Nitric Oxide and Brain Health | Dr. Nathan Bryan

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Neuro Experience

Episode: "Nitric Oxide and Brain Health | Dr. Nathan Bryan"

Host: Louisa Nicola (Neuroscience Expert), Pursuit Network
Guest: Dr. Nathan Bryan
Date: June 20, 2024

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Overview

This episode dives into the pivotal role of nitric oxide (NO) in human health with Dr. Nathan Bryan, a leading researcher in the field. The discussion covers the biology of NO, how its production changes with age, its critical functions in vascular and brain health, the impact of lifestyle and pharmaceutical factors, and emerging therapeutic strategies—especially relevant for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. What is Nitric Oxide?

• NO is a signaling gas molecule produced in the body, vital for cardiovascular function, neurotransmission, immune response, and more.
• NO dilates blood vessels, improving blood flow to all organs, tissues, and cells—including the brain.
• It acts as a retrograde neurotransmitter, impacting processes like memory, pain sensation, and neurotransmitter release.
• NO is involved in innate immunity, helping destroy harmful bacteria and viruses.

“Nitric oxide is now recognized as one of the most important molecules produced in the body... A signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system.” – Dr. Tim [00:54]

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2. NO and Aging

• NO production declines with age, paralleling decreases seen in other hormones like estrogen and testosterone.
• This decline isn't inevitable—lifestyle and nutrition can help restore and maintain NO production.
• Loss of NO leads to symptoms and diseases: high blood pressure, sexual dysfunction, dementia, immune compromise, etc.

“If we can prevent the age-related loss of nitric oxide production, you can completely prevent age-related disease, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, metabolic dysfunction.” – Dr. Tim [11:43]

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3. How the Body Makes Nitric Oxide

• Two main pathways:
  1. Enzymatic (Nitric Oxide Synthase, NOS): Converts L-arginine into NO, requiring multiple cofactors (notably BH4).
     • Oxidation of BH4 “uncouples” the enzyme, leading to harmful byproducts instead of NO.
     • NOS dysfunction is linked to vascular problems and neurodegenerative disease.
  2. Dietary/Microbiome Pathway:
     • Nitrate/nitrite from vegetables is reduced by oral bacteria, generating NO systemically.
     • The oral microbiome is critical; mouthwash and antiseptics can disrupt this.

“There’s a vascular component to every chronic disease... If you can’t get blood supply to the heart—you have a heart attack. Same thing happens in the brain.” – Dr. Tim [08:42]

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4. Oral Microbiome & Systemic Health

• Destruction of oral bacteria (via mouthwash/fluoride) impedes NO production and raises blood pressure.
  • E.g., 7 days of mouthwash use raised systolic BP by 26mmHg in young adults ([32:40]).
• Most Americans use mouthwash regularly; this may drive widespread hypertension and resistance to standard blood pressure medications.
• Restoring oral bacteria (by stopping mouthwash use) re-normalizes BP in days.
• ADA is beginning to heed these findings; Dr. Bryan is advocating for guideline changes.

“Two out of three Americans in the US have an unsafe increase in blood pressure. And not coincidentally, two out of three Americans are waking up every morning using mouthwash.” – Dr. Tim [33:07]

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5. Diet, Nutrition, and NO

• Majority of dietary nitrates/nitrites come from plants, not processed meats.
  • Plant-based diets are linked to lower disease rates; nitrate/nitrite association with cancer is overstated and not supported mechanistically.
• US food is nutrient depleted; even organic foods may lack key NO precursors like nitrate.
  • Soil depletion and farming practices are to blame.
  • Solution: Eat from nutrient-dense sources, support local/regenerative agriculture when possible.
• Taking NO-supporting supplements or functional foods (e.g., specially-formulated beet powders) can help.

“If that were true, vegetarians would have a 10 times higher rate of cancer than meat-eaters—because 85% of the nitrate and nitrite we get from our diet comes from plants and vegetables.” – Dr. Tim [51:17]

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6. Medications That Disrupt NO

• Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs, antacids) block stomach acid and severely impair both NO pathways.
  • Long-term use: 40% higher incidence of heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer’s.
  • Risk/benefit profile is unfavorable—such medications should be avoided if possible.

“Proton pump inhibitors...completely shut down the body’s ability to make nitric oxide from both pathways... consequence: 40% higher incidence of heart attack, stroke, and Alzheimer’s.” – Dr. Tim [57:51]

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7. NO, Hormones, and Sexual Health

• NO is crucial for erectile function and orgasm in both men and women (mediates blood flow to sexual organs).
• Sexual dysfunction is an early sign of systemic vascular/NO deficiency.
• Hormones and NO are mutually reinforcing (e.g., estrogen boosts NO production, NO needed for hormonal secretion).
• In menopause, estrogen loss reduces NO, increasing cardiovascular risk.
  • HRT alone is less effective if NO is not also restored.

“You can replete and restore estrogen or testosterone or hormones, but first let’s focus on restoring the enzymatic production of nitric oxide.” – Dr. Tim [62:52]

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8. Exercise and NO

• Physical activity (even moderate) boosts NO by stimulating endothelial cells.
  • Exercise helps maintain vascular elasticity, reverses age-related changes, and mobilizes stem cells for heart repair.
  • The benefits of exercise are lost if the NO pathway is disrupted (e.g., by mouthwash use).

“Exercise is medicine, because it stimulates and activates nitric oxide production... just 20–30 minutes of moderate exercise a day.” – Dr. Tim [28:29]

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9. NO in Neurodegenerative Diseases, Alzheimer's, and Drug Development

• NO deficiency is implicated in the vascular components of Alzheimer’s and other dementias.
• Dr. Bryan is developing NO-based drugs for Alzheimer’s, wound care, and heart disease.
  • Approach: Early intervention and prevention are most effective, but some reversal of disease appears possible.
  • Clinical trial design is crucial for showing efficacy—ideally enrolling early-stage patients.
• Ongoing research aims for preventive and regenerative therapies.

“If we can maintain nitric oxide production, maintain adequate perfusion, increase glucose uptake, potentiate insulin signaling... you maintain normal cognition.” – Dr. Tim [14:01]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On NO Discovery:
  “The signal transduction by gas is a completely new paradigm... once it’s produced, it’s gone in less than a second.” – Dr. Tim [01:58]

• On Antacids/PPIs:
  “If you read the package insert on these, nobody would take these drugs—risk: heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer’s... benefit: maybe alleviation of heartburn.” – Dr. Tim [59:35]

• On the supplement industry:
  “Most beetroot products on the market don’t do anything but turn your pee and your poop red. There’s no nitric oxide to it... gummies and chews are completely useless.” – Dr. Tim [70:19]

• On US Health System:
  “If I wanted to make you sick, I’d tell you to watch TV, follow all the guidelines, follow the government’s diet, take mouthwash, take antacids, get your cholesterol below 200, and you become chronically dependent upon Big Pharma.” – Dr. Tim [42:15]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:39–02:42: What is nitric oxide? Mechanisms, roles, and significance
• 05:14–06:54: Nitric oxide and aging—production decline, disease susceptibility
• 07:00–11:43: Nitric oxide synthesis—enzymes, cofactors, and dysfunction in disease
• 13:15–15:01: Genetics, risk factors, and how maintaining NO can counteract predispositions
• 22:21–26:36: Sexual dysfunction as early sign of NO deficiency; systemic implications
• 29:53–38:02: Dietary pathway, oral microbiome, and the detrimental effects of mouthwash
• 40:08–46:20: Nutrition, food depletion, and why even "healthy" diets may lack NO precursors
• 57:45–61:23: Proton pump inhibitors’ role in blocking NO and raising chronic disease risk
• 62:13–63:52: Hormones, menopause, and the interaction with nitric oxide
• 64:50–69:53: Dr. Bryan’s consumer products (NO-releasing lozenges, beet powder), safety, and clinical uses
• 71:05–73:48: Future directions: book, clinical trials for Alzheimer’s, and pharma industry resistance

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Actionable Takeaways

• Maintain a healthy, diverse diet—favor nutrient-rich foods, support local and regenerative agriculture.
• Be cautious of mouthwash and fluoride-containing products; these disrupt your body’s NO-producing bacteria and can meaningfully impact your health.
• Limit/avoid indiscriminate use of antacids/PPIs—they may harm your vascular and brain health long-term.
• Exercise regularly—even modest physical activity significantly enhances NO production.
• Monitor lifestyle for early signs (e.g., sexual dysfunction) that may signal systemic NO deficiency.
• Be wary of supplement and food marketing claims—not all “NO boosters” are effective or evidence-based.
• Stay tuned for NO-based clinical therapies—as research progresses, monitoring and intervention will likely become more mainstream.

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Conclusion

Dr. Nathan Bryan makes a compelling case that nitric oxide is foundational to human health, touching nearly every vital function from vascular regulation and neurotransmission to immunity and metabolic performance. Many modern lifestyle habits, foods, and pharmaceuticals inadvertently – and sometimes drastically – reduce the body’s NO. Proactive awareness, including lifestyle shifts and strategic supplementation, can help maintain NO levels and prevent chronic disease, while next-generation therapeutics may offer hope for difficult-to-treat conditions like Alzheimer’s.

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For further information and resources, follow Dr. Bryan’s research, look out for his upcoming book (“The Secret of Nitric Oxide”), and track developments in nitric oxide–focused clinical trials.

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Note: All advertisements and non-content sections have been omitted for clarity and focus.

Transcript

[Dr. Tim]

These bacteria that live in and on our body are there to do things that we as humans can't do. It's a true symbiotic relationship. 85% of the nitrate and nitrite we get from our diet comes from plants and vegetables. Only 5% comes from cured and processed meats. The other 10% comes from swallowing our own saliva from the nitrite and nitrate that are naturally produced in the human body. The people who practice a plant based diet have lower incidence of cancers. Sure, you can replete and restore estrogen or testosterone or hormones. But first let's focus on restoring the enzymatic production of nitric oxide. Because if you restore the hormones without restoring the enzymatic function of nitric oxide, you're not going to, you're not going to restore the cardioprotective benefits of hormone replacement therapy.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

For the people who are listening and they don't really understand nitric oxide, which by the way, from someone who comes from a medical background, it was even hard for me to really understand all the different mechanisms of action. Why don't you explain to us what nitric oxide is?

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, well, first, thanks. It's great to be with you. Nitric oxide is now recognized as one of the most important molecules produced in the body of humans. In fact, all mammals. But at the end of the day, it's a signaling molecule. It's how cells in the body communicate with one another. It's primarily known as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system. That's how it was first discovered and really Nobel Prize was awarded for its role as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system. But it dilates blood vessels, it improves blood flow to every organ, tissue and cell in the body. In the brain, it's critically important because it's part of our neurotransmission. It's produced by the neurons and it's a retrograde messenger. So it controls a lot of neurotransmission things like, you know, calcitonin gene related peptide, glutamate. All the signaling is part of nociception and pain, sensitization, long term memory potentiation. But it's also part of our innate immune system. It's how our body, our immune cells kill bacteria, prevent virus from replicating, and preventing us from getting sick from many pathogens.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So it's a gas.

[Dr. Tim]

It is a gas. And that's what makes this really a unique signaling molecule. And I think that's what, what the Nobel assembly, basically why it was awarded a Nobel Prize, because the signal transduction by gas is a completely new paradigm in signal transduction as we knew it prior to the discovery of nitric oxide. The other challenge in recapitulating nitric oxide signaling and production is how can you harness the therapeutic benefits of a gas that's naturally produced in the human body? But then once it's gone, once it's produced, it's gone in less than a second. So it's this fleeting molecule. Once it's produced, it activates these second messenger systems, but it has a half life of less than one second.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

No.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah. Whether it's produced in the lining of blood vessels, which produced in the immune cells or even in neurons.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So, okay, so nitric oxide is a gas, if you will, but it's something in that allows for vasodilation, that is the, for our, our arteries, our veins to dilate in order to increase profusion or blood flow.

[Dr. Tim]

The train.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

So it's a naturally occurring.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So we're all born with it because we need it. Evidently. And what is your hypothesis then? Because you've, you've spent, what, your entire 25 years, 25 years understanding what nitric oxide is. So I guess there's more to it than what you just said if you spent 25 years on it.

[Dr. Tim]

Now, look, I mean, now we have a clear understanding of nitric oxide. You know, once in the 90s, nitric oxide was considered this miracle molecule because it seemed to do so much. And miracles are things that happen but have no explanation. So today it's not miraculous because we understand its production, we understand its signaling and all its biological activities are very well elucidated in terms of mechanism. So it's not a miraculous molecule, it's not a miracle. It does some miraculous things, but I wouldn't consider it a miracle.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So it was a miracle because what we didn't understand, X amount of years ago, what dilated the blood vessels?

[Dr. Tim]

Well, miracle, meaning that miracle in the broad term are things that you observe but, but really have no explanation for how it happens or why it happens. Right. And so how could this gas that's naturally produced affect things like blood pressure, sexual function, cognition, exercise performance, inflammation, oxidative stress? How can a single molecule mitigate and regulate all those seemingly fundamental biological processes? So it was almost like a miracle, people call it. Well, it's a miracle just does it. We know it does it. We don't know how it does it. But now, fast forward, you know, 25, 30 years, we have a clear understanding of how it's produced, what its cellular targets are, how it activates Cellular second messenger systems and how it controls vasodilation, how it reduces inflammation, how it prevents oxidative stress, and how it mitigates immune dysfunction that we see in every chronic disease.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

I really want to get into that because I want to understand how it's produced, because correct me if I'm wrong, we. Is it like with everything in aging, do we lose our ability to produce nitric nitric oxide or do we just have a. Less like, do we just lose nitric oxide as we get older? Like, what's, what's the correlation between nitric oxide and aging?

[Dr. Tim]

Well, if you look at population based studies, and this was done back in the 90s, the older we get, the less we made. So similar to growth hormones. Similar to hormones. Right, but it's not, it doesn't have to be the case. So now we understand. So the basis for my research program when I was in academia was let's first understand how does the human body make nitric oxide. What leads to this age related loss of nitric oxide production, what symptoms manifest, what's. What disease manifests as a result of that. And then once we understood all that, then and only then could we start developing product technology, drug therapies, nutritional products that could restore the production of this molecule.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So you keep producing it, then it's not just a natural, there's not just like you don't have just a storage sink of it. You produce it.

[Dr. Tim]

You naturally produce it. I mean, that's the production of nitric oxide. The lining of the blood vessels is what's responsible for the second to second regulation of blood flow. So, you know, if we're, if I'm trying to recall where I left my keys, we have to increase blood flow to certain regions of the brain for memory recall. If we're about to exercise, we've got to increase blood flow to the heart. If we're about to have sex, we got to increase blood flow to the sex organs. And so nitric oxide is what leads to the basal dilation, memory recall, sports performance, sexual function. So we need that second to second production of nitric oxide. And if you can't produce that, then you lose the regulation of blood flow. You develop sexual dysfunction, high blood pressure, Alzheimer's, dementia, you become immunocompromised. So this laundry list of symptoms that manifest all can kind of trace back to this functional loss of nitric oxide production.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Okay, so then what is the cause of not being able to produce nitric oxide?

[Dr. Tim]

Well, there's, Today we recognize there's two pathways where the human body makes nitric oxide. There's an enzyme called nitric oxide synthase. And that enzyme is what's found in the neurons. It's what's found in the lining of the blood vessels and endothelial cells. And it's what. It's an enzyme that's express and induced by our immune cells.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Interesting, because we were just talking offline about the correlation of nos. That's nitric oxide synthase and neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and even Alzheimer's.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, dementia.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

And Alzheimer's dementia. Can we just focus on this one for a second?

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah. So there's a vascular component to every chronic disease. And so this. If you go back and look at the work of Dr. Daniel Amen, who does SPECT scans of the brain.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Correct.

[Dr. Tim]

I think the largest database of SPEC scans in the world, by the way.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

A highly controversial topic, if you will, because I don't see a SPECT scan in a hospital setting.

[Dr. Tim]

No. And I think I was just with Dr. Amen last week, and, you know, he's famously quoting this, that psychiatrists are the only physicians that don't look at the organ they're treating.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Correct.

[Dr. Tim]

You know, cardiologists certainly look at the heart, either through echo or through angiogram. GI docs take a look at the gut. They do a stool analysis.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Neurologists are looking at MRIs and CTs.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah. So how can you treat a neurological disease or a brain without looking at its function? Not only its structure, but its function? And so SPECT scans actually allow us to look inside the brain. And really what it's telling us is how well perfused that organ is.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So how much blood flow.

[Dr. Tim]

How much blood flow is getting into certain regions of the brain, because obviously certain regions of the brains have certain functions. And if there's what we call focal ischemia or lack of blood flow to certain regions of the brain, then neurological disease manifest. Because if you can't. I mean, think about it. If you're not getting oxygen and nutrients and blood supply to an organ, that organ fails. The best example is in ischemic heart disease. If you've got an obstruction of the coronary arteries and you can't get blood supply to the heart, you know, you. You develop ischemia, angina, heart failure, and people have heart attack and die. So same thing happens in the brain. If we don't have adequate blood supply to the brain, then the neurons don't get the nutrients, the oxygen they need to do Their job. And what is that? It's signal transduction. It's neurotransmission.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes. And something that I've stated many times on this podcast is that the brain is the most vascular, rich organ in the body. And what we know from, you know, studies, even in hypertension, we know that the first thing go are the little capillaries.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah. Microvascular dysfunction.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Those tiny little one cell blood vessels that supply different areas of the brain blood. But I'm still not understanding where. And we'll probably get into atherosclerosis as well, where NOS fits in to even the small blood vessels of the brain, where things go wrong. Because we don't hear, especially in my world, in Alzheimer's disease, we don't technically hear, oh, we hear maybe a blockage or an infarct. Okay, you see a stroke. But we don't go so far to hear about nitric oxide dysfunction.

[Dr. Tim]

That's right.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Okay.

[Dr. Tim]

That's why we're here. We're hoping to change that. Right?

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes. Please educate me on what it means when you have. Okay, so we've got the first component, which is nos. We what happens when this goes wrong? It just. It occludes the blood vessel.

[Dr. Tim]

Yes. So we have to first understand the enzymology and the biochemistry of that enzyme. So there's a known biochemical reaction whereby this enzyme takes an amino acid, L arginine, and then converts that into nitric oxide gas. And then you get citrulline as a byproduct. So this is a very complex biochemical reaction requiring it's a 5 electron oxidation, many cofactors, many substrates. Everything has to be present at the right time in the right place for that enzyme to make nitric oxide gas.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Okay.

[Dr. Tim]

The rate limiting step in that entire biochemical reaction is oxidation of a critical cofactor called tetrahydroboptrin or BH4 short. So when BH4 becomes oxidized, then NOS uncouples and now that enzyme actually produces superoxide instead of nitric oxide. Okay, so we have to prevent BH4 oxidation.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes.

[Dr. Tim]

Then we can maintain NOS coupling and typically we can maintain normal nitric oxide production.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So funny. I think you were just listing the ingredients of a pre workout.

[Dr. Tim]

That's right. You know, we've been doing this for many years and so again, we understand what it takes to make nitric oxide, to recouple the NOS enzyme and to maintain normal nitric oxide production. Because really what we're finding is if we can prevent the age related loss of Nitric oxide production, you can completely prevent age related disease, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes, metabolic dysfunction.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Is that irrespective of plaque in the arteries?

[Dr. Tim]

Well, nitric oxide is what controls and regulates plaque deposition. No. Yeah, so when you, when the endothelial cells produce nitric oxide, it prevents the upregulation of adhesion molecules, prevents lipid transport, prevents the hyperplasia in the smooth muscle, prevents stenosis of the coronary arteries, and maintains normal coronary flow. And without adequate nitric oxide production, you get an upregulation of adhesion molecules. Monocytes, neutrophils, stick, platelets start to aggregate, you get lipid transport, you get fat deposition, plaque instability, plaque rupture, and that's a heart attack or stroke.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

I wonder how this would play out. And I don't know if you know, in genetic mutations and actually I always differentiate in Alzheimer's disease with the APOE4 gene. We want to understand there's risk genes and then there's the mutations. So we've got the amyloid precursor protein and presenilin 1, presenilin 2. But if we look at carriers of the APOE4 gene, have you seen any correlations between NOS and APOE4?

[Dr. Tim]

Well, as you said, these are risk factors or kind of predispositions for. But the genetics is kind of like your blueprint. It doesn't necessarily mean that it predisposes you. But we can't blame disease on genetics anymore unless you're born with an inborn air metabolism. Right. So we can overcome that. So obviously, if there's single nucleotide polymorphisms in the nitric oxide synthase gene, or methyltetrahydrofolate reductase, the mthfr, and it's that enzyme that reduces bioptrin, tetrahydrobotrin. But obviously if you have an apoe, you know, polymorphism or you've overexpressed that, then there's clear data showing that you have an increased kind of predisposition for development of Alzheimer's. But again, genetics doesn't always translate to function.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Correct.

[Dr. Tim]

So what we can, what we're finding is that if we can maintain normal nitric oxide production, no matter what the risk factors are, it basically gets to the root cause of Alzheimer's. And what is it? It's lack of blood flow, it's focal ischemia, and it's insulin resistance. So when you develop insulin resistance, you can't get glucose into the cell. That's the primary fuel for that. The cells of the brain use, uh, if you're not getting adequate blood supply there, then you can't get the oxygen, nutrients you need to that part of the brain to function. So you don't get the good stuff in. You don't take out the metabolic waste products. It leads to protein misfolding, buildup of tau proteins, buildup of amyloid plaque, and that's what we describe as Alzheimer's. But if we can maintain nitric oxide production, maintain adequate perfusion, increase glucose uptake, potentiate insulin signaling, now the brain can signal. It gets the oxygen, it gets the nutrients it needs. There's no protein misfolding, and you maintain normal cognition.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Well, seems pretty simple, right?

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Did you. I don't know if you saw the. The latest FDA approval of lecanemab or leqembi.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, no, I saw. I don't watch tv, but I did see it's on a feed or something. But monoclonal antibodies, I think, are. They're chasing the wrong target.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes.

[Dr. Tim]

I mean, and plus the amyloid plaque and the tau tangles aren't the cause of Alzheimer's.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

No, they're the symptom.

[Dr. Tim]

They're a consequence, or the consequence, I shouldn't say consequence of the underlying problem.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes.

[Dr. Tim]

So if you're chasing. If you're going after the consequence of disease, do you think it's really going to have. I mean, anybody with any objective readout, is it going to affect the onset and progression of the disease? And then we're finding that a lot of these monoclonal antibodies, you have imaging artifacts that they may look better on imaging, but there's no improvement in cognition or the prognosis from disease.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Actually, we're actually seeing atrophy from leqembi and brain bleeds. And like the. It's just unbelievable.

[Dr. Tim]

Well, they just pulled one drug off the market.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yeah, they did, because we are, you know, we're still going down that amyloid cascade hypothesis. It's funny. We can get to the moon, but we still can't figure out Alzheimer's disease, which just is really unacceptable to me to be.

[Dr. Tim]

Well, we're getting there. You know, we. We have a major effort for our Alzheimer's drug program. We're developing a nitric oxide drug specifically for Alzheimer's.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Alzheimer's patients or mild cognitive impairment patients.

[Dr. Tim]

Well, the devil's in the detail. You know, when you do drug studies, the success or failure of any drug is, number one, is how you design the clinical study and what patients do you enroll in. So I'm working with Dr. David Perlmutter on Designing and trial, because here's what we want to show. Worst case scenario, we want to slow progression. We have to enroll patients early enough in the process to where we can see if we're slowing the progression. Best case scenario, we want to reverse disease because the basic science around nitric oxide shows that we can actually reverse disease. We want to catch patients early enough in the disease process where we can monitor their progression. But we also want to catch patients far enough along in the disease process and symptoms and the underlying pathology that we can show in our drug study. We can actually regress disease and reverse disease.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Huge the word reverse regress when it.

[Dr. Tim]

Comes to, and more importantly, prevention. Once we prevent, yes, an understanding, and we have a clear understanding of the mechanism of action of nitric oxide and the onset progression of every major chronic disease, including Alzheimer's. Once we understand that we get a drug approved for the treatment, then I think what we'll do is we'll develop strategies, rational therapies and strategies that we can recognize nitric oxide deficiency early in the process before the onset of symptoms such as ed, such as high blood pressure, such as mild cognitive disorders, which leads to vascular dementia and then eventually Alzheimer's. So you take these at risk patients and then you intervene early on and now you have a prevention program. As we all know, it's much easier to prevent disease than it is to treat it.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Oh, 100%. So, so you're, you know, back. I want, I know this is still step one. We've got to get. Cause you mentioned that there was two steps. Okay, we'll get there soon, guys. But really funny that you said ED erectile dysfunction and it would be hard. Correct me if I'm wrong, you said the half life is less than a second. How could you even detect dysfunction or deficiency of nitric oxide if the half life is less than a second?

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[Dr. Tim]

Huge challenge clinically because in the research lab we can do this. We can draw peripheral blood, we can test saliva, we can test the tissue biopsies, and we can quantify. And so we don't really quantify nitric oxide, but we've created a fingerprint of innobiology. So once nitric oxide is produced, we know where it, where it goes, what it becomes and what it does. So in the research environment, we can do that. We can quantify what we call an innometabolome. And then we can look at different disease processes and figure out, you know, what's going wrong with nitric oxide production. Nitric oxide signaling, clinically, you know, it's not like your cholesterol or vitamin D where you just go and you draw blood and they send you back a number it doesn't exist for. No. Because it's a gas. So we have to rely on symptoms, right? So if you start to develop sexual dysfunction, that's really the first sign and symptom of nitric oxide deficiency.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

And in men, that is, it's men and women, okay?

[Dr. Tim]

Because in, I mean, to get an erection in men or women, we have to have vasodilation to get engorgement to increase blood flow. And that comes from the blood vessels in the sex organs producing nitric oxide. So if you have vascular dysfunction in the sex organs, you can't produce nitric oxide. You get no dilation, then that's erectile dysfunction and it's Also part of the orgasm process. So for, in women to have an orgasm, you got to get an increase in intralabrial intracliteral pressures, and that comes from an increase in blood flow. That blood flow comes from nitric oxide. So if you have vascular dysfunction, you can't make nitric oxide. No dilation, no increased engorgement, no increase in pressure, Women become anorgasmic.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

It's. Yeah. It actually reminds me of a cream that are generally given to postmenopausal women to help with that process. And it is a vasodilator. I'm not sure what's, what's in it other than there's some estrogen and, and some other things. Yeah, interesting. Okay, but then how does that explain why erectile dysfunction rates are actually rising?

[Dr. Tim]

Well, if you think of what's. So then the next part of our kind of research program was we know how the body makes nitric oxide. Now, what disrupts it?

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes.

[Dr. Tim]

So this answers many questions. Why is there an increase? I mean, 20 year old kids with erectile dysfunction.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes. What is that? What is erectile dysfunction classified as?

[Dr. Tim]

I mean, obviously it's a disease diagnosis for this treatment for it. Right. The PD5 inhibitors, the drugs like the Viagra, the Cialisin, Levitris, which act downstream of nitric oxide, they don't affect nitric oxide production, but it's vascular dysfunction. But it's really a systemic disease. It manifests as erectile dysfunction. But if you can't dilate the blood vessels of the sex organs, that same disease occurs in the brain and the heart and the liver. So you have systemic vascular dysfunction. Yes, it just manifests as the inability to dilate the blood vessels at the proper time, when we're stimulated, when we want to have sexual activity. And if you don't vasodilate, you don't get engorgement and you can't get an erection. So it's, it's really the canary in the coal mine. And it's the first sign and symptom of nitric oxide deficiency. And if you treat it as a lifestyle disorder and not treat it as a root cause of cardiovascular disease, then you're doing that patient a disservice. So we have to look at it now as really a systemic disease. And it's more than a lifestyle disorder or socially inconvenient symptom. Yeah, it's a sign of systemic disease.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

It's funny that you said systemic because I teach, you know, I teach neuroscience and neurology and when I'm talking about the blood vessels in the brain that supply the anterior part of the brain. We know that we've just got branching out of the aorta, we've got the carotid arteries, then we've got the vertebral arteries, but we don't usually tend to think, think of branching off into the entire system. Right. So I think that that's, that's a really important point to, to follow through with. And Viagra was also a, wasn't that first known as a cardiovascular disease drug?

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, Pfizer was developing it originally as for pulmonary hypertension, to dilate the pulmonary arteries, but it was a, it was a vasodilator.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Tim]

And so in these clinical trials, the men reported, self reported back, that when they took this drug in the clinical trial, they experienced these great erections. And, you know, the economics obviously lead drug development from these pharmaceutical companies. So they basically abandoned, you know, ischemic heart disease protocol for PD5 inhibitors, and even pulmonary hypertension, and went for an erectile dysfunction. And I think it was a wise choice because it was a huge unmet need.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Tim]

At the time that, you know, these drugs were approved in 1998, 26 years later, 50% of the men don't respond to these drug therapies. They don't respond with better erections. And now that we understand the mechanism of action of how these drugs work, these drugs work downstream of nitric oxide production. So if the body can't make nitric oxide, it doesn't activate these second messenger systems, so these drugs cannot work. And that explains why there's 50% non responders to PD5 inhibition therapy. They're completely devoid of nitric oxide deficiency.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yeah. So it's basically you're just putting a band aid on it, really. Which is the entire US health care system.

[Dr. Tim]

Well, that's, you're, you're not addressing the root cause of the disorder. Yes, because now we're fine. So nitric oxide kind of turns this switch on and that's Viagra keeps it on. So nitric oxide leads to increase in cyclic GMP, which is a second messenger. And PD5 inhibitors prevent the breakdown of the second messenger. That's why you're warned against four hour erections. Unsafe drop in blood pressure because it's not isolated to your pelvic region. It's systemic. It's still dilating blood vessels of the brain. That's why you get a horrible headache, because at least an increase in cerebral or cranial pressures and, you know, it can be dangerous and cause seizures, causes Changes in vision, an unsafe drop in blood pressure. Some men get priapism, which leads to, you know, that's an extended like a four hour erection, which people think, people wonder, well, what's wrong with that? Well, the problem is you run out of oxygen and the outflow is constricted. So then this tissue is being deprived of oxygen for four hours, it lead to necrosis and you've got a dead organ.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yeah, that's quite scary. No, it's for all the men out there who wants a four hour erection. Yeah, I wonder if this plays into this famous study that I read which was really life changing for me, basically. Ben Levine, he's a cardiologist, a sports cardiologist, where he showed that evidently as we age, we get stiffening of the arteries in the heart, as we know, and then we also get left ventricular hypertrophy. So we know that the left ventricle supplies the muscles with blood and we know that the right ventricle supplies the lungs. And what he found was that he took, he took 5350 year olds and subjected them to, I think three to four hours of maximal aerobic exercise per week. And over the course of two years, he reversed some of the age related symptoms of the stiffening of the arteries. And he saw that these 50 year old hearts actually turned into 30 year old hearts. So he was able to open up the left ventricle, allowing for more blood flow. And I wonder where nitric oxide would play into that.

[Dr. Tim]

Well, exercise is medicine because it stimulates and activates nitric oxide production. And the problem in the American lifestyle is nobody exercises anymore. We live a sedentary life. We get in our car, we drive to our office, we sit, nobody sweats, nobody exercise. And it's, we're set in. Plus the food we eat, the diets that most Americans practice, all lead to a decrease in nitric oxide production.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Okay, so you said then you're, you now know that there is, that's really important. Okay, so we can actually increase the synthesis of nitric oxide through exercise.

[Dr. Tim]

That's right. It's just moderate physical. I mean, it's not, you don't have to do a lot. I mean, years ago it was demonstrated that 20 to 30 minutes of just moderate physical exercise a day. Because that, when you start to exercise, that causes a little bit of sheer stress in the lining of the blood vessels. Right. Because you increase your heart rate, it pumps more blood and it causes sheer stress, that activates nitric oxide production. And if your endothelial cells can produce Nitric oxide dilates the blood vessels, increases perfusion, and actually increases the, meets the increased demands on the heart so you can dilate the coronary arteries. And now your heart works better. It monitors, it regulates blood pressure. You know, the left ventricular hypertrophy and the arterial stiffening leads to high blood pressure. Then when your heart's pumping against high blood pressure, it has to create more muscle to pump against that higher pressure. It's man that's, that's not healthy. Over time, it leads to heart failure and heart disease. So if you can increase an exercise regime, improve an exercise regime, improve your nitric oxide production, you dilate the blood vessels so you lower the pressure. Your heart has to work less to deliver that, that blood, and it mobilizes stem cells. So now you can completely remodel the heart. Yes, and reverse the left ventricular hypertrophy, mobilize stem cells, replace and repair dysfunctional cells, and restore the function of the heart. But all that is dependent upon the body's ability to produce nitric oxide.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Okay, we have reached the stage where we really need to understand what is limiting our or. Unless you want to go to stage two, step two.

[Dr. Tim]

Well, let's talk about the second pathway, because really that, that really leads into how diet and lifestyle are completely leading to a nitric oxide deficiency. And what I believe and what the science corroborates is that it's what leads to chronic disease. So that's probably been 30 years ago. There was first studies showing that the oral bacterium are involved in the production of nitric oxide that regulates blood pressure, that monitor, that mitigates inflammation. So now that the, the microbiome project has been completely mapped, right, with a clear understanding, the bacteria that live on our skin in certain body parts, you know, the vaginal microbiome, the oral microbiome, the gut microbiome, these bacteria that live in and on our body are there to do things that we as humans can't do. So it's a true symbiotic relationship right there. The human host is providing them kind of a way to deliver metabolic products that provide the human host benefit. So when we destroy the microbiome, that has health consequences, right? So it's clear today that people who use antibiotics, overuse antibiotics, complete gut dysbiosis, systemic disease. What people fail to realize to probably 20 years ago, we started interrogating the oral microbiome, because for me, this is where digestion first occurs. It's really the first way that we start to break down the foods we eat. And provide some metabolic function. Obviously we were interested in nitric oxide. How are the bacteria in the mouth responsible for producing nitric oxide and does this have systemic effects? Because this was a completely new paradigm in nitric oxide based signaling. Because the enzyme, there's, there's a co localization or a proximity of the smooth muscle to the endothelial cells, nitric oxide is produced, it's a gas, it diffuses in the smooth muscle, activates guanyly cyclase, vasodilation, increase in blood flow. But nitric oxide being produced in the mouth, how is that affecting nitric oxide and vasodilation in the systemic circulation? I mean completely foreign type thought process. But what we were finding was if you gave people mouthwash, these are, people had normal blood pressure and the only intervention was we gave them mouthwash to completely destroy the microbiome and then we saw an increase in blood pressure. So then it's like, well, and this was very reproducible.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

What was the increase?

[Dr. Tim]

I mean in some cases, in a paper we published in 2019, we could see after one week of mouthwash, we could increase systolic blood pressure by 26 millimeters of mercury.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

You're joking.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah. So we would take normal, healthy 21 year old kids and giving them mouthwash twice a day for seven days. We made them clinically hypertensive.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Oh my.

[Dr. Tim]

I mean this, this, this is, I mean this completely changes the world of cardiology and management of blood pressure.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So basically you're saying if mothers are giving their kids mouthwash, they are subjecting them to hypertension.

[Dr. Tim]

Absolutely. And two out of three Americans in the US have an unsafe increase in blood pressure. And not coincidentally, two out of three Americans are waking up every morning use mouthwash.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

And it's funny because the US medical system will just prescribe you an ACE inhibitor to deal with that.

[Dr. Tim]

Well that gets into this whole concept of resistant hypertension.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes.

[Dr. Tim]

Right. So if you have high blood pressure, you go to your doctor, he puts you on an ACE inhibitor, angiotensin receptor blocker, calcium channel antagonist, a diuretic, or some docs use beta blockers as a first line therapy for hypertension, which to me is malpractice. But yet we know that 50% of the people that are prescribed anti hypertensive medication don't respond with better blood pressure. So they're refractory to the, the increase in blood pressure. So why is that? And in our 2019 paper we argued that their hypertension is a symptom of oral dysbiosis.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Just oral Dysbiosis?

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's not a renin angiotensin issue, it's not a kidney problem. So ACE inhibitors, arbs obviously aren't going to lower their blood pressure. It's not a dysregulation of calcium flux for metabolism. So calcium channel antagonists aren't going to normalize their blood pressure. It's not a fluid imbalance, so it's not a volume overload. But we're finding is that they're destroying the oral microbiome, killing the bacteria in their mouth that are normally responsible for producing nitric oxide. And so now we find, okay, if you have resistant hypertension, you ask people, are you using mouthwash? Do you have fluoride in your toothpaste, which is an antiseptic?

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Doesn't all, like, I mean, doesn't all toothpaste have fluoride in it?

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, and we wonder why we're sick to think about this. Fluoride is a, is an antiseptic. That's why they put it in toothpaste to kill the bacteria. That's why they put it in municipal water to kill the bacteria in the water supply. It's a neurotoxin and it shuts down your thyroid function. And we've got an epidemic of hypothyroidism all around the world, especially in the U.S. yeah. So we focused on strictly what, what are we doing that's destroying the micro, oral microbiome that's leading to a disruption in nitric oxide production, that's leading to the onset and progression of all metabolic disease, including cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes, you name it.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So let's just say you've, you've been having mouthwash, you're washing your teeth with fluoride rich toothpaste. We want to start introducing the good bacteria back into our mouth. What are we doing? Are we having probiotics?

[Dr. Tim]

Well, unfortunately, there's no probiotic or prebiotic on the market that restores the bacteria. But here's, here's really the fascinating thing. And we've been studying the human body for, for many years and I'm constantly amazed at how resilient the human body is. So in our 2019 study, we, we basically gave mouthwash for seven days and then we stopped for four days and then brought the patients back and then did a reevaluation, did tongue scrapings, cultured the bacteria, monitored their blood pressure, and what we found was four days of just stopping the mouthwash. The oral microbiome completely repopulated their Blood pressure completely normalized. So this is completely just this kind of like smoking. You know, if you stop smoking, you see the benefits almost immediately. You stop using mouthwash, you see the benefits of that within four days. And that it may be sooner, but that's the first time point we looked at. But these bacteria, we have to support the microbiome. We can't destroy the microbiome. And there's no physician that would tell you to take a antibiotic every day for the rest of your life. So why would any dentist tell you to take an antiseptic mouthwash? To use fluoride to completely destroy the oral microbiome? That's destroying a lot of metabolic activity and specifically nitric oxide production. So we have to get away from that. And next week I'm going to be in Chicago because we finally got the attention of the American Dental association to convince them to change their guidelines, because dental practices in America are making people sick. We got to get rid of fluoride. You've got to stop doing root canals, you've got to stop recommending Listerine antiseptic mouthwash. There's a better way. And what we're doing is trying to figure out how do we selectively kill the pathogenic bacteria, the ones that are known to cause cardiovascular disease, periodontal disease, gingivitis, caries and cavities. How do we selectively kill the pathogens while supporting the non pathogenic commensal bacteria? And that's what we finally solved the riddle on. And so we're working on that now. We're presenting that before the American Dental Association.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Well, that's really important because we know that there is an association between periodontal disease and Alzheimer's disease because it can seep through the gums and enter the bloodstream and go up into the brain.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, well, it's the oral systemic length. It's been around for 100 years. People with poor oral hygiene have higher incidence of heart attack, stroke, all cause mortality, cardiovascular disease. So people thought, well, what is it? There's a clear observation, but what's the mechanism? And people thought for years, well, it's a translocation of the bacteria. If you get bleeding gums, the pathogens enter your systemic circulation. You know, you can find these pathogens in the atheroma on patients who have died from a heart attack or stroke. So there is obviously translocation in an upregulation of lps, cytokines and starting the whole inflammatory cascade. But I think what we're also finding is that it's a destruction because when you have oral infections, the bad guys out compete the good guys. So there's a. Yes, there's a dysbiosis. So it's not just mainly it's down regulating the good nitric oxide producing bacteria. So if you can selectively kill the bad guys, the good guys then repopulate. If you can maintain good oral hygiene, the good bacteria are kind of like the cops. They keep the bad guys at bay. And so we can do this through nitric oxide. We developed a mouth rinse, a microbiome friendly mouth rinse. We're creating a fluoride free toothpaste that's microbiome friendly, that restores this oral microbiome. So that alone will maybe are prebiotic or probiotic.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Okay. So you've got the oral microbiome, which is the first line of defense of not being able to produce nitric oxide.

[Dr. Tim]

Well, these are two completely separate and independent nitric oxide production systems.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Okay.

[Dr. Tim]

One can compensate for the other.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Okay.

[Dr. Tim]

So if you have endothelial dysfunction, but you have a good diet, good oral microbiome, then you can overcome that deficiency that's produced in the lining of the blood vessel.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Okay.

[Dr. Tim]

Same thing. If you have good endothelial function, but you have a very poor diet and you typically don't have. And I think that's why kids, you know, who are active, good endothelial function, they can get away with eating a poor diet. Mm. But older people with endothelial dysfunction, if they eat a poor diet, then that's really a very slippery slope. Accelerating, accelerating that.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Okay, so where does. What's the. So where does the standard American diet fit into the production.

[Dr. Tim]

It's sad, right?

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So where does that fit into it? And I want to know, do you subscribe to any specific diet? Like, are you a carnivore, are you a plant based.

[Dr. Tim]

I'm not a fan of extreme diets. I think we humans have evolved to get our nutrients from a diverse source, from plants, from animals, and different sources. But the standard American diet, if we go by. So I like to take really important clinical observations and then work back and figure out mechanism, then you can start to develop rational therapies. So the data, and we have to look at data. The food that's grown in America today, compared to the 1940s, there's a 78% depletion of basic nutrients, micronutrients, complete depletion, things like vitamin A, vitamin D, selenium, chromium.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

But even if you were to go.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

And get organic food, right? I know that even the shelf life of spinach, if it's sitting like from the, the time that it's cut to when it is placed on the shelves, it loses all of its nutritional value within three days anyway. And we know that they're just sitting on these shelves for how long?

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

So what are we eating then?

[Dr. Tim]

Well, we're eating nutrient depleted foods.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Great.

[Dr. Tim]

And you know, going back to the days of Linus Pauling, he says that chronic disease is driven by nutrient deficiencies. So when, and we published a study in 2015 showing that organically grown vegetables have less nutrients than conventionally grow and especially the nitrate content which is used to make nitric oxide. Because if you think about this, you know, most Americans buy into what the media sells them.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes, we talk about that a lot. We always say that the, that the.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Healthcare industry is fed by the military.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Industrial complex and by these big food conglomerates and the pharmaceutical companies.

[Dr. Tim]

It's a beautiful financial model.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

It's wonderful.

[Dr. Tim]

It's at the cost of our own health.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yeah, well, the most profitable force is illness.

[Dr. Tim]

So yeah, there's no, there's no money in curing. There's money and treating.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So that's, you know, that's what he's saying, guys. Basically, like, how is the media telling you to go out and, you know, eat these foods? Even that the food pyramid, which was debunked many years ago, which we won't even get into.

[Dr. Tim]

But yeah, if I wanted to make you sick, I would, I would tell you to watch tv, follow all the guidelines, follow the government's diet, take mouthwash, take antacids, get Your cholesterol below 200, and you become chronically dependent upon big pharma.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So these foods are devoid of nutrients, even organic foods, which scares me. So then in America, where are we supposed to eat from? Like, you don't live here, do you?

[Dr. Tim]

I live in Texas.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Oh, you live in Texas. Okay.

[Dr. Tim]

So here's what I tell people is that you have to, you're almost always nutrient deficient just because of what we said. The farming practices, the pressures of feeding a growing planet, growing population, are at the expense of nutrient density. So I tell people organic is good because obviously there's no herbicides or pesticides. But to get an organic label in the US you can add nitrogen based fertilizers to the soil. Right? So without nitrogen in the soil, there's no nitrate. Without nitrogen, there's no nutrient assimilation. So not only the soil is depleted in basic nutrients, but the process of nitrogen fixation in the plants to assimilate other nutrients is gone if you don't add nitrogen. So here's the solution. I live on 800 acres out in the middle of Texas. I grow my own food, I raise my own beef, but I do soil samples every year and I test the soil. I know what's in the soil and if there's certain nutrients that are missing, then I put that nutrient back in the soil and then I use non GMO seeds and I grow those vegetables and plants in a nutrient dense soil. I don't use herbicides or pesticides. And then you get a nutrient dense food where there's no chemicals, no herbicides or pesticides. So that's the best way. So I tell people that live in, you know, I'm blessed because I'm able to do that and have the resources to do that. But people who live in big cities, you know, go to your local farmers market, know your farmers, you know, the pressures, consumer demand changes, practice. So if you go and you know, what I eat is not organic because I had nitrogen to the soil. So I couldn't get an organic label on the foods that I grow on my.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Interesting.

[Dr. Tim]

But it's free of herbicides, it's free of pesticides, there's no genetically modified agents in any of these seeds that I grow. So it's just a nutrient dense food that's free of toxic chemicals.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Interesting. I think, I mean, look, it makes sense and actually it makes me think about the role that nitric oxide plays in not just in cellular metabolism, but more so mitochondria. Because we know that we are feeding our mitochondria as well through environmental, you know, through sunlight, through excise, but also through what we eat.

[Dr. Tim]

I mean the mitochondria are, as you know, every age related chronic disease has mitochondrial dysfunction.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes.

[Dr. Tim]

And lower number of mitochondria per cell. So nitric oxide, again its mechanism is very well elucidated in terms of mitochondrial function and mitochondrial biogenesis. So nitric oxide controls the electron transport chain, prevents electrons from leaking. So you get better oxygen efficiency and more ATP per cycle through the Krebs cycle. If your body makes nitric oxide. The other important signaling aspects of nitric oxide is it induces mitochondrial biogenesis. So things like intermittent fasting, caloric restrictions, sirtuins, all of those are dependent upon the cell's ability to produce nitric oxide. If we make nitric oxide, we activate PGC1 alpha and then mitochondrial biogenesis. So if you do intermittent fasting, caloric restriction, all these things, but the cell can't make nitric oxide. You don't get activation of PGC1 Alpha and you don't get mitochondrial biogenesis. But if you restore the cell's ability to produce nitric oxide, then all these signaling pathways are intact and intermittent. Fasting, caloric restriction, exercise, sirtuins nad all that leads to mitochondrial biogenesis. So now the net effect is in a person who's repleted nitric oxide. They have more mitochondria per cell, generating more cellular energy with less oxygen, more efficiently. And that's, that's optimal health.

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[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes, as you can tell, I'm very.

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[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

That is, that's human process. But basically what you're saying is you can go out and do all the good things, live like a monk, if you will, but if you have an inability to restore and produce nitric oxide, then all of that doesn't really matter to an extent.

[Dr. Tim]

No, it doesn't. I mean, look, we, I was on the doctor show a couple of years ago. We first revealed that if you use mouthwash and you go and do exercise, you lose the protective benefits of exercise. So think about this in the context of the average American who's health conscious, who wants to eat a good diet, plant based diet, exercise every day. But if they're using mouthwash or have fluoride in their toothpaste that kills the microbiome, they lose the protective benefits of the diet and the exercise program. I mean, it's, it's amazing.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So you're saying that if you're a marathoner, but you are having mouthwash, then you're getting no benefits from doing this.

[Dr. Tim]

It's compromising your performance. And it's not just athletic performance, it's sexual performance, it's cognitive performance, it's performance as we know it.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

What do you think about this whole controversial topic about nitrates in foods such as salami, bacon, et cetera? Because I think that this is, you know, we have to talk about this because cured meats are getting like a really bad rap. And look rightfully so in some, in some instincts. But it's, you know, I'm Greek, there's a lot of, there's a lot of meat in my culture. And it really upsets me when I hear things like that. So what's the truth behind it?

[Dr. Tim]

The truth is this may be shocking. We've been misinformed. Oh, what? Yeah, so this started back in the 50s. And again, I think most scientific observations and programs have good intent. Again, you start with important clinical observations and then you work back and try to figure out mechanism, what is it that's happening with an association between two things or multiple things that lead to chronic disease or some disease outcome. In the 1950s, it was first observed that nitrite cured meats. And this was in, this was the 1956 paper that you could have preformed nitrosamines. And this was specifically nitrosyl dimethylamine, which is a potent carcinogen and mutagenic compound that causes cancer, primarily liver cancers. Then the nutritional epidemiologists came in in the 70s and 80s and started to correlate meat eaters, cured and processed meats with a slight increase, what they call a relative risk in certain cancers, primarily gastroesophageal cancers. So maybe a relative risk of say 1.18 18%. So anything below a relative risk of 2 is typically just noise. Anything above 2, it's probably a real effect. So then they go back to the 1950s, they go, oh, nitride. Cured meats can form nitrosamines. Nitrosamines cause cancer. So then there's your Biologically plausible mechanism of nitrate and nitrite and curd and processed meats increased risk of certain cancers. But what they failed to recognize in the 1980s, it was starting to be realized that nitrate and nitride are actually naturally produced in the human body. That's what led to the discovery of nitric oxide. When you activate an immune response, you see an increased production of nitride and nitrate in the human body. And then you work backwards and figure out, oh well, nitric oxide is the intermediate. So now that is completely elucidated. And if that were true, let's just say nitride and nitrate and cured and processed meats cause cancer. We bought into it, the media's told us this. If that were the case, vegetarians would have a 10 time higher rate of cancer than meat eaters. Because 85% of the nitrate and nitrite we get from our diet comes from plants and vegetables. Only 5% comes from cured and processed meats. The other 10% comes from swallowing our own saliva from the nitrite and nitrate that are naturally produced in the human body. And we know it's just the opposite, that people who've practiced a plant based diet have lower incidence of cancers. So the numbers don't work and their whole hypothesis falls apart. And you know, I published a book on this, it's called Nitrite and Nitrate in Human Health and Disease. And we're on our second edition. But I, I co edited this with Joe Lascalzo, who's a cardiologist at Harvard, he's chair of medicine at Harvard and chief of cardiology at the Brigham in, in Boston. But we actually invited Walt Willett who's probably the nutritional epidemiologist at Harvard. And you know, and he basically kind of somewhat admitted that they got it wrong. So he doesn't dispute the increased and association is not causation. And people who eat a certain amount of cured and processed meats have a certain higher incidence of certain gastro esophageal cancers, for example. But there's so many confounders out there that their biologically plausible mechanism falls apart. It's not the nitrite and the nitrate and the cured and process meets this, doing that. And we published this in 2009. And people spend a lot of money on no nitrite cured bacon.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

I was going to say, like, yeah.

[Dr. Tim]

No, you're spending way more money. And we, we published that the no nitride added bacon has three to four times more nitrite than the nitride cured Bacon.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

How is that possible?

[Dr. Tim]

Well, because the meat companies, again, giving in to the consumer demands and the misinformation, tried to figure out, how do we not add nitrite to cured. Cured meat. And the answer was, there's no way. You can't, because then you have an epidemic of foodborne illnesses, botulism, salmonella, because this prevents food spoilage and prevents bacterial overgrowth. So what they've done, this is creative marketing, is they take celery powder, which is enriched in nitrate, so they're adding a cultured celery powder to the meat, and then they're adding a bacterial culture called staph carnosis, which is a nitrate reducer. So these bacteria are reducing nitrate to nitrite. It's the nitrite that cures the meat. So because they're not adding sodium nitride or potassium nitrite directly to the meat production, they can say, no nitrite addict, but they have to add it or else it wouldn't be a cured meat product and it would have a shelf life of less than a day and people would get sick from eating.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So then how do you correlate the increase of these cured meats and gastroesophageal cancer then?

[Dr. Tim]

Well, there's so many other confounders, people who eat a lot of cured and processed meats have other habits. Yeah, they may be smokers, they may be sedentary.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

They don't state that, do they? They never.

[Dr. Tim]

I mean, you try to account for the confounders, but there's no way a nutritional epidemiology, you can account for all the confounders in a cohort of a thousand people.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Oh, gosh.

[Dr. Tim]

And then here's the other deal. It's a statistical illusion. The absolute risk versus the relative risk.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Tim]

And the thing you need to understand in drug trials and nutritional epidemiology is the number to treat.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes. Nt.

[Dr. Tim]

Right. And so it's a statistical slight of sleight of hand when you look at relative risk. So relative risk to me are absolutely meaningless. But that's what makes the headlines. 100% increase in your risk of getting cancers if you do this. But what if you look at the real data? So if you. And let's put this in perspective. If we had 10,000 people in a control group and 10,000 people in a treat, in a placebo group or a treatment group, and let's just say in the control group, one out of those people got stomach cancer. One out of 10,000. And then in the other Group where was primarily of meat eaters or bacon eaters or cured meat eaters. Two out of 10,000, oh, yes, got cancer. So the headlines in that study is a doubling of risk, doubling 100% increase in risk if you eat cured meat, cancer. But it was actually one added to the number. To see that in a general population, it's meaningless.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

I think it's also important to understand that the dose makes the poison. You know, it's like people just, you know, I'm so happy I'm not in the nutrition space. I don't touch it, especially on social media. I do not go near the space because it's not my field. I like, I like when people stick to their lanes. My lane is Alzheimer's. I understand there is a nutritional component. That's not my area of study. Mine is exercise for mild cognitive impairment. So I stick to that. But what I hate so much is everyone talking about the, you know, the harmful effects of, you know, sucralose, all these. It's like the dose makes the poison and we're failing to see that. And everyone's like, well, Diet Coke is going to kill you. It's like if you have one can a month, I don't think it's going to kill even one can. I think you have to have what, 50, 150 a day for it to have a little bit of an effect.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, it's. Look, it's the chronic exposure. What I tell people, what you do one day a week is going to kill you. It's what you do the other six days. Correct. It's going to get you right. So again, it goes back to what nitric oxide is extremely important, it's critical. But what I found in 25 years of studying the human body is that chronic disease is caused by only two things. Your body's missing something that it needs or it's exposed to something that it doesn't need. So if you remove the body toxins, it's exposed to and replete, missing nutrients, then the body's regenerative by nature. We just got to get out of the way. The problem is we get in the way of the body.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Well, so far. So we've got nutrition, we've got oral microbiome that's disrupting it. What's the what, what else is disrupting it? Our ability to make it.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, the big one is antacids, you know, the proton pump inhibitor specifically.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes.

[Dr. Tim]

So those, you know, those drugs have been on the market now for, for probably since the 80s, I think. And These drugs are used to, to stop the production of stomach acid for gastroesophageal reflux disease. And when the FDA approved these drugs, there were no long term safety studies. Of course, the clinical trials were only, you know, three to five days at most, maybe a month use to stop stomach acid secretion prevention, gastroesophageal reflux disease and then bare toesophagus in them. Now that these drugs have been on the market for decades, we're finding in 2015, the first, again an important clinical observation, people had been on PPIs for three to five years, 40% higher incidence of heart attack and stroke. And then in 20, last December a paper came out that people, and this is relevant for you, people have been on proton pump inhibitors for at least three years, had a 40% higher incidence of Alzheimer's. So again, you start with these, these observations. Now what's, what's responsible for that? Now mechanistically, these proton pump inhibitors are they completely shut down body, the body's ability to make nitric oxide from both pathways. So this one drug shuts down nitric oxide in the lining of the blood vessel and the nitric oxide produced from the oral bacteria from swallowing our own saliva. And so what's the consequence of that? 40, higher incidence of heart attack, stroke and Alzheimer's. So we have to get people off of proton pump inhibitors and acids. 200 million prescriptions written every year and.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Now you can buy, you can buy it over the counter. I see people taking these just standard, like, oh, I'm going to go out, I'm going to eat horribly, someone to take an antacid just in case. Yeah.

[Dr. Tim]

And if you look at the warnings on this, so these, they're causing hip fractures, they're causing kidney disease. So if you reef and nobody does this, but if you read the package insert on these, nobody would take these drugs because what's the, for me it's all about risk, benefit. What's the benefit? I mean maybe alleviation of heartburn. What's the risk? Well, you're going to die from heart attack, stroke, you're going to get Alzheimer's, you're going to have hip fractures without stomach acid. You can't absorb iodine, you can't absorb B vitamins, you can't absorb iron, can't absorb calcium. What does that mean? You get brittle bones, brittle bones and you bone loss. And so there's the risk of these drugs way far outweigh any benefit. And you know, I'm an advocate for these drugs should be taken off the market. They're dangerous. They're killing people. It's leading to chronic disease. And the FDA and these drug manufacturers have to take responsibility and do what's right for the American public. Take these drugs off the market. They provide no benefit and they're killing.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

People, to be honest, who's going out there and taking copious amounts of antacids?

[Dr. Tim]

Everybody.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

See, I, I'm so segregated. I'm in my world. Sometimes it's still hard for me to believe. Like when I see somebody with a cigarette, I think, oh my God. Like, it actually shocks me when I hear that people just don't exercise. You know, exercise is part of my hygiene. When I hear that, people are like, oh, yeah, no, I, I went for a run like a month ago. I just, it's so out of my world. So when you, when I, when you tell me that people are taking them habitually, I think to myself, what? It's so.

[Dr. Tim]

You don't even have to have a prescription form anymore. These are outside the care of a physician. And you can go to your grocery store, health food store and you can buy these. And people take them every day. And they've been taken. I know people have been taking them for 10, 15, 20 years. Multiple strokes, multiple. And they wonder why they're sick.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

I wonder what the, the hormonal component would be to nitric oxide because it just. This whole time I've been thinking about erectile dysfunction and lack of oxygen. But we know that even as I mentioned, and right now I'm, I'm actually publishing, I've probably said the word menopause so many times because I'm currently looking at postmenopausal women and Alzheimer's disease and estrogen receptors, et cetera. And we also know that we get a decline in testosterone. Males do. As we get older. So. And we know that there is erectile dysfunction just due to aging in that population. But also the postmenopausal women, we know that there is erectile dysfunction there. Well, sexual dysfunction, I should say. So does that, is there a hormonal component?

[Dr. Tim]

Absolutely. So nitric oxide is part of the secretory process of endocrine glands. Even estrogen secretion, testosterone secretion from the gonads, and then it's a two way street. And then estrogen and testosterone can activate and stimulate nitric oxide production. And that's why premenopausal women are protected from heart attack and stroke because of the positive activation and regulation of nitric oxide by estrogen. So at menopause you lose estrogen, you lose the activation of nitric oxide and you see the risk of heart attack and stroke and post menopausal women. I mean, just go through the roof.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Yes.

[Dr. Tim]

What I tell people in a lot of these hormone clinics that are doing hormone replacement therapy is you can, sure, you can replete and restore estrogen or testosterone or hormones, but first let's focus on restoring the, the enzymatic production of nitric oxide. Because if you restore the hormones without restoring the enzymatic function of nitric oxide, you're not going to restore the cardio protective benefits of hormone replacement therapy. So nitric oxide is absolutely critical and essential in hormone replacement therapy. In fact, in 2007 we published that nitric oxide is actually a hormone. So similar to hormone replacement therapy for estrogen, thyroid, testosterone, we have to restore the nitric oxide hormone and we have to do that through giving the actual gas, the actual molecule, not giving your body precursors and substrates. And I mean, you don't take, we don't give precursors in hormone replacement therapy. We give bioidentical hormones or we give the actual molecule. And that's what we do with nitric oxide, we give the actual molecule.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So you've probably got a, a huge distaste in the Women's Health Initiative study as well.

[Dr. Tim]

Oh, it's, it was tragedy.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

I mean, yes, the worst thing to happen in female health. But we won't even go there because we've only got, my gosh, 20 minutes left. But I really want to now focus on what you're doing, what your company is doing, because you actually gave me, you gifted me some dissolvable.

[Dr. Tim]

Yes.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Is that so, so tell me what that is because I don't think I have a problem producing hydrocol. I don't know. I have. I feel like I've got a lot of blood flow. I, I consider myself healthy. I don't drink, smoke, I exercise daily. I feel like I've got adequate.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

But you never know.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

We can't test it. You know, one day. I always say that it's my dream to be able to have a continuous blood pressure monitor. You know, hopefully one day we'll get one of those. But maybe one day we'll be able to test nitric oxide. Very.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming. Yeah.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So, okay, so what happens then? Am I, I'm going to take this dissolvable pill. It's a lozenge.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, right. An early disintegrating tablet.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

And what's what's that going to do for me?

[Dr. Tim]

Well, first, I mean, is there. So I tell people, people ask me all the time, is there a need to monitor? And I go, well, there's only two people in the world who need nitric oxide. There's people who are sick and want to get well. There's people who are well and don't want to get sick. So do you need to test? I mean, if you, if you're one of those two people, then you should take it. So what we do is we. Nitric oxide is a gas, right? So how do you capture the therapeutic potential of nitric oxide gas? My claim to fame is I'm the only person who's made a solid dose form of bioactive gas. It's nitric oxide. We had to make this in a matrix that falls apart that has a certain dissolution rate. When you put it in your mouth, it's activated by your saliva. This matrix falls apart and we generate about 30 parts per million nitric oxide gas. We can quantify it, we can detect it, we can verify that it's coming off and we can show its work. We can use an ultrasound on the crotch. We can see dilation of the crowd is within about 10 to 15 seconds. So the nitric oxide that's being produced in the mouth goes systemic. It binds to cysteine, thios to glutathione, it's transported, it's vasoactive. So we can see that we're delivering this hormone. So it's just like testosterone or estrogen. Fortunately, when we do hormone replacement therapy for testosterone, we don't have to give injections in the gonads, Right? We can, we can do intramuscular, we can do sublingual troches, we can do creams. And same thing with nitric oxide. We don't have to reproduce this in the lining of the blood vessels. We can produce it in the oral cavity, which, by the way, we recouple the nitric oxide synthase enzyme. So we're improving endothelial function and we're restoring the good oral bacteria so that lozenge really gets to the root cause. So if your body can't make nitric oxide, we do it for you and we improve the body's ability to make it on its own.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So even if I don't have a problem, once I have it, there can be no harmful effects. Unless you can't overdose.

[Dr. Tim]

Well, you can. I mean, those dictates poison.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Correct.

[Dr. Tim]

So the toxicities we're concerned with, with nitric oxide are Unsafe drop in blood pressure and then methemoglobinemia, which means that it oxidizes the heme of the iron. Heme, iron and hemoglobin and reduces the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood. But no, if you take these as in, and Look, I turned 50 in November and I don't have a nitric oxide problem, but I've been taking this for 20 years and I take it because. Not because I need it, because I don't want to need it. Correct. Right. We have to, we have to be proactive instead of reactive. I don't want to wait until I get ED or high blood pressure, have a heart attack to go, oh, you know what I need nitric oxide. No, let's focus on that now. Let's be proactive. Take your daily nitric oxide like you take a daily vitamin C or vitamin D and prevent that age related loss. And so those are our consumer products. But we're taking that technology and we're, we now have going through the FDA to get these drugs approved on the market so physicians can prescribe it to their patients. It's safe, we've demonstrated safety. We've got drugs for ischemic heart disease, we've got a drug for Alzheimer's as we mentioned. And then I make a topical drug for diabetic ulcers and non healing wounds. And that's going to be a game changer I think. And you know there's been no innovations in wound care for the past 50, 60 years. No nitric oxide kills the infection in the non healing wound and wounds are non healing because there's no blood flow. Right. There's hypoxia and ischemia to that wounds. So nitric oxide dilates the blood vessels, causes hyperemic response, kills the infection and wounds heal. It's remarkable technology that would be a topical, be a topical drug drug.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Wow, that's.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

And then when you, when you take.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

It, I mean this is, I guess this is why we've seen a rise in. Isn't arginine in almost every, every pre workout? Because when I take it like I've, I mean I don't take it but like when I have. My skin gets itchy because I feel like there's all this blood flow.

[Dr. Tim]

Well it's not, it's actually, it's compromising blood flow because you're never limiting. In larginine, it's a semi essential amino acid. You get it from the proteins you eat and it's made through the urea cycle and giving excess Arginine actually leads to an upregulation of arginase and you basically dispose of it as urea and you divert it away from nitric oxide production. And there's two clinical trials that, where they gave high dose arginine to post infarct patients and the patients with peripheral artery disease and they got worse. So. L. Arginine should not be used in anybody. You don't need it, especially if you have endothelial dysfunction.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

So then taking one of these lozenges you could take as a pre workout, if you will.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, we make a fermented beet powder called no beets. That's our pre workout because beets kind of give us. And we make a fermented beet powder. We remove the oxalates and the beet pulp so it doesn't look or taste like beets. But as soon as you put this in solution and water, it's meant to be taken as a shot. And now we're generating nitric oxide systemically and it's an unbelievable pre workout or energy product.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Where were you 15 years ago? When I was a, I was a competitive triathlete, I raced for Australia and my, my coach used to always say to me, before you go out on the race, I want you to have beetroot juice. I was like, what? Yuck. And I was drinking it. I was.

[Dr. Tim]

And all the gastric distress, I don't know what.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Oh yeah, it was, it was a bloodbath in there. But that was. Yeah, he. And I never understood why I needed to have beetroot juice.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah. Well, unfortunately, most beetroot products on the market don't do anything but turn your pee and your poop red. There's no nitric oxide to it. You know, that company's selling gummies and chews with beets and it's probably the biggest fraud out there. Gummies and shoes are completely useless. You can't generate nitric oxide and gummies or chews. So, you know, we've, we're trying to, you know, steer the ship in the right direction in the nitric oxide field and bring to market products that actually work. Because there's a lot of deception, deceptive marketing and fraudulent products out there that are, you know, people are taken and hope that they get nitric oxide from it, but, you know, there's no way mechanistically these products generate nitric oxide.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Wow, you've changed my life. Yeah, I think so. What's. So what's new for you now on the.

[Dr. Tim]

What's on the horizons I've got a new book coming out probably this fall, early winter, called the Secret of Nitric Oxide Bringing Nitric oxide to Life, where we really talk about the discovery of nitric oxide. And it's part autobiographical, talks about the discoveries we made over the past 20 years. Have we been able to translate that into product technology? The hurdles we had to overcome, the disruption in the space, the attacks we've had to overcome because what we're doing is disruptive.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

You mean disruptive to the US Healthcare.

[Dr. Tim]

System and big pharma, into competitive companies out there who try to come after me and, you know, stop us doing what we're doing.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

There's all the competitors in your space.

[Dr. Tim]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm involved in multiple lawsuits, people coming after me and Sue. We're target. But, you know, I wear that as a badge of courage because if you're doing things that are trivial and meaningless, people leave you alone. If you're doing things that are meaningful, that are revolutionary, then you become a target. So I wear it as a badge of courage. And we're going to fight them and we're going to. We're going to win. But, yeah, I'm most excited about our drug discovery program. We've got drugs now in Phase 3 clinical trials for ischemic heart disease, where hopefully next year we'll have our clinical trial designed and completed for Alzheimer's drug study. And so I think, you know, as we get these early drugs approved, then we'll move for other indications because I'm truly convinced there's not a single disease process where nitric oxide at the right dose at the right time in the right patient wouldn't provide benefit at the right time. That's right. So every, you know, the. To treat Alzheimer's disease may be different than treating a patient with ischemic heart disease or diabetes. You know, there's a progression of disease that you may have to intervene at certain times at different doses to affect that disease process.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

I think we could do an entire episode just on nitric oxide and Alzheimer's disease, because I'm still trying to understand that if you are in late stage, let's just say I don't know if you're going to test this eventually, but we've got a. Evidently a buildup of tau and amyloid deposition. Is it going to be clearing those outer. Is it just going to be able to provide more adequate blood flow? Because even with adequate blood flow, you still wouldn't ameliorate the plaque.

[Dr. Tim]

I mean, if you support the cellular function and autophagy, you know, you basically get rid of the cellular debris, the misfolded proteins, and you excrete it. And if we provide adequate blood, supply, oxygen, nutrients, and then maintain normal cellular function, then that cell can function, that tissue can function, that organ can function. So I think it's completely reversible, although I think in every disease process, there's probably a point where it's past the point of no return. And people who have severe advanced Alzheimer's, you know, just.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Which is only detectable with a csf.

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, are we going to be able to regress those? Maybe not. But I think what we can do and what I feel confident is if we can detect this early enough in the process, I'm 100% confident that we can slow the progression and at best, reverse disease.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Tim, I know where I'm all over the shop, but I just keep thinking, what would be the. Is there anything for women who are maybe experiencing unexplained infertility and nitric oxide?

[Dr. Tim]

Yeah, again, I think it's. Look, it's multifactorial. Yeah. So, number one, I'm finding that it's usually hypothyroidism, and that's usually due to an iodine deficiency and overexposure to fluoride, because if you remember from the periodic table, these are halogens. Most people are deficient in iodine, but yet we're chronically exposed to fluoride. So you need iodine to convert T4 to T3, which is the active enzyme. You know, you gotta balance your hormones. But for conception, you know, the. The egg and the sperm have to meet. So in men, nitric oxide is what controls sperm motility. So without nitric oxide, there's little sperm motility and there's no conception in women, obviously, it's hormone regulation. It's. It's normalizing your thyroid. It's, you know, eliminating from the body the toxins and then giving good nutrition. And then, you know, I'm still, you know, I think childbirth and conception is still miraculous process. I mean, we understand kind of scientifically, but to me, it's. It's still a miracle.

[Podcast Host (Neuroscience Expert)]

Wow. Well, I am so excited to follow your research avidly. I'm excited for your book. Please let us know when that comes out. I'm going to be aggressively watching your Alzheimer's disease trials and. And I hope that we can do a part two when the book comes out, because, yeah, we're going to need another two to three hours. But thank you so much for coming onto the New York podcast.