← What Are You Made Of?
What Are You Made Of?
Optimizing Health with Nitric Oxide: Dr. Nathan Bryan’s Science-Backed Approach
00:44:46
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A
Every single day I feel.
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B
Artlist IO.
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A
Every single day I feel the pleasure. Double up the work. Let's make it extra. Working on my mother.
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B
Every single day I feel the pressure. Hey, hey, it's your boy C Rock back in that one studio on the what do you made of show. Got my man, Dr. Nathan Bryant in the house. He is doing amazing things, folks, and we. You got to hear about what he's doing, but we want to really dive into how he got to doing what he's doing and some of the things that he went through and overcame. Get to where he is today. That's the mission here at what he made of is to really inspire you and remind you that you're unstoppable to living the life of your dreams. You just got to keep going.
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A
Amen, brother.
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B
Dr. Nate was having it, man.
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A
It's all good, Mike. Thanks for having me.
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B
Yeah, no, my pleasure. I'm glad to have you here. And I want to thank you for also trusting in that one for us to help you with your mission. You know, I. I'm really fulfilled now in this. I was in the mortgage real estate space, but I'm really fulfilled now because I get to tag along other people's missions that I believe in. And. And it's just an amazing thing because I used to have this shiny bells and whistles like syndrome as an entrepreneur looking all over the place. Oh, I like that. I like that. And then I was. I was so dispersed, I couldn't be successful in any one thing. And this allows me to be successful. Really laser focused, but just being a catalyst for other missions. And I want to thank you for that.
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A
No, no, thank you. Look, this is. This is a great mission you're on. We're excited about what we're doing and, you know, just appreciate you for. For getting our message out there and telling our story.
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B
Yeah. So let's start with the question that we always start with. What are you made of, man?
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A
I'm a small town Texas boy, and I'm just true grit and determination. You know, I think that's. That's been me from day one. And you tell me I can't do something, I'm gonna give it my damn to prove you wrong.
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B
And that's.
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A
That's kind of what I've lived by.
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B
Yeah. All right. I knew we aligned some form of fashion that's there. I created. I wrote a book called Rocket Fuel Convert. Setbacks become unstoppable because I'm. I was the same way. You know, I just had this concept, and I'd love to hear your take on this. In life, we come into these things and we have a decision when we run into heartache or, you know, hardship or adversity to store it in our tank or our trunk. And I. And I was doing some subconscious thing my whole life, I was storing in my tank and using it as fuel this whole time. And then when I hit 40, I was like, I gotta analyze this. This is something powerful here. And that's what I found out I was doing. And most people keep the stuff in their trunk and it slows them down and weighs them down, and then they wonder why they're not accomplishing anything. And I had to write a book about that. So. Did you notice that in your life, like, you were just, like, storing things in your tank?
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A
Yeah. You know, look, it's human nature. I mean, you think you. You get your heart and your mind set on something, you go and you run into roadblocks. People tell you you can't do it. You know, they oppose you, they criticize you, and then human nature is to give up. But, you know, I just, I just, I'm not made of that thread. And so I just, I've never been willing to allow people to stop me, what I set my mind to do. But, yeah, I think it's human nature, but it takes a lot of courage and it takes a lot of, you know, discipline to overcome that. Yeah.
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B
Yeah. Well, you got to want something so bad that you're willing to do whatever it takes, you know?
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A
That's right. Nothing easy is. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy if you're going to do something and leave a lasting legacy. You know, we only have a short, very short period of time here on Earth. And you got to make each day the best because, I mean, if you're going to do something meaningful, it's not easy.
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B
Yeah.
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A
If your life is easy, then it's probably not meaningful.
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B
Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of short time, I was just telling my wife, I'm like, it's still light out and stuff. It's five o' clock here on the east coast and it's still light out. I'm like, man, I remember when the winter times in darkness at 5 o' clock lasted forever. And now the older I get, the faster time flies. Now it's like, what the heck's going on?
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A
I'm glad you're getting longer now. Right.
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B
I'm glad, but it used to last so much longer when I was younger. All right. Growing up in Texas, are you a cowboys Fan by chance I should have asked you that.
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A
You know, early on I was a Houston Oilers fan. You know, we, we lived, you know, about an hour and a half outside of Houston. Grew up with Earl Campbell fan, Bum Phillips. You know, I like the Cowboys under Tom Landry. 90s Cowboys, but, you know, they wear me out now watching them. I'm not a big pro football fan. I like college football. We got season tickets to the Longhorns and. Okay, that's my.
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B
Yeah, yeah, you got a man, a great season this year and you got Arch coming up through the ranks now. Yeah. And then, and then Marshall, Marshall Manning's coming behind him. So. Yeah, he might go to Texas. Who knows where he's gonna go. He's probably got offers now, but. Yeah, so my partner Todd, he worked in the, in a space, in the sports space for a while and Warren Moon was around him a lot. Do you like Warren back in the day?
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A
I did like Warren Moon, yeah.
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B
Yeah, I love that. What do they call that? The run and shoot.
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A
That's right, the running shoot. Yeah.
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B
I think, I think June Jones was the guy that orchestrated that.
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A
That's right. Former Atlanta Falcons coach.
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B
Yeah. Yeah, that's. Man, it brings back memories. I've loved football since I was old enough to talk. I, I just, I have, I'm just. And I played in the end of college, but like, I just, I'm just such a fan in college too, man. Like I, I just. There's something about it.
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A
Yeah. High school football, you know, Texas. High school football in Texas is, you know, the thing. And my boys, all of my boys played football. They're great athletes. My son's team, he's a junior this year, they went four, four deep into the playoffs. Made all state defensive team. And it was a fun year for him. Just come up a little bit short.
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B
You find yourself living vicariously through them.
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A
Yeah, you know, they're a lot better athletes than I was. I was rodeo and as a, as a high school kid, I didn't play. I played football one year, basketball one year. But I was a competitive calf roper when I was in high school.
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B
Yeah, I just watched my son win a state championship here in Maryland. They went 14, 0 and, and I was, man, I was riding and living through them. Boy, I was, I was sharing her stuff on IG and giving them shout outs and stuff. Man, it was great. Yeah. But I never went to a, an SEC football game live until two years, a year and a half ago. I went to Ole Miss and went to Oxford and into the grove and saw the LSU overtime game, and, man, I was just like, what? How? I haven't ever been into this environment before. This is crazy.
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A
Different level.
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B
Yeah, yeah, it really is, man. So anyway, all right, so then you grew up in Texas, and then did you always. Did you always know that, like, you wanted to be a doctor or was that something that came along later?
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A
You know, I went to a very small school. It was like maybe 100 kids in my graduating class. I was at the top of my class and, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do. My counselors told me I should be an engineer because I was good in science and math. And so I followed their advice. I enrolled in civil engineering at University of Texas. And then, you know, being a naive small town kid, I go, what engineers do? And they go, well, they build bridges and roads. And I go, I'm not interested in that. What is. So anyway, long story short, I switched over to biochemistry because I was interested in, you know, biology, natural sciences, and medicine. So that's kind of the road I took and had a chance to do undergraduate research and as an undergrad and, you know, the feeling of discovery. The thing I love about science and research is you can ask any question you want and then design a set of experiments to get the answer. I mean, complete intellectual freedom. There's no other job out there that gives you the complete intellectual freedom that science does. And that's what drew me to it. And then so I got a degree in biochemistry from the University of Texas, and then from there I went to LSU School of Medicine and got involved in basic science research and got a PhD in molecular and cellular physiology, then trained up in Boston at BU Medical center in the Department of Medicine and Cardiology, then moved back to Texas and got a professor of medicine position at UT Medical School in Houston. That was kind of the early years. And now, 25 years later, here we are.
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B
And what were you thinking at the time that was going to be the thing. When you were in college going through all the schooling, what was the thing you thought you were going to do to make money?
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A
Well, you know, I thought as a biochemist with a bachelor's degree in biochemists, you could go out and make a decent living. But, you know, I tested the job market and it was awful. I mean, you can. I waited tables all through. Through college, and I could make more money waiting tables than I could utilizing my bachelor of science degree in biochemistry. So I knew I had to either abandon that path or go and get more Education. And fortunately for me, I'd elected to go and, you know, further my education and get advanced degrees and, you know, But I always knew that I wanted to do something in science and make discoveries and kind of solve these complex medical mysteries. Because Today in the U.S. even 25 years ago, 30 years ago, when I was in school, that, you know, we're the sickest population on earth and that we're probably the richest nation on Earth. Well, back then, we're so far in debt now, but, you know, the science tells it. We know in the sciences how to cure, prevent and treat every human disease out there. So what's the problem? We don't translate that science into clinical medicine. And so that was my whole mission, was let's understand the mechanism of human disease to the extent that we can address it and fix it and make people healthier and make people better. So that's been my driving force from day one. And obviously you're going up again a lot of big forces and opposing forces and big pharma and, and regulators and politicians who, you know, have the lobbyists and big pharmas in their pockets and, you know, give them the money under the table. So what we, what I've been doing for the past 25 years is very, very disruptive. And I've been vet with, met with, you know, criticism, violent opposition, I mean, you name it and I've encountered it.
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B
Yeah. And when you do your studies and research, how do you, how do you vet the information that you're studying and researching? Like a lot of studies are funded by, you know what I'm saying? So how did you vet and know what, what to really give validity to?
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A
Well, look, science is all about questioning the status quo. And then any observations or findings that you have, it has to be reproducible. And some of the most important discoveries that I've made in my lifetime were negative studies. They weren't what I expected. And so this whole scientific method of creating a hypothesis, designing experiments, testing, that's all bullshit. It doesn't work. And that's why most scientific discoveries never make it to market in terms of product, technology or drugs. Because what you got to do is you got to be curiosity driven. What I did is I went and looked for physicians who had some complex medical patients. They couldn't explain their underlying symptomology. And I go, well, look, what are they? How are they presenting? So take important clinical observations, bring it back to the lab, model that disease in cells in animals, and then figure out biochemically mechanistically what's going on, and then go back to the clinic and to the patient, and once you have the right information and people go, what's your hypothesis? They go, I don't have a hypothesis. I just know, I'm curiosity driven. I know that patient's presenting with this. These symptoms are seemingly unrelated. And so how do we fix that? What's the underlying cause of that symptomology that's unexplained by the current medical paradigm, and that's how we make advances. It's not. Well, let me think of a hypothesis and let me design experiments. That's all bullshit. The scientific method is.
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B
Yeah, we're hearing of the word, the phrase, common sense a lot lately, especially in politics and news.
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A
Right.
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B
And I was telling my wife, I was hearing, you know, I think they were talking about, they were talking about DEI and the plane crash and all that, and I was like, you know, it makes no sense to me that they have to talk about common sense and they have to say these things that make common sense. It just doesn't make sense to me, like, why we have to do that. Like, this is so obvious. So when you're going through these, these things and, and looking at a disease, for example, does it, like, eventually it just looks like common sense to you? And did you look around the people and like, you guys, this doesn't make sense to you? Like, what's matter with you?
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A
No, look, they can't, they don't see it because they're not taught to see it. And I think that's what, you know, there's a famous quote. They'd always say that, you know, research is to see what everyone else has seen, but to think what no one else has thought. And people don't think differently. And as you said, common sense is not that common. I'm finding, especially in science, in medicine, even in the general population, it's really not that common. But, yeah, things that are obvious to me, and I've been very fortunate and blessed to be able to see things that probably other people can't see. And, and through research and experimentation, have observations that lead me down a different path. So, you know, I take one step at a time. And this discovery led us here. This discovery led us here. And it's not, you know, success is not a straight line. It's up and downs and. But eventually it's going to lead to a kind of a northeast trajectory.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
But, yeah, it's just thinking differently.
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B
Yeah. And, and when we're dealing with this big force this big heavy force you mentioned already, big pharma. But, and cap, the capitalist. Capitalism is, is not the best thing, but it's the best thing we have, I think, because everything has flaws. Every different type of system has flaws. But when there's money involved, there's conflict of interests that rise. But we got this big, big ball, this big heavy movement or what have you. And, and it's going one direction. And how, how do we, how, how do we start to move it? I mean, I guess it's happening now, I guess we're seeing it happen now. But it seems like it's just like you said, you dealt with pushback, discrediting probably. Like how, where do we, I guess, where do we start or where have we started to really see some movement?
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A
Well, you know, sunlight's the best disinfectant. We have to expose and reveal what's really going on. Capitalism is great. There's no better financial system than capitalism. The problem with capitalism is the regulators should not be involved in capitalistic markets. And that's the problem with, with career politicians. I mean, how can you accumulate tens of millions of dollars in net worth on a $180,000 a year salary as a senator representative? I mean, the math doesn't work. So obviously they're conflicted and they go and they legislate based on what they're getting paid to do, not what's best for the American public, which is why they're elected with the best interest of the public in mind. It's a republic for the people, by the people and of the people. And we've gotten so far away from that. And I think that's why RFK is, you know, he's a disruptor, Trump is a disruptor. And they're very polarizing figures. But, and if you look at the electoral map in the counties of the U.S. 98 red. So I think people are, people are fed up and I think these disruptors are coming in to play now. And you know, the veil is going to be, the curtain is going to be opened and you know, people are going to be exposed for, you know, the probably the not honorable things they've been doing. And it's not just politicians, it's people everywhere. But you know, my philosophy is be transparent, just do the right thing. Because what I've learned, when you do the right thing, the cash register rings. So all we have to do is do the right things. If you, I tell my kids all the time, if you solve an important problem that develops, well, that creates wealth, but don't take a job to try to get rich. Take a job to do something that you like, that you can work towards solving a major problem and leaving the world better than you left it. But don't try to make the cash register ring. Just focus on doing the right thing.
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B
Yeah, I was talking to someone the other day. I think it was Dr. Gladden. I'm not sure if you know Dr. Jeffrey. Yeah, I was talking to him the other day and I'm like, if big Pharma could just understand that people would live longer if they just switch their focus to preventative medicine versus what do you call it? I guess it's reactive. Reactive medicine. They just understand. They switch to people who live longer and they're going to, they're going to have clients longer, they'll have customers.
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A
That's not the financial model, you know, medicine. The thing that changed my entire paradigm on medicine, you know, I taught future physicians in medical school for a number of years as a professor. The thing that changed my whole philosophy is you got to look at medicine as a business. It's a business just like any other business. And what's the number one kind of motivation of business? Acquire a customer and never lose that customer and extract as much value out of that customer as you can. And it's a, it's a trillion dollar global economy. It's the best business model on earth because they get you on a drug, then they got to put you on another drug to mitigate the side effects of that drug that causes other diseases. Now the gastroenterologist has to intervene and give you drugs for the gi. Then the neurologist has to intervene because now you have dementia, Alzheimer's. And then cardiologist has got to intervene now because you've got heart disease and angina. So, you know, during COVID we had clinical trials in place and we had patients that were on 15, 20 different medications. So that business model of medicine is the best in the world, but it's at the expense of the American health. And we got to get away from that because it's killing Americans, it's bankrupting the company, the country. And there's a better way. We know there's a better way, but there's going to be some hits. And the hits are going to come at the expense of big pharma.
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B
Yeah, well, you've made millions in sales from doing it the other way.
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A
On the other side, we've generated probably close to a billion dollars in sales by taking care of people and creating a trust that the Science that I've created and discovered over the past 25 years is valid. And the products that we offer to consumers is not only safe, it's recapitulating physiology and addressing root cause mechanisms of disease. It's just giving the body what it needs and the body heals itself.
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B
Yeah, I got a buddy named Rosie and he, he was working with some nitric oxide products and he was talking about the, the reversing of age with it. Did you find, did you found that.
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A
As well with it now we would look, there's now these biomarkers coming out, whether it's glycan biomarkers, glycan age, or you can look at endothelial function and through algorithms, develop a biological age and compare it to your chronological age. And yeah, every time we do this, we see a reversal of aging based on whatever endpoint, whatever metric we're looking at. I'm 51 chronologically, but my biological age based on some of these biomarkers are 36, 38. And you know, I'm a meat eating, scotch drinking, hell raising, Texan, but I take care of myself. And you know, I certainly use our nitric oxide products every day and I have for the past 20 years.
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B
Yeah, yeah, but so nitric oxide, you picked, it seems like you have other products that you worked with, but that's the one that you're known for, right? How did you become known for that? And, and by the way, in business it's always good to niche, right, if you get that, because if otherwise you're dispersed all over the place. How did that become the niche for you?
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A
Well, I've always thought do one thing and do it better than anybody else. And in science, that was my niche. So when I was in LSU School of Medicine, a Nobel prize had just been awarded for the discovery of nitric oxide. So it was an exciting time in science and medicine. Had a chance to meet with the guys who won the Nobel Prize. That's the highest accolade in science to win a Nobel Prize. It's based on discoveries that affect and improve humankind. And so this molecule, nitric oxide, it's a gas, it's naturally produced, and once it's produced, it's gone in less than a second. So the Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system. So when nitric oxide is produced, it dilates the blood vessels. So now we can improve blood flow, normalize blood pressure, improve things like sexual function, cognitive function, athletic performance. But it's a gas and at the time we didn't know how to quantify or measure nitric oxide in biological systems. So I cracked the code on that during my PhD work and we figured out how to detect and quantify nitric oxide in heart tissue, in blood, in cerebral spinal fluid and saliva. And so we then created a fingerprint of nitric oxide biology in many different disease states. So now we could figure out these so called collateral symptoms that were previously couldn't be explained by their underlying diagnosis because everything that contributed to that patient's disease or symptomology could be explained by lack of nitric oxide. So then when I went to Boston, I trained with, you know, in the department of medicine and cardiology, really vascular biology, and try to figure out, okay, what goes wrong in people that can't make nitric oxide. And then how do we correct that? How do we fix that? You know, I've published over 100 peer reviewed papers and we've made a lot of discoveries. And then when I got to Houston, all I did was enable patents. I would go into the lab by myself and I had these ideas and I would say, okay, if your body can't make nitric oxide, then I got to provide it for you. And this was similar to, in 2007, we published a very important paper showing that nitric oxide is a hormone. So then that changed the way the entire field thought because hormone replacement therapy is, everybody knows it, right? If you can't make testosterone, then what do we do? We give you testosterone. We don't give you DHEA or precursors and rely on your body to make it. No, you can't make it. We got to give it to you. Same thing with women, hormone deficiencies and estrogen deficiency. We give you estrogen. So if you're nitric oxide deficient, I can't give you something and rely on your body to make it, because that's the reason you're deficient. You, you, your body can't make it. So I developed technology that if you can't make it, I'm going to do it for you. I'm going to replace nitric oxide hormone through our delivery system, through this orally disintegrating tablet, through a topical delivery. So everything we do is only repleting and reproducing nitric oxide in the human body. That's our metric. We set the standard and we do it better than me body. No.
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B
So when you mentioned crack the code, what happens when you crack the code? Okay, let's say you take us through that process. When you right before and when you crack it, and then what happens right after?
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A
Well, look, nitric oxide is a gas, and at the time, since the early 90s, the only way it could be administered was in a. In kind of an inpatient setting, in hospital setting. So they would hook you up to a nitric oxide gas cylinder through a nasal cannula, similar like they give you oxygen, and they would deliver nitric oxide directly into the pulmonary vasculature. And the only approved indication by the FDA was premature babies with pulmonary hypertension. So when babies are born premature, the lungs are typically the last organ to develop. So if you're premature, your lungs are poorly developed. Then when you start breathing room air, when you get out of the womb, you develop pulmonary hypertension. So the treatment for that was to give nitric oxide gas to dilate the pulmonary arteries and relieve the pulmonary hypertension and improve oxygen exchange. So how do you deliver nitric oxide gas in an outpatient setting without wheeling a nitric oxide tank around? And so what I did, I cracked the code on delivering a solid dose form of nitric oxide gas. So now we can deliver therapeutic amounts of nitric oxide by putting a lozenge in your mouth, allowing it to dissolve, and as it's dissolving over five to six minutes, it's releasing therapeutic amounts of nitric oxide gas. And that's the code that everybody said it's impossible, you can't do, Won't be absorbed, it won't go systemic, and we prove them wrong.
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B
And then. So you crack the code, you prove them wrong, and then what happens after that to, like, get the word out or. And get recognition for it?
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A
Well, we publish papers in the scientific literature. Others have, you know, replicated that data, they verified the data, so it stood the test of time. And then we do clinical trials, we. We enroll patients, and then we give them the lozenge or a placebo, and we follow them over certain amount of time. And we look at the difference between a placebo effect and the effect of the actual lozenge technology. So we do basically everything we know in the scientific and medical literature to verify and validate the technology.
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B
I. I noticed I can breathe better since I started taking your products. Like, I feel like I. I don't know, it just feels easier to get a deep breath. I noticed the difference. 100%.
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A
Yeah. You know, the beauty. I think you mentioned it when you first came on here. You know, what the, the gratification that you get doing what you do, and the gratification I get doing What I do, because every morning and throughout the day, I get dozens, probably hundreds of emails, texts, phone calls of people that we change their lives. You know, people that had blood pressure issues for 30 years, and they just heard me on a podcast, they take my lozenges and they're off all their prescription drugs, their blood pressure is normal, their sex life has improved, their cognition's improved. I mean, how many people work in an environment where you can change people's lives? That's the power of basic science research, but more importantly, translating that research into tangible products that consumers have access to. And so that's. That's. But we had to create the market. Right. Because no one still, today, very few people understand what nitric oxide is, what it does, and why they should even consider a product a nitric oxide product. So that's hurdle number one. Hurdle number two is we've got hundreds of companies and products out there that are marketed as nitric oxide products. But because these companies don't understand the science, there's no way these products can work. And so now the challenge for me is how do we distinguish our product technology from all those other dozens of hundreds of products you can buy on the shelf at the supplement store or online or on Amazon? Because those products can't work. They don't work. And they can't work because these companies don't understand the biochemistry and the enzymology, and they're just trying to sell a product and take advantage of this growing awareness around nitric oxide. And I think that's why these conversations are so important, because my only objective is to educate and inform the masses so that you, Mike, can go out and make. And your listeners can go out and make an educated decision and be an informed consumer. So you can buy a product that's going to work for you and not buy a product that can't work for you.
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B
But. All right, so you were. You were talking about where we left off. You were talking about how to get the products into people so that they could. It actually could work, versus some of the companies out there that have nitric oxide products. But it can't work because they don't understand the science.
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A
Yeah. So most of the products out there giving your body precursors or substrates and then relying on your body to utilize those to produce nitric oxide, which is.
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B
The problem in the first place.
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A
And because they don't. Yeah. Which is the problem in the first place. We're never deficient in the things that. That are needed to create nitric oxide. We've Just lost the ability to utilize those to make nitric oxide. So you know, I say all the time, it's taking those products is like putting a gas, putting gas in a car with a blown up engine. You're not out of fuel and it's not going to get you where you need to go because the engines broke. The engine that makes nitric oxide, the enzyme or the bacteria are dysfunctional or not present and that's the reason you're nitric oxide deficient. So what we do is we know if your body can make nitric oxide for whatever reason, then we got to give it for you, we do it for you. And that's what differentiates us from anybody else. And I actually copyrighted and trademarked the term called nutraceuticals because nutraceuticals, everybody knows it's take supplements, vitamin C, vitamin D, magnesium. These are nutrients that you need to supplement what's missing, nutrients that you supplement. Nitraceuticals is specifically what we do. We provide nitric oxide, we give your body missing nitric oxide that otherwise you can't make. But more importantly, we fix the reason your body can't make it. We, we fix the enzyme and the lining of the blood vessels. We're restoring the, the right oral bacteria in the microbiome so that now your body, the more you take our products, the less you need our products.
- [28:09]
B
Oh, wow. I didn't know that because we're fixing. I didn't know that part.
- [28:12]
A
Yeah, we're basically getting your body back to making it on its own. And that's as a physiologist and biochemist. That's been my goal the whole time. You know, my marketing team doesn't like me telling you that because, you know, we're a for profit business. But I'm more interested in getting people better in using diet and lifestyle and eliminating certain things to restore natural nitric oxide production than I am selling them a product. Because you have to make changes. People have to change what they're doing that led them to that condition that they're in in the first place. Whether it's ED or high blood pressure or diabetes, there is no silver bullet. There's no end all, be all, cure all my laws and just not going to fix that. It can help, but you've got to make some lifestyle changes to get back.
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B
To where you, how do you know when you don't need it anymore?
- [29:03]
A
You know, in an ideal world, in utopia, we wouldn't need it if ever. If the food we ate contained all the basic nutrients we needed and was free of toxins, and we lived in a clean world where the air was clean and the environment we lived in was free of toxins, then nobody would need supplements. Right? We get it all from the food we eat and we exercise and, you know, we create, you know, energy through that mechanism. But the problem is the food we eat today, compared to the 1940s, food grown in America has about a 70, 76% decline or deficiency in basic micronutrients. The same food grown in the 40s to the 2000s, no nutrients in the food we eat. The other thing is, now we have herbicides, pesticides, Roundup glyphosate, all that on the food we eat that are toxins that kill the microbiome, you know, and making people sick. So ideally, if you have a normal blood pressure, if you're a well trained athlete and you can, you know, run a marathon or, you know, a sprinter, and you have normal sexual function, normal cognitive function, and you don't have any metabolic disease, then that tells us your body's probably making sufficient nitric oxide to provide the metabolic machinery that you need to perform. But if you have ed, if you have high blood pressure, if you're metabolically unfit, which nine out of 10Americans are, you can't make nitric oxide. Your body is unable to make nitric oxide. And that explains every single.
- [30:29]
B
And when you get panels done, can you see how much nitric oxide your body's producing? Is that, is there a marker for that?
- [30:36]
A
I mean, we do it in the research lab, but it's not used clinically. So we can draw blood, we can test saliva, and we can test these metabolites of nitric oxide. But because nitric oxide is a gas that's gone in less than a second, once it's produced, we can't pick up the gas in blood and we can't really create a panel. So what we do is we, we have associations. So, for instance, if you're deficient in nitric oxide, what will happen is you'll see the inflammatory markers go up. C reactive protein. A lot of times, depending upon diet, you'll have elevated triglycerides, you know, uric acid. High elevated uric acids will shut down nitric oxide. So there's things we can look at, biomarkers that kind of have an association with nitric oxide production, but there's really no causation of any of these biomarkers. If this is low, then nitric oxide's low. So what we have to do is look at the whole clinical picture, look at biomarkers, but more importantly, look at the clinical presentation of the patient. Do they have ED? Do they have blood pressure greater than 120 over 80? Do they. You put them on a treadmill and if they get winded after a couple of minutes on a treadmill of just doing basic moderate physical exercise, if they get tightness of chest, angina, ischemic pain in the coronary arteries, your body can't make nitric oxide. So that's what we rely on.
- [31:54]
B
I have a couple questions on this. One was that somebody sent me these sticks one time that came in a little tube and you could put your saliva on it and can measure. Is that, was that what it was measuring your nitric oxide?
- [32:06]
A
You know, I was the one that developed those test strips back in 2010. I created that first and only non invasive point of care diagnostic for nitric oxide. But to answer your question, no, it's not measuring nitric oxide. What we're measuring is a byproduct called nitrite, salivary nitrite. So it's really, that test strip is detecting how well your oral microbiome biome is in its ability to convert nitrate from the diet or from nitric oxide that's been oxidized to nitrate in the lining of the blood vessels into nitrite in your saliva. So, you know, I filed patents on those. I abandoned the patents because for me, it wasn't a biochemical test. Always has some caveats. And what we were seeing, we were seeing a lot of false positives. And so by that, I mean, people would probably 80, 85% of the people who use that test strip would show low or depleted. And I think that's accurate. There are no false negatives. If you're low or depleted on that test strip, then that tells us that your body is not able to produce or recycle nitric oxide activity. But the problem with those test strips are we found that there were false positives. So, and this came in the form of a 50 year old, overweight, diabetic, hypertensive patient with severe erectile dysfunction. And he used the saliva test strip and he goes, oh, look, my nitric oxide is perfect. It's optimal. And we're going, this guy is far from optimal. So through interrogating that whole process, come to find out he had bad oral dental infections, he had infected root canals, he had gingivitis, periodontal disease. And so what we were picking up in the saliva was a reflection of the local immune response. To the dysbiosis and the inflammation in the mouth and in the gingival tissue and in the, in the, the gums. So those are false positives. And now we're finding most people have oral dysbiosis. A lot of people have asymptomatic dental infections, and it creates this false positive that could really be dangerous if you don't understand and you misinterpret that test. So we've got.
- [34:14]
B
Do you know how many people don't understand the importance of taking care of their teeth and going to the dentist and getting checkups that how it can affect your heart and can cause problems with your heart? They don't, they don't know that.
- [34:27]
A
Now, this data came out in the early 1900s. I mean, this data is over 100 years old, showing that you could detect oral bacteria in the plaque that killed people from acute sudden cardiac death. Oral bacteria found in the plaque of the thrombus that killed people from heart attack. So that created this whole what we call the oral systemic link. People are now looking at perspective data. People with poor oral hygiene have much higher incidence of heart attack, stroke, all cause mortality. Because what's happening, it's number one, we thought it was translocation of bacteria, bleeding gums. Oral bacteria now become systemic and you get an inflammatory response, a cytokine storm, and it causes inflammation inside of the blood vessel. Platelets become active, you develop a blood clot and heart attack or stroke. And so to fix that, to remedy that, in the early 1900s, they started using antiseptics to kill all the bacteria in the mouth. And now, fast forward 50 years and discovery of the microbiome, the bacteria that live in and on our body that are there to do things that we as humans can't do. When we destroy the microbiome, we now.
- [35:38]
B
Cause systemic Listerine and Scope and all these.
- [35:43]
A
Now those are bad news. I mean, we published on this probably 10 or 12 years ago that people who use mouthwash, the chlorhexidine, the Listerine, the scope, all the alcohol, antiseptic mouthwashes, you're destroying all the bacteria, the good, the bad and the ugly. And the good bacteria far outnumber the bad bacteria. So what we published on and others again have replicated this. You use mouthwash, you kill the oral microbiome, you shut down nitric oxide production, you develop high blood pressure, you lose the protective benefits of exercise, and you start to develop erectile dysfunction. And two out of three Americans wake up every morning and use mouthwash, and two out of three Americans have an unsafe elevation in blood pressure. That's not a coincidence. That is what we call causation.
- [36:28]
B
What about toothpaste?
- [36:31]
A
Yeah, toothpaste, the same. I mean, 99% of the products on the toothpaste on the market have fluoride. And why do they put fluoride in toothpaste? Because it kills bacteria and it kills all bacteria. It's not just the pathogens. It's killing the good non pathogenic commensal bacteria and the microbiome. But furthermore, fluoride is even more toxic than that. It's a neurotoxin and shuts down your thyroid function. And not only is fluoride in your toothpaste, but it's in most municipal water supply. And now you probably saw the data coming out. I've known about this data for 30 years. Exposure to fluoride lowers IQ in kids. And yet they put it in our water. The water we bathe in, the water we cook in, the water we drink.
- [37:11]
B
We get fluoride treatments at the dentist office.
- [37:14]
A
And you get fluoride treatments at the dentist office. I mean, I've spoken before the American Dental association last summer and we're finally getting their attention that the way things you did, you're doing things today the same way you did 80 years ago. And we've learned so much more today than we knew this. So you can't, you can't give me this excuse. Well, why are you doing this? And well, that's because we've all the way, we've always done it. Well, because you didn't know better back then. Today we know better. We know fluoride's a toxin. We know fluoride's an antiseptic. We know fluoride lowers IQ in kids. And you got to get rid of paste.
- [37:50]
B
What should we be using for toothpaste then?
- [37:53]
A
A non chlorinated toothpaste. I mean you got, you got to get rid of fluoride. And all you got to do is look at the back of a toothpaste label of a fluorinated toothpaste. Take your crest, your colgate, your aim and look on the back. It says if you swallow this called poison control center and it's got the number for poison control, the sodium fluoride is what's used in rat poison. It's a poison. It's poison control center is on the back of the toothpaste. I mean, if people knew this, no one in their right mind would buy fluorinated toothpaste.
- [38:21]
B
Is it hard to find Non fluorinated toothpaste.
- [38:22]
A
So you got to get rid of. I mean, no, not really. You know, I'm, I'm launching my own toothpaste later this month, probably in March, because we figured out how do we select, how do we support the oral microbiome, how do we provide a toothpaste that remineralizes teeth, that prevents periodontal disease, gingivitis? We got to support the microbiome. We can't destroy the microbiome. So we make a nitric oxide friendly toothpaste, fluoride free. All the chemicals are out of it, it contains electrolytes, it remineralizes, and it restores the good oral bacteria. So now the good guys can kind of cop and police the bad guys. And if you create a. What we're finding is the greater the diversity of the oral microbiome, the better systemic health, the better the oral health. So what we've been trying to do for the past four to five years is how to create oral care products that support the microbiome, that remineralize teeth, that prevent cavities, and that supports overall systemic health and give consumers a safe option against the 99% of the toothpaste out there that's making people sick.
- [39:29]
B
It's amazing. I'm so glad to be a part of this, to get this, this information out there. All right, we're up against the clock. I want to wind down with this last question here. What was the toughest time in your life?
- [39:41]
A
You know, there's been many tough times. I mean, both professionally and, you know, personally. Obviously you've got a lot of professional backlash from what you're doing and kind of going outside the norm. Personally, it was the loss of our oldest son in a car accident in 2018. 20 year old kid home from college, went out with his buddies and he was a passenger in a, in a vehicle that unfortunately his buddy was drinking and drunk and hit on a tree and killed him instantly. So, you know, that was.
- [40:11]
B
Yeah. As far as your family and everything goes, like, what, what were some of the things that you guys have done? Just, I don't want to say recover, but like, hang in there, you know what I mean? Like, I can't even imagine.
- [40:27]
A
You know, we rely on, on our faith and, you know, we live in a small community and the community comes together in times like that and support and, you know, we just, we, we have hope and we trust and, you know, faith in God that, you know, it was God's will, whatever that is. We don't understand it. But we, we trust and have faith. But you know, it, it certainly changed the way that I go through life on a daily basis because certainly made us realize that time is precious and we're not promised tomorrow. And you know, you get up every day and you do the best you can and be better than you were yesterday and you know, make the most of every day. And you know how we treat people. Yeah. You know, we're remembered by the way we make people feel. Feel not what we. Yeah.
- [41:13]
B
And if we on.
- [41:14]
A
So it's completely changed the way we thought about life and you know, how we.
- [41:19]
B
Yeah. If we, if we understood the why of our Creator. The Creator. Our Creator's not big enough. Right. I mean, you know, and, and you know, I gotta tell you, like, I've had friends that have lost kids before and I have two kids myself. And you know, if, if anything, this means anything at all, like anytime I hear something about this happening, man, I just hug my kids, you know, more and really start to really take the little things and that, you know, they get on you sometimes, get on your nerves sometimes and things, and just let them things pass, you know. And.
- [41:52]
A
Yeah, and I think you have to be present. You know, I've been traveling. I travel 150000 air miles a year and I've done this for the past 10, 15 years. And it's just, you know, but now I try to be. I wish, you know, looking back, spend more time at home, spend more time with the kids because they grow up so fast. And I look back and all the, you know, I try to make every football game, every basketball game, every golf tournament, every sporting activity and just try to be present and don't let the outside distractions interfere with the time that we have with the kids because you know, I look up and now I got a 16 year old and a 14 year old and.
- [42:25]
B
What was your son's name? What's his name? Grant.
- [42:28]
A
That was Grant. Grant was the oldest and we'll have Lincoln.
- [42:31]
B
Well, listen, again, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hug my kids tight tonight and appreciate that. I mean more than I even. I think I'm doing a pretty good job now, but I'm just going to do it a little bit.
- [42:40]
A
Just.
- [42:40]
B
And if nothing else, the purpose of that too just, you know, adds to it. So thank you for sharing that. And yeah, look, you're doing amazing work and again, I'm just so excited to be a part of it and get this message out. I'm gonna go throw the toothpaste out upstairs if we have any fluoride toothpaste.
- [42:55]
A
And tell my wife, stay tuned because we've got a really healthy toothpaste coming out. And you know, I've got a new book coming out where I chronicle, you know, a lot of the questions you ask are going to be answered in this book. You know what the personal hurdles, the professional things we had to overcome. But this tells the story of nitric oxide, my 25 years in science and medicine and the discoveries we made. But more importantly, what can you do, what can the readers do to take steps to restore their nitric oxide production, prevent this age related decline in nitric oxide production? And the science is really complex and complicated. But what I found is the solution is really pretty simple. So I spent two years writing this book and trying to make it as simple and up to date and practical.
- [43:37]
B
Where can I get that book? Where can I find it?
- [43:42]
A
You can find it where most books are sold. It'll be on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Well, there's a thousand privately owned bookstores. If you go to Nathan's book.com it'll take you there. We're doing pre sales now. The Official launch is February 24th, but we'll have pre sales.
- [43:56]
B
And the title is called the Secret of Nitric Oxide. For those that are listening. Bringing the science to life.
- [44:02]
A
So I'm bringing this molecule is coming out of the palm of my hand because we've been able to bring this molecule to life in product.
- [44:11]
B
The secret of natural gas oxide. Guys, go check it out. And, and here's the other thing I want to say. My wife always says, they say this, they say that. I don't know if she's scrolling tick tock or whatever it is. And we're trying to figure out who they are. I always say who's they. Now we know who they are. Dr. Nathan Bryan, thank you so much for your time today on the what do you made up show.
- [44:30]
A
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [44:31]
B
Thankfully. We'll wrap this up folks. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate the time and attention you've paid with us today. Keep coming back. Subscribe. It's your first time. Welcome and thank you for being here. Keep coming back and until next time, be that one.