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The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast
Welcome to "The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast," the podcast where insightful conversations unfold, and the depth of the human mind is explored. In each episode, I sit down with a diverse range of individuals—thinkers, innovators, and captivating personalities—who share their unique insights and experiences. Together, we embark on a journey of discovery, unraveling the complexities of the human psyche and uncovering the untold truths that influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast
Dr. Nathan Bryan: Longevity and How Nitric Oxide Prevents Disease | The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast #48
Could a simple gas naturally produced in your body be the key to preventing heart disease, dementia, cancer, and sexual dysfunction? Dr. Nathan Bryan, a pioneering biochemist who has spent nearly three decades researching nitric oxide, reveals why this molecule is fundamental to human health and longevity.
After the 1998 Nobel Prize recognized the importance of nitric oxide, scientists began to understand its essential role as a vasodilator that keeps blood flowing freely throughout our bodies. Dr. Bryan explains how this critical gas production naturally declines with age, but can be accelerated by modern lifestyle factors including processed foods, sugar consumption, antiseptic mouthwash, fluoride exposure, and pharmaceutical drugs – particularly proton pump inhibitors like Prilosec and Nexium.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Dr. Bryan connects the dots between oral health and systemic disease. He presents compelling evidence that root canals and dental infections may contribute to cancer development by creating environments of low oxygen, low pH, and disrupted energy pathways. This controversial but evidence-backed perspective challenges conventional medical and dental practices while offering new hope for disease prevention.
Most importantly, Dr. Bryan provides practical, actionable strategies to maintain and restore healthy nitric oxide levels. He cautions that most marketed "nitric oxide supplements" are ineffective placebos, and instead recommends specific lifestyle changes: eliminating sugar and processed foods, increasing green leafy vegetable consumption, avoiding fluoride products and antiseptic mouthwash, practicing intermittent fasting, and getting regular sun exposure.
Whether you're concerned about cardiovascular health, cognitive function, metabolic disorders, or simply want to optimize your wellness and longevity, this eye-opening conversation provides critical information that could transform your understanding of health and disease prevention.
You can't do it to the heart, you can't do it to the brain, the liver, the lungs, every organ in the body. And then, number two, you start to see an increase in blood pressure and because nitric oxide is a vasodilator, it's opening up the blood vessels. So now you're. If you lose the ability to make nitric oxide, you become chronically constricted. Now you've got the same volume of blood going through smaller pipes, if you will, and that causes an increase in blood pressure.
Speaker 2:Basic physics Hello everyone, thank you for joining me today. I took a long break, but it's wonderful to be back. This episode I want to present to you in such an eloquent way. He is world-renowned researcher, dr Nathan Bryan, somebody that's dear to me, an incredibly essential human being. Dr Bryan is doing God's work and he has helped so many people understand the essential importance of nitric oxide.
Speaker 2:He's recently released a book, the Secrets of Nitric Oxide, and on this show today we're going to dive right into it and how important it is to live and I mean that to live. It's such an important asset of our body and he's going to explain to us what nitric oxide is, why we're deficient in it, how do we know if we're deficient and, if we are, what are the causes, what are the symptoms and how can we get it back. So thank you for joining me and I'm very excited to show Dr Nathan Bryan, phd on nitric oxide. All right, dr Brian, it's so nice to have you on my podcast. It's an honor. I love your work, I follow your work and I appreciate you, and I'm very, very grateful that you accepted my invitation. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, those are kind words and I appreciate this and honor and invite for the. You may invite me to be with you, so I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely All right, let's get into this amazing conversation of nitric oxide. So how did you get into this field? You have a PhD. You've been studying this for many, many years and have worked with hundreds and hundreds of patients. So tell us what is nitric oxide?
Speaker 1:Well, you know it's a fascinating molecule. It's a gas that's naturally produced in the body. The odor we get, the less we make, and that's what's responsible for age-related disease. But I was first introduced to the science of nitric oxide in the late 90s, early 2000s, when I was a student at LSU School of Medicine. They were working on a PhD in molecular and cellular physiology and a Nobel Prize had just been awarded in 1998 for the discovery of nitric oxide. So you know it was an exciting time. Everybody had a lot of promise for this molecule, that it had really the potential to change the world, of managing chronic disease, even preventing a lot of the poorly managed chronic disease that we're still dealing with today. And so that's how I got introduced to this. And you know, fast forward 30 years, 25 years Now, here we are. We've made a lot of discoveries. So there's over 200,000 scientific papers published in the nitric oxide literature. So you know we understand a lot more today about nitric oxide certainly than we did 25 years ago.
Speaker 2:So when you say that as you get older, that your body produces less nitric oxide, from what age are we looking at?
Speaker 1:We know it's quite variable and so let me just preface that by saying there's really two ways the body makes nitric oxide. There's an enzyme in the lining of the blood vessel and when we talk about this age-related decline in nitric oxide production, it's really looking at the function of the enzyme that typically makes nitric oxide from L-arginine. That's called the NOS pathway and so it's similar to. You know you can kind of mirror the effects we see in human growth hormone. You know it peaks kind of in our teens and then just steadily declines as we get older. But there are many things that contribute to a loss of nitric oxide production in terms of the function of that enzyme.
Speaker 1:But today we know that we don't necessarily see that age-related decline. We can prevent it, we can prolong it or we can accelerate it. Related decline we can prevent it, we can prolong it or we can accelerate it. So to answer your question, you know today there are 18, 20, 24 year old kids and young people that have the nitric oxide production of a 60 or 70 year old and we have people like, for instance, I'm 51, and I have the kind of the nitric oxide production potential of someone in their 30s production potential of someone in their 30s.
Speaker 1:So we can you know it's not a static kind of concept, but it depends upon diet, it depends upon lifestyle, it depends upon what you put in your body, on your body and how you really go about every day, but it's the Western lifestyle diet, physical inactivity, pharmaceutical drugs, antacids, fluoride, antiseptic mouthwash, antibiotics all of those lead to a loss of nitric oxide or an accelerated decrease in nitric oxide production.
Speaker 2:Now I want to ask these two questions. You said food has an impact on nitric oxide, so does this mean that whether you eat organic food or grass-fed meat, do all of these play a factor in the decrease of nitric oxide?
Speaker 1:They do. And so what we're finding is that diet really serves two functions. Number one you've got to eliminate things in your diet that are inhibiting nitric oxide production, and then you've got to start including things in your diet that can enhance or stimulate and activate nitric oxide production. So then you got to start including things in your diet that can enhance or stimulate and activate nitric oxide production. So really, the biggest culprit in inhibition of nitric oxide is sugar. So you know, we we were consuming way too much sugar in the Western world and simple carbohydrates. So simple, elimination of sugar.
Speaker 1:You know, we explained this because sugars, or glucose, is like glue right, it's the root word of glucose. It's a glue, it sticks things together. So when you have an elevation in fasting or blood glucose levels, that molecule, that sugar, sticks to things like hemoglobin, and we measure that as hemoglobin A1C. But it also sticks to enzymes, and enzymes in biochemistry and enzymology are designed to undergo conformational change to transfer electrons through different domains of an enzyme, and if there's too much sugar on there, it's stuck in a single conformation so that enzyme can't do its job.
Speaker 1:So that's number one you have to eliminate sugar, sugar-containing supplements, sugar-containing foods and then start to increase the consumption of green leafy vegetables, healthy fats, a lot of protein. Now, you know, the older we get them, the higher consumption of protein that's required to prevent muscle loss and bone loss. So those are the biggies. And I'm not a big fan of hardcore vegan, hardcore carnivore, keto. But I think the most important thing is eliminate carbs and sugar and then, you know, eat a balanced diet in moderation Lots of protein, good fats, very little carbs.
Speaker 2:What are some of the symptoms a person can experience if their nitric oxide is decreasing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, we've come a long way in understanding that, and that's a really important question because it's not part of your standard lab. So if you go to your physician or healthcare practitioner and they want to draw blood, there is no option. For what is my nitric oxide levels? Right, because it's a gas. Once it's produced, it's gone in less than a second. So we have to rely on symptoms and the presentation of symptoms in people.
Speaker 1:So usually the first thing that you see and experience when your body has the inability to produce sufficient nitric oxide is sexual dysfunction or erectile dysfunction.
Speaker 1:That occurs in both men and women, because in order for women to have an orgasm or men to have an erection, we have to dilate the blood vessels of the sex organs, and that's done through the production of nitric oxide. So if we've lost the ability to produce nitric oxide, we don't get dilation, we don't get encouragement, women become an orgasmic and men can't get an erection. So that's number one and that's what we call the canary in the coal mine, because if you can't produce nitric oxide and regulate blood flow to the sex organs, you can't do it to the heart. You can't do it to the heart, you can't do it to the brain, the liver, the lungs, every organ in the body. And then, number two, you start to see an increase in blood pressure. And because nitric oxide is a vasodilator, it's opening up the blood vessels. So now you're. If you lose the ability to make nitric oxide, you become chronically constricted. Now you've got the same volume of blood going through smaller pipes, if you will and that causes an increase in blood pressure.
Speaker 1:Basic physics so, an increase in. Two out of three Americans have an unsafe elevation in blood pressure. So that should tell you how many people are nitric oxide deficient. And then, number three, you start to get metabolic disease, things like glucose and insulin resistance, type two diabetes, because in order for insulin to work in the cell and for that cell to bring in glucose and clear it from the circulation, it requires that cell to be able to produce nitric oxide. The nitric oxide is part of the insulin signaling pathway and responsible for glucose uptake. And then, number four, you start to develop exercise and tolerance. If you can't walk up a flight of steps or do basic exercise without becoming winded tightness of chest, then your body can't make nitric oxide. And then, fifth, you start to get dementia and.
Speaker 1:Alzheimer's. We and others have discovered that really Alzheimer's disease is a symptom of nitric oxide deficiency. It's lack of cerebral blood flow, it's insulin resistance, it's type three diabetes, and nitric oxide corrects all of those. So if you maintain normal perfusion, you don't get the focal ischemia, you can maintain normal glucose uptake in the brain. You don't get misfolding of proteins. So there's no taut angles, there's no amyloid plaque built up and all that can be corrected by maintaining optimal nitric oxide levels. Amyloid plaque built up.
Speaker 2:And all that can be corrected by maintaining optimal nitric oxide levels. Exactly and what I noticed. Now I want to get into the proton pump inhibitors. I want to talk about that? Yeah, because some of the symptoms that you just described that occur from decreasing the nitric oxide. Do they prescribe these proton pump inhibitors to help with the situation? Look, I've never understood this type of drugs.
Speaker 1:Now look the standard of care in Western medicine and I think it's kind of gone all over now but if you're admitted to the hospital, and it doesn't matter if it's from trauma or influenza-like illness or more serious critical conditions such as a heart attack or stroke. And it doesn't matter if it's from trauma or influenza-like illness or more serious critical conditions such as a heart attack or stroke. The first thing they do is give you omeprazole.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Prilosec and proton pump inhibitors, and so to me it's no wonder that people get worse when they're admitted into a hospital and very few people get better, because if you've ever been to the hospital and eaten hospital food.
Speaker 1:It's I mean it's. It's criminal. But even more criminal is giving these patients proton pump inhibitors without any real indication, and these are only approved for gastroesophageal reflux disease. But here's what happens If you put patients on a PPI they can't absorb nutrients things like magnesium, iron, selenium, chromium, iodine, b vitamins and you can't break down proteins into amino acids. So you start to develop foodborne allergies and you can't regulate acid base balance and you become acidotic. We saw this in COVID from the hypoxemia and the acidosis from admitted COVID patients. So giving PPIs is the worst idea in the world that I could think of as a biochemist and physiologist. But you would only give them if you wanted to make your patients sicker. So there's a host of bad things that happen with inhibiting stomach acid production. I mean, secretion of stomach acid is probably one of the most fundamental critical aspects about human physiology.
Speaker 1:But it's also these drugs are completely in shutting down nitric oxide production and again we like to start with important clinical observations and then work back to figure out mechanism.
Speaker 1:But if you just look at the clinical data and these drugs, have been on the market for decades now, and it was clear that if you've been on a proton pump inhibitor and these drugs have been on the market for decades now and it was clear that if you've been on a proton pump inhibitor and these are things like Prilosec, prevacid, nexium, omeprazole, pantoprazole those are the prescription medications Now you can get them over the counter. If you've been on those drugs for three to five years, what the clinical data tell us is that you have a 40% higher incidence of heart attack, stroke and Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2:Alzheimer's Right. I was reading your yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I mean, we have to do better, we can do better.
Speaker 1:And it's just. The data are very clear. Now we just have to apply the pressures. You know these drugs should have black box warnings on them because they're dangerous and they should be taken off the market. I think these drugs are more dangerous, more deadly, than the COX-2 inhibitors from the early 2000s that were killing people left and right from heart attack and stroke and taken off the market for a brief time. But now they're back on the market with a clear black box warning that these drugs can cause heart attack and stroke, and the same thing should be acknowledged for proton pump inhibitors.
Speaker 2:I was watching a few of your podcasts and one thing that you had said is, I think, that we're afraid of acid in our body. We try to contain that as much as possible, but, understanding your work, what you're saying it's needed Because if we don't have it, then our supplements are like magnesium and so are not going to be breaking down properly in our body. Can you explain us? You know a little bit about that. Yes, so the gastrointestinal system.
Speaker 1:First of all, the human body is a lot smarter than we are. It knows what to do under all circumstances. We just got to get out of the way. So here's how normal gastrointestinal physiology is designed to work. When we eat food, we get nutrients from our food. This is the basic parts of energetic and converting food we eat into cellular energy. We need stomach acid to absorb things like B vitamins, magnesium, selenium, iron, chromium, iodine. So if we can't make stomach acid, then when we consume these foods that contain these nutrients, they just pass right through.
Speaker 1:You know, the gi tract from the mouth to the anus is the outside world. I mean, it's a hollow type that goes hollow pipe that goes straight through us. It's the outside world. Yeah, so our gi system, our epithelial cells, our gastric mucosa and the lumen of the stomach, those different environments are designed to absorb specific nutrients. Along passage from the stomach to the duodenum, the jejunum, small intestine, large intestines, colon At different stages of digestion, there's transporters that take up nutrients from the food and then put it inside our body so that our cells can use it. So that's number one. Number two is that for the pancreas, the exocrine pancreas, to secrete sodium bicarb, which is the buffer system to make sure that our body maintains a normal pH of 7.4 and an electrical potential of minus 25 millivolts across the cell membrane.
Speaker 1:we have to secrete sodium bicarb from the pancreas, and the signal to tell the pancreas to secrete sodium bicarbonate is the acid dump from the lumen of the stomach. So if our body's not making stomach acid, the duodenum, the early part of the small intestine, doesn't detect and get the signal. Hey, I need to secrete some sodium bicarb and that's the acid-based buffering and the acid-based system for maintaining normal cellular potential voltage and pH. So this leads to a hallmark of a number of problems. And then the other thing is that you can't break proteins into amino acids. So you know, we make human proteins. We're never designed to take on animal proteins or plant proteins.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:Proteins are made up of amino acids.
Speaker 1:Right, so when we consume plant protein or animal protein, the purpose of the stomach and its acidity is to activate an enzyme called trypsin, which then cleaves that peptide bond and releases amino acids. So now the amino acids can be absorbed in the small intestines and then we transport those into the cell and we make human proteins out of those basic amino acids. But if you don't have stomach acid, you can't break those down. Now you have peptide fragments that are absorbed across the gut. You lose the integrity of the barrier, the epithelial cells, and now your body sees this as a foreign substance and it makes antibodies against it because it doesn't recognize foreign proteins or foreign peptide fragments.
Speaker 1:And for me that's the basis of all foodborne allergies. You know, when I was a kid in school we didn't have kids with peanut allergies, milk allergies, all these allergies. And because I think it's when kids throw up or spit up as a baby, what do you do? The pediatrician gives them an antacid and now that makes them prone to foodborne allergies, because they can't break down milk proteins, they can't break down proteins like gluten and peptides, so they develop intolerance to them and foodborne allergies are born. So nitric oxide is important, obviously for a number of reasons, but we have to get away from inhibiting stomach acid production. I think it's what's leading to most of the symptoms and syndromes and things today.
Speaker 2:My goodness, dr Bryan, can we get into the four hallmarks of disease? I think this is such an important matter to kind of address If you briefly explain to us what they are so we can understand them better.
Speaker 1:Well, you have to kind of take a step back and look outside of how medicine is practiced today, because everything is siloed right. So if you've got a heart or vascular issue, you go to your cardiologist and he's only focused on your heart and blood vessels. Yes, please, neurologist, but you got to remember everything is connected. And so whether you're looking at heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, neurological disease, when you step back and look, there's always common denominators and those four hallmarks are low blood flow to the organ. So in cardiovascular disease we get a buildup of plaque in the coronary arteries and you get an obstruction of blood flow and we develop ischemic heart disease In the brain, whether it's Alzheimer's, parkinson's, adhd, bipolar, through imaging, spec scans, functional MRIs, we see that there's a loss of regulation of blood flow to the brain.
Speaker 1:So number one, it's low blood flow. And then number two is inflammation. We know inflammation is what drives chronic disease. Number three is oxidative stress. And then, number four, we start to develop immune dysfunction. And so if you go back and now, mechanistically and we and others have discovered for the past 25 years if you can prevent the age-related decline in nitric oxide production, you maintain normal perfusion of the organ. It inhibits inflammation. In fact I've got a number of issued patents that are on methods of reducing inflammation by nitric oxide and we completely inhibit the oxidative stress that occurs we see in most disease processes and we mitigate the immune dysfunction. So simply by giving nitric oxide or restoring the production and signaling of nitric oxide, you're addressing the hallmarks of every single chronic disease.
Speaker 2:I think what I have learned from reading so much about research like how essential blood flow is in a person's body.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, it's blood flow, and it's oxygenation.
Speaker 1:So there's two things it's hypoxia, which means low oxygen, or it's ischemia, which means a disruption in the blood supply, whether there's oxygenated blood or not. So ischemia occurs when there's an obstruction, either a thrombus or an embolism. That's what happens in ischemic stroke or an acute MI there's an occlusion of the blood vessels. There's no blood flow getting in, it's a roadblock. The other problem and we experienced this, this during COVID was the hypoxemia. So you may have adequate blood flow and circulation, but the hemoglobin, the oxygen carrying capacity of the red cell, is compromised. And again, all that is controlled by nitric oxide. Nitric oxide dilates the blood vessels to improve circulation and it's how we oxygenate hemoglobin in red blood cells. So nitric oxide controls everything we know about circulation and tissue oxygenation.
Speaker 2:Earlier we were talking about heart disease and heart attacks. Are those also caused by the lack of nitric oxide in the body, like high blood pressure? Because number one killer right now is heart disease and heart attack right.
Speaker 1:It has been for the past 100 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what are some things that people can do to prevent that? I mean, what can we do to have more nitric or maintain our nitric oxide?
Speaker 1:Well, I'll just answer the first question. The first question is yes. So when we lose the ability to make nitric oxide the functional loss of the endothelial cells, which are the cells that line all blood vessels throughout the body when those endothelial cells lose the ability to produce nitric oxide, you start to get an upregulation of adhesion molecules and then monocytes, neutrophils. Cholesterol starts sticking and it's transported across the endothelium into the intima. Cholesterol starts sticking and it's transported across the end of the limb into the intima. You get smooth muscle hyperplasia, intima media thickness and you start to occlude the lumen of that blood vessel. And then that starts the inflammation, oxidative stress and immune dysfunction. So that functional loss of nitric oxide occurs years, sometimes decades, before there's ever a significant occlusion or stenosis of, for instance, the corneal arteries or the carotid arteries. But then and the other important thing about is this nitric oxide can actually stabilize plaque. It can prevent the plaque from from occurring in the first place. But it's really not the degree of stenosis that causes the problem, it's the vulnerability of the plaque. Stenosis that causes the problem. It's the vulnerability of the plaque.
Speaker 1:And about 50% of heart attacks, sudden cardiac death, in America, is in patients who have less than 50% stenosis of the coronary arteries.
Speaker 1:So it's the vulnerability they got vulnerable plaque that erupts. Now you've got a thrombus and an embolus that goes down, clogs up those coronary arteries and that's acute MI or myocardial infarction, and many people their first sign is sudden cardiac death and there's no going back from that. So what we have to do is we have to maintain adequate nitric oxide production so you don't get plaque deposition, you don't get plaque instability and you don't have an eruption of that plaque and causing acute MI. So it goes back to understanding number one, how the human body makes nitric oxide, and then further understanding of what's causing a loss of the natural production of nitric oxide. Then, and only then, can you start to kind of suggest or recommend therapeutic strategies to restore nitric oxide. So we've touched on those a little bit. I mean you have to get rid of antacids, you have to get rid of antiseptic mouthwash and Maybe that's probably a nice segue into this other pathway, because we discovered that the oral bacteria are responsible for producing nitric oxide.
Speaker 1:So anything that destroys oral bacteria fluoride, toothpaste, and really fluoride it's not toothpaste, it's the fluoride in the toothpaste. Or things like Listerine, scope, antiseptic mouthwash, chlorhexidine those kill. When you see the commercials, it says this kills 99.99% of the bacteria. You should believe them, because it does, and that's not a good thing. By the way, we have to we, now that the entire microbiome project has been mapped out and we know that the bacteria that live in and on our body outnumber our human cells 10 to 1.
Speaker 1:We need to maintain a healthy microbiome. We don't need to kill it, we need to support it, and so things like mouthwash are completely disrupting nitric oxide production. We and others have published that to use mouthwash, your blood pressure goes up, you lose the protective benefits of exercise, and so it's just bad news. So get rid of mouthwash, eliminate fluoride, wean off antacids, and then it's just common sense moderate physical exercise, 20, 30 minutes of direct sunlight exposure day, and then a balanced diet, in moderation no sugar, few carbs, healthy fats, a lot of protein and throw in some green leafy vegetables.
Speaker 2:What about some foods? I mean, yes, those are going to help the nitric oxide, but what are some foods that we should stay away?
Speaker 1:from yeah, the white foods, bread, dairy, anything that leads to an increase in Bread, dairy, kind of your white foods, your high glycemic index foods.
Speaker 2:What about sourdough? Because I have a lot of moms that make sourdough bread from starter, you know. So it's an important thing for us to know.
Speaker 1:I think it's difficult to say because everybody's different and it depends upon kind of your metabolic flexibility. And now the beauty of these continuous glucose monitors you can monitor in real time and as long as you don't see a rapid increase in your blood glucose levels, you stay away from things that cause a spike in glucose Because, as I mentioned, an elevation, a prolonged elevation in glucose leads to vascular dysfunction, leads to loss of nitric oxide production. So just do an experiment on yourself, get you a continuous glucose monitor. Eat things, monitor your blood sugar and if you have good insulin sensitivity, then it shouldn't lead to an increase in blood sugar that persists and lasts for many, many hours, like it does in type 2 diabetics.
Speaker 1:So, everybody's different but I just respond to what I know my body tolerates and I listen to my body and if it's insulting and makes me feel bad then I typically don't eat it again. I'm too busy to feel bad.
Speaker 2:So there's bread and then there's processed food. What else?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean mainly it's sugar, your simple carbohydrates, processed foods, like you know anything that any food product that's not refrigerated it can sit on a shelf for weeks, months or years. It's probably not good for you, right? Because food real food will spoil over time, and you've probably seen it. You know people that buy the McDonald's food and leave it out on the shelf for years and it doesn't spoil. I mean, ants won't even eat it. I mean, we got to look at nature, right, that's true. If ants don't touch it, it's probably a pretty good indication that it's not real food. And so that's the McDonald's experiment.
Speaker 2:What about oils? Dr Bryan, what oils do you recommend? That's good for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, certainly you got to stay away from seed oils. I mean we need, you know, olive oil, kind of natural oils, avocado oil, ghee, beef tallow.
Speaker 1:Because the seed oils we got to remember and this goes back to basic cell biology every cell is contained within a cell membrane and that phospholipid bilayer is made up of fats, cholesterol, triglycerides, fatty acids. And these seed oils, these omega-6, really affect the membrane fluidity and now we lose the control of what's going on outside and inside because there has to be intracellular signaling. The outside of the cell gets a signal and there's this seven transmembrane signaling mechanism that depends upon cell membrane fluidity. And if we lose that, we lose the intracellular signaling inside the cell and cells become dysfunctional. We develop disease and the half-life of these seed oils canola oil, corn oil, vegetable oil is about 600 days, almost two years, and what that means is if you consume a seed oil, it takes about two years for half of it to be excreted out of your body.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:And really we need about five half-lives to completely eliminate something from the body. So seed oils stay around for about 10 years and they're causing damage, they're causing diabetes, they're mitochondrial toxicants, they're losing the body's ability to communicate cells in the body to communicate with one another. So we have to avoid those cells in the body to communicate with one another, so we have to avoid this.
Speaker 2:Dr Bryan, there has been such a high rise in cancer rates among men and women in their 20s, in their 30s. I watched a recent podcast of yours when you were talking about you have treated hundreds and hundreds of patients and every single one of them had a you know something going on, like whether that's I don't know a cavity or root canal. So can you, can you briefly talk to us about that? Like is, is cancer or having problems orally? Is it related? How does that relate to cancer?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's a confusing thing, but you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can see that that one little clip on Instagram has hundreds of thousands of comments and shares and you know some really some pretty bitter and nasty responses that you know I've kind of fallen off the wagon and I don't know what I'm doing. But no, that means you're, you're making an impact because this is thinking. It's a completely new paradigm. So, number one, I'm not a physician. I don't treat patients, but what I do is, you know, people call me, people that are sick and chronically ill, that the standard of care and the conventional medicine has failed them, and so people come see me and I just give them what I know about human physiology and biochemistry. But when these people, these chronic patients that are sent home to die, they've gone through surgery, chemo, radiation, the standard treatment of cancer, and even MD Anderson will tell you they've never cured a person of cancer their goal is to make you die with cancer and not make you die from cancer.
Speaker 2:I mean, what a low bar right, there's a word that I had a water scientist. He said if the disease won't kill you the cure will kill you.
Speaker 1:No, that's exactly what happens in oncology today, and it should be criminal. And here's the problem In every oncologist and I've gone to the oncologist appointments with many of these patients that I've developed a oncologist, and I've gone to the oncologist appointments with many of these patients that I've developed a friendship with and I simply go in and ask the tough questions that the family obviously isn't aware of or educated enough to ask important questions. And I go what caused this patient's cancer? And no one can answer that. And so my question is how in the hell are you going to treat something if you don't know what caused it?
Speaker 1:And so every cancer is looked at the same, but we're going to cut it out, we're going to radiate the shit out of it. Which radiation causes cancer in the first place? You're going to get a toxic chemotherapeutic agent that's going to kill all rapidly dividing cells, including those of the gut, including those of the hair follicles, and we're going to make you extremely sick and actually make you want to die. That's what I've witnessed. People get cancer treatment. They want to die because the life they're living, the quality of life, is awful, and those that believe you know they're going to go on to an everlasting life, so what we have to do is what again look at the clinical hallmarks of cancer and Otto Warburg, in the 1920s and 30s, discovered that cancer is a metabolic disease and he was awarded a Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1:It's called the Warburg effect because cancer cells only thrive, replicate, proliferate in a low oxygen, low pH environment through mitochondrial dysfunction. So then you got to ask yourself what is causing the metabolic disease? So nine out of 10 Americans have metabolic or metabolically challenged, meaning they're not metabolically healthy, and that's the first step in the rapid progression of cancer. So then you got to ask yourself what's leading to that? So the issue of oral hygiene. You know it's been known for over 100 years now that people with gingivitis, periodontal disease, oral dysbiosis, have about a 10-time higher risk of heart attack, stroke and all-cause mortality, and we call that the oral systemic leak. But let's talk about the root canals in cancer.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And if you go and you have to understand what a root canal is, If you develop a toothache, you go to the dentist, they'll typically refer you out to the dentist, they'll typically refer you out to an endodontist and you've got an infection right. You've got nerve cells in the root of the tooth that are sensing pain and that pain is typically if it's not from trauma, it's from bacterial translocation and an infection.
Speaker 1:So what they do is they take the nerve root out of the tooth. It's a root canal. They canal down, they take the root out of the tooth, so now you no longer feel the pain, and they also remove the blood supply to that tooth. And then they send you home and put you on an oral antibiotic. And they must have forgotten that 10 minutes before that they took out the blood supply to that infected tooth. So the oral antibiotic, it goes systemic but it's not getting to the site of infection. So now you still have an infected tooth, but now you've got dead tissue, because without nerve supply and without blood supply, that tooth, that tissue, that crystalline tissue in your head, is now dead. And dentists are the only professionals who think it's okay to leave dead tissue in the body. If you develop a gangrenous toe or foot and you don't get rid of it or don't amputate it.
Speaker 2:It will kill you.
Speaker 1:But yet they think it's okay to leave dead teeth in the body and expect people to live a happy life, and that doesn't happen. And so, number one, you've got an asymptomatic infection in that root canal tooth. And these bacteria, they're anaerobes, so they don't need oxygen, but they're just eating and metabolizing and spitting out toxins. And this goes back to really traditional medicine, ayurvedic medicine, where it's known that every tooth, these acupuncture meridians, are connected to an organ and so the teeth are like circuit breakers. And if you've got a disruption in that meridian you don't get voltage, you don't get electron flow, you don't get nerve conductance in that meridian. And what happens? Low voltage, low voltage, low ph, low oxygen, and that's cancer.
Speaker 1:My goodness, I'm shocked, yeah, and I tell you know, when people come to see me no, that's the first thing I say and a lot of people look at me like I've, I've lost my mind. They go look, I don't have a toothache, I got cancer, help me. And I go look, the reason you may have cancer is just go and let's, let's figure step by step. But I made a kind of a profound comment in that one podcast I did and said the people that come to me with solid tumors with metastatic disease. I've never seen anybody that I didn't send to a dentist and people on that commented and they go I've gone to the dentist and I don't have any dental infections and I've had cancer and I still got cancer. Well, their dentist is looking at an x-ray and sending them. Oh, the x-ray comes back clear, it's unremarkable. Well, an x-ray is not going to pick up the radiolucency of an asymptomatic osteo-necrotic infection in the jawbone so you have to do a CT scan or a 3D cone beam. So if you go and let them do and it's not always a root canal right Root canals are a problem because 100% of them are infected and it's dead tissue.
Speaker 1:But the other problem could be from an extraction from years ago that left an unresolved infection and now you've got a cavitation underneath that extracted tooth, so it could be cavitations. A cavitation underneath that extracted tooth, so it could be cavitations, it could be root canal tooth. It could be an asymptomatic infection, an osteonecrosis somewhere else in that tooth. And almost without fail, if you look at the acupuncture meridians in the tooth chart, wherever you had the primary tumor developed whether it's breast cancer, prostate cancer, liver cancer, gi cancer it'll always revert back to that tooth along that meridian. So all you have to do is just go and get it extracted, find a dentist who can use ozone gas, because you have to use a gas to permeate the small tubules of the tooth and the jawbone to kill the bacteria, and then they can do a bone graft and regrow that bone and make it strong enough now for an implant if you need an implant for cosmetic regions. But that's just the basics and so you know, when you get a chance to understand the physiology and the mechanism of that, it makes perfect sense why root canal may be leading to primary tumors and those are solid tumors. And so there's a difference between metastatic solid tumors and bloodborne cancers like leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma.
Speaker 1:From my experience again, I'm not an oncologist, I'm not a cancer doctor, I'm a biochemist and physiologist. But I've seen enough of these cases to know that those are caused from exposure to some chemical toxicant. It's either mold and mycotoxins, it's exposure to things like Roundup, glyphosate, herbicides, pesticides. You've seen the class action lawsuits now. You've exposed to glyphosate or Roundup and you've developed lymphoma leukemia. You can get some money. So a clear association and causation by those. So those are basically the box we have to check.
Speaker 1:If you have a solid tumor, I send you to a dentist, do a 3D CD comb beam and then go to a dentist who can extract the two, clean up the infection and now we've got to get your body back strong again, to where you create an environment where the cancer cells can't grow.
Speaker 1:But sometimes it's too late because unfortunately a lot of the people that contact me have gone through chemo radiation surgery and they're sent home to die on hospice and I can't always rescue those patients because they've been poisoned, they've been radiated and they've never addressed the underlying root cause of their cancer and every disease process reaches a point where there's a point of no return. So what we're trying to do is get this word out there and this has been known for 60 years. All you have to do is look for it. But people would never in their right mind again. I taught in medical schools, I've talked to a lot of dentists and this is never taught. So if you don't know what to look for, you're not going to find it. But if you know what to look for, there's a preponderance of evidence out there dating back 50, 60 years on the association with dental infections, root canals and primary tumor formation.
Speaker 2:You know you stated something about Ayurveda medicine. I'm a big, huge fan of Ayurveda medicine and every organ in your body is such an essential, every single organ is so important. Yet in today's world, the medical industry, we're so quick to remove gallbladders and this and that, and so I mean, how effective is that? I mean, are we shortening life by doing that? Because I think gallbladder is such an important? But every other person that has pain there is just, you know, cut off, remove. Everything is just remove, remove, remove. We're not really looking at all these other you know research and evidence.
Speaker 1:Well, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you're a surgeon, you know they want to remove things and they want to do surgery. And if you've got an afflicting organ, rather than try to understand what's causing the affliction, they just want to take it out. And for me, I believe that my creator didn't make any mistakes and I'm going to leave here with what I can't do.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Look, it's all connected because you go back to how does the gallbladder work? What causes the gallbladder to become clogged and gallstones and dysfunction, it's that secretion and the recognition of that acid load from the stomach and all that enters into the portal at the same level as the pancreas, the liver, the gallbladder, and so if you're not getting that, the gallbladder never gets the signal. Hey, I need to secrete a little bile here to break down these fats and so it becomes clogged and then they take your gallbladder out. Now you can't digest fats, you can't absorb basic nutrients and it's a life of misery. Because they're quick to react, they just want to take it out and eliminate the symptoms. But you haven't addressed the root cause of why they had the symptoms in the first place.
Speaker 2:That's right, dr Bryan. What are the best ways from your perspective? A person can increase blood flow in the body, since that's such an essential.
Speaker 1:Well, there are a number of vasoactive substances in the body right. There's vasodilators and there's vasoconstrictors, and so what we have to do is maintain a balance of both of those. But nitric oxide is the main vasodilator. So if you can't, if you lose the ability to produce nitric oxide now, you've lost the vasomotor activity and the response to vascular reactivity. So we just have to prevent the age-related decline of nitric oxide production. We've got to maintain a healthy oral microbiome, We've got to eat nitrogen-rich foods and we have to provide the body the nutrients it needs. And for the enzyme to make nitric oxide, it requires eight different cofactors and substrates, one of those being magnesium, and 75% of Americans are deficient in magnesium, based on the government's own data and I'm not a big believer in government data, but you know that's real data and so 75% of.
Speaker 1:Americans are deficient in magnesium, the basic nutrient we need for 800 biochemical reactions and one of those is to make nitroxyl. So we focus on two things Do basic micronutrient analysis, understand what your body's missing and then supplement it back. And then, number two, understand what your body's exposed to. What toxins are there present in your body that's inhibiting basic biochemical reactions? Because people get sick for two reasons, and two reasons only they're missing something they need or they're exposed to something that's toxic. And if you address those two fundamentals, which is very basic detoxify, replete missing nutrients, then the body heals itself and the body basically does what it's designed to do to repair and replace dysfunctional tissues. And we're regenerative by nature, the human body is regenerative by nature. And eliminate drug therapy and synthetic compounds and pay attention to what you put in and on your body.
Speaker 2:That's right If a person is diagnosed with cancer. Dr Brian, what are the? What are? The first thing, what's the first thing on second and third that they should do?
Speaker 1:second and third that they should do. First, if it's a solid tumor, you know a primary tumor, or even if it's, you know, advanced and it's metastatic disease and they got, you know, cancer all over their body, the first thing is go see a biological dentist. And when I say go see a biological dentist, this isn't your local dentist in your town or in your community. You have to. There's an organization called International Association of Biological Dental Medicine, iabdm.
Speaker 1:And the website is iabdmorg and you can put your zip code in there and it'll give you a local biological dentist in your area that's familiar with this type of dental and systemic medicine. Then there's another really good dental group called IAOMT. It's the International Association of Mercury Toxicity, IAOMT IOMT.
Speaker 2:IAOMT, i-a-o International.
Speaker 1:Association of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, and then the other is the Integrative Dental.
Speaker 2:Medical Society.
Speaker 1:And that's a really good group. And these are the dentists that are on the forefront of dental medicine and who understand the root cause in this oral systemic link and know how to mitigate and remediate the infections the dental infections where the normal dentist is trained in.
Speaker 1:today's dental schools don't understand this at all, and so that's what I do, then the other thing is, you know, especially if you've undergone chemotherapy and radiation, we have to detoxify you. That's right, because you've been exposed to some really, really toxic chemicals and radiation. And we can put people in sauna, we can give them chelators, you know, high-dose niacin and then, give them binders to.
Speaker 1:If they mobilize the toxins, they need to excrete them. But our main routes of excretion of toxins are breathing. We have to learn how to deep breathe and take deep breaths. We have to sweat. That's one of the benefits of sauna. We have to stay hydrated with good, clean, fluoride-free water, and then we have to have regular bowel movements. So if we're not drinking a lot and if we're not urinating a lot and not pooping and sweating and doing deep breathing, we get a buildup of toxins.
Speaker 2:And that's cheap right, that's costly. These are just normal biological responses, that's right, we just have to look out for what about fasting? Yeah, how effective is fasting.
Speaker 1:Look again. Everything I do is based on what's published in the scientific and medical literature and there's enormous benefit from intermittent fasting. Caloric restriction is probably the most powerful thing you can do to improve longevity Caloric restriction.
Speaker 1:Caloric restriction Caloric yeah, so eating less calories. You know, everything in the US is based on a 2,000-calorie diet and everybody's different, right? If you're a well-trained athlete and you're competing in the Olympics, you need to consume a lot of calories to fuel you during your event. But if you're the normal couch potato American, then you don't need to eat a whole lot of calories because you're not burning them and what happens is you're going to store this fat. But I do an 18-hour fast typically every day.
Speaker 1:This is sometimes difficult when I'm traveling in different time zones, but I think what is clear is that when you do the intermittent fasting and you go for these prolonged periods, it completely rewires your metabolism and upregulates these longevity genes and induces mitochondrial biogenesis and improves mitochondrial ATP production and it clears out these what we call zombie cells. And so you have these old cells that aren't functioning and we have a process called autophagy. It's called self-eating. When we do intermittent fasting, or even 24-72 fasting, autophagy is turned on and we start eating up these old dysfunctional cells and we generate nitric oxide and we mobilize stem cells and we replace those old zombie cells of senescent cells with cells that actually function.
Speaker 2:My father is big on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, look, it's been life changing for me because I, you know, we were told you know, breakfast is your most important meal of the day. You have to eat breakfast. But I mean, we've been misinformed so much by the so-called policy makers that I don't believe anything they say anymore.
Speaker 2:That's right. Question authority.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what should people look for when considering nitric oxide supplements?
Speaker 1:Yeah, look, that's a loaded question and it's confusing. You know, I've been doing this for almost 30 years and I'm pretty well informed and I go and look and see what's online. If you just Google nitric oxide supplements, you're going to get a laundry list of all these, and so it's what comes up. First are the companies who pay the most money. First are the companies who pay the most money, and mostly these companies who pay the most money are spending more money on marketing and no money on science and understanding the underlying problem of why people are nitric oxide deficient. So about 95, 99% of the products on the market that are sold as nitric oxide products are placebos in terms of nitric oxide. Wow.
Speaker 1:So, and the reason is that these companies don't understand the underlying biochemistry and the complexity of the science. They just read our article and go oh well, l-arginine is how you make nitric oxide, so you get all these products with L-arginine or L-citrulline. And then beets came up. You know, a hero vegetable in the 2012 Olympic Games. So people are selling beetroot products and beetroot powder and things like that, and I've tested all these and they're basically placebos. That's right.
Speaker 1:All they do is turn your pee and your poop red and cause a lot of anxiety. People think they're having a dream. That's hilarious.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you how many calls I've gotten from that. What I've tried to do over the past 15 years is how does the consumer know? Because, based on the Dietary Supplement, health and Education Act, what we called the SHEA back in the 90s every supplement manufacturer basically can say the same thing May support healthy blood pressure, sexual function it's called structure function claims. So all these companies, including myself and my companies, we can't make drug claims because we're supplements. So how do you identify a product that actually works? And so supplements fall in the category of nutraceuticals right Nutrients that supplement or provide therapy. Soutical means therapy. So I trademarked a term which I called nitroceuticals. It's nitric for nitric oxide, and so all of my products are nitroceuticals because it produces nitric oxide and we can quantify, we can detect, we can verify nitric oxide gas coming off my products and they're nitroceuticals, they aren't nitroceuticals, they're nitroceuticals, they aren't. They aren't nitroceuticals, they're nitroceuticals. And so I encourage people look for, look for products that actually produce nitric oxide gas. So if your body can't make it, then I'm going to do it for you, and this is hormone replacement therapy at its very best, if you're.
Speaker 1:If men can't make testosterone, what do we do? We give them testosterone. We don't give them DHEA and hope their body can make testosterone out of it. We don't give them HGH and hope their body stimulates testosterone. That's their problem they can't. They've lost the ability to do it. And it's the same thing with nitric oxide. The reason people are nitric oxide deficient is they can't utilize arginine. They don't have the right oral bacteria to convert any nitrate and beet juice into nitric oxide. You can't make stomach acid to make nitric oxide, so no matter what you give them, they can't make it. So that's what we do. That's different is, if your body can't make it, then we do it for you and but we also fix the reason your body can't make it. Spending 20 years working on these enzymes that make nitric oxide, I know how to restore the function, so we put that in our technology and we're restoring the oral microbiome.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, Dr Bryan. We've talked about the adults briefly. I know we're almost out of time. I want to talk about the children Now. I have a two-year-old and a 10-year-old. How can mothers and the fathers and the families that are watching maintain the health and the nitric oxide of their children? What are some things that we can do to, you know, keep them healthy.
Speaker 1:Well, it starts at conception. You know the mother and the father have to have good nutrients. So you've got a viable cell, viable sperm, and then, especially the mother, during those nine months of gestation, you have to have good nutrition, limit your exposure to toxins, so you're creating an environment for that baby to grow and thrive and have everything it needs. And then, upon birth, you know we need to breastfeed. There's clear health disparities between breastfed and formula fed babies. So and I understand, there's certain times when women can't breastfeed, their milk doesn't come in or other reasons Most important thing, give the baby good nutrition, but breastfeeding, it's nature's most perfect food, god give it and then you know when they start eating solid foods.
Speaker 1:You know, certainly do not give antacids to a baby, even though they may be prone to spitting up and regurgitating at times. But avoid antacids and just you know again. Good, high quality foods, not processed foods, good fats, lots of protein. You know baby's metabolic demands as they're growing may need a little bit more carbs than kind of a full grown adult, because they're really metabolically much more active. But, yes, basic good nutrients, elimination of toxins and physical activity love that and avoiding fluoride avoiding.
Speaker 1:Now there's data I think there's 40. There's a meta-analysis recently produced showing, I think, 40 independent studies showing that fluoride lowers the iq in kids that's right.
Speaker 1:I mean you've got it. This is awful, and I think, with this new administration and an rfk going in there, you know we're going to start eliminating fluoride in our municipal water and you know, I spoke before the American Dental Association last summer and I think we're finally getting the attention of the ADA. And so just because you did this 100 years ago doesn't mean it's still sound science today. We can do better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have been rejecting that since my eldest was born. He's 11. And I kid you, not 11 years ago, when you said no fluoride to the dentist, oof.
Speaker 1:It kicked you out, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it did. I was looked at as a crazy mad woman, but you know.
Speaker 1:God told me, your intuition that's right, that's right, dr Bryan.
Speaker 2:It's been such an honor. Thank you so much. The information is amazing. I've learned so much from you, as the audience have, and I appreciate you. I'll link everything so that everybody knows where you are and how they can definitely reach you, because you're such an important person. You're like God given. This is God's work, because you're such an important person.
Speaker 1:You're like God, given this is God's work, I feel we have an obligation and responsibility to get, because it's education and it's knowledge, and you know, knowledge is power, but only if you, if you act on it, and so there's a lot of misinformation out there and let me just plug my upcoming book.
Speaker 1:I got a new book coming out here in a couple of weeks called the Secret of Nitric Oxide and really in that book I tell, I chronicle what nitric oxide is, how it was discovered, what we've learned, and really talk about kind of the part autobiographical of the discoveries we've made and how we've got to where we are today. But the purpose of the book is to empower the reader to understand these things that they may not have even considered and to take action and do these simple things and to maintain optimal nitric oxide production and you'll see their life transform.
Speaker 2:That's right. And before we go, there's this one question that I ask all the professionals on my show, and it's going to ask you this question If there was one supplement that you would take and give it to your children, what would that one supplement be?
Speaker 1:Well, look, you're asking a strong person.
Speaker 2:I'm saying magnesium, but I would love to know your perspective.
Speaker 1:Well, no, I mean based on just the work. If I'm limited to one, I want to enhance my nitric oxide. So I would take my N1O1 lozenge because it contains magnesium. It produces nitric oxide, and when you have adequate blood flow, adequate tissue oxygenation, adequate mitochondrial function, lower inflammation, no oxidative stress or immune dysfunction, then the body can function. And so that's what I take. That's what I've been taking now for more than 20 years, even some early prototypes of it, but it's our nitric oxide generating lozenge.
Speaker 2:That's your brand.
Speaker 1:That's my brand N101.
Speaker 2:Okay, and if you weren't limited to one?
Speaker 1:The next would be iodine. There are 12.5 milligrams of iodine a day because the American diet is completely depleted of any iodine. 95% of Americans are deficient in iodine. There's iodine receptors on every cell. You need iodine to make stomach acid in the palloric cells. You need stomach acid to convert thyroid T4 to the rise of autoimmune disease my gosh Part of our immune dysfunction. Iodine is antibacterial, so if you develop iodine deficiency, then bad things are going to happen. So I think that's a very important, very neat nutrient. But those are my go-tos.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you and you have a blessed day.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much. Same to you.