What a family. It's episode
234 of the genius life.
What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the show. I'm your host Max Louvre filmmaker held in science journalist in New York Times bestselling author. I've dedicated my life to unraveling the science behind how our choices, including what we eat, and how we live affect our cognitive and physical performance, how we feel our health span, and our risk for disease. This podcast is all about how to live in that optimal state, which I call living like a genius on today's episode of the show.
I am super excited to welcome back at long last dr. Nathan Brian. Dr. Bryan is an international leader in molecular medicine and nitric oxide biochemistry. He's been involved in nitric oxide research for the past 20 years and has
made many seminal discoveries that have resulted in dozens of us and international patents and has improved
patient care worldwide on this episode of the show. You're going to hear dr. Brian talked about why nitric oxide may be the single.
Well, most underrated molecule when it comes to both our short term and our long-term Health, we're going to discuss the link between low nitric oxide levels and heart disease, Sexual Health, Alzheimer's disease, high blood pressure, and metabolic Health. We're also going to talk about what gets in the way of optimal nitric oxide levels, specific foods, and lifestyle choices that can boost your nitric oxide production, the different signs of nitric oxide deficiency and so much more if
Are a regular user of antiseptic or antibacterial mouthwash, fluoridated, toothpaste or antacid medications. You are definitely going to want to pay close attention to the information that dr. Brian is about to deliver because it's relevant to. You it's all. I'm going to say I'm recording this from a hotel in New York City. I'm here for the next few days. I flew in just this morning actually to record I guess.
I think it's all you guys. Why not? I'm recording The Today Show again tomorrow morning. So I'm actually it's about 11:00 at night. So I'm recording this fairly last minute for how I usually record these intros, but had to get it up of course for you guys and I'm super excited in the morning to be heading over to NBC Studios, I guess to to record where we talk about all things gut health. And the air date is actually not going to be tomorrow. Typically, The Today Show stuff is today is
Live. But this I believe is going to air on Friday. So giving you a few days. Notice, if you remember, or if you have a happen to have a DVR tune into the third hour of The Today, Show this Friday, I'll be talking all things foods for gut health. Super excited, very grateful, that they continue to have me back. So big shout out to the peeps over at the Today Show, I'm just having a blast. And then on Friday, I'm heading to
London to do speaking at a private event there. But I love any chance I get to hang out in London and as you guys know I am freaking obsessed with a full English breakfast. So I'm going to be hopefully getting a few authentic English breakfast while I'm over there across the pond and love travel love travel. And I hear the weather in London right now is actually really nice as well. So, I'm super looking forward to that anyway. Hope you guys are doing well.
Had a ton of great feedback on Lily Nichols podcast, which I really saw earlier in the week on all things food for pregnancy, which I didn't mention in the intro to that podcast. But if you're interested in brain development evolutionary, biology nutrition in general, it's a fascinating episode to listen to. She's so smart and so, even if you are not planning on getting pregnant any time soon,
if you're a dude, don't sleep on it. It's a really great episode and I would hate for it only to be listened to by people who are specifically interested in the topic because I think it's just so fascinating above and beyond the obvious actionable actionable. Takeaways that Lily presents. So yeah, don't forget to listen to that if you haven't already and that's about it. Sending a lot of you guys from sweltering hot and humid New York City,
And I hope you guys enjoyed this episode show. I had a blast taping it. Dr. Brian is brilliant. So strap on your seatbelts and let's rock and roll. Dr. Nathan Brian. Welcome to welcome back to the genius life. Thanks, great to be here. Yeah, dude, when I had you on the first time, I learned a ton and it was really eye-opening in many ways about the power of nitric oxide. And all of the many different variables that fall under our control that allow us to modulate this powerful chemical. This powerful signaling.
Kuehl in our bodies but that was some time ago and I know that the research is continually evolving. So I want to do a bit of a bit of a recap and then also, you know, kind of go where the where get like a lay of the land in terms of where the science is headed, but from a high level, I guess it's dive in off the off the top and for people who are unfamiliar with nitric oxide, what is it and what role does it play in the body?
Well, I think it's been a couple years since we last spoke when I last spoke since we do the podcast, I've seen it several conferences. Yeah, but yeah, Nitric oxides one of these fascinating molecules. It's a gas. That's produced naturally. In the human body, the older, we get the less we make and that's what's responsible for age-related disease, but it's and you call it. It's a signaling molecule tell cells in the body. Communicate its most common or known function is in vasodilation. So it's produced by the lining of the blood vessels, it diffuses into the smooth.
Muscle where it leads to smooth muscle relaxation. Vasodilation. So it controls blood flow and circulation to every organ tissue and cell in the body. And when we lose the regulation of blood flow, bad things happen as the earliest event and chronic disease. Wow, and it plays a role in all kinds of chronic disease conditions, right? Like type 2, diabetes hypertension, even I mean I'm guessing Dimension Alzheimer's disease where vascular dysfunction plays a role for sure. So if you look kind of broad
And I've been in academic medicine after 25 years. And so we understand the scientific Community understands what causes human disease. We know how to diagnose it. We know how to fix it. So the fact that we don't have a treatment for Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease to me is unacceptable. So the problem is not that we don't know the science. It's that we can't we haven't been able to communicate the science to the healthcare practitioners physicians in and teach them how to teach their patients. So when we look at chronic disease, there's for Hallmarks of every single chronic disease, doesn't matter if it's Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease,
Diabetes autoimmune disease. What is that? There's decreased blood flow to the organ. There's inflammation oxidative stress, and immune dysfunction in nitric oxide is what controls and mitigates, all four of those, it improves blood flow. Some of my patents on methods of reducing inflammation, we know, we should out down the fires of inflammation. It prevents oxidative stress and it mitigates the immune dysfunction that's occurring in those diseased tissues. So it's really the Holy Grail in terms of cardiovascular medicine, but when we look at kind of the
First. So there's a hierarchy of symptoms, right? When you start to develop, nitric oxide deficiency, the first sign and symptom is usually erectile dysfunction. Hmm. And that makes sense because when you lose the ability to dilate blood vessels, which you need to dilate the sex organs to get engorgement to get an erection in both men and women. When you lose the ability to produce nitric oxide, you lose, you fail to get vasodilation, you don't get engorgement and it's the fundamental basis for erectile dysfunction. So if you have Edie, that's not just a sec.
All dysfunction is what we call the canary in the coal mine. Well, if you have vascular dysfunction in the sex, organs, you have asked for dysfunction in the heart, the brain, the liver, the kidneys. It's a systemic disease. So if you don't recognize that as a really serious sign and symptom and take steps to correct it, you're now on a very slippery slope to cardiovascular disease. The number one killer of men and women in some resistance. Pastor dementia Alzheimer's every single age related. Chronic disease can be traced back to lack of nitric oxide. Wow. So it is like erectile
In is like, the major red flag, are there, others?
Yeah. Typically, then if you have a, if your blood pressure starts to creep up, you know, I took one of the Nitric oxides fundamental roles in regulation of vascular tone, keeping your blood vessels soft and compliant and being able to dilate upon neat. And so, when you lose the ability to make nitric oxide, that's the primary vasodilator. So the vessels become chronically constricted, your now, pumping the same volume of blood through a thinner hose. Well, he developed high blood pressure and then that leads to damage.
All of the blood vessels which leads to plug, deposition, Athos grossest, heart attack and stroke. So then then, and two out of three Americans have an unsafe elevation of blood pressure, mmm, so it's a huge problem. It's the number one risk factor for the number one, killer of men and women worldwide, which is coordinated species. And then you mentioned one that's near and dear to your heart is dementia and Alzheimer's and we know fundamentally what causes dementia? Alzheimer's, its lack of cerebral, blood flow and it's insulin resistance. It's fact by many referred to as type 3 diabetes.
Hmm. And so what is nitric oxide? Do it dilates. The blood vessels, we can perfuse the brain and it improves insulin signaling potentiates glucose uptake and we reverse the entire metabolic phenotype of vascular, dementia and Alzheimer's. Wow. And in fact we have a drug now and going into clinical trials, specifically for Alzheimer's. That's
incredible. Erectile dysfunction is something that I just just going back to that for a minute. It's something that is fairly obvious to observe if you're a male, right? But what about in women because heart disease is
Is still the number one killer in women and women are at twice. The risk of developing Alzheimer's is compared to men. So what is like one of those early red flags that women could look out for?
Well, I think it's the same thing when you look at sexual function in women, in order for women to become aroused and stimulated and have an orgasm, have to have an increase in blood flow, and that leads to an increase in inter labial pressure Intercultural pressure, that's what leads to orgasm. So, all of that increase in pressure is due to vasodilation from nitric oxide. Wow, can't make Nitric
So you don't get dilation, you don't get the increased pressure, women become an orgasmic and they develop sexual dysfunction. But so those and women, you know, men are somewhat. Simple. Creatures is typically just a vascular problem and women. It's hormonal, it's psychological, it's, it's vascular, it's physiological. Their number of different contributing factors, but it's still. The underlying problem is the vascular dysfunction. You can do hormone replacement therapy, but if you don't fix nitric oxide production in the lining of the blood vessels thin, your only correcting half the
Mm, wow. So what are the primary causes them of? This decline in nitric
oxide, you know, we've been one of the fundamental questions I've asked in my research lab for the past 25 years. How does the human body make nitric oxide? What goes wrong and people that can't make it? What are the clinical consequences than how do we fix it? So in order to answer the second question is what goes wrong in people? I can't make it have to understand how the human body normally makes it. There are two primary Pathways, there's an enzyme in the lining of the blood vessels that makes nitric oxide.
They're very complex. It's got a 5 electron oxidation of L-Arginine which is in a semi essential amino acid so that enzyme becomes dysfunctional with age and time there's some genetic predispositions that caused it to become dysfunctional. But a lot of it is due to diet and lifestyle, you know, poor diet sedentary lifestyle render that enzyme dysfunction. So we know how to correct that we know how to re couple the enzyme and restore the function.
What's the name of the enzyme?
It's called nitric oxide synthase. So it's found in the lining of the blood vessels. It
It's found in our immune cells and is found in neurons. Well, so it's part of the neuro signaling and the action potentials by neurons. Mmm. And the cell signaling is called a presynaptic or retrograde messenger. It's how these neurons talk to one another and we
also have it like aren't our sinuses enriched with metric oxide synthase.
So there's there's a high concentration of this enzyme in our epithelial cells. In fact it's the basis for blood pressure lowering effects of deep breathing. Wow so mouth-breathers bypass this that's one of the reasons
Not breathing, so detrimental because you're bypassing a fundamental nitric oxide production Cascade. Wow. But if you have a dysfunctional enzyme in the endothelial cells, then that enzyme is dysfunctional on the epithelial cells. So you can do nasal breathing or deep breathing exercise. But if we don't fix that enzyme and I can functional, you're not going to get any nitric oxide produced when you do breathing exercise. Hmm. So that's what people have failed to recognize is what's the enzyme APA thie in that enzyme? Then how do you fix it? Because that
That's really the Holy Grail in cardiovascular medicine, and then, so, that's one way we become nitric oxide. Deficient the, other is kind of the aha moment for most people because about 20 years ago, we recognize that there's an entero celebrate circuit, right? So, the mechanism of action of certain dietary patterns, whether it's a plant-based diet are Japanese diet or Mediterranean diet. We're consuming a lot of inorganic, nitrate then this molecule is inert in humans so humans cannot process this molecule.
We're 100% dependent upon the bacterium. So the there's bacteria on the crypts of the tongue that metabolize nitrate into nitrite and nitric oxide. So if you don't have the right oral microbiome, you can consume these vegetables but you don't get the nitric oxide benefits of it. And here's where the problem comes in mouthwash. Hmm. Two out of three Americans use mouthwash, two out of three Americans. Have an unsafe elevation blood pressure and we published in like in 2015 that this is causal for hypertension. So when you
Eradicate these essential commensal, nitrate producing bacteria, it causes an increase in blood pressure. The other problem is fluoride fluoride as an antiseptic kills the bacteria. Most people put fluoride in their toothpaste or using fluoridated toothpaste. There's fluoride in Municipal Water, fluorides an antiseptic. It's a neurotoxin and kills your thyroid function. Yikes
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We have to get rid of fluoride. Yeah, I mean it is a serious toxin,
dude. You are the one who turned me on to this whole mouthwash
Yeah,
and I had the privilege of getting to go on The Joe Rogan podcast and and talk about it because I mean since you since you brought it up on my podcast about it was it's a rabbit hole that I was happy to go down because it's just so fascinating. So just make it. Like if you can I mean you've already made it so clear but just walk us through this again. How can mouthwash something as benign, right? It's sold over the counter, right? Can does over-the-counter mouthwash have this have this effect?
Absolutely.
So here's what happens and the advertisements are correct, kills 99.99% the bacteria when you use it and that's the problem, that's the problem. I mean, the bacteria that live in and on the human body outnumber on human cells, tend to 1, right? So this is an entire ecology. We call the symbiosis, these bacteria, providing metabolic benefits to the human host that we can't do. One of those is production of nitric oxide. So when you eradicate these bacteria, there's an entire ecology from the mouth all the way down to the
This right, in this, the microbiome lot of people focused on the gut microbiome years ago. We focused on the oral microbiome. And what we found was that the more diverse the microbiome, the better cardiovascular health in the better blood pressure management. So, when you eradicate this with mouthwash we saw, I think of the first paper was in maybe 20 2009 2010. He take normal tense of patients who just put them on mouthwash, twice a day for seven days. You see an increase in blood pressure down. Now, this was an this drove kind of
Biologist and Vascular, biologist crazy because they thought we thought we had a pretty good understanding of vascular, biology and maintenance of stomach blood pressure. So, how by killing oral bacteria, were affecting systemic blood, pressure in vascular tone, and then we figured out was through the production of nitric oxide. So, yeah. Alcohol-based. Mouthwash. Does this, the chlorhexidine prescription mouthwash is very effective at killing it. The good news is, and we publish this in 2019.
If you use mouthwash, we certainly see an increase in blood pressure. And I think in 2020, I was on the doctor. So we came and we will build it. If you use mouthwash, you actually lose the protective benefits of exercise, hmm. So think about this, if you try to do all the right things, you're eating a good balanced diet, you're getting exercise. But if you use a mouthwash, you lose the entire cardiovascular benefits of everything you're doing, hmm. The good news is four days after we stopped using it, but pressure normalizes the bacteria we completely repopulate. So this is a
Alliant community, that just let them do their job, leave them alone. You know, there's a reason we don't take an oral antibiotic every day for the rest of her life. There's known systemic effects of this, right? So it doesn't make any sense to use an oral antiseptic every day for the rest of our life. Get two-thirds of Americans, wake up every morning and use mouthwash
shocking.
And so, to me, it's no wonder why Americans with the sickest population on the planet.
But they'll sometimes Market these mouthwash mouthwash uses for
For people with diabetes, right? Like they'll but but it that seems to be
misguided. It counterintuitive. Know it's counterintuitive and worse.
Yeah. And misguided and yeah, making it worse as you suggested if nitric oxide plays a role in insulin signaling,
right? We'll have to look back and think about historically, what caused this, right? What caused medicine to do the things they're doing today and most of the time there was good reason, right? So, 50, 60 years ago, there was a recognition of an oral systemic link.
Right that patients who have paid ah no disease gingivitis, have a higher incidence of heart attack and stroke. So they immediately assume that it was the pathogens in the gum that translocated got systemic causes vascular inflammation, plaque instability plaque, rupture heart attack and stroke. So then the thought was well if that's the case, then we need to kill these bugs. Kill the pathogens, but that was long before we understood the entire microbiome. Hmm. So when I asked, Dennis this all the time and I speak a lot of dental events, why do you still use fluoride rinse his and why you still
Prescribing chlorhexidine a mouthwash to get patients thinking. Well, that's just the way we've always done it. Well, you know, when Madison years ago we used to use leeches for examination, right? We don't do that anymore because we have better methods and we know the science, the science advances. So we have to be able to apply the Innovations in basic science, and translate that into clinical medicine. And the only way to do that is to take this new information pivot. Realize that, okay, maybe what we weren't doing was working because people aren't getting better.
Going to Physicians and taking medicine. In fact, they're getting worse. Hmm. And from a scientific standpoint, we understand the mechanism of disease today that we can fix every single chronic disease.
Will also like medicine is known for taking this reductionist approach where the where the different organ systems of the body are siloed off and studied unto themselves. But if there's anything that that the microbiome has shown us is that everything is
connected. Yeah.
The knee bones connected to the hip bone run. Yeah, Hearts connected to them out to the lungs to the sex organs. I mean, we're all connected through the cardiovascular system and when that funk, when that fails then you get end organ disease and the human body feels.
So what happens then when we eat a meal or a dish, a bowl of dark leafy greens. For example, rich in these inorganic nitrates I can walk favorite
what? Kelly van kale
Oh my God, people always pick on me first, I enjoy kill. I'm, is that the only dark green leafy green that I like arugula. I like the mixed organic greens. But yeah. So what's so what walk us through this process? What's happening? You know as we as we lift, the fork full of of kale will say to our to our mouths.
So this pathway was first discovered in the 1970s and so these were cancer biologists trying to understand the etiology of oral cancers. And at that time, it was thought that
Nitrate would form Nitros amines, which would intercalate DNA, cause mutations and cause cancer.
And then they recognize that the human body actually concentrates intentionally concentrates and I trade in our salivary glands, the kidneys reabsorb it and concentrate on our salary glands, so the body doesn't make mistakes, right? Why would we intentionally reabsorb a molecule and then concentrated are salivary glands because I thought, okay, that's contributing to certain oral cancers. Well, fast forward, 30 years and now we recognize that the salivary, glands secrete nitrate so that the bacteria living in the crypts of the tongue can metabolize.
Is this and these are faculty of anaerobes. So when there's no Oxygen around these respire on nitrogen in the form of nitrate. Wow, the missed two electron reduction forms nitride in our saliva. So now, when we swallow our own saliva, we get a burst of nitric oxide in the Lumen of the stomach.
So we've evolved a pathway to feed the bacteria. That's
right. In our masks, in our own mouths, it's a Prebiotic. It's an endogenous Prebiotic, and it's made to recycle and reproduce nitric oxide on the continue.
Basis. So this pathway is dependent upon number one, getting enough, nitrate from the diet. Number two, the presence of the right oral bacteria. And number three is the presence of stomach acid. And so when you use stomach or and acids, you completely shut down nitric oxide production. So under normal conditions, if you're healthy, if you're eating a good diet, balanced diet in moderation, you have the right bacteria. You have stomach acid production when we consume that meal and it takes 90 minutes from if we eat a salad.
Let with expenditure. Any nitrate containing food 90 minutes after we consume that, we can start seeing secretion of nitrate or salary glands. And now for the next six, eight 10 hours each time we salivate and swallow our own saliva. We get a burst of nitric oxide in the Lumen, of the stomach wall and that nitric oxide is produced in the stomach kills things like H pylori, the also causing bacteria. If you've got some E coli or salmonella or some pathogen on your salad or greens, it'll kill that it enhances it enhances.
Gastric mucosal blood flows. You enhance nutrient absorption, it prevents ulcers from chronic in said use. I mean it's a fundamental physiological process that we interrupted at our own demise. So now we find that there's, you know, people who have been on and acids for three to five years, have a 40% higher incidence of heart, attack and stroke. That's not increased risk. That's actual events. Wow, Let's study up two weeks ago, show that people have been on proton, pump inhibitors for
For
years had a 40% increase in dementia. Wow in Rapid onset of Alzheimer's. So these drugs really there should be a black box warning on them. You know these drugs were never approved by the FDA for long-term use. They were only approved for acute use for gastroesophageal reflux. Hmm But now you can buy them over the counter, people have been taking them every day for 5 10, 15 years and the consequences are deadly. So these are these are very dangerous drugs that should not be
used. I mean antacids they also block B12 absorption
Ian without stomach, ask you to can absorb iron, you can absorb B vitamins, you can absorb magnesium, it can absorb iodine can absorb selenium chromium. So we become nutrient deficient we interrupt cell signaling, insulin signaling to become insulin resistant, we shut down, nitric oxide production. We develop autoimmune disease without the stomach acid. You can't break down proteins into amino acids. We get peptide. Fragments absorbed across the gut. We develop antibodies against it, it's autoimmunity.
And it's all caused by lack of stomach acid
production. Wow guys, quick pause this episode of the show is sponsored by element. My favorite electrolyte powder, they come in these little packets that taste, oh, so delicious. And after a, vigorous sweat session whether in the gym or after a sauna, or even if you just are looking for a quick pick-me-up, to be honest, I am obsessed with element. Once you start to shift your diet to a healthier State minimizing ultra-processed
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Waivers from raspberry salt to Citrus salt. So freaking good, and you are going to love their chocolate flavor with some hot water. Maybe a little added sweetener if you want so freaking good again. I drink this up every day. Hope you enjoy it. Check it out. How do we increase? I mean, say, you're not on an antacid, your you don't take an antacid regularly. Are there any ways to boost stomach acid production? I get asked this
quite a bit, actually. Well, as a biochemist, you, we had a look at reactions, right? What is the chemical reaction?
Pride ourselves that make hydrochloric acid. And so that, that chemical reactions very well. Elucidated we need iodine. We need betaine hydrochloride, we need zinc, and we need B vitamins. You need carbon dioxide in The Prado cells. Make carbon dioxide are make hydrochloric acid, but if you don't acids, you can absorb iodine, you can absorb think you can absorb B vitamins. So, there's no way that your body can make stomach acid if you're on an asset. Wow. Because you don't have the nutrients to do it to feel that reaction. Yeah, so then what we have to do is
Have to supplement the body in the whole kind of Paradigm. I work on is called restorative physiology. Whether it's drug development of product development, give the body what it needs. Get out of the way. Hmm, the body is a lot smarter than we are in the body heals itself. So till people got a supplement with iodine most people are deficient in zinc, B vitamins and now the parietal cells have what they need to secrete hydrochloric acid and you overcome all the problems of nutrient deficiencies in nitric oxide production.
I had no idea that iodine iodine is role in stomach acid production. I mean, I was
Lawyer with his role in thyroid or malaria. But when you're
deficient in, iodine mean, you get thyroid dysfunction, you develop autoimmune, you develop a core history in the stomach and everything that occurs there after
what are some sources of
iodine?
Kelp seaweed, you can't get enough iodine and iodized salt to, to fuel, everything you need to do to convert, T4 to T3, active thyroid hormone. There's not enough iodine and really Americans are deficient in iodine. We found that the Japanese diet is probably the only population died out there. That's getting enough nitrate from their food supply. Hmm. And that's why I supplement with iodine every day. You drove 12 and half mg because the American diet in
Food that we eat. America is basically devoid of any iodine?
Yeah, well I mean, unless you're eating a ton of sea vegetables, that's right. A fermented foods are fermented foods. Yeah, I mean, I know egg yolks contain some. Yeah, but I don't know how much that is wild. Really good to know because I mean, it people people one, sometimes people ask me, they have difficulty digesting animal products for example. Some, yeah. And and the my go-to response might sort of like Cookie Cutter default.
Responses. Usually like you should check out your stomach acid, you know, it's that's a big picture, you know issue but somebody who has for example, been on like a low meat diet. For some time probably is not regularly getting adequate amounts of zinc,
iodine, B vitamins. Yeah,
so it's like creates this vicious cycle, right? You don't eat a lot of animal products. So then the Machinery to digest animal products, winds
down, right? Yeah. Our body adapts, what we give it. Yeah, right. And so if you hit your body with something that's not used to seeing, it's going to take awhile for it.
Depth. So we have to give the body what it needs and he'll. So I tell people, my response is take some apple cider vinegar before meal. Hmm so that's a Scenic acid 1 tbsp enough, it'll satisfy the Lumen of the stomach. Now you're acidic and you can break down proteins into amino acid. You can properly digest food, you can properly absorb nutrients and it fixes a lot of problems until your body is able to secrete stomach acid on its own.
Wow, that's incredible.
Yes, I tell you know, nitric oxide is foundational but if you're deficient in stomach acid and iodine
in nitric oxide is foundational, but it's not a silver bowl. It's not going to fix these other problems. But I think what we're finding is the body cannot and will not heal without nitric oxide production and improving blood flow and reducing inflammation, but you still have to address the other deficiencies. The other problems, the other toxins that you may be exposed to the other nutrient, deficiencies. So, this is just kind of like a, the laying the groundwork for the body to heal. But the physicians in the practitioners still have to do the investigative work and figure out what exactly is causing this particular
patients.
Yeah, but I mean when you acknowledge that the gut starts in the mouth. Yeah I mean this is like this is just really really empowering information one, one area where you bloom I mean every you're just like you deliver have all this incredible information to deliver but one area in particular that I found fascinating about our first chat was we talked a bit about nitrites. Yeah. In processed meat right because processed meat is
Is very controversial. Some people believe it to be like the devil incarnate and others will you know, regularly use it for for the valuable source of protein that it is. Right. But one I think chemical that does seem to that there seems to be I guess more agreement on than not is sodium nitrate which is added as a preservative and processed meats and a lot of people tend to like avoid that as a compound. But you've argued you've published papers suggesting that this is
Actually, the dietary Boogeyman that it's also made out to
be. It is a cure, it's an actual cure to curing agent and it cures the human being of disease.
Okay, this is fascinating. So and highly
controversial. Yeah, well, let's go back. Historically again, there's a reason for the way things were done. If you go back, thousands of years, long before Refrigeration when early humans were hunters and gatherers, they killed the Buffalo, they killed the deer, it was no Refrigeration so that to preserve them,
Me to get them through winter, what they found, way back when thousands of years ago, that they would preserve it with sea salt.
And I thought that the salt was just reducing the moisture content of the meat and preventing spoilage and on it will come to find out that the sea salt actually had a night raid and I try some night ride in it as a natural salt potassium, nitrate called saltpeter today and that led to the curing. So they would you would cure the meat. They would be bacteria that we're there were naturally on the meat than those bacteria would reduce nitrate to nitrite and you would get nitric oxide that binds to the hemoglobin of or the myoglobin of muscle.
And that creates the nitrosyl hemochromatosis, ignorant that causes the pink color than red meat curing. So when it preserved the me, it prevents food spoilage. It prevents bacterial overgrowth, prevents food borne illnesses. So it's absolutely essential for ready to eat meat in any processed Meats, in fact, for decades. Now, the meat industry, trying to figure out, how do we get rid of nitride because of the misinformation by the media and you cannot live without it. I mean, if you took nitride out of cured and processed Meats, then
you would have more Americans dying from salmonella E, coli botulism then ever before. So then the question was then fast-forward to the 50s and 60s in nutritional epidemiology came about right. Nutritional epidemiologist take observations from populations of people and look at their incidence of certain diseases. So they found that people who eat kind of a more prosecuted meets than others, have a higher incidence of gastrointestinal.
Enters its colon cancer, stomach cancer. So these are observations and their associations but associations are not causation. So there's a series of steps. You have to go through to establish causation. One of those is one there's an observation and by the way it's a very small increased risk. So relative risk is different than absolute risk and it's a statistical kind of a deception.
Can you give us an example of that? Like we're
so let's say if you
if you've got a clinical trial and you say that in the control group that was eating cured meat the say 1,000 patients and in that thousand patients, 998 people developed or two out of those thousand developed stomach cancer. And then in the control group, only one out of a thousand, develop stomach cancer. So the absolute risk is 0.001, right? But if you take the relative,
There's a hundred percent increase in Risk because that group went from to that had cancer in the cured meat and only one in the control as 100% makes headlines 100%. It makes headlines, right? Otherwise an absolute risk of .001 it's within the noise. There's so many other confounding factors. That's the problem with nutritional epidemiology and relative risk and Reporting. This is relative risk. It's a deception. Hmm. So you have to look at Absolute risk and the actually, what we look at is the number to treat how many people
You need to treat or intervene to actually see a reduction in the disease process.
So that's a whole nother subject matter that people don't understand. They just read the headlines and those are headline-grabbing members. But the next step of that was what's a biologically plausible mechanism? To see that observation to establish causation, so when the 50s it was recognized that nitride can form night. Rosa means night, Rosa means can cause cancer. So that was their established blah, blah, blah, logically plausible mechanism. But then in the 1980s, it was recognized that the body actually produces
Trade and I track. This was the first observation and really one of the first observations lead to discovery of nitric oxide. Wow, so if nitrate and nitrite were cancerous carcinogens, why would the human body naturally produced them? So it starts shooting holes in their whole hypothesis. And then the other observation was from vegetarians. People eat a plant-based diet, have a 10-time less reduction in risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Hmm, so if nitrate and nitrite and cured and processed Meats cause cancer that
materials would have a ten-time higher rate of cancer than meat eaters. In fact, we see pretty much the opposite. Wow, because 85% of the nitrate and nitrite we get from our diet comes from green, leafy vegetables, right? So five percent comes from cured and processed meat. The other ten percent comes from swallowing our own saliva,
right? So you're saying that if this is true then we would expect to see dramatically higher rates of these kind of GI cancers in vegetarians, vegans and vegetarians, who are ingesting a lot more inorganic, nitrate nitrate the try super
interesting,
Yeah, so it goes back to the fact, this may be surprising. The media is not always honest with this, right? Has been shocking. We're getting a lot of misinformation. So this whole story of nitrate nitrite, Nitros means and cancer has completely Fallen apart for the past 30 years. And it was really the discovery of nitric oxide and that these compounds actually nitric oxide precursors in effect. I've argued since the past 20 years that these are indispensable nutrients. Hmm, that we need nitrate and nitrite so
I tell and I've consulted for crafts Oscar Mayer and try to figure out ways how to do this and I could look, you shouldn't be running away and creating these nitride. Free bacon. I tried free hot dog. You should lead with it, advertising it, I'm developing this compound. As a drug we're developing. These is functional nutrition products. And in fact, we've measured this and we publish this in 2009 nitride. Free bacon has five times more nitrite than they can with sodium, nitrite added to it.
Whoa, where does it come from the celery?
Powder or whatever. So here's, here's the game
to get a no nitride label. You just can't add sodium nitrate. So what do they do? You celery? Salt, which is high in nitrate. Hmm. And then they put a starter culture of a bacteria called staff car. Gnosis on that broth in the bacteria reduced, the nitrate to nitrite. So it's the nitride that comes from nitrate, that cures the meat but they didn't add nitrite directly. So it's known. I tried. I did meet, wow. But yet now you've got a problem with the variability of the bacteria reduction.
Do you still have some bacteria present in that food? And the shelf life isn't as long. Hmm. So it's not a better product, it's a more expensive product but it's certainly not a better product. So I tell people save your money, don't spend the extra $2 a pound or whatever it is now to by night, no Knight Rider, organically cured or whatever, they're calling it now.
But so what is the process than by which these nitrites become nitrosamine in the body? Like don't when you fry bacon that has
Him nitrite in it at high temperatures.
I'm not a chemist, but, like, isn't there. Some kind of reaction that converts these compounds to Nitro sameen's?
Yeah, here's the chemistry. You've got to have a certain set of conditions or reactants present for this to occur, so there and it's not night. Rosa means in general. So it's only secondary a means, right? So this is a certain type of low molecular weight aiming. So primary a means they typically rearranged to alcohols their nonreactive.
Sherry and coronary. A means there's too much steric hindrance for the night, right? To react. So they don't worry about. So the only thing we worry about our secondary, a means, because they're small, they're low molecular weight, and I try can react to form Nitric needs. And then those night, Rosa means there's only there's a handful of these that are known carcinogens and bitter mutagenic, and cause cancer. So I don't dispute the fact that Nitros amines are bad. So we have to understand is is there endogenous formation of Nitros means in the food we eat.
So, number one, you have to have a night, right? Number two, you have to have the presence of secondary, a means, which there typically are none in meat products. I mean, you can add dimethylamine inform night, Rosel dimethyl, amine, which is a huge liver carcinogen, but that's not naturally present, the other thing. Once they realize this chemistry was that vitamin C in polyphenols and vitamin E are potent. Inhibitors of nitrous, 8 of chemistry. So even if you have a secondary amine around, and you've got nitride, if you've got a certain amount of
Ascorbic acid or vitamin E or polyphenols completely inhibits 100% inhibits that reaction. Wow! So you don't get any nitrosamine formation and I believe it was 1972, the code of Federal Regulation changed to wear any nitride, cured meat product. You had to add ascorbic acid, hmm. To prevent any potential night, receipt of chemistry. So now they use a router bit. You'll see a river debate on bacon and hot dogs and that's kind of the, we call it an accelerant because it accelerates the one electron reduction of nitrate tonight or not.
Tried to nitric oxide which is the actual curing agent and it prevents any nitrous 8 of chemistry.
So now there's no no cause whatsoever. Hmm. So you're getting efficient nitric oxide production, you're getting efficient curing and really there's no residual nitride left in a cured meat product. It's the in oh, that's bound to the heme of myoglobin in the meat muscle itself. There's hardly any residual night,
right? Wow. Sodium nitride. Actually, you're saying is a cure is the cure, very interesting. So do we do we see like a reduction of
do we see any of the benefits that we would see from a boost in an acute boost of nitric oxide after the consumption of processed meat, for example,
with its right now. Because there's so little in there, right? It's all reacted in the form of no bound to my globin. Hmm. The other thing is that, you know, there's a this is a complex Matrix right? To get proteins, you get fat, you get a lot of extra cellular material in Meet muscle. So it's a complex food to digest but you don't get any at you don't get enough, Knight Rider.
To Cock side and curtain processed Meats to really provide any therapeutic benefit. And I think that's the reason that we should eat a balanced diet in moderation. And historically, I've written about this. You know, the societal Norms is you eat your salad before you eat your steak?
Why is that? Well, the night, the salads, providing the nitrate. So by the time we're digesting the protein from the steak, we've 90 minutes, and we've got the nitric oxide being produced for protecting the vasculature. From the postprandial inflammation. Oxidative
stress. Hmm French. Do it the opposite way, right explains the French. I don't know, but French paradox, right? Yeah. Actually, the French paradox is interesting. It's not as paradoxical. I think, as we once thought it was right, they eat a lot of cheese. They lot of
Um, you know, they eat a lot of saturated fats but saturated fats that are bound to this. What's called the milk fat globule membrane, which we're seeing is actually benign from a cardiovascular standpoint. And so, they have like pristine
heart health and they smoke a lot. They drink wine lat. Yeah. If they're active Europeans exercise a lot, right? They walk everywhere.
Yes, yeah.
It's so, it's I think it's, you know, we have to move, we have to exercise. We, in America, we go to our restaurant, we encourage ourselves, we drive home, and we never walk in. We go
A Bed full and so it's just a constant
battle. There's a lot of there are a lot of pre-workout supplements on the market that claim to boost nitric oxide
Is there any Merit to the to those claims in your typical pre-workout product? And for people that do like to lift your boy being one of them. Yeah. What is a good way to boost nitric oxide
pre-workout? Well again, let's go back to 98 when the Nobel Prize was awarded. That's when nitric oxide really hit kind of Main Street. So in 92 was recognized as molecule of the Year by Science magazine. So it was gaining some momentum in terms of the scientific Community but still very little public awareness.
Relic. And then in 98 a Nobel Prize was awarded, then people got excited about it. And then it was recognized that there's an enzyme called nitric oxide, synthase that converge Arginine to nitric oxide. So these, the market was flooded with Arginine base products that called nitric oxide, the problem with these products are arginine is a silly essential amino acid, right? Meaning that it's produced within the human body through the urea cycle, and then we get Arginine from our diet from plant.
Oh, teens animal proteins. It's part of its one of the amino acids that make up proteins. So when we eat a protein diet, we get Arginine. When we have normal cycling and flux through the urea cycle, we make Arginine the body's never deficient in Argentina so it doesn't make sense to supplement Arginine. Hmm, in fact. Now there's clinical data out showing. If you supplement high dose of arginine, the patients that had previous heart attack or peripheral artery disease, they get worse in post, in Far patients that killed more patients than the placebo. Well,
An Arginine. Wow, so arginines should not be recommended for patients with endothelial dysfunction, so if you don't have any Theatre this function which well-trained athletes have a good enough, deal function and there's some evidence out there that if you give a certain dose of arginine, you can kind of push a little bit of nitric oxide and get some out. But again, arginine is never the rate-limiting step, in nitric oxide production, it's the function of the enzyme that converts it to nitric oxide. So those products don't work. Those were those were big for probably 15 years.
And then in 2012, and the London Olympic Games was recognized that people were drinking gallons of beetroot juice. Hmm, right. In the London Games and in fact, the, the UK Olympic team, won more gold, medals won, more medals than any time in the history of the Olympics and they attributed to drinking their beet juice. Wow. So then the market was flooded with be rude products. And now there's hundreds of the root products out there that are sold as pre workouts. I've tested, probably all of them, 99% of them, do nothing, but turn your pee in your poop Pink and caused a lot of anxiety.
Very interesting. I wonder if it's because you're drinking it and it's just like, you know, right down the gullet. It's not those products aren't allowed
time. Here's the it, I mean, the companies that are marketing, these don't understand the science, they just think beet juice. They go out and buy the cheapest, dehydrated beetroot product, they can, and and sell it for 10 15, 20 bucks. You have to have sufficient nitrate in it. You have to have the right bacteria and you have to have stomach acid. And as we've already loosened hated, most people don't have the right bacteria.
And most people are on an acid, so they're not going to get a nitric oxide benefit them. In fact, most of these be products, don't have any detectable nitrate or nitrite
in. WoW, damn. So there's, there's no way they can
work. Wow, it's just Creative Marketing. Hmm.
Fascinating. So we understood the science and you know back in 2012 I recognize this and I developed my own fermented beet powder. So what we do is we convert it. We don't rely on the human body to convert it because everybody would have a differential response. I'm not interested in bringing the product Market. A product that only works in a third of the people. We have to maintain the Integrity, the science and provide safe and effective products that everybody's going to get the same effect. So we pre convert our beetroot product into a bioactive nitric oxide. So
when you put it in water, we generate nitric oxide gas. When you consume it, we're liberating, nitric oxide systemically. We're not dependent upon the bacteria will not depend upon your ability to produce stomach acid. We generate nitric oxide for you. Wow.
And what's the product that you gave me? That has it's like literally sodium, nitrite and vitamin C and all this stuff and it's like, swallow your saliva after I've been taking a pre-workout and I, so that's our lozenge. Okay, cool.
That was the first product that I brought to Market, and that
It came from kind of my first Eureka moment in science. And in 2007, we published the first paper showing that nitric oxide was a hormone.
Right? So, if you're deficient and other hormones like testosterone or estrogen, what do you do? We have to take it, right? Same thing with nitric oxide. If you're deficient, in nitric oxide production, we have to give you nitric oxide and we have to fix your body's ability to make it on its own. So that was the whole basis for me, developing a product technology that number one. If your body can't make nitric oxide, we got to do it for you. As I mentioned earlier, we understand the enzymology in the biochemistry that we can fix the enzyme in the lining of the blood vessel. And now we know how to repopulate these bacteria.
So, I developed this orally disintegrating, tablet that you put in your mouth, it dissolves over five minutes, you just move it around and we're providing nitric oxide gas. So as its dissolving we're generating about 30 parts per million nitric oxide gas. Whoa, It's not giving you're hoping your body can converted. We can detect it. We can quantify it, we can verify it. So and then the other important thing is we re couple the NOS enzyme. So we see about a 15% Improvement in your body's ability to make it four hours after the lozenge. And then we're repopulating the goodbye.
You in your mouth. Wow. So it's just the opposite. So we're so theoretically people would need less and less of my product over time. Hmm. Because his work, as we're fixing your body's ability, to make it the less, you need supplemental,
interesting. You said it takes about 90 minutes for a high nitrate meal. It's right to boost nitric oxide is that the same time frame that it takes for one of
these laws inches to get a lozenge, is immediate?
Wow. Yeah, because I've been taking it like, literally, as I walk into
my gym, so we can see if we use an ultrasound of your carotid artery. When you put that lozenge in your mouth,
Within 12 seconds, we can see your carotid artery dilate. Whoa, so it's immediate dissolution, its immediate Vaso activity and you get systemic effects
is nitric oxide. The answer to hypertension to all. I mean, it's like we're seeing such staggering rates and metabolic illness wanting to people wanting to adults today, have hypertension.
Yeah. Two out of three have either pre hypertension or hypertension. Wow. So yeah, I think there's there's different causes for hypertension, right? And
if you look at different class of drugs, for antihypertensive medication,
The first kind of, think effective drugs on the market were affecting What's called the renin-angiotensin system. So there's ACE inhibitors, which range in tents and converting enzyme Inhibitors. And that's part of a kidney problem related to hypertension. So if you inhibit the conversion of a range of tents and converting enzyme in the lungs, you can prevent the production of a vasoconstrictor, right? So hypertension is really just an imbalance in the Vaso dilatory versus vasoconstrictive molecules
So nitric oxide is the primary vasodilator so ACE inhibitors, ARB is calcium channel antagonist, and then diuretics to correct fluid imbalances. Wow, but there's something called resistant hypertension, right? And so 50% of the people that have high blood pressure that are put on prescription medication, don't respond with better blood pressure.
So why is that? It's because the root or the cause of their hypertension isn't related to their kidneys isn't related to Angiotensin, it's not related to calcium flux imbalance and it's not related to fluid imbalance. When we published on is that hypertension, in many cases is a sign of oral dysbiosis
oral dysbiosis.
Yeah, so if you're using mouthwash, stop your blood pressure normalizes, when you restore the Ecology of the oral microbiome, your blood pressure normalizes. Hmm.
What about just
King alcohol, people who just you know, enjoy imbibing. Every once in a while. Does those drinking alcohol vodka to get whatever? Can that disrupt the oral
microbiome? Now I'm a scotch Drinker, you are not. I'm a social Scotch Drinker. In fact, I love my Scotch, here's the issue. If you were to drink alcohol, vodka, scotch or whatever and you hold it in your mouth for 60 or 90 seconds as you would an antiseptic. Yeah. I mean maybe.
Because these are 40% right in the actual mix mine with water. So probably what your what I'm drinking is, maybe 10% alcohol. Well, if
there's anything I remember from 2020, and the whole like Ovid hygiene theater, it's that you want. Your the alcohol percentage has to be 60% or higher for it to be antiseptic or something. And I did I just butcher
that. Yeah, I know, I think that's that's probably right. So what we're drinking even if we were to hold the alcohol in the mouth for 30 seconds like we would have mouthwash. It's probably you're not.
Not going to get effective killing, hmm. But, you know, during kova did everything. They were telling us to do was basically making people more susceptible to covet infection crazy like the, the antiseptic the hand sanitizers. And using, I mean, that basically kills the microbiome, there were people telling you they use mouthwash and acids and all that. I mean, you're making the patient more susceptible to covert
infection. Hmm. Wild.
Yeah, that was a that was a crazy time. And there was just that review published in. It was like exercise physiology, one of these journals where they said that exercise literally is like the ultimate most ideal first line defense for sure.
Like when I feel like my body's getting weak and I feel like I could get onset of an illness coming. First thing, I do the last thing I want to do is go to the gym but the first thing I do is go to the gym. Wow. And I exercise, I do 30 minutes of cardio and then I'll go sit in a sauna for 30 minutes.
And I haven't been sick in more than 20 years song times spoofs nitric oxide, does it? Not yes, certain I mean, red light, there's certain wavelengths of light that will stimulate nitric oxide production, red
light. So I have a red light device is that, in pets, boosting nitric oxide when I use
that. So what's happening is, there's what we call and we published on this, I believe in 2001, their photo, labels stores of nitric oxide that you can activate. So when nitric oxide is produced, it has certain cellular targets. It can bind the metals that can bind assisting files.
And so infrared light will actually liberate nitric oxide bound the metals. And if you look at infrared, ultraviolet, light it will cleave in outbound, assisting tiles on proteins. So when you get exposure to sunlight, you're getting both UV, you're getting infrared and you're releasing nitric oxide. Wow. But the problem is, if you're, if you're deficient in, nitric oxide, you're deficient in these photo label stores of nitric oxide. So if you got a sick patient who can't make nitric oxide red light therapies, there's no nitric oxide
Release. Hmm. So what we do is we try to titrate up the nitric oxide. So you either take our laws and our beet powder and then exposed to red light therapy. Now we're going to potentiate the effects of red light therapy. You're going to potentially at the effects. The blood pressure lowering effects of sunlight or exposure to different light
sources. Wow. But if your, if your oral microbiome is intact and healthy and you regularly, eat dark leafy greens, then there is a synergistic effect. Absolutely that you get
In terms of nitric oxide synthesis with red, light exposure or sonic storm etcetera.
Yeah. You need nitrate. You need bacteria, you need stomach acid.
Wow,
without either of three of what? If one of those is missing, you don't get the effects.
Do you think the carnivore diet is a terrible idea.
No. Like I think different people respond to different diets. I'm not a big fan of extreme diets perpetually. I think you can make some changes in human physiology metabolism by these drastic changes. So I'm not a big fan of a straight vegan diet. I'm not a big straight, big fan of a carnivore diet forever so I think you can you can do intermittent changes in this and see the benefits but from what I know about science and
Me and nutrient assimilation and vegetables and nutrient assimilation. In animal proteins is we get the many nutrients and minerals that we need from a balanced diet from a diverse diet. I think that's how we, as humans have evolved, we get our nutrients from many different dietary
sources. Hmm. Well, it's like they're not getting these inorganic
nitrates. There's really not. I mean, I think we published on this in 2015. There's very little residual nitrate and
I tried in animal meats and meat products. And so, these, the animals we eat are vegetarians, right? Yeah. Because, yeah. So they're assimilate their plant them. So they're assimilating the nitrate from the grass, and the vegetables are eating into their own tissue muscle tissue. So even non cured meat, non processed Meats, like a rib eye steak, or things that son process has some nitrate and nitrite and it's very little well, but it's there and it's
detectable.
That's rib eyes are my love language. Yeah. Mine too. Yeah love them. There's also correct me if I'm wrong. There's a role for some of these karna nutrients like co Q 10 right in terms of recycling, right? Nitric oxide so it can make a little go a longer way. Hypothetically,
well there are a number of there's the human body is redundant by Nature, right? So there's enormous redundancy in the human body. In fact, if there was only one way to make nitric oxide, then probably
This would become extinct. So there has to be numerous ways to make this critical molecule, and there are different ways to recycle it and extend, its biological Half-Life. That's kind of what we've harnessed in a therapeutic program in our product development. So once nitric oxide is produced, it's gone in less than a second. In fact, the half-life of nitric oxide in the human body is two milliseconds. Whoa,
So, but we can extend the biological half-life of this, by understanding. The metabolic kind of, hierarchy of nitric oxide. Where does it go, what does it become and what does it do? And so, if we can capture that in form of a product technology or therapeutic, then we can extend the biological Half-Life from to Ms up to tens of minutes and hours. We can do this through giving sulfur compounds like glutathione polyphenols. You mentioned co Q 10 cookie. Tins. Extremely important for mitochondrial function,
Nitric oxide is what controls and regulates mitochondrial. ATP production maintains the electrical potential across the mitochondria. So can generate ATP and produce less superoxide and oxidative stress and nitric oxide is what controls mitochondrial biogenesis. So again, we can induce all these Pathways but if you don't have enough co Q 10 and all these mitochondrial cofactors, then the mitochondria going to be dysfunctional. So in that case, it's not a nitric oxide deficiency. It's a mitochondrial issue. Mmm. So again, we have to give the body what it needs the body,
He incorporates what it needs and does. Its job
Beyond cardiovascular health, are there other areas of well-being that nitric oxide influences like immune function, for example, inflammation.
So we learned a lot. There's a rich literature on nitric oxide and immune function. In fact, one of the first discoveries of nitric oxide was in, macrophages in this whole reaction of arginine to nitric oxide to nitrate. So, back in the probably mid 80s, so,
Immune cells make nitric oxide. And the whole purpose of this is when were exposed to pathogen, whether it's a virus or bacteria, then our immune cells recognize that our cardiovascular system mobilizes, an immune response. So we get the immune cells to the site of attachment infection and then these immune cells surround that and generate a ton of nitric oxide. Wow, in this nitric oxide binds to the iron, sulfur centers of bacteria of shuts, down their respiration, kills the bacteria. And it's prevents the virus from replicating. So even if we're
exposed to a virus for immune system is strong and generates nitric oxide. We don't get sick from the virus. Wow. And this was what we recognized in probably March of 2020 and covet that the people that were getting sick and dying from covert where the people could make nitric oxide. Wow. So who was this is for the elderly people, the prior heart attack, diabetes, African-Americans people with pulmonary hypertension corded smoked. These were the people that if they got exposed to coveted, it was a very predictable sequence of events.
Within three days they were sick then four to five days. They were hospitalized from low blood oxygen saturation, five to six days later they were put on mechanical ventilator. They were dead. I mean this was free predictable. So that's what initiated us to start our drug trial for covitz. We had a nitric oxide drug in Phase 3, clinical trials for kovin. Wow, we filed our investigation, we drug application in June FDA approved it in July. We started enrolling patients in December of 2020.
And we were making people better. But at that time, code changed right, the hospital's weren't overrun with patients these new restrains, that evolve were bless virulent and people weren't going to the hospital. So we are our trial design was to reduce hospitalizations by 20%. So, we were enrolling, high-risk patients, and seeing if we could Implement create an early treatment to keep them out of the hospital, keep their blood oxygen saturation up, prevent virus replicating, and we did this, but the problem was
Patients that we were enrolling. No one is going to the hospital, even the ones on the placebo because they were getting the milder form of the disease. Hmm. But here's what we've learned and I'm probably the best example during since March of 2020. I've been on an airplane. Probably every week for the past four years and at one time we had 26 coded clinics around the u.s. so we would go in enroll patients. I didn't wear a mask. I was almost thrown off airplanes for not wearing masks. I didn't get the jab, I've never had:.
You've never had goat. Never had Coke.
Wow, like the heaven
had been sick from any infection or sickness since 2001 when I got the flu vaccine when I was at Boston Medical Center. Damn. So it's not that I'm not exposed to these pathogens, I'm exposed every day. Yeah. But my immune system is robust. I make a lot of nitric oxide and if I'm exposed we shut it down at the source of infection. We prevent it from replicating and propagating and making people sick.
Wow, fascinating, and what about just forget? I mean a lot of people today, struggle from generalized, low-grade chronic
inflammation.
Well if you look at so mechanistically what I do in terms of inflammation it's very well. Defined in science most people just think what your inflamed, right? They see it as the silent killer which has been known. Yeah, many decades. So there's different markers of inflammation. One is high sensitivity C-reactive protein that you can measure in the blood. In fact, one of my patents in our nitric oxide is a method of reducing C-reactive protein. Wow, so nitric oxide will be published on this in 2009. That nitric oxide. Reduces the inflammatory response.
Response, reduces C-reactive protein. And when we look at inflammation, the earliest stages of inflammation, is called micro vascular information. When the blood vessels become like velcro right platelets. Stick, monocytes neutrophil stick. And then they infiltrate into the intima, they develop oxidative stress, immune dysfunction to get plaque development, the plaque, ruptures heart attack and stroke. So, the sequence of events physiological, you're very well-defined. If you can inhibit that early microvascular inflammation, you can inhibit the onset and progression.
Of cardiovascular disease. Wow, that's what nitric oxide does. That's the reason it is so effective. In encoded, you know, whether you give inhaled nitric oxide in, there are number of clinical studies that nitric oxide prevents the, the upregulation of adhesion molecules. So the spike protein binds to the ace receptor. If you're nitric oxide deficient you get an upregulation of the ace receptor. So there's more targets for the spike protein. To bind to that causes further. Vascular inflammation. Platelet starts ticking and get an elevation and D-dimer micro clots. So everything we know about covet and Long Cove.
Added in the systemic disease of Kovac can be traced back to a lack of nitric oxide
wild. Is there a risk from bumping? Your nitric oxide too high?
Yes as with everything, it's a dose-dependent. Yes. A little Enos bad too much, can be bad. Hmm. There's only two signs of toxicity. One is low blood pressure, if you take too much nitric oxide, you get systemic vasodilation and you'll lose perfusion pressure.
So is it safe to say that? Somebody with, for example, pots,
You know, I guess probably has to could. They potentially have too much nitric
oxide. I think that's an autonomic disorder, not necessarily related to the over production of nitric oxide. It's an autonomic nervous system disorder where they lose the ability to control, you know, pasta blood pressure upon sitting and standing. Yeah, it's an autonomic nervous system issue the only time you see. And again if you go back 20 years people thought that when you get sepsis right when you get systemic infection and septicemia that the
When people die from sepsis is hypoperfusion of organs. So it was thought that when you have an active infection, the immune cells are generating too much nitric oxide. You can exist to make vasodilation leading to loss of perfusion pressure and organ failure and death. So in 1990, I think it was 1998. They developed a clinical trial to give a nitric oxide inhibitor to septic patients with very good reasoning, right? If you're making too much nitric oxide, if you inhibit it, can you prevent the loss of blood pressure and save people's lives?
Well a very unpredictable occurrence happened that when they gave an AAS inhibitory killed more people than the placebo. Hmm. So that tell the scientific medical community that the death from sepsis and septicemia is not due to an over production of nitric oxide. So now we struggle with trying to find kind of a natural physiological condition where there's over production of nitric oxide and I don't think they're that exists but certainly you can take too much in oh and you'll
Use a loss of your blood pressure will drop or you develop what's called methemoglobinemia so you'll oxidize the iron in the hemoglobin of the red blood cells. And then you lose the oxygen carrying capacity of the red blood cell and you become cyanotic she'll get blue around the lips. Well, you're loose color but that's a I mean, that's a whopping two shouldn't he? And it's typically hundred a thousand times higher than what you would ever get from a diet or from any product. Yeah, and you will lose, you will develop low blood.
Pressure long before you develop any medical
information. Hmm, I mean, most of the people today, the problem facing most westerners is hypertension, high blood pressure. Not the not the
inverse. Well, there are people with low blood pressure in, that's typically a thyroid issue. Hypothyroidism causes low blood pressure. So then you get a fix and the good thing about our product technology. And we tested this early on is if you have low blood pressure and you take one of our laws inches. Does it further reduce your blood pressure causing syncope and
And and lightheadedness him, the answer is no. So my blood pressure is typically 115 over 72 at any given time. And I take a lozenge, doesn't change it. We've been 24-hour, ambulatory blood pressure and it doesn't, if you have normal or low blood pressure doesn't change your blood pressure. If you have high blood pressure, will normalize it. So that's one of the remarkable things about. Delivering nitric oxide at the right dose, over the right amount of time. It's its regulatory by Nature.
Hmm. Man-to-man, you take one of those laws inches.
For sex, what happens?
Well, we improve perfusion, right. I mean, we're leading to not only dilating the resistance arteries, but opening up the microcirculation. Hmm, it's so in the sex organs, it's a spongy tissue, right? With a lot of small vet blood vessels. So when we can improve the profusion and open up those micro circulation and small blood vessels, we get better perfusion better. Engorgement better erections
have. You are their clinical trials? I mean, how does it does it like, how would it
It's how would it work in comparison to a drug like Viagra
for well? Again, let's go back and talk about how Viagra was discovered and put into clinical practice. These drugs early on were developed for patients with pulmonary hypertension and for ischemic heart disease. So, the whole rationale is. So these drugs are called phosphodiesterase Inhibitors. Nitric oxide wanted to produce causes an increase in a second messenger called cyclic. GMP in Viagra. Prevents the breakdown of the second messenger. Hmm.
So now like I said, nitric oxide turns the switch on in Viagra keeps it on and that's the reason you're warned against the four-hour erection and headaches and loss of vision all these side effects. And yeah, but 50% of the men that are given Viagra, don't respond with better erections.
Interesting.
So it's been on the market for 25 years. Multibillion-dollar your drug that only works in less than 50% of them in
less. I thought it like worked in
everybody. No, no 50% efficacy in men with Edie or symptoms of BPH benign.
Hypertrophy so mechanistically, we understand why that is because you need nitric oxide for Viagra to work.
And if you can't make nitric oxide, there's no increasing cyclic GMP. So there's no substrate for these drugs to work on. Got it. And we did a clinical trial years ago where we took non-responders to P D5, inhibition therapy. We were using patients, who are on 5 mg CLS once daily for either erectile dysfunction or B pH and those that were non-responsive. We actually made them responsive by giving them the nitric oxide.
Damn, so you take one of your lozenges and a Viagra and you're just ready to party. Yeah, be careful though.
Damn, can overdo it. So the whole point is if you if you understand mechanistically, what causes vasodilation, what causes Improvement and sexual function and directions, then you get to the root cause of it. You don't need phosphodiesterase Inhibitors to improve sexual function. What we're finding is if you just improve nitric oxide production, all the downstream signaling aspects of that, take care of itself, you generate nitric oxide. You activate guanylate, cyclase, you increase cyclic GMP, you get vasodilation to get
An erection, it's that simple.
And as you mentioned earlier in the episode benefits, women as well,
right? Yeah. Look, they need engorgement and and directions as well. It's a clitoral erection, the state of a penile erection, but it's the exact same. The anatomy is a little bit different. The physiology is exactly the same.
Yeah, damn. More nitric oxide for everybody. I feel like the world would be a better place. We all be happier.
Well, we're working on that work. Thanks to you, we're going to educate more people on the importance.
Yeah man, my mind is always blown whenever I get to sit down and
With you. And I felt I failed to mention this earlier in the episode, but actually quote, you in my third book, genius kitchen as well in the section about like
mouthwash. Yeah, yeah, that's always the aha moment for people because people have good intent. I think, you know, they see the adverts on TV, they go to their dentist may think. Well, I need to have clean breath fresh smelling bread, but they don't understand the collateral damage causing. Yeah, it's like dropping an atomic bomb in your mouth. You're killing the bad guys. But you're killing the good guys, too. And
not only that, but the good guys
Probably police the bad guys tell. That's exactly right, right to promote, good
breath. Like, if the whole ecology, their different communities of bacteria on the gingival tissue on the tongue there biofilms different layers. And so as long as you have a good healthy, diverse oral microbiome, the good guys, keep the bad, guys at Bay, when you disrupt that you caused chaos in the bad, guys, take over. And now, the inmates are
leading the Asylum. Damn. All right. So let's just do like a recap
Because I feel like there's so much incredible information here and people should definitely go and, you know, follow you on the socials and check out your products and everything because I mean this is like really groundbreaking groundbreaking science that you're sharing. But for those interested in optimizing their nitric oxide levels, let's just in a sort of Cliff Notes. Format recap. What actionable steps or advice would you
recommend? You got to do two things. It's only the very simple, stop doing the things that disrupted, start doing the things that promote it. Hmm. So, what is
Is that stop using mouthwash? I mean the evidence is abundantly clear? I mean, for me, everything is about risk benefit. What are the risk versus the benefits mouthwash? There's really no benefits. The risk high blood pressure loss of the protective benefits of exercise and probably Edie and the whole sequel of things that happen with nitric oxide efficiency. You have to get rid of fluoride by fluoride free toothpaste. Get rid of fluoride in your drinking water in your home health, sister home, water system and then if you're using an acid, you have to stop.
So those are three Biggie's, fluoride mouthwash, and acids have to completely get off this because that's inhibiting. The body's ability to make nitric oxide on its own and then there's no need for product technology unless you're not doing the other. So if you stop doing those three things and you just get 20 30 minutes of physical exercise, a day, it can be a brisk, walk then more green, leafy. Vegetables were a nitrate Source at the. I recommend a balanced diet in moderation and then sunlight for the red light.
Appeared, you know, you get broad spectrum full spectrum from sunlight. So I'm a big fan of you know just sitting 20 30 minutes out in the sun today. Hmm.
And then when all else fails, then we have products that do it for you.
Love it, super useful with regard to Oral Care. Are you a fan of hydroxyapatite, like, some of these fluoride were Replacements.
I think there's a, there's a spot for that again and everybody's different, right? So hydroxyapatite is kind of like a substrate that helps build strong teeth and bones. There's a lot of, there's a lot of things we don't know. Still, you know, people ask me all the time about oil, pulling essential oils, different oral hygienic practices.
Scraping, you know, 2019 we published that. If you tongue scraped that the people who did tongue scraping had seemed to have a higher diversity of the oral microbiome, which seemed to be a good thing and they had better blood pressure management. But if you tongue scraped and use mouthwash, those were the people. We saw. The highest increase in blood pressure on. Wow. So I think tongue scraping alone is probably good. We just don't know about things like hydroxyapatite how they're affecting the microbiome. We don't have any data on things like
Essential oils are all pulling but I think what is long as they're not antiseptic, then it's probably going to be fine. You have to support the Ecology of the oral microbiome and let these bugs do their job. Hmm.
Great, advice, Nathan. Brian for president,
not yet, dude. It doesn't work to do. I know you. Do you
do? Yeah, there's a lot of work that needs to be done, but fascinating stuff, man. Thank you so much for coming back. Thank you Max. And, yeah, I mean, I always learn a ton and I feel like this is like
These are my favorite kinds of episodes of the show because they're so actionable. Like, there's so many takeaways that that my listeners now, like, have to go and Implement in their lives and share with their loved ones like really like impactful, high impact High leverage stuff. So thanks, as always, we're can. If you have like a website or a social media handles, please share those.
Well, I see my job is not to sell your product. My job is to educate and inform so I send people to my YouTube channel. It's dr. Nathan s Brian nitric oxide. I've got an educational website.
Website dr. Nathan s, Brian, I do a monthly blog its educational by nature. And so the most important thing for me is for people to educate themselves, get informed on nitric oxide, but also be able to recognize the products in the companies that are actually based on science and don't believe the marketing in the hype by companies that are out there fraudulently marketing. So called nitric oxide products, that don't make nitric oxide at all, and then Instagram, I'm dr. Nathan es, Brian, I'm on Twitter at dr. Nitric LinkedIn.
Penis, Brian.
I think that's it. Don't for a product's website, it's in 101.com.
Yeah man. I've been really enjoying the laws Jews pre-workout up and taking them so yeah, keep me. Keep Me stuck with them. I guess it's all I can so I can ask for, I will do them. Yeah, love it. Last question that gets asked everybody on the show. What is living a genius life mean to you?
Well, I think it's really having the ability to impact others lives. I mean, there's no. I think we have to each of us have
Recognize our gift and figure out our, why for being here and, and taking that, and really empowering people, and changing people's lives. And to me, that's the most gratifying thing. I do I get hundreds of texts phone calls and emails every day of people that we've changed their lives. And it said, if you change the life of one person you've changed the world you've certainly changed their world. Yeah, so that's for me, it's really just about taking information discoveries we've made and kind of educating and informing the masses so people can take control of their own health.
With. So now there's no excuse, right? You have access to information it's actionable and you can take responsibility for your own
health. There you go. Boom. Thank you guys for listening. Share this episode with friends and loved ones that may benefit from it. Leave a rating and review on your podcast app of choice. It really does help to freeway to support and I'll catch you on the next episode. Peace, everybody.
Julia's life.
