimes it's not what you know, but many times it's who you know and people being in your life at the right time and kind of direct you. And so that was my journey and it was at University of Texas where I spent really the first year of my independent career just.
You know, I had these ideas, I had these thoughts that if we could make nitric oxide gas, we could really change the world and change the landscape of, of medicine. So for the first year, I just spent a year in the lab by myself doing experiments, collecting data, filing invention disclosures, filing patents, and then, you know, 20 years later, here we are.
We've got several dozen issued patents all in the U. S. and around the world. We have Safe and effective product technology that's changed the lives of millions of people. And you mentioned, um, you know, changing the world and, uh, you know, I, I see so much, you know, there's so much disease, you know, and so many sick people today.
And I feel like things are on the rise and going in the wrong direction for the most part. But you know, when it comes to nitric oxide, what do you think the main sort of connections are between. Transcribed Nitric oxide and your levels, you know, not being where they should be and, and disease. Well, I think the loss, and this is what the science tells us, this isn't what I think, this is what the science reveals.
Is that the loss of production of nitric oxide, the functional loss of production of this molecule. Is what leads to the onset and progression of every major age related chronic disease. Whether it's cardiovascular disease, the number one killer of men and women worldwide. Whether it's Alzheimer's, dementia, diabetes, autoimmune disease, neurological disease.
It's loss of nitric oxide. When you understand the role and what this molecule does, it makes perfect sense. So when we look at chronic disease, kind of the end stages of chronic disease. There's always four things. There's low blood flow, so for instance, Alzheimer's, there's reduced blood flow to the brain.
In coronary heart disease, there's reduced blood flow to the heart. In kidney disease, there's reduced blood flow to the kidney. So that's number one. Number two, those organs are always inflamed. There's inflammation, there's overproduction of oxygen radicals, which we call oxidative stress. And then our immune system gets a little bit confused and we have immune dysfunction.
So every major chronic disease is low blood flow, inflammation, oxidative stress, and immune dysfunction. And when we, when we start to understand what nitric oxide is and what it does, number one, it's a vasodilator. So it dilates the blood vessels, every blood vessel in the body, the resistance arteries that maintain normal blood pressure and the small blood vessels that actually perfuse, uh, every organ tissue and cell in the body.
So nitric oxide is a vasodilator. So we're overcoming the low blood flow. We're improving circulation, improving oxygenation. And we also mitigate the inflammation, you know, several of my patents are on the method of reducing inflammation. So nitric oxide down regulates the inflammatory response, so that's two out of two boxes we check.
Number three, it inhibits oxidative stress. We and others published 10 15 years ago that nitric oxide inhibits the three primary sources of oxygen radicals in the cell, NADPH oxidase, uncoupled electron transport chain, and the NOS enzyme itself. So when we, when we restore the ability to produce nitric oxide, we completely shut down the oxidative stress we see in diseased organs or, or, uh, chronic disease.
And then number three, number four, we inhibit the immune dysfunction that we see. So once you eliminate the oxidative stress and inflammation, The immune system can get back on track and, and, and heal and repair tissue and fight off infections, but it's not attacking itself. So we've cleared up the terrain.
We've cleared up the environment where the immune dysfunction can no longer occur. So simply by restoring the production of nitric oxide, we address all fundamentals of chronic disease. Now I think obviously in, in many conditions there reaches a point in every disease process where there's a point of no return.
So what we're trying to do is, is change the, the narrative in medicine. Because medicine all over the world is a reactive practice, right? You don't take action until you get sick or have an event or get disease. What I hope to do and why I always welcome opportunities to have conversations like this is let's be proactive.
You know, it's much simpler to prevent the onset and progression of disease than it is to cure it, treat it, or reverse it. So we have to pay attention to our body and our body tells us all the time that something's not right and we just got to listen to our body. So when you start to develop things like high blood pressure, rectal dysfunction, when you don't recover as quickly as a as a professional athlete such as yourself, that your body, that's your body telling you Hey, I'm not optimized, something's, something's going on here that I don't repair and replace cells as quickly as I used to, I don't recover as quickly as I used to, so I need to pay attention to that and focus on nitric oxide so we can mobilize stem cells, improve circulation, oxygenation, improve performance, and improve recovery.
So we just got to listen to our body and take action. So interesting because, you know, this is something that, I mean, over my career, I've had, you know, quite a few things go wrong and, uh, surgeries and injuries and things. And it's something that I've never, you know, it's never been mentioned to me. And you know, from what you're saying, this could really make an impact to, uh, you know, to recovery from whether it's a disease or an injury or surgery, anything like that.
And, uh, also my grandmother, for example, she, she actually passed away of Alzheimer's and you mentioned the effect of that, and it's something that. It's sort of not really, I don't know if it's not mainstream, it's just not, you know, the, the average doctor doesn't, uh, doesn't talk about it and, uh, it's really frustrating.
Well, we're hoping to change that. You know, I speak at, you know, 30 to 40 medical and scientific conferences a year all around the world trying to, to change that. And I think there are a number of reasons for that. So number one in allopathic medicine. Um, there's, there's really not a, a way to diagnose nitric oxide deficiency.
There's no labs like cholesterol or triglycerides or vitamin B and pull blood and give you a number and then treat that number. Um, the other thing is, you know, there's really no safe and effective prescription medication. So doctors, the way medicine is practiced today is they make a diagnosis and then they build, they, they code that, right?
So they can get paid for that. And then once you make a diagnosis, there's only finite number of things you can do to And it's called the standard of care to address that diagnosis. And if you do something outside the standard of care, then the doctors are putting their license on this. So you have to operate within the standard of care and there's no nitric oxide therapy for any indication.
Um, so you can't prescribe a medication for that. Now what we can do and I think what's most important is you can modify your diet, you can modify your lifestyle, stop doing the things that disrupt it, start doing the things that promote it, and now we can start to have an impact. They're on these chronic diseases, but I think, and what we're doing now through, through Bryan Therapeutics, my drug company, is we're moving this technology through the FDA to where it's my intent that we're going to have prescription medications for nitric oxide for a number of conditions.
We're going after ischemic heart disease, we've got a drug for Alzheimer's, and we're making a topical drug for diabetic ulcers, and that's just the beginning. We'll go after many other. Indications, because what I truly believe and I think the science supports that is that there's not a single indication where nitric oxide would not be safe and effective for any chronic disease when given at the right dose, at the right time, and the right patient.
And so it's my job and our job to figure out what's the right dose, what's the right patient To, to give this to, and for what indication. And we, we have a very clear understanding of, of how to do that. Now it's just a matter of getting this technology through the FDA, getting it approved, so that now that we can give doctors and physicians and healthcare practitioners safe and effective medications to treat a number of these poorly managed disease.
Because it's clear to me that, that the way we're treating patients today is not making anybody better, right? More drugs are not the answer. It's really understanding the root cause of disease and addressing the root cause. And I think the reason we're on the wrong path and we're dealing with this huge global pandemic of poorly managed age related chronic disease is because we're not addressing the root cause of it.
And the root cause is really a loss of nitric oxide production. There are many other contributing factors, whether it's exposure to toxins or deficiencies in certain nutrients and minerals. But the underlying mechanism of all that, whether it's toxin exposure, whether it's deficiencies in nitric oxide.
And basic cofactors and substrates is the body loses its ability to make nitric oxide. We lose the regulation of blood flow. We're inflamed. We have oxidative stress and immune dysfunction, and these diseases manifest differently in different people. But we, we, your body cannot and will not heal until first we restore the production of nitric oxide.
Then you got to start addressing the toxins and things that are inside the body. We got to, we got to clear and then repleting missing nutrients and vitamins and minerals, then changing our diet and lifestyle. If I understand correctly, you believe that actually nitric oxide is in a way more important than, you know, cause as for health in general, you know, people talk about diet and exercise and, and toxins and all of this.
And do you believe that sort of, Nitric oxide production trumps all of that. Absolutely. Because if you look mechanistically, you know, diet and lifestyle are the key to, to longevity, uh, performance. I mean, you know, this as a, as a professional athlete that if you don't take care of your body and watch what you put in your body, your diet, and then exercise and train, then you can't compete.
I mean, you're going to get killed out there, but mechanistically, if you look at dietary patterns, whether it's the Mediterranean diet, the Japanese diet, the dietary approaches to stop hypertension. Even a carnivorous or a vegetarian diet. Why do these dietary patterns improve health and longevity? Many people thought, well, in a plant based diet, it's getting the antioxidants and all that, and it's really that, but when you try to recapitulate that through controlled clinical trials, by giving those antioxidants that are found in a plant based diet, they fail to, to reproduce the effects of a plant based diet.
We published in probably in 2009. Was that the mechanism of a plant based diet, a meta training diet, a Japanese diet, was that it improves nitric oxide production. So you're getting a lot of this molecule called inorganic nitrate that the body metabolizes into nitric oxide. So these dietary patterns that are shown throughout nutritional epidemiology for decades, if not centuries, to improve health, have a nitric oxide component.
They're priming and improving nitric oxide production. And then what about training, exercise training, resistance training? All of that stimulates and activates nitric oxide production. So if you have a sedentary lifestyle and you eat of a Western diet that completely shuts down nitric oxide production, and what are the consequences of that?
You get nine out of 10 Americans that are metabolically unfit. You get two out of three Americans that are overweight and obese, and you get two out of three Americans have an unsafe elevation in blood pressure. And you may or may not realize this, but the, you know, over half of the people that are young and military age aren't fit to serve in the military.
So this is a national security issue in the United States. And, you know, unfortunately this isn't just a Western issue anymore. It's a global pandemic. So whether we're looking at diet and lifestyle, um, and things we do, all of that can be traced back to, to nitric oxide. So. Yeah, I agree with what you said.
I don't think this, I know this, that nitric oxide is foundational. For everything we do, it's affected by diet, it's affected by lifestyle, it's affected by, you know, some hygienic practices and, you know, a lot of the medications that were prescribed by, by healthcare practitioners and physicians shut down nitric oxide production.
So when I look at the, the average American or the average sick person, everything they're doing and the reason they're sick is because their body can't produce nitric oxide. So we have to focus on that and it's foundational. And again, I don't want to come off as being a panacea and a silver bullet and that's all you got to do.
But what I do think, and I think the science corroborates this, is that you have to focus on nitric oxide as the foundation, because you can try all these other things, but if you aren't optimized for nitric oxide, you can have minimal results. But if we focus on nitric oxide, restoring the production of that as a foundation, now you can focus on other things and get much better results.
And when people start to see results, they're more motivated, right? They can really get more motivated to manage their blood pressure, to overcome sexual dysfunction, To lose weight, become metabolically fit. And that's our goal. I mean, I'm sure there are many factors that influence this, but in your experience, what are the main things that actually lower nitric oxide?
Well, it's, it's a poor diet. Um, you know, consuming sugar and high, uh, high glycemic or high carbohydrate type dietary patterns because sugar is the enemy. I mean, sugar is, is a toxin. It's a poison. And it's glucose, right? Glucose is the terminal kind of, um, molecule that the body uses to make cellular energy.
So we need it. Our body makes this, this molecule to help facilitate cellular energy or ATP production. The problem is when we consume too much of it, our body sees too much. This glucose molecule is blue. I mean, there's a reason that, that there's that same root word. It's glue. So it's, it's sticky. And you've experienced this.
If you, if you drink a sugar beverage or a soda. And you spill it on the countertop, you come back the next day, sticky, right? It's everything is sticky. That's the sugar in it. It's a glue. So that's what happens in the body. It becomes sticky and it glues things together. And so we can measure this, the amount of sugar bound or stuck to a molecule hemoglobin.
We call this hemoglobin A1C, and it's a measure of long term glucose or sugar control. And this is just one molecule that we're picking out of the circulation that measures the amount of sugar or glucose stuck to it. But it sticks to every protein, it sticks to enzymes, it sticks to the enzyme that makes nitric oxide.
And when you understand biochemistry and enzymology, these enzymes have to be able to move and undergo conformational changes, but if sugar is stuck to it, it, it, by, it locks these proteins in a certain conformation state and it can no longer move, and so you develop enzyme deficiencies and enzymopathies.
And you become nitric oxide deficient. So sugar is a problem. You have to eliminate sugar from your diet. It's a huge, huge problem. Then the other thing are, you know, uh, again, Western diet, processed foods, lack of any physical exercise. And then when we talk about kind of things that kind of have an unintended consequences, You know, mouthwash, you know, we published about 15 years ago that if you eradicate the oral microbiome, it shuts down nitric oxide production and we see an elevation in blood pressure.
So in America, two out of three Americans wake up every morning and use mouthwash, killing the oral microbiome, shutting down nitric oxide production. And not coincidentally, two out of three Americans have an unsafe elevation in blood pressure. So this is causal. Now, so there's the microbiome, the bacteria that live in the, in the mouth, part of their role.
Is to produce nitric oxide. So when you kill these bacteria by using an antiseptic mouthwash or worse you use fluoride in your toothpaste and in America, you know, we put fluoride in the drinking water. And why do they put fluoride in the drinking water? Well to kill the bacteria in the water supply.
Well that same fluoride kills the bacteria in your mouth so we're creating a an aseptic environment in the mouth and it's leading to nitric oxide deficiency. Uh, increasing elevation in blood pressure, it's causing sexual dysfunction, and it was published several years ago that people who use mouthwash actually lose the benefits of exercise.
They lose the cardioprotective benefits of exercise. So think about this, and people have good intent, intentions, right? They eat a good diet, they exercise, they may be a well trained athlete, but they use mouthwash because they're thinking that, you know, they need to have fresh breath. But when you do that, you eliminate the nitric oxide benefits of diet.
You eliminate the nitric oxide benefits of exercise. So using mouthwash or exposure to fluoride to base fluoride water is the worst thing you can do. So I tell people all the time, get rid of fluoride, stop using mouthwash, and then the other thing is antacids. You know, there's 200 million prescriptions written for antacids every year in the U.
S. alone. And that's not even counting the over the counter purchases. You can buy Prevacid, Prilosec, Nexium. Over the counter without a prescription and these drugs now have been shown to completely inhibit nitric oxide production And we now have data showing that people who have been on an acid for three to five years have 40 percent higher incidence of heart Attack stroke and Alzheimer's so these are these are very dangerous drugs and deadly drugs that should be taken off the market So if you eliminate mouthwash if you eliminate fluoride in your toothpaste And you start to wean patients off antacids and under teach people the dangers You Of these drugs that alone will change the world and change the ability for the body to naturally produce Nitric oxide and those are cost savings, right?
So if you stop using Mouthwash that's going to save you money get off antacids It's going to save you money and make your body much healthier and you know Just eliminate fluoride buy some fluoride free toothpaste and you know that may cost you a little bit extra premium products or buy a home filtration system to To filter out the fluoride in your drinking water if you're drinking That municipality has right.
So it's sometimes it's really that simple. It's not, we're not asking you to do things extra change your lifestyle. We're asking you to eliminate the things that are indisputably inhibiting nitric oxide production. It's interesting because you mentioned that, you know, people doing the right things and exercising and eating right and thinking that, you know, they're doing all the right things.
And I was one of those people. Uh, and, and obviously being an athlete and, uh, I just, I didn't think that I could have anything go wrong because I was like, well, I'm doing everything right. Or so I thought. And, uh, you know, then I got diagnosed with a melanoma. Um, and I was just, my whole world was rocked because I thought, you know, my sort of inner confidence of, of what I thought I was or what I was doing was suddenly.
You know, uh, and then you realize, okay, this can happen to anyone. And then, but then as I did more research, um, over the last few years, I've seen that it's, you know, there's so much more to health than just, you know, The way you eat or exercising, uh, you know, like something like nitric oxide or sleep, uh, stress, you know, there's relationships, there's, there's so much more, and I think a lot of people don't have any idea, you know, and I hear it all the time when someone there, maybe they're super fit, they're, they're a tire athlete or something like that.
And, um, And then they get sick and, uh, you know, they get cancer or something. And then someone says, Oh, well, you see, it doesn't matter if you, if you healthy or not, you know, and I think just people don't realize like how much goes into it. And you mentioned also about the mouthwash and, and, uh, and fluoride and the toothpaste.
I mean, I was using mouthwash actually, until I saw another podcast with you on it until you mentioned the mouthwash and I subsequently stopped using it. And, uh, also. I mean, both my parents are on Antacids as well. And yeah, it's, it's hard, uh, you know, because especially when you, you know, you have information like coming from yourself and listen to podcasts and things, but I'm not a doctor.
So when people hear the information from, from me, they often don't believe me. I mean, once you understand this. And I think the benefit from my perspective, having a degree in biochemistry and a PhD in molecular psychophysiology, really learn how to integrate mechanistically the biochemistry that happens in every cell in the body to understanding how you integrate this into human physiology.
So cancer is a terminal process in metabolic disease, right? Cancer is a metabolic disease. This goes back to Otto Warburg and the Nobel Prize and his work in the 1940s. When you understand what cancer is. It's what we call aerobic fermentation. So you get uncoupled electron transport and you start to, you know, it creates an environment where there's low oxygen, low voltage, low pH, and that's, that's cancer.
That's a, that's an environment where cancer cells grow and proliferate. So how do you overcome that? One, you gotta, you gotta recouple the electron transport chain, which nitric oxide does. You gotta get adequate blood flow and oxygen delivery to that hypoxic site, which nitric oxide does vasodilates. And you've got to restore the voltage.
And interestingly, the physical chemistry around nitric oxide is it's a, it's a free radical, meaning that it has an unpaired electron in its outer orbital and anything that donates electrons contributes to the electrical potential or the potential hydrogen, the pH of the cell increases voltage. So nitric oxide is one of those things that contributes to increase voltage.
So cancer, again, there are a number of things that contribute to cancer, but terminally the, the final step in that is this low oxygen, low pH. Low voltage environment that you have to overcome. Now, I think a lot of this contributes to dental infections that contribute to that But that's you know, the point here is that cancer is a metabolic disease that you have to address the metabolism It's not a genetic disease genes change in response to the environment, but you have to control the Metabolism of that particular cell or environment where that primary tumor is and then we talk about stomach acid You know, our body, there's a reason our pyloric cells of our stomach make hydrochloric acid.
Because in order for us to absorb nutrients like iron, calcium, magnesium, selenium, chromium, iodine, we have to have stomach acid production in order to break down proteins. So the food we eat, whether it's plant based or animal based, humans are never designed to integrate foreign proteins. Right? We don't, we don't integrate animal proteins into the human protein machinery.
We don't, we don't integrate the plant based proteins. What we do is we consume these proteins. Proteins are made up of amino acids. And when we have sufficient stomach acid production, that allows for the breakdown of proteins into the constituent amino acids. That happens in the stomach. And it's 100 percent dependent upon stomach acid production.
So now we have these amino acids, that are emptied into the duodenum, the small intestines. We absorb these amino acids and then we make human proteins from amino acids that we get from plant or animal proteins. But never do we integrate animal proteins or plant proteins into the human protein machine.
So without stomach acid production, because we're inhibiting it with antacids, now we can't break down these proteins into amino acids. These undigested peptide fragments are now, uh, emptied into the small intestines. They're transported across the gut lining, and now the body recognizes these as foreign molecules, and our immune system attacks it.
And that's the basis for autoimmune disease. So even when my kids were babies, you know, they'd spit up, the doctor would put them on N acids. And when once we understood this, we'd have no N acids, and I think that's the basis for a lot of food based allergies today. Autoimmunity, it's We have to be able to support stomach acid production in order for, to break down proteins into amino acids, to absorb basic nutrients, you know, in the U S 75 percent of Americans are deficient, magnesium, calcium, iodine.
And why is that? Well, number one, we're not getting enough from the food. And number two, if we can't make stomach acid, we can't absorb these. And going back to the days of Linus Pauling, who is famous to quote a saying that chronic disease is caused from nutrient deficiency. I think that's part of it.
It's nutrient deficiency, but it's also exposure to toxins that, as I mentioned, completely shut down nitric oxide production. So once you understand how the human body works and why it does what it does, the last thing and the worst thing we should do is inhibit that process, that natural process.
Through antacids, through giving, uh, synthetic compounds that inhibit, uh, normal biochemical reactions. You know, cholesterol lowering drugs, these HMA CoA reductase inhibitors, uh, are very dangerous drugs and should be avoided, uh, because we, we, we need cholesterol. Brain's 80 percent fat and cholesterol, and our body makes cholesterol naturally because if we don't get it enough from our diet, our body has to make it.
That's how essential it is. So the worst thing you can do is inhibit cholesterol synthesis in the human body. But if, if there's a recipe for chronic illness. And it goes like this. Get your cholesterol below 200 because if your cholesterol is below 200, you can't make vitamin D. If you can't make vitamin D, you become immunocompromised and you can't make testosterone and women can't make estrogen.
Uh, so get your cholesterol below 200, put fluoride in the drinking water and then get everybody to use mouthwash to completely eradicate the oral microbiome. And all you got to do is turn on your TV and watch all the advertisements for, for antacids. Uh, and then eat a western diet and follow the government's dietary recommendations.
Eat a lot of grains and carbohydrates and limit meat consumption. I mean, that's a recipe for chronic illness, and that's what we're seeing around the world is chronic illness. So we have to reverse that, and, and I think it's, there's a number of forces that, uh, that are contributing to that because big pharma is a trillion dollar industry.
And the number one rule of business is never lose a customer. And they play by those rules all the time because there's no money in curing disease. There's money in treating disease. I'm a, yeah, I'm a firm believer that and, uh, as you know, people say that it's a conspiracy theory and this and that, but I mean, honestly it makes total sense.
I mean, if you think, just think about cancer, for example, and how much money, how many billions of dollars, um, you know, the medical industry is making from chemo and radiation and all of that. And so if someone. If there was suddenly a cure, you know, for cancer, it would definitely lose their money. A lot of it, so why, why would they, they don't want people to be better.
They would want people to, they would want people to live, but just kind of tick along, but keep coming back and keep getting medicated. Um, so, you know, as, as horrible as that sounds, uh, I definitely believe that. You mentioned, um, also with the antacids, uh, Interesting, because most people take antacids for something like GERD or, or reflux.
Um, but then I'd heard that actually a lot of the time reflux is caused by too little stomach acid and not actually too much. No, that's right. Because when the, look, the human body is much smarter than any of us, right? And we, a lot of times we just got to get out of its way. So when we talk about breaking down proteins into amino acids, and if we don't, then our body sees it as a foreign substance.
So if we have low acid production, we're going to get reflux disease because if the, if the, if the stomach can't break down those proteins into amino acids and we have these undigested peptide fragments or protein fragments in the stomach, the stomach is saying, hey, this is foreign. I need to get rid of this.
I need to get this out of my body. And so what does it do? It refluxes, it tries to expectorate it. And so what happens, what little acid is there, you start to burn kind of the, the, uh, the juncture, the sphincter that closes into the stomach and from the esophagus. So you get some reflux and it's, it's uncomfortable and it's a burning.
So they think, okay, it's the acid that's causing the burn, so let's give an antacid. And it, it, it exacerbates and makes the condition worse. So it, it, it, it does relieve the kind of, the, the acute symptomatic burning from asset reflux, but it's making the process work. It's masking and preventing the body from doing what it's designed to do is get rid of the foreign material.
You know, if we, if we eat something that has e coli or, or a foodborne pathogen on it. Mm-Hmm, , what's the first response? We throw up, right? Cause that's our body saying, I got something really nasty inside it. I need to get it out. What's the quickest way to get it out? Well, if it's in the upper GI, we throw it up.
If it gets down further into the GI system, what does it do? It creates diarrhea because it's our body trying, I got to get rid of this as fast as possible. So it's, it's depends upon where in the GI tract the body recognize it. But foodborne illnesses is always the same symptoms. It's throwing up followed by diarrhea.
And that's the body's way of getting rid of this. Bad thing in the body and the same thing happens when we can't make stomach acid It's the body trying to get rid of this undigested food particle that it recognizes as foreign So I tell people if you have reflux, you know Now they become dependent upon antacids because anybody who's tried to stop antacids cold turkey We'll understand that this is a very bad idea.
I tried to convince my, my, my father to do that. And, uh, he, I think he stopped for two days and then told me I was mad. Now you have to wean off of these drugs. So I tell people, you know, whatever dose you're taking, cut it in half and do that half dose for 10 days. And after 10 days, do half dose every other day for 10 days.
And slowly you'll, you'll eliminate these drugs out of your body. And we won't get this hyper rebound. Or hypersecretion of acid if you stop cold turkey. But then, before every meal, just take some apple cider vinegar, which is basically just flavored acetic acid, to acidify the lumen of the stomach. Now when you eat your meal, you can absorb nutrients, you can break down the proteins into amino acids.
And you eliminate the, the reflux, and now you eliminate the need for these very dangerous and deadly drugs, antacids. I actually took, uh, something called betaine hydrochloride tablets, um, yeah, I, I, cause I occasionally had reflux as well at a stage, um, I haven't for now quite a long time, and I don't always take the tablets, but, um, Yeah, that was something.
And also, I avoided eat, uh, drinking, um, a lot of fluids before and after meals. I found that made it way worse. It obviously makes sense because you're now, um, watering down the acid that you have in your stomach. That's right. You're diluting the, the, the stomach acid. So, yeah, no, those are very, I mean, to you that was common sense, but you saw the, the results from that.
But again, when you look back at kind of mechanistically and scientifically, why that is, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. It's diluting the acid that's being produced in the stomach and really inhibiting the body's ability to break down proteins and to absorb nutrients from your diet. So it makes perfect sense.
Yeah. I mean, it does make also sense. I get why people think that because they're getting this burning sensation that they need to know that they've got too much acid. And when I first got explained that it made sense as well. But then. You know, once you see more research, you realize that is actually a different way to look at it.
Well, there's also offending foods we eat too. I mean, you know that, I mean, I try to eat a good, clean, healthy diet that, you know, I travel a lot on occasions. My kids want to not eat a piece of pizza. And I, I regret it, you know, 20, 30 minutes later, cause it's offending. You know, and so then I just avoid those, those foods.
And so if you can eliminate the offending foods and everybody has kind of their own tolerance to those, but if you eat a good, clean diet, uh, and eliminate the offending foods that cause reflux and just follow these simple principles, then it goes away. Um, and okay. So going slightly back to the, um, you know, the nitric oxide again, um, besides the, we talked about now the disease besides that.
Are there, you know, would there be any other symptoms, you know, that people would notice on a day to day basis that would tell them, okay, maybe I've got an issue with this. Yeah. We're starting to understand there's a hierarchy of symptoms, right? So when your body can't produce nitric oxide, there are things that start to show up and it's your body telling you, Hey, something's not right.
What we're starting to understand really the first sign and symptom is, is sexual dysfunction. And this is in men and women. And when you think about this, it makes perfect sense. So to get an erection. In either men or women, you have to get engorgement, right, and engorgement is really just an increase in blood flow to that organ, whether it's the penis or the clitoris or the lady.
And so that increase in blood flow comes from the body's ability to produce nitric oxide, the main vasodilator. So if our body can't produce nitric oxide for whatever reason, then when we're stimulated sexually, there's no vasodilation, there's no engorgement. So we develop erectile dysfunction. In both men and women.
So that's first. And then we call it the canary in the coal mine. It's really the first sign and symptom that you're losing the ability to produce nitric oxide. And interestingly, if that same dysfunction, if the blood vessels of the sex organs have lost the ability to produce nitric oxide, then it's a systemic disease.
The blood vessels of the corneal arteries have lost the ability to dilate. The blood vessels of the brain, the cerebral arteries, have lost the ability to vasodilate in response. And we have to, Be able to regulate blood flow upon demand because if during sex or during exercise, we have to increase the blood vessels of the coronary arteries to, to increase, to meet the increased metabolic demands on the heart.
And if we can't make nitric oxide, we can't dilate the blood vessels of the coronary arteries and we develop exercise intolerance, you can't perform, sometimes you develop what's called ischemia and changes in electrical activity, ST elevation changes in, in the electrical conductance of the heart that we can pick up on EKG.
Um, so that's number one. Number two is your blood pressure starts to increase because we have a finite volume of blood we're pumping each day, you know, five to six liters every day throughout the body. And if we can't make nitric oxide, the blood vessels become chronically contracted or constricted. So now we're pushing that same volume of blood through smaller pikes and pressure goes up.
Again, increase in blood pressure is typically always a symptom of nitric oxide deficiency. So ed, high blood unsafe elevation and blood pressure, and it's really anything that starts to get above one 20 over 80 mm-Hmm, . So every one millimeter increase in blood pressure, it's an 1% increase in cardiovascular disease.
Let's just say your blood pressure is one 30 over 85. You've increased your risk of heart attack, stroke, and cardiovascular disease by 10%. If your blood pressure is one 60 over 90, you've increased your risk by 50%. Have a heart attack or stroke or cardiovascular disease. So maintaining healthy blood pressure is absolutely critical.
Then the other thing is you start to develop metabolic disease. You know, nitric oxide is required for insulin signaling and glucose uptake. So if the cell can't produce nitric oxide, you develop insulin resistance. That's metabolic disease. What is that? That's cancer. That's, that's, uh, you know, metabolic syndrome, metabolic disease, diabetes.
Um, and then you lose exercise tolerance. So again, if you can't make nitric oxide to dilate the blood vessels, you can't enhance mitochondrial biogenesis, you can't make cellular energy, then you can't exercise and you see these people walk up a flight of steps, they become winded, they gotta stop, they gotta take a break, uh, that's nitric oxide deficiency and mitochondrial, uh, dysfunction.
And then really the terminal then is, is Alzheimer's because Alzheimer's is diabetes type 3, it's loss of regulation of blood flow, it's glucose, uh, deficiency. It's insulin resistance, can't get glucose into the cell, and that's all because of a loss of ability to produce nitric oxide. So those are the symptoms, and that's, you know, we see this all day, every day, and, you know, when people start to integrate these approaches, eliminate mouthwash, eliminate antacids, get rid of fluoride, eat a balanced diet in moderation, good, clean diet, high protein.
Low carb, uh, and then start exercising. You see remarkable effects on people. You mentioned, um, obviously you touched on it there with, with exercise and performance, and you mentioned it's also a vascular, vascular dilator. So I would assume that that must have a massive impact on, on, um, athletic performance, obviously me coming from the, you know, the sports side, professional sports side, this is something that I haven't really heard talked about.
Um, In the sports space. I mean, I'm sure it is at some point, but, uh, I, I haven't heard about it and it sounds like it could be a huge, uh, enhancement for a lot of athletes now, without a doubt. You know, there were data. We, we collaborated with a group outta Germany years ago, and, and you, there's two, two experiments you take, well-trained athletes, these are people performing at, at, at peak, peak performance, you know, like you.
And so we, we, we put a catheter in and, and draw blood and then put them on a treadmill and increase their workload. And their ability, and we could pick up nitric oxide metabolites in their blood, and their ability to produce nitric oxide predicted their performance. Think about this, so if you're a well trained athlete, you're producing a lot of nitric oxide and it predicts your performance.
How far you can go, how long you can go. Uh, so it's performance predictor. Now we do that same experiment, but we take people over the age of 50 with known risk factors. Either they're smoking, they have high blood pressure. Cardiovascular disease or diabetes, and we put a cat in, draw blood, put them on an exercise.
They failed to increase nitric oxide and they failed an exercise stress test. So it's indisputable that the ability to produce nitric oxide predicts exercise capacity. So now the question is, okay, how do we improve nitric oxide production to improve performance? So you probably were aware of this in 2012 in the London Olympic Games, there were a number of these Olympic athletes using, drinking liters and liters of beetroot juice.
There was some evidence out there that beetroot can enhance nitric oxide production and improve performance. And to some extent, that's, that's correct, but, you know, I've tested this and 95 percent of the beetroot products on the market. don't do anything for nitric oxide. All they do is give you gastric discomfort and turn your pee and your poop red and cause a lot of anxiety.
So there's, there is a nitric oxide potential of beets, but it's dependent upon the, the inorganic nitrate content of that. And it's also dependent upon oral microbiome and dependent upon stomach acid production. So you can enhance performance by giving a nitric oxide active product technology, which is what we make.
If your body can't make nitric oxide, then we do it for you. And you see an enormous performance enhancing effects of that from, from supplements. From supplements. So we, we do a couple of things. We make an order disintegrating tablet. You put this lozenge in your mouth and it produces nitric oxide gas.
It's not dependent on the bacteria. It's not dependent upon stomach acid because once I figured out how to make nitric oxide gas, and this is the only solid dose form of nitric oxide gas. We make a solid dose form of nitric oxide gas. You put it in your mouth, let it dissolve over five to six minutes.
And it's liberating this gas. So if your body can't make it, we do it for you. And so that's, that's number one. Number two, because of the popularity of beads. And people actually looking for beet products, we make it a fermented beet powder. And again, we ferment this, we pre convert it, and we take the oxalates out, we take the beet pulp, the beet color, the beet taste out.
So now we make a fermented beet powder that's a white powder, doesn't look or taste like beets. But as soon as you put this in solution, it starts generating nitric oxide gas. So again, if your body can't make it, we do it for you. Dilates the blood vessels, improves the efficiency of mitochondrial function.
Efficiency of ATP production. So you're making more energy with less oxygen and from a performance aspect that pushes that anaerobic threshold improves your performance improves recovery And really makes you outcompete the competition Can you I mean is there upper limit as to you know? How much you can have and and also is it would be legal in in in sports?
from a Performance enhancing point of view. Yeah. Look, you can overdo anything, right? If you drink too much water at any given time, it'll kill you, right? There's a hypotonic lysis of cells. The same thing with nitric oxide. You can overdo it. I mean, the toxicity comes from, uh, hypotension. So if you take too much and dilate all the blood vessels of the body, you can drop blood pressure to an unsafe level and lead to hypoperfusion, uh, and then really end organ failure because of hypoperfusion, you lose perfusion pressure.
to organs throughout the body, but you'll, you'll typically get lightheaded and pass out because of loss of perfusion pressure to the brain. And then you'll develop a condition called mid hemoglobinemia, you'll oxidize the heme of, uh, the heme iron of hemoglobin and reduce the oxygen carrying capacity of the red blood cell.
But that's if you way overdo it. I mean if you take these products as indicated, you know, there's no toxicity and you can improve performance and safety, but yeah, but you just, you have to, you know, be very careful with this. Yes. Dose dictates poison. And so for me, actually, interestingly enough, I've a lot of my life been prone to lower blood pressure.
Um, and I, I mean, obviously there are many factors involved, but I mean, would you think that could be something to do with nitric oxide? Or would you only encounter that when you're actually doing, you know, things like taking a supplement to, to increase it? Well, it's a very important question. And we answered that question early on before we ever launched any products on the market.
And they, really the fascinating thing about nitric oxide is if you have normal or low blood pressure, it doesn't further reduce your blood pressure. So it's almost like a rheostat mechanism to maintain healthy blood pressure. But if you have high blood pressure, the higher the blood pressure, the drop, bigger drop of blood pressure nitric oxide has.
So with the 24 hour ambulatory blood pressure monitors, you know, my blood pressure at any given time is 118 over 68. I take nitric oxide, I take our products and the blood pressure doesn't change. We've done that people that have, you know, severe hypothyroidism, which blood pressure of say, you know, a hundred over 60.
We give them the nitric oxide, there's not a further drop in blood pressure. So it's a very important consideration because we don't want to drop blood pressure in people who don't need their blood pressure dropped. But I think from my experience, people with chronic low blood pressure is typically a thyroid issue.
Mm hmm. So the thyroid really sets your basal metabolic rate. And people who have really low diastolic blood pressure is really a sign and symptom of hypothyroidism. So I tell people, you know, get your thyroid checked, check your temperature first thing in the morning when you wake up. If it's below 98, it doesn't matter what your TSH, T4, T3 is, you have, your thyroid isn't working if your temperature is below 98 when you wake up in the morning.
So then you got to figure out why isn't my thyroid working, why is my blood pressure low? Well, you're probably deficient in iodine, 95 percent of Americans are deficient in iodine. So supplement, I take 12 and a half milligrams of iodine per day. Stimulate my thyroid function. You need iodine to make stomach acid, hydrochloric acid from caloric cells.
So we need iodine for a number of important biological functions. It's interesting because I, I've often, well, I would say as I've gotten older, um, it's gotten a bit higher. But when I was younger, I had chronically low blood pressure. And my mother actually, I think I got it from her because she had, um, she's always got, you know, sometimes she's got 98 over, 58, you know, it's really low.
Um, and you know, I think that I don't think she's ever looked into something like I'd like an iodine supplement or her thyroid. So that's, uh, yeah. Yeah. But the problem is if she goes to her doc and does a thyroid panel, what's at her TSH, T4, T3, reverse T3. It's going to be, a lot of times I'll say it's in the normal range.
Well, the only really readout of normal thyroid function is your basal metabolic rate and your temperature. And so that's when you wake up in the morning, as soon as you open your eyes, your temperature. If your temperature is below 98 degrees Fahrenheit at 37 degrees Celsius, your thyroid isn't working.
I don't give a shit about your TSH or T. Your thyroid isn't working. That's the readout. And then you've got to figure out, okay, why isn't my thyroid working? Am I deficient in. In iodine, do I have an elevation of reverse T3 that's inhibiting, you know, normal thyroid function and, uh, thyroid binding, do you have a downregulation of your, uh, thyroid hormone receptors?
There are a number of things that contribute to that, but the biochemistry is well, and the endocrinology is very well elucidated. You just gotta ask the right questions. And figure out what the deficiency is. What about something, I mean, we obviously touched now on performance, um, I'm assuming that something like injury recovery, you know, after surgery or something like that, it would have a big effect on that too.
You know, in the early 2000s, late 90s, it was first published that nitric oxide is the molecule, is the signal in the body that tells our own stem cells to mobilize and differentiate. And it's stem cells in our body that go and repair and replace dysfunctional cells, whether it's. You know, old kind of zombie cells or senescent cells, or if it's an injury and we got to go and repair and replace, whether it's a surgical incision, um, scar, then our body has to replace those cells and repair and replace those cells that don't work.
And it's nitric oxide that's produced that tells those stem cells to mobilize, differentiate into whatever cell type they need to. So again, if your body can't make nitric oxide, it's deficient or compromised in its ability to make nitric oxide. Your ability to repair and replace and recover is compromised because what we're finding is we don't lose the number of stem cells with age, we lose the ability to mobilize our resident stem cells with age because of this age related loss of nitric oxide.
So if you can, again, restore and recapitulate nitric oxide production in signaling, you can mobilize stem cells and recover much better from injury. from surgery or from, from whatever. So I'm, I'm sure that, uh, most people want to be able to increase it, including myself. Uh, and so, I mean, you've touched on it a little bit already, but, uh, if someone didn't want to take anything, they didn't want to take a supplement or something like that.
When it comes down to diet, you mentioned avoiding sugar, you know, are there any other things diet related that people should either eat or not eat or not drink, you know, we talk about coffee or if it's a carnivore diet, ketogenic diet, you know, there anything, you know, from that, that's better or worse.
Yeah, you again, we look at data. We were driven by data. And if you look at nutritional epidemiology, I'm not a big fan of these extreme diets like the straight vegan vegetarian or straight carnivore Keto, I think there's there may be a time and a place for those extremes. The data on people with with advanced coronary artery disease, you put them on a plate based diet, it can reverse disease, regress disease.
Work of Dean Ornish and Caldwell Esselstyn and My good friend, Joel Kahn, um, that data is really pretty remarkable and indisputable. Um, and then if you look at straight carnivore, again, I think it, it changes the metabolic flexibility of people, but what I think the common denominator in both of these so called extreme diets is really the elimination of sugar and simple carbohydrates.
Um, but I think what I do is I eat a balanced diet in moderation. I eat a lot of protein, uh, red meat, throw in a few vegetables, but I really limit. Simple carbohydrates, high glycemic index foods, try to avoid sugar when I can, and I exercise. We have to move, we have to burn calories, we have to stay active.
Um, but yeah, I think a balanced diet in moderation. I'm a big fan of intermittent fasting. I do an 18 hour fast every day. I think the data on that and inducing these, these longevity genes, inducing mitochondrial biogenesis, An increase in your metabolic flexibility is really indisputable. So only eat between 12 and 6, typically what I do.
Eat a light lunch, you know, a high protein, uh, meal no later than 6 o'clock in the evening and then I fast until noon the next day. But I think, you know, everybody's different. There's not a one size fits all. You've got to figure out. You know, you as a, as a competitive athlete, your metabolic demands on you are different than me who just, I'm not a competitive athlete.
I, you know, I'm kind of what I call a weekend warrior. I want to stay fit. I want to stay in shape, but I'm not out competing at the highest level. Uh, you know, cognitively, I think I am, I'm a competitive athlete there because, you know, I, I live and work in a very competitive field and I've got to, I've got to outperform my competition, but not outperform them physically, I got to outperform them.
Mentally and strategically and execute on that. So I have to maintain a competitive environment cognitively, and that requires. You know the eating the right foods and staying metabolically fit. What about um, For from the food side, what about something like bacon? Uh, because it's got nitrate in it Uh, and then the other thing is with fasting.
What about longer fasts going, you know, two days three days You know, i've heard obviously the benefits of that. So, you know, what are your views on this? Well bacon the processed meats whether we're sodium nitrite or celery salts added to these cured meat products We've tested this we published this back in 2015 You There's very little residual nitrite and nitrate in these products because the nitrite they add reacts and binds to the iron of myoglobin and forms this cured meat color, inhibits bacterial overgrowth.
But there's very little residual nitrite in that, so you're not going to get enough nitrite and nitrate from cured meats to lead to any appreciable benefit. But what I tell people is you shouldn't avoid these foods because of the nitrite. Um, there's no issues with cancer or carcinogenicity. Of this.
That was a myth. We put the bed but 20 years ago, uh, so you shouldn't avoid those, but you're not going to get enough nitrite nitrate from eating bacon or hot dogs or lunch meat cured meats from that to know not to avoid them. Now, look, I'm a bit like, I mean, I'm a big red meat guy. A lot of protein, red meat, usually every meal.
So, yeah, I think they're not bad for you. They're good for you. But again, everything in moderation. Thanks for watching. And on the, uh, the fasting side, is it got more, you know, doing longer fast because obviously you can overdo it with these things as well. Yeah, the thing you have to kind of combat against is loss of protein and preventing protein breakdown.
And I think everybody's different. So usually about once a month, once every six weeks, I'll do a 48 hour, 72 hour fast. Okay. And I think what that does is it allows the body to clear these senescent cells. And it changes, it puts your body in kind of a, a state of acute stress. And it, I think it induces a lot of these longevity genes, but again, what I do to mitigate the loss of protein.
And muscle breakdown or bone loss is you take amino acids every morning So even though i'm doing a fast I still take basic nutrients to give my body kind of the raw material To do its job And so what what we're finding is that when you if you take these branch chain amino acids, it prevents protein breakdown Muscle loss bone loss and it turns on protein synthesis So if you're gonna do, you know a prolonged fast like a 48 or 72 hour fast I would, I would, you know, advise you to take some brine and amino acids to prevent that bone loss, that muscle loss during that fast.
So then you get the benefits of clearing out the senescent cells, activating mitochondrial biogenesis and do this PGC1 alpha longevity pathway without losing muscle and without losing bone. And that doesn't actually break the fast, so to speak. It doesn't break the fast, no. It's just branched chain amino acids that give your body the raw material.
I like the humic kind of giving your body the basic raw material, the basic micronutrients and minerals in that. Again, that doesn't break the fast, but it's giving your body kind of the raw material it needs to do its job without breaking the fast. It's good to know because I have been contemplating doing, doing a multi day fast for a while and, uh, haven't quite got, yeah, I wanted to do my research and make sure that I do the right thing before I just go blind into it.
If you're lean like you and you're in good shape, then I think you have to do that. If you're morbidly obese person, you've got enough reserve fat reserves in your body to where you can probably get away. With that, because if you're lean, you know, there's a hierarchy, we burn glucose as a primary fuel.
Then if we run out of glucose, we start breaking down fat. If we run out of fat, we start breaking down protein and we don't want to break down protein. So everybody is different. For a lean person in good shape, you have to prevent with very little fat to burn as a reserve. And you got to throw in the aminos and the heme and the fulvic to give the body the energy and the fuel it needs to, to where it doesn't start breaking down protein.
Good to know. I'll make sure I've been planning to do it in the, within the next month. So, uh, that's, uh, definitely something I'll keep on my, yeah, the first 24 hours is the worst. Once you get past 24 hours, you, you start to lose the hunger pains. And I've done, I've done, uh, quite a few 24 hours is that I, I don't have a, really an issue with going dinner to dinner.
I I've done that a few times a year for the last couple of years, but I've been I've always obviously that those last couple hours when it gets too close to dinner time the next day is really when you start having those, you know, those hunger pains and then I sort of think like if if it's this bad now, then what is it going to be like the next day?
But but then I've heard people say that it can actually be better the next day in some cases dinner to dinner because once you feel those hunger pains, what I do when I did those, I would just go to bed early. Right. If I started to feel really hungry around six or seven o'clock and I was tempted, and the worst thing you can do is turn on the TV because then you get all these advertisements, booze, Taco Bell.
And then even that nasty stuff starts to look good. But so I just turned the TV off and try to get a good eight, 10 hours sleep. And then you wake up and then the hunger pains are kind of got subsided. So you got to, you got to time your day based on that. It just, Go to bed when you get hungry or drink water.
That's a good tip. Um, and, uh, and we talked a bit about X, about exercise and that effect, you know, obviously there's different types of exercise. Um, you know, which is the best type of exercise that's going to stimulate the most, you know, the most production, whether it's weight training, interval training, or zone two or something like that.
Well, the early data, you know, data back probably 30 or 40 years ago was just, you know, 20 minutes of kind of aerobic exercise. Right, kind of that, um, that zone two where you're starting to, to break down fat. And it was thought that when we start to exercise, it causes sheer stress in the lining of the blood vessels and that activates nitric oxide production so you can dilate the blood vessels and improve, uh, blood flow to that working skeletal muscle, the working, uh, heart muscle.
And then there's adaptive effects of that, right? So that increase in nitric oxide would actually induce mitochondrial And, and improve the oxygen efficiency, uh, of ATP production, or mitochondrial efficiency of oxygen utilization. But, so 20, I used to tell people 20 to 30 minutes of moderate physical exercise, that's a brisk walk.
Getting your heart rate up, you know, increasing your, your respiratory rate, breathing in through your nose, out through your mouth, that's sufficient. But now you, we're seeing really impressive data on this high intensity interval training. You know, as little as two minutes of high intensity interval training, you know, you You know, getting your heart rate up, getting your breath rate up, uh, is showing enormous benefit.
And so people would always tell me, well, I really don't have 20 to 30 minutes to exercise because my day's full, but now there's no more excuse. Anybody has two minutes throughout the day. What I do is I do usually wake up every morning. I'll do a hundred pushups and a hundred squats. It takes me, you know, six or seven minutes.
To do that, but are, are you, you know, two minutes, I brush my teeth for two minutes and I'll do squats while I'm doing brushing my teeth. So you don't, you don't have an excuse, you know, you don't get old, you don't stop exercising because you get old, you get old because you stop exercising. So it's just a conscious decision, you know, do you, do you want to live longer, live better, live healthy?
There's no free ride. You've got, you're going to have to put in the work and you can do 20 minutes of moderate exercise. You can do two to four minutes of really high intensity interval training. Um, but I think the benefit is there and resistance training to, you know, when we're doing resistance training, when you're contracting your muscle, you're contracting the blood vessels and restricting flow in that area.
So you're creating what's called intermittent hypoxia or intermittent ischemia. And then that induces vasculogenesis, angiogenesis, you make new blood vessels, you improve blood flow, and that's all dependent upon nitric oxide. Can you overdo it with exercise? I mean, can you do it to the point where it's actually going to have a negative impact?
Yeah, I think so. Your body responds to stress, and it's called hormesis, right? And I think that's what exercise does. It's creating an acute stress response. And then your body's like, Oh, I need to adapt to that to where I can do better during that stressful situation. But if you're chronically, and you see this in ultra marathoners, right, and the people who do these hundred mile runs, and it's, you know, these people, the most, most fit, well trained people in the world are dying from sudden cardiac death, occlusion of the coronary artery.
So yeah, you can overdo it. If you don't give your body time to adapt to that stressful environment and you're chronically inducing that stress, then it can have diminishing returns. But I like showing in, I'm all about efficiency for me. What I do is I do, you know, 20, 30 minutes or two to four minutes, maybe six, eight minutes of high intensity interval training with the pushups and the squads.
And I'll do at most probably 15 minutes of resistant exercise on weight, whether it's in using my body as weight, whether it's pull ups, uh, setups, or just dumbbell training. And weight training, but then fuel, give your body the amino acids to turn on protein synthesis, turn off protein breakdown, um, then good nutrition to give your body what it needs to make new cells that work properly, then let, then rest, give your body a chance to adapt to that, that, that stressful situation you put it in.
It's interesting. Cause I feel like so many people, uh, you know, when you tell them, you could tell them exactly what they need to do to improve their health and, um, Most people I find won't do it and it's strange, it's, I don't know, for me, it's, it doesn't make sense because I think like, this is going to make you live longer, healthier, stronger, happier, and so many people just aren't interested and just wait until things are at the point where they're really bad until they go, Oh, okay, now I need to make a change, but often then it's too late.
Oh no, that's right, people are, people are fear based. Right. They don't make changes unless there's fear. And usually that fear comes in the form of a heart attack or a stroke. And for many people, the first sign of heart disease is sudden cardiac death. They don't have a time to respond to that. But for other people, they have a massive heart attack.
They've got a cardiac function, an injection fraction of 20 or 30%. Now their quality of life is awful. They're put on multiple drugs, polypharmacy, and you know, they've got an injured heart. And so now they've got to work extra hard to reverse that. And so I think that's why it's important to have these conversations and motivate people to be proactive instead of reactive.
And then, because once you realize that your biggest asset, the greatest wealth you have is in your health. And if you lose your health, what does money in the bank mean? What is, what does your family mean? If you can't enjoy the time you spend with your family and you're burdening them by taking care of you, if you're bedridden and can't enjoy it.
And people have to put this in proper perspective. But it takes discipline, it takes responsibility, and I find most people don't have a lot of discipline, self discipline. Yeah. And they want to, you know, take a pill and wait for a magic bullet to come out. Well, bad news, there is no silver bullet, there's no magic pill that's on the horizon that's going to make your life better.
It's about what you put in your body, what you put on your body, how you live your life. And it's really that simple, but it takes discipline and responsibility. I've seen that as well. And I learned that, I guess, um, you know, obviously a lot of people get caught up in their own world, whether they're an athlete or, uh, you know, in their business career or relationships, whatever it may be.
You're so sort of blindfolded, uh, against, you know, the outside world and you think, Oh, nothing's going to happen to me. And, and, uh, people get stressed out about things that actually don't matter, uh, in the big scheme of things. And until you have a life event, sort of a life changing event, whether it's an illness or a horrific injury or something.
And, you know, I. I went through that and, and my racing career was my entire life basically. And that's all I thought about. And only thing I really cared about pretty much, um, you know, and it was the number one thing. And, and then when I got injured and, and, uh, you know, had the, had all this stuff happen and mental health issues and everything, I realized that.
All that stuff doesn't matter, you know, money, money, fame, like, when your health is not in order, it, nothing matters, and the only thing that matters is the people that are around you, your family, and your friends, and the people closest to you, and your health, and, um, it's just, uh, it's sad that, that takes that extreme to make people realize that, and, you know, myself included.
Yeah, no, I experienced the same thing. You know, years ago I was caught up in, you know, trying to build a successful career and companies and build my peer esteem and academia and advance this whole nitric oxide field. And I was traveling all the time, you know, 150, 000 air miles a year and wasn't spending a lot of time at home.
And then, uh, you know, in 2018, we lost our 20 year old son to the car accident. And that, you know, for me was, It was my wake up, well, all this may be important, but at the end of the day, it's, it's trivial. And then, so that was my focus. That was my wake up call and go, and I need to be more efficient, be more present at home for the younger boys.
And so it happens, you know, it's an event we, we don't understand, but it certainly it's a, it's a punch in the mouth and, you know, go, what are your priorities? And then, you know, sometimes it's, you know, a personal health issue, you know, like a heart attack, a stroke, or. You know, cancer or chronic disease and it wakes people up, but, you know, there's, we have to, you know, keep things in perspective and, you know, realize our greatest asset is, you know, our health and our ability to serve others.
We'll never leave a, leave a legacy and be the best we can be in whatever we're doing. Hopefully we can, uh, start to do that with podcasts like these. Yeah, no, that's the job there. Yeah. Well, the last couple of things I was actually interested in, um, the last couple of changes potentially is something like, uh, you know, what does something like sleep, uh, that sort of effect have on it on, on nitric oxide?
Yeah. Like sleep is probably the number one thing. I mean, if you, if you're not getting good night's sleep, your body can't repair. And regenerate because it's during sleep that we, you know, repair and regenerate. Um, but it's also dependent upon tissue oxygenation and people who are mouth breathers, people who have obstructive sleep apnea, uh, become hypoxic, you can't make nitric oxide, you can't mobilize stem cells and you don't repair, replace dysfunctional cells and you wake up tired.
Uh, so sleep is absolutely essential, but it's good sleep. It's not just lying in bed and resting. It's actually getting good sleep and being fully oxygenated. Um, so I like, I like this peep, this mouth taping for people who are typically mouth breathers and it forces you to breathe through your, through your nose because when we breathe through our, our nasal sinuses, there's, there's nitric oxide producing enzymes in the epithelial cells that when activated produce nitric oxide.
So when we do deep breathing, nasal breathing, that activates nitric oxide, produces nitric oxide, lowers blood pressure, mobilizes stem cells, and helps us to get better sleep, um, And get better recovery from that sleep. But yeah, if you're not sleeping well, you know, it's a very slippery slope for chronic disease.
You don't deal with stress, you don't. You're in a bad mood all the time, but yeah, you have to get good sleep. It's interesting. I've actually tried the mouth taping, uh, just once, uh, out of interest. Um, but I think I am a nose breather anyway. Um, as I found out, but, uh, when you do these things and you talk about these ways to improve, People look at you like you're crazy.
Uh, you know, you take, ah, tape my mouth tonight when I went to sleep, you know, and, um, whether you're talking about diet or exercise or avoiding this and toxins and this, it's crazy to me that everyone that's, Not sort of cruising through life obliviously and not worrying about a thing, but also not doing themselves any favors, that's the norm.
And the people that are actually trying to do the right things are looked at as the looney tunes, you know? Yeah. Well, there's a famous quote that goes back to the 1600s, I think, by Schopenhauer, who was a German philosopher. And he says that truth, all truths go through three phases. Number one, they're ridiculed.
The second phase is they're violently opposed. And then the third phase is they're accepted as being self evident. So these are just fundamental truths based on good sites. So when we understand that, yeah, people ridicule you, I've been ridiculed, uh, they're violently opposed. I've certainly been violently opposed by Big Pharma and some of my competitors, but these are self evident.
Right? And when you think about, when you, when you have the opportunity to have a conversation of why are you taping your mouth and then explain the physiology and the biochemistry that results from them, of course it's self evident. But, you know, people are always going to ridicule, people are always going to oppose you, but just stay the course and it's self evident.
Uh, the world we live in is, is quite crazy. Um, so the last thing in terms of, uh, you know, improvements, are there anything, is there anything else that people can do? Maybe biohacks, you know, I've heard of things like red light therapy, cold, heat, you know, anything like that. I've actually got a red light panel at home, uh, which I use, uh, I try to use daily.
Yeah, there are a number of these biohacks that I, I use personally, and I've, you know, I'm kind of like the N equal one guinea pig. I try these things on me to see if there's any, and then try to contemplate the science and work backwards and figure, does this make sense scientifically and biochemically?
And there are a number of things that really do work. So my routine, I like red light therapy. I like, you know, 20, 30 minutes of sunlight a day, first, first sunlight. And there's clear evidence in science that shows that. Certain wavelengths of light will release nitric oxide that's stored in tissue. So if we titrate up our nitric oxide, we're gonna get better benefits of red light therapy or even sunlight exposure.
So what I do every morning, even this morning before I get on the podcast was, I usually wake up around 5. 30 in the morning. I live in Texas, Central Time Zone. And then I have an infrared sauna. And so I'll go and I'll take what's called Corella and Spirulina. These are algae based products and they act as binders.
So then I go sit in an infrared sauna, 30 minutes at 170 degrees, uh, and I put an ozone generator in there so I'm fully ozonated and oxygenated. So I'm at 170 degrees for 30 minutes. So you're sweating, you're detoxifying, I've got binders present in my body that's binding toxins, excreting them. And then I'll typically do a 3 minute cold plunge.
At four degrees Celsius or 37 degrees. And so that, that temperature extremes, we're going from, you know, 170 degrees to 37 degrees. It's basically exercising our blood vessels because when you're heated up, all your blood vessels are dilated, trying to, you know, create the heat and maintain normal body temperature.
Now, when you go from 170 degrees to 37 degrees or four degrees Celsius, your blood vessels contract or constrict because now we're trying to preserve heat. in that really cold environment. So it's almost like exercising resistance training for your blood vessels. And I think the data on that are pretty impressive in inducing these longevity genes.
And then I'll typically get out, I'll do my push ups and sit ups. Sometimes I'll do that before I get into the sauna. Um, and then I take my amino acids, um, and usually go out. By that time the sun's coming up, so I go out, sit out naked in my, um, yard and watch the sun come up. I'm grounded, touching the earth, uh, You know, I live in a very rural environment on 800 acres.
I don't have many neighbors. How do you be okay with sitting out naked in my front yard? A lot of people may not be able to get away with that. Yeah. I was actually going to ask you about your routine. So, uh, yeah, thanks for sharing that. And, uh, also, um, I mentioned that to a few people with, um, you know, being naked and, and getting also vitamin D exposure, for example, sunlight exposure.
And, uh, most people think, you know, I supplement with vitamin D and, um, a lot of people, uh, don't realize that. Most people are deficient in vitamin D. Um, and because you need to actually spend, I think it's something like 30 minutes outside, you know, with, not with clothes on, uh, in, in sort of the middle of the day, more or less to get enough, uh, to, to sustain enough, you know, high enough level.
And most people just think, Oh, because they're walking around outside. With a t shirt on and that that's enough. So that was interesting but uh, Sitting out naked in the yard could be problematic for a few people maybe for me. Definitely Yeah, be careful Um, so i've got two questions, which I ask every guest.
Um, the first one is as a takeaway from this if there was One thing that people could do today, um, that you would say is the most important, it could be one, two, three things, but one thing that would be the most important, what, what would that be? Well, they've got to take kind of inventory of what they're doing on a daily basis that's, that's clearly shown to inhibit nitric oxide production.
So I think the simplest thing are, you know, stop using mouthwash, eliminate fluoride, and if you're on an acid, you have to wean off these antacids. Uh, that I find has the biggest impact in people's health. And we see this all the time, people who have high blood pressure and on two, three different blood pressure medicines.
And I ask them all the time, do you use mouthwash? And they go, yeah, unless you have fluoride in your toothpaste. And I go, just do me a favor. Don't, get rid of your mouthwash and start using a fluoride free toothpaste for 30 days. And then come back and let's monitor your blood pressure. And almost without fail, their blood pressure, they come back 30 days later and their blood pressure is normal.
And that's the number one risk factor for the number one killer of men and women worldwide is high blood pressure. And simply eliminating that and getting off antacids, you see a remarkable effect. So that's a biggie for me. And again, that's cost savings. Well, yeah, yeah, definitely going to be telling a few people, hopefully a few people watch this.
And the second question is, what is, what does success mean to you and what impact do you hope to have? I mean, success for me means leaving an impact. And you know, the little bit of work I've done, this little microcosm of the micro oxide. You know, I want to, my job is to educate and inform. And success for me is, People having a light come off and going, Oh, I didn't realize this.
And, Oh, this was what was contributing to my chronic disease or, or poor health. Um, so for me, it's about waking up every morning, living with a, with a servant's heart and serving others and, you know, providing information that's not readily available. You know, I taught in medical schools for. 10 years of training future physicians on, on this.
So it's in, in people there in medical school that want to be healthcare practitioners are well intended and I don't fault them. It's the system in which they're taught in that fails them because it's a system based on reimbursements and the economics of medicine and not on the philanthropy and the altruism of medicine.
So, success for me is just making an impact, giving people little bits of information and making simple changes, and you know, we can innovate and make product technology and you know, change people's lives like that, but for me it's not about financial success, it's really about, success for me is changing the narrative on medicine and health and longevity and taking these simple steps every day to restore the production of nitric oxide, to prevent the age related decline.
And then everything else from there is really trivial. Dr. Brian, this has been an absolute pleasure. And honestly, I think, uh, you're in it for all the right reasons. And if we had more, more people like you, then, uh, there would probably be a lot less disease in the world right now. Well, thank you. We got, we've done, we've come a long way that we still got a lot of work to do.
So, yeah, thank you. And, uh, yeah, who knows, uh, hopefully we can, uh, chat again in the future. Let's do it.
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