EFR 796: Using Nitric Oxide to Reverse Diabetes, Save Newborns, Treat Viruses and Natural Ways to Boost Nitric Oxide Through Diet and Nasal Breathing with Dr. Louis Ignarro

00:00 - Speaker 1 The following is an Operation Podcast production.

00:03 - Speaker 2 I was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the work. Every male patient who was on the drug, although they got a decrease in their blood pressure, developed an erection. The nurses were very aware of that in the clinic and one of the most important factors that leads to diabetes is a deficiency in nitric oxide.

00:24 - Speaker 1 Viagra stops working after a while. People get too casual with it. There are serious side effects, one of which is hearing loss. Is there any truth to this? Some some. First of all, have you heard of the carnivore diet? Yeah, right they only ever eat meat usually red meat, which is a deadly diet. Can we say Mediterranean food is the best way to live.

00:44 - Speaker 2 There's no question about it, but in serious respiratory distress situations the inhalation of nitric oxide gas can work right.

00:54 - Speaker 1 If I inhaled a little bit of nitric oxide, would I get a breathing enhancement? Yes, would it optimize my lung capacity?

01:02 - Speaker 2 Because NO is antiviral, not just vasodilator, and this and that we make NO to kill viruses in our body to sustain our lives.

01:13 - Speaker 1 Why has no one heard about this?

01:16 - Speaker 2 Hi, my name is Lou Ignaro. I am a professor of pharmacology and physiology and I am here to talk about nitric oxide and I want to welcome everyone to Ever Forward.

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03:23 We are back. Dr lou is back. Welcome back to Welcome back to Everford Radio. My friends, I'm so excited to bring you Dr Lou Ignaro returning to the show. He joined us a little over a year ago on the podcast in episode 615, where we talked about the discovery of nitric oxide, how it prevents heart disease, erectile dysfunction and why it is so important for our overall health. I'll make sure to link the first episode with him down in the show notes. A big reason why I invited Lou back on the show is because over on YouTube, this video has just been straight up, blowing up Nearly 300,000 views, thousands of likes, hundreds of comments. You all actually had some really interesting questions, and so I brought Lou back on the show to dive into the questions that you asked.

04:06 On the YouTube channel we talk about the crucial role that NO has in human health. Dr Arnaud is also gonna be providing insight into the unexpected effects of certain diets on nitric oxide levels, comparing Mediterranean diet diving into the carnivore diet, profound implications for pre-diabetics, diabetics and those of us myself included here just seeking to maintain healthy lifestyles and to optimize where we can. He's been guiding us through the science behind medications like Ozempic, the importance of dietary choices and the often overlooked significance of nasal breathing techniques for enhancing NO production. Lou is back with me in the studio, so if you want to check out the video part two, I'll have it linked for you down in the show notes.

04:47 This is always available on the website. Just go to everforwardradiocom. Or, if you are on YouTube but me in the world, if you would subscribe to the channel. It really does support us in a big, big way. I'm gonna have this link for you down in the show notes. As always, some big surprises in this episode, big, big surprises, talking about how humming can amplify your body's NO production, the benefits of nasal breathing over mouth breathing, not just for sleep enhancement but for actually immediately increasing NO, and so much more. Welcome to Everford Radio everybody. This is Dr Lou Ignaro.

05:20 - Speaker 2 Well, thanks, chase. It's great to be back here and I'm so happy to learn that so many people are interested in nitric oxide. Not me necessarily, chase. It's great to be back here and I'm so happy to learn that so many people are interested in nitric oxide Not me, necessarily, but nitric oxide.

05:29 Well, if you don't know, if my audience is unaware of who, I have a doctorate degree, a PhD in biology and pharmacology, my research has always been in the cardiovascular system, and so, right from the get-go, I started trying to figure out what causes high blood pressure, what causes diabetes, what causes coronary artery disease, and so on, and by just working hard and pursuing my dreams of trying to unravel all this, I was able to discover that our bodies produce a very magical molecule, if I may call it that called nitric oxide or NO, and this is a molecule we produce that works to protect us against all kinds of cardiovascular disease.

06:31 - Speaker 1 And quite the humble man you heard in that story. He left out a very interesting detail. Nobel Prize recipient for the discovery of nitric oxide in the human body.

06:44 - Speaker 2 Right. Yes, I was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for the work and the two criteria for the Nobel Prize which most people don't know, is one you have to have made an original, first-time discovery. So my discovery was that the body makes nitric oxide. But that's not enough. The second requirement to be considered for the Nobel Prize is that your discovery has to be of obvious benefit to humankind. And, of course, we know that nitric oxide can save your life, can extend your life. Many drugs now work through a nitric oxide mechanism and that's why I was awarded the Nobel Prize. Congratulations again. Well, thank you.

07:30 - Speaker 1 I mean that's quite the feat, and for anybody that is unfamiliar about nitric oxide, I'm sure we'll get into this a little bit more. The format of this episode is I'm going to kind of bring our attention back to nitric oxide, what it is, why it's important, but really we're going to be answering quite a few questions from that first video that people are still curious about in terms of why is it important, how can I create it, how can I get it and a few other things. So just to kind of set the tone, just pull the definition from Google. No, nitric oxide is a gas formed by combining nitrogen and oxygen. It occurs naturally both outside and inside the body. Outside the body, nitric oxide is a colorless, sweet-smelling gas that is toxic at high levels. Inside the body, it acts as an important chemical messenger involved in many bodily functions. Did Google get it right? Would you add or subtract?

08:26 - Speaker 2 anything. Yeah, google's getting better and better over the years, so they got it right with nitric oxide.

08:31 - Speaker 1 So my first question, or our first question, is how can it NO affect pre-diabetics?

08:40 - Speaker 2 Oh, in a very favorable way. The thing to remember is that there are certain factors in the body that lead up to diabetes or pre-diabetes, and one of the most important factors that leads to diabetes is a deficiency in nitric oxide, when your nitric oxide levels are low. So if one were to maintain, if one could maintain, at least normal levels of nitric oxide, then the likelihood of one developing diabetes, especially type 2 diabetes, is quite low. And the thing is this that if people adapt an unhealthy lifestyle meaning poor diet, no physical activity, mostly a sedentary lifestyle these are the factors that lead to a decrease in nitric oxide well, well known for the last 25 years. And when you lower your nitric oxide levels, you lower the protection that the nitric oxide has to prevent the development of diabetes. So if your NO is normal, you probably won't get diabetes. I mean, there are always exceptions to these rules, but in general what you want to do is have a normal nitric oxide level. So the question was what can NO do in pre-diabetics?

10:06 - Speaker 1 Yeah, how can nitric oxide affect pre-diabetics?

10:09 - Speaker 2 Yeah it can improve their condition, no question about it. It can certainly slow down and delay the development of a full-blown diabetes. So if someone is a pre-diabetic, then the key thing the physician should tell them is you must immediately embark on a healthy, balanced diet and we can talk about that later. Healthy, balanced diet, and please put some physical activity in your life. Even if it's just walking three or four days a week, that will do it.

10:46 - Speaker 1 And correct me if I'm wrong. I haven't looked at the charts in a little while, but I believe pre-diabetes is considered an A1c of 5.7 to 6.1,.

10:57 - Speaker 2 I think yes in that range, yes around six, right.

11:01 - Speaker 1 So is it safe to say that if someone is pre-diabetic, meaning they have an A1C within that range, is it safe to say then that most likely they have low NO levels as well?

11:13 - Speaker 2 Yes, right, where it's been examined clinically, everyone with a high level of hemoglobin A1C, or just call it A1C. Those patients have lower levels of nitric oxide in certain areas of the cardiovascular system. And, looking at it another way, in where it's been examined, those people with normal levels of hemoglobin A1C have normal production and action of nitric oxide. So that's why this is a very strong association and other research has shown that there's no question about it. When the nitric oxide level is low, the protection is lost.

11:56 - Speaker 1 There are a variety of metabolic changes which I won't get into and that causes problems which cause a rise in hemoglobin a1c and we're going to get into this a little bit later on in terms of ways to naturally ie internally boost or create more no, or even you know foods and supplementation. But aside from that, it should make sense that we increase nitric oxide production and therefore can reduce or get out of that pre-diabetic range by means of the best way to create more NO is through what you're talking about physical activity, strength training, exercise. That's really how the body creates more of it naturally. So increase healthier lifestyle through activity and exercise boosts NO, and therefore it gets you out of that pre-diabetic range. It's a simple answer.

12:44 - Speaker 2 That's what I tell people, and most of them don't believe me because they say, well, it can't be that simple. And I go well, why can't it be that simple? See, people are looking for a magic drug, a magic bullet. They want to be able to eat their hamburgers and not get up and jog.

12:59 - Speaker 1 Well, they have it now it's the Ozempic.

13:05 - Speaker 2 yes, that drug will aid one in losing weight, that's for sure, losing weight.

13:12 - Speaker 1 GLP-1 agonists.

13:14 - Speaker 2 Exactly. But just losing weight, I'm afraid, is not going to do it, because you're going to still develop diabetes. Because you're going to still develop diabetes If you don't do anything to boost your nitric oxide while you're losing weight. You will lose weight, but years down the line you're going to still develop cardiovascular disease. Now Ozempic has been out a short time.

13:40 - Speaker 1 It was a diabetes drug first, and now it's off-label for weight loss.

13:43 - Speaker 2 It was a diabetes drug first and now it's off-label for women. Right, we have to wait 20, 30 years to see the results of Ozempic in decreasing the incidence of cardiovascular disease. We're not going to see that for a long time. You can't do a study in two or three years and say, oh, Ozempic prevents cardiovascular disease. No, you have to. I mean, what does it do? It does a number of things that allows you to lose body weight. But the smart patient and the smart physician will tell the patient take advantage of the Ozempic While you take the drug and lose weight, increase your physical activity, switch your diet over to a healthy, balanced diet and between the Ozempic and those two other more natural phenomenon you're gonna be very healthy.

14:31 - Speaker 1 It's a great start absolutely.

14:32 - Speaker 3 Yeah.

14:32 - Speaker 1 Yeah, amazing. Okay, so number two. The second question Viagra stops working after a while. People get too casual with it. There are serious side effects, one of which is hearing loss. Is there any truth to this?

14:45 - Speaker 2 Some some. First of all, there's very, very little evidence that taking Viagra leads to the development of tolerance to the drug. Tolerance means you're responding less and less to the drug. If you look at the clinical literature, the evidence for the development of tolerance to Viagra, the normal recommended dose, which is 50 milligrams for a man to take, there's very little evidence. And what most urologists believe is that the tolerance to the drug I mean it's not the tolerance to the drug that's developing, but it's the worsening over time of the erectile dysfunction. Oh, interesting really, they're happening together.

15:35 So you can't blame the Viagra for the tolerance. Instead, the ED, the erectile dysfunction, is getting worse. You know, remember now folks, viagra does not cure ED, it does not reverse ED. It has nothing to do with the disease. What Viagra does is allows the man to get an erection when he can't really get one because he has erectile dysfunction. So it increases the ability to get the erection, but it has nothing to do with ability to get the erection. But it has nothing to do with, you know, treatment of the disease.

16:21 - Speaker 1 Can you, maybe Dr Liu, walk us through a high level understanding of what is happening with erectile dysfunction? Now again, we did touch on this quite a bit in the first episode, but just so people are clear now.

16:27 - Speaker 2 Well and people forget Well, erectile dysfunction most forms. There are many different forms, but let's focus on the most common form of erectile dysfunction. It's brought about by failure of the nerves, the nerves that attach to the erectile tissue in the penis. They're not releasing, they're not functioning normally and they're not releasing. They're not functioning normally and they're not releasing their neurotransmitter. All nerves release a chemical called a neurotransmitter and that neurotransmitter then produces a function on the organ that the nerves are attached to. In the case of the erectile tissue, the nerves are releasing, as we first found, nitric oxide, and the nitric oxide is a vasodilator right Meaning it expands.

17:18 - Speaker 1 It expands the blood vessels, expands our blood vessels. So what?

17:20 - Speaker 2 happens. When you expand blood vessels, they fill up with blood. I don't have to explain how that relates to erectile function. Okay, I mean, that's how Viagra works. So in patients with ED erectile dysfunction for some reason that's now becoming clear the nerves are not releasing enough nitric oxide, so a normal erection cannot be obtained in order to, you know, perform sexual intercourse or anything else for that matter. And so what we understand now are the factors that can lead to this decrease in nitric oxide release from the nerves. And once again, what is it? It is a poor diet and a lack of physical activity. The poor diet and the lack of physical activity is very strongly associated with erectile dysfunction.

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19:43 Slash ever forward. That's b-i-o-p-t-i-m-i-z-e-r-s dot com. Slash ever forward. And then, at checkout, to save 10%, make sure to use ever forward 10. That's ever forward one zero. I personally love taking mine about 30 minutes to 45 minutes before going to bed. It helps me get the best, deepest, most restorative sleep so that I can wake up energized, feeling my best, and just keep moving forward every damn day. Buy optimizerscom slash everforward Code everforward10 to save 10%. How would you define poor diet? What do you mean by that?

20:21 - Speaker 2 A poor diet is not eating enough fruits and vegetables, which naturally boost your nitric oxide tremendously, which naturally boost your nitric oxide tremendously, and it's eating the wrong kinds of carbohydrates. Carbs are good, fruits and vegetables are carbs, but so is refined sugar, so is sugar potatoes, potato chips and all the packaged carbs out there.

20:51 - Speaker 1 Mostly processed foods, mostly processed foods processed foods.

20:54 - Speaker 2 You know that that's a big problem and also it's it's important to eat protein, but it's important to eat healthy protein how do you define healthy protein? Well, let me tell you what healthy protein is not okay. A nice fatty wagyu beef or steak.

21:11 - Speaker 1 You're saying Saturated fat.

21:15 - Speaker 2 Saturated fat. Saturated fat is a big, big problem and we can get into that later.

21:23 - Speaker 1 There's a lot of controversy about that. A lot of people feel like it's not as big of a demon as a lot of people make it out to be. It depends.

21:29 - Speaker 2 Well, it depends who. A lot of people are. They're not cardiologists, I assure you. Ask, ask a handful of cardiologists. Now it just depends how you look at that. Some saturated fat may be worse than you know than others, and there's also I mean saturated fat in your body when you eat. It leads to the formation of something called free radicals. I don't know how many viewers know that. You can look that up, you can Google that, or if you use chat, gtp.

22:01 - Speaker 1 GPT, gpt.

22:03 - Speaker 2 That is an amazing tool to learn something. I use it all the time, really. I've tested it and I tested it, asking it questions about myself and my work.

22:13 - Speaker 3 I got it right every time, so that's good.

22:16 - Speaker 1 But saturated fats, the fat in certain cuts of beef for example, any fat that is solid at room temperature yeah, any fat that is solid at room temperature in the body is oxidized.

22:29 - Speaker 2 It undergoes oxidation metabolism to free radicals. So if you have a steak once a week, maybe even a couple of times a week, probably is not a big problem. But you know, some people eat hamburgers and all kinds of meats that have saturated fats every day.

22:48 - Speaker 1 Yeah, people on a. Have you heard of the carnivore diet? Yeah, Right they only ever eat meat, usually red meat, which is a deadly diet.

22:56 - Speaker 2 Okay, and I'm happy to criticize that, because you need to consume about one-third each of the major food groups, which is protein, carbs and fat. There's healthy protein and there's unhealthy protein. Eating chicken, for example, eating pork pork is good. It doesn't have nearly as much fat as you know beef from a cow or whatever, so you can have your meat, but you know you need to stay away from the red meat that has lots of fat, lots of fat, and the meats that don't have as much fat are pretty good. But there's so much evidence that saturated fats, both clinically and experimentally, can lead to a decrease in nitric oxide production and that's what you want to avoid. It's very simple experiments to do in humans and lab animals and so on, so it's wise to keep the level down.

23:58 - Speaker 1 I would love to. While we're here kind of talking about it, I would love to get your take on. I mean, you said the carnivore diet is a deadly diet.

24:06 - Speaker 3 That's a pretty big claim, I'd be curious to kind of hear your definition.

24:12 - Speaker 2 You have to understand where I'm coming from. I understand nutrition, I'm an expert in the cardiovascular system and I'm a hell of a biochemist Absolutely, I will say that. So I understand how the body handles saturated fat. And the body handles saturated fat in only one way by. Whenever you consume something, your digestive system breaks it down right, so that it breaks it down into the smallest components, like fatty acids or amino acids, because those are the. Those tiny molecules are the ones that can get through the membranes in your gastrointestinal tract and wind up in the blood. If you can't digest something, it just comes out in the feces.

25:02 So the way your body metabolizes saturated fat is the fat goes to the liver and other organs and gets broken down into smaller fatty acids. And in those reactions and all of those reactions are well known in all those reactions free radicals are produced. Okay, so if you're healthy if you're, admittedly, if you're healthy and you have your saturated fats, but you also have a fairly well-balanced diet and you're of normal weight and you don't have cardiovascular disease, you could, you could probably handle that load of saturated fat, and all those free radicals formed are not going to destroy your cells and decrease your no, production I do do see the majority of people that I see adopting the carnivore diet are very active, exercise very regularly, usually strength training, so they're not just bringing in all the saturated fat and then having a sedentary lifestyle.

26:03 - Speaker 1 So I feel like that kind of that should support it right.

26:06 - Speaker 2 Yes, but you know, just because you're on a carnivore diet does not mean you have to eat Japanese Wagyu beef. You know which is the fattiest beef. I mean, I love it. Once every six months I put in my calendar go to Wolfgang Puck's Cut restaurant in Beverly Hills and have the biggest fattest, you know.

26:25 - Speaker 1 Wagyu beef. That's a great biannual anniversary meal Because I love it, you know.

26:28 - Speaker 2 But it's not going to kill me if I have it once in a while. But you could have carnivore. The definition is what you can Google. It it's meat. It's not fat, it's meat. You can eat meat every single day and be healthy. What kind of meat? Well, if you have pork twice a week, if you have lamb chops twice a week, twice a week, if you have lamb chops twice a week and you have a lean cut of beef once a week you're probably going to be fine.

27:02 - Speaker 1 I think this leads in perfectly to our next question, and that is can we say Mediterranean food is the best way to live?

27:07 - Speaker 2 There's no question about it. And I'm not saying yes because I'm Mediterranean. You see, there's no question about it and I'm not saying yes because I'm Mediterranean. You see, my mom and dad were born in Italy and I was born in Brooklyn, new York, close to the water. So I'm kind of very Mediterranean and so it's well known. I mean, every nutritionist, dietician, physician will state because of the evidence, not because they just feel like speaking Blue zone centenarian.

27:35 - Speaker 3 Yes, the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest diet.

27:39 - Speaker 2 And if you look at all the statistics, the number of how, you know what age do these people achieve? And even though they grow old, what's the incidence of cardiovascular disease? What's the incidence of diabetes? What's the incidence of dementia, their lifespan and incidence of diabetes? What's the incidence of dementia?

27:53 - Speaker 1 their lifespan and health span are both very high, absolutely very high.

27:57 - Speaker 2 Okay, so why? Well, you know, thousands and thousands of people have looked into this and I've read so much of this and it's very clear in my mind. Now, getting back to what we said before carnivores these people, they eat meat. I've been to italy 50 times. They eat meat, but not a 24 ounce chunk of meat with fat hanging around the edge, do you know?

28:26 they cook it. They cut all the fat off, then they cook, cook it. Okay, that's a very big difference. They eat lots of chicken, of course, the way the Mediterranean people get their protein is from fish. Fish is a hundred percent protein. Every time you put a piece of fish in your mouth, all that meat if I may call it that is the fish is protein protein is unsaturated fat. There's no unhealthy fat in fish, it's all polyunsaturated has omega-3s right, omega-3 fatty acids.

29:04 So so that's part of the diet, but the key thing in getting back to the carnivore diet the the big thing I want to state about the reasons why the Mediterranean diet is so healthy. The most factual, believe me, is these people eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables are carbs, but the fruits and vegetables that have the most pronounced color are loaded with antioxidants. Antioxidants are chemicals. If you have each of these antioxidants in a jar as a chemical, it's going to have an extremely bright color. You can identify which fruits and vegetables have the most antioxidants.

29:50 - Speaker 1 How do we do that?

29:51 - Speaker 2 Just look at it. Pomegranate, would you say. Pomegranate is dark. Try getting pomegranate juice on your white shirt.

29:59 - Speaker 1 See if it comes off. My wife is Persian, so I've had that happen many times. That's right pomegranates.

30:05 - Speaker 2 So pomegranates, blueberries, strawberries, any kind of berry. If we go to the vegetable family, beets, try getting beet stains off. You know your nice white sweatshirt.

30:19 - Speaker 3 So beets, arugula, kale, spinach, brussels sprouts dark green, right Dark color green, right Dark color green, right. Dark color green, right Dark color green, right Dark color green, right Dark color green color, green, right dark color green, right dark color green, right. Dark color green, right dark color green, right dark color green, right dark color green, right. Dark color green, right dark color green, right dark color green, right. Dark color green, right dark color green, right dark color green, right dark color green, right dark color green, right dark color green, right dark color green, green, right. Dark color Green, right Dark color Green, right Dark color Green, right Dark color Green, right Dark color, green, right Dark color you have to have fruits and vegetables.

30:58 - Speaker 2 I don't care how much meat you eat, just balance it with an equal amount of fruits and vegetables and you'll sleep better for it, and you'll sleep longer.

31:13 - Speaker 1 So the next question this one's a little bit longer and we have somebody here Welcome to the internet that doesn't agree with you. So this person writes Ignaro makes certain claims that are untrue. The way NO release helps with erectile dysfunction was discovered completely by accident, not by him when experimenters first gave sidenafil to people with heart problems. This is what it was originally designed for, he says. They reported having spontaneous, long-lasting erections as a side effect. Also, saturated fat does not by itself destroy. You know, I know we kind of just touched on that, but we kind of discussed that.

31:46 Then they go on to say the reason obese people and diabetics have atherosclerosis and ischemic heart disease is because both groups frequently suffer from both high blood pressure and insulin resistance. The obese are also known to eat junk food, trans fats and seed oil produce, all of which damage the endothelium. Saturated fat and cholesterol are not the baddies they were made out to be for decades. Kind of a lot in there.

32:13 - Speaker 2 Oh yeah, about two hours worth, but we can kind of slice it. Where would you like me to start? Let's go with my claim.

32:20 - Speaker 1 Let's go back to the claim. The way NO release helps with erectile dysfunction was discovered completely by accident, not by him.

32:26 - Speaker 2 Okay, that's completely incorrect because you see, the Nobel Committee, the committee that awards the Nobel Prize, does not award the Nobel Prize simply for claims. The Nobel Committee awards prizes to those individuals who have made original, original discoveries themselves for the benefit of humankind. So the action of NO in the treatment of erectile dysfunction was definitely not an accident. It's basic research that we did in our laboratory to show what causes erectile dysfunction, which is a lack of nitric oxide. The Pfizer pharmaceutical company was bright enough to look at the research we published and say, oh my goodness, we developed a drug about five years ago that works like nitric oxide to lower the blood pressure. But they didn't market the drug because every male patient who was on the drug, although they got a decrease in their blood pressure, developed an erection. The nurses were very aware of that in the clinic.

33:54 This caused an incredible embarrassment to Pfizer. I've spoken to many of those people since then. They didn't know how to deal with it. On the product label, what do you say? Take the recommended dose of Viagra. Do not exceed the dose because you'll get an erection. If you're a male, well, all the men are going to triple the dose.

34:17 - Speaker 1 Yeah, not the scariest side effect I've ever heard. No, exactly.

34:20 - Speaker 2 And so, rather than deal with that, they decided to stop development of the drug. But this drug to lower the blood pressure produced an effect similar to nitric oxide. It wasn't nitric oxide, similar to nitric oxide, okay. So when we came along and published our findings in 1992, which was a few years after Pfizer stopped developing their sildenafil drug they realized oh my goodness, our drug is working by boosting the action of nitric oxide in the penis, and that's why the patients developed an erection. So they decided to file a new drug application, nda, this time for the treatment of ED, not hypertension. Ah, I see.

35:13 They had already done all the toxic studies toxicity studies and they found the drug was safe. So the FDA fast-tracked the development of the drug and in 1998, it was marketed as Viagra for the treatment of erectile dysfunction Now.

35:32 I have been to Pfizer many times. They've invited me there to discuss all this, and what they admit is that if I had not discovered that nitric oxide is released from the nerves to promote erectile function, they would have never taken that drug off the shelf and redeveloped it for Viagra. Because they decided to stop developing it, because they didn't, they didn't, they didn't know how to deal with the side effect. Now that side effect becomes the major effect, and if you take too much Viagra you'll lower the blood pressure, you'll get dizzy. And now that lowering the blood pressure is the side effect, whereas in the original drug development, it was the erection.

36:20 - Speaker 1 That was the side effect, Because they have both effects. Okay, Well, thank you for clearing that up. I feel like the rest of that statement we kind of touched on before the saturated fat and all of that Right, right, of course of touched on before.

36:33 The saturated fat and all of that, right, right, of course. Moving on to the next one, no, is used extensively in the icu intensive care unit yeah, in all populations as one tool to improve gas exchange in the lungs and elevate po2 in patients with ards. Ards, um, I'm not familiar with what that stands oh, that's acute respiratory distress syndrome, a pulmonary problem.

36:53 Okay. Then they summarize or end it by saying it can be a lifesaver Sure. How is NO used in ICU and how does it relate to improving gas exchange in lungs and elevating PO2?

37:04 - Speaker 2 Sure, it's a long story which I will abbreviate. As you pointed out earlier, nitric oxide is a gas. It doesn't come in a pill or a liquid. It's a gas, very unstable gas. It lasts for about three seconds, that's it. That's enough time for no to produce its effect in the body because it undergoes oxidative stress. Oxidation, free radicals in the presence of free radicals, no lasts for a hundredth of a second.

37:32 - Speaker 1 Does that even count?

37:34 - Speaker 2 Well, that's why I told you that if you have too many free radicals in the body, you wipe out your nitric oxide and it doesn't work anymore. We had discussed that. So, anyway, commercially available is nitric oxide gas. It comes in a big cylinder, it's pure nitric oxide gas and it can be used. It has to be diluted, it has to be mixed with air or oxygen, but that inhaled I'm going to call it INO inhaled nitric oxide with a mask that could be used to treat a number of pulmonary disorders.

38:13 It was first discovered about 25 years ago at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where each year, thousands and thousands of infants newborns. When they're born they have a blue color because their pulmonary arteries are constricted, is not enough blood flow to their lungs to pick up oxygen, so they turn blue. And what was discovered? And, oh yes, so many of them died. So what was discovered is that if you give them just a tiny bit of inhaled nitric oxide I was there witnessing this several times the bodies turn from blue to bright pink before you can count to 10. Wow, it brought tears to my eyes. It was unbelievable.

39:07 - Speaker 1 And bright pink is good. Yeah, way better than blue.

39:11 - Speaker 2 And so these kids, these infants, newborns, after a few days they could go home. Their condition was cured. Wow, it's incredible. So this then led to the use of inhaled nitric oxide to treat other respiratory distress syndromes in adults, like what ARDS? Well, it's just a deficiency of oxygen exchange. They don't have any specific names. I mean they're called acute respiratory distress syndrome. People refer to them as ARDS, and nitric oxide works a little bit. It doesn't work in adults as well as it works in these infants. We don't know why, but in serious respiratory distress situations the inhalation of nitric oxide gas can work.

40:05 - Speaker 1 Do you have to have a respiratory disorder in order to benefit from inhaled nitric oxide? Let's take me me, for example, a standard, healthy, adult male. Right, if I inhaled a little bit of nitric oxide, would I get a a breathing enhancement? Would it optimize my lung capacity?

40:23 - Speaker 2 oh, it'll optimize your lung capacity, it'll increase is it safe?

40:28 nitric oxide relaxes smooth muscle, okay. So your airways, the trachea, your airways have smooth muscle. So when nitric oxide is breathed, in, inhaled, it widens the airway. So you get much more air, therefore more oxygen into your lungs. Nitric oxide also relaxes the arterial, the arteries. That increases blood flow, right, wider the artery, more blood. So now you have more blood and more oxygen in your lungs, you increase your oxygenation and your whole body I mean you know gets increased oxygenation. So your question was is it safe? Right? Yes, only when given in the hospital setting by a professional technician who knows how to give nitric oxide. That's why you can't go use it at home when you're weightlifting.

41:23 - Speaker 1 I was going to say I feel like this is where my mind kind of went Some people might be going there as well in terms of like a training aid or a supplemental way to optimize my healthy lifestyle. If I could have almost like an inhaler or a CPAP or something, just take a quick couple puffs to get these benefits and then go train, I feel like that is something that a lot of people would want Chase you and I both.

41:50 - Speaker 2 Hey, I'm 82 years old Boy. Could I use a boost of nitric oxide in my lungs and other places as well? You know, it's just that we can't deal. The chemistry of nitric oxide is impossible to deal with commercially for those purposes, no is a gas, can't put it in a pill, can't put it in a capsule, can't put it in a liquid. Know, is a gas, can't put it in a pill, can't put it in a capsule, can't put it in a liquid. But most importantly, the gas has a half-life, that is, it lasts for three seconds. So if they put it in a drink it's going to be gone before they put the cap on the drink.

42:25 I mean, you can't take nitrate. The only way you could take nitric oxide is by controlled administration from a tank that has nitric oxide in the absence of oxygen. In the absence of oxygen, the NO lasts for a thousand years. As soon as oxygen creeps in, the oxygen reacts with the nitric oxide to form other molecules and inactivates it. So there's no device, no one knows how to design such a device where all of a sudden you have your nitric oxide.

43:06 - Speaker 1 I feel like somebody could. It's very difficult. That's a million-dollar idea, yeah.

43:11 - Speaker 2 Let me tell you there are a couple of device companies looking into this and I have seen what they're developing. Uh, and it looks great, but still big problems. And it's a handheld device that just contains air. Well, it contains a lot of things, but mainly it's got a chamber of air from the air and a spark plug A spark plug.

43:35 - Speaker 1 Let me explain, and you're going to inhale that.

43:38 - Speaker 2 In the air. We have lots of nitric oxide, which is considered as a pollutant gas in the atmosphere. Before we knew NO existed in the body. We knew it was a pollutant gas in the atmosphere.

43:50 - Speaker 3 Existed in the body we knew it was a pollutant gas Really In the atmosphere.

43:51 - Speaker 2 So that's why, when I first started to study nitric oxide in the 1970s, I couldn't get any money to do my research.

44:02 Because the NIH thought why do we want to give this guy money who's going to study a pollutant gas? Okay, they told me to go to some atmospheric agency to get money to study it. But the point I want to make is that during a lightning storm, when there's lightning, the lightning increases the reaction between the nitrogen in the air. Right, the air has 80% nitrogen, right, it's 20% oxygen. So the lightning catalyzes the combination of n and o to make no. That's how. That's why no exists in the air. Okay, let's come down to earth now. We have a chamber, we have a device that has air in it and a spark plug, where the spark plug is ignited to instantaneously make nitric oxide in that little device.

44:57 And as soon as you stimulate it, you breathe it in. Theoretically it's beautiful, but operationally we ain't there yet. Fascinating If you make too much, NO, it's toxic. You cause a big drop in your blood pressure because it's a vasodilator. If you cause a big drop in blood pressure, you stop delivery of blood to your brain.

45:21 - Speaker 3 That ain't good.

45:22 - Speaker 2 So we have to wait and see how these devices are developed. I'm always talking to these guys because I am hoping, hoping that before I have to go six feet under I could have one of these devices. But I guarantee you, when they first come out it's going to be so prohibitively inexpensive that only the rich would be able to use them to work out but it's a great thing to hope for.

45:48 - Speaker 1 The extremist, most extreme biohackers. Have you heard of a gentleman, Brian Johnson?

45:52 - Speaker 2 Yeah.

45:53 - Speaker 1 Maybe somebody like him. He might be the one Right right.

45:55 - Speaker 2 But you know, before we leave this topic, if I may Chase, we talked about inhaled nitric oxide. I wanted to emphasize and this has gotten some public attention but not the public attention it should have During COVID, you know, vaccines were developed to treat COVID-19 and they worked like a bandit. Whether you believe in vaccines or not, it still worked and saved millions and millions of lives and in fact, last year the Nobel Prize was awarded to the two people who discovered a new kind of messenger RNA that they used to make the vaccines for COVID-19.

46:35 - Speaker 1 Because COVID is a pulmonary.

46:37 - Speaker 2 Yeah, pulmonary disease caused by a virus.

46:39 And so I went to that Nobel. I was invited to go back and I met these two people and it was just great A very well-deserved Nobel Prize for their original discovery, and I think the benefit to humankind was rather obvious. So let me say that, in addition to the vaccines, inhaled nitric oxide, starting two years ago, was used very, very successfully in treating patients with severe COVID. It worked so well that it kept the patients out of the ICU so that the beds in the ICU were more freely available to those people who were really sick and could not get the inhaled nitric oxide.

47:22 - Speaker 1 If I'm misunderstanding, excuse me, but let me ask you directly. Yes, so people that were in dire straits, suffering from COVID and what I will say most likely if you're going into the ICU, you have COVID and other symptoms, chronic illness, disease, what I witnessed during COVID time people who, barring a few occasions, most of the people that suffered the most and unfortunately passed away from COVID also had a myriad of other preexisting conditions obesity, diabetes, other things like that and this was kind of like the catalyst. Why didn't we hear about people inhaling, using inhaled nitric?

47:56 - Speaker 2 oxide to alleviate. First of all, I would agree with half of what you said, not the other half. Yes, people with other conditions cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes they suffered the most when they got COVID. They suffered the most when they got COVID, but over 50% of the patients who died from COVID were normal or were apparently normal when they were admitted. They were not obese, they didn't have diabetes.

48:24 Covid is a terrible situation. Let me explain, because it has to do with nitric oxide and the use of inhaled NO. When that SARS-CoV-2 virus, let's just say the COVID virus, when the COVID virus is inhaled, what it does is it attaches to the alveoli in your lungs where you have oxygen exchange, and it destroys the capillary network. It destroys the endothelial cells that line the capillaries. Those are the cells that make nitric oxide. So the COVID virus destroys the inner lining of the arteries and this has been measured of course causes a huge drop in nitric oxide. So what is the result?

49:14 Now you'll be able to answer this based on what you all now know about the pharmacology of NO. Remember NO is a bronchodilator. It widens the airways. So if you decrease NO in COVID, you constrict the airways. It becomes very difficult to breathe. Also, if you decrease your nitric oxide, you get a vasoconstriction, so you're decreasing the blood flow into the lungs. So now you have less blood, less oxygen and you wind up in the ICU under oxygen and you wind up in the ICU under oxygen, artificial respiration, mechanical oxygenation and so on, and it's due to the destruction of nitric oxide. The other thing is this, which we didn't touch on we talked about NO being a vasodilator, bronchodilator, Right, but nitric oxide is a fantastic antiviral chemical, Really, yes, it's the way in your body. It's the way nitric oxide protects your lungs against viruses. That's why, when you inhale through your nose, you get nitric oxide into your lungs. We could touch on that later.

50:26 - Speaker 1 So maybe I was living under a rock, but why didn't I hear about NO being used in the treatment of COVID?

50:32 - Speaker 2 It was. You know I do not understand why I really have come out against the press at Harvard University and several other places where these studies were done and published in the best of journals. And the inhaled nitric oxide was used in every clinic and hospital in the US and in Europe and especially in China where there were so many people with COVID-19. And just to show you how safe it was and that the people didn't have to be obese and diabetic. The second clinical study, which was done in Massachusetts, brought in a whole bunch of pregnant women of normal health.

51:16 - Speaker 1 You can conduct clinical trials on pregnant women.

51:18 - Speaker 2 Yes, because they were ready to go into the ICU and die. They were volunteers, okay, okay, approved by the university and the FDA, they went in. They were given inhaled nitric oxide. After about a week or two their condition was cured. They did not have to go into the ICU, they went home and every one of them gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby, and two of them had twins.

51:46 - Speaker 1 And mom and babies.

51:48 - Speaker 2 now, years later, Fine, yeah, two years later.

51:52 - Speaker 1 Why has no one heard about this?

51:53 - Speaker 2 Why has no one heard about nitric oxide or leuignaro, mom and babies? Now, years later, fine, yeah, two years later. Why have? Why have I not heard? Why has no one heard about this? Why has no one heard about nitric oxide or Louie narrow? You answer that and I'll answer your question.

52:01 - Speaker 1 Well, they will. Now, you know. Hopefully we can get the same viewership on this one, you know let's get a few hundred more thousand people to tune in, right, I mean, that's that is mind boggling. I know, I know, I know I know, and also so not to get too political.

52:13 I mean because I know you do have you know you are affiliated or you have relationships with Pfizer and I know they have skin in the game, especially when it comes to COVID and vaccines. But I feel like to do that is a natural, I'm going to say I think way less expensive option to treat something as severe as ARDS and COVID. There's really we didn't hear about it because there's no money in that probably right.

52:38 - Speaker 2 You mean the COVID?

52:39 - Speaker 1 treatment Right yeah.

52:40 - Speaker 2 Oh yeah, the inhaled nitric oxide is so expensive. First of all, it has to be performed in a hospital or clinic under supervision, because NO can be toxic at the very high concentration. It has to be administered in a certain way, diluted a certain way, has to be monitored a certain way. But if the people are, in such dire straits already.

53:02 - Speaker 1 they're already going to be in the hospital, they're already going to be getting that acute care. So I feel like at that point you know we're already there.

53:09 - Speaker 2 Yeah, under those conditions. Yes, many patients in hundreds of clinics throughout the United States and Europe and in China, were given inhaled nitric oxide. It's very beneficial. However, if you look at ratios, globally, globally, but. But the vaccine saved the lives of, or the vaccine was used to treat patients with COVID by the hundreds of millions. The number of patients that were treated with the inhaled nitric oxide was more in the hundreds, maybe a thousand.

53:43 - Speaker 1 Why so low? Was that just access?

53:44 - Speaker 2 Well, because it's just not enough of those machines around. Not every clinic has it, Not every. I think there's 40 places in the US that have it, but they have one machine.

53:54 - Speaker 1 We need to get every hospital, every ICU to have an INO.

53:57 - Speaker 2 Hey, you're preaching to the choir. I'm dumbfounded. Well, covid is going away now, but the beautiful thing about this finding and I want everybody to keep this in mind is that COVID is caused by a virus. So is the common cold, so is the flu. Can inhaled nitric oxide be used to treat the common cold and a flu before it gets worse and kills you, especially if you're old? This is why the biotech companies are trying to develop small units that can be kept at home to breathe nitric oxide, so that if you get a bad cold and you're aged and you get a bad flu, you could take this yourself and maybe save your life. Believe me, that's a trillion-dollar market and I just can't wait. I hope that that comes to fruition someday, because no is antiviral, not just vasodilator and this and that it's we make, no, to kill viruses in our body to sustain our lives you have given me a lot of homework to go check out.

55:11 - Speaker 1 Uh, I am, I'm seriously, I'm dumbfounded. I cannot believe that I, or my peers, my wife, even she's a family nurse practitioner. I feel like even someone working in health care during covid. This is all new information to me.

55:23 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I, I'm all right, good, I hope we get mad about it. I want, I'm, yeah, I'm. Why? Why don't we know about it, right?

55:30 - Speaker 1 you think they would talk?

55:31 - Speaker 3 about it on the news you know no can we get nitric oxide over the counter?

55:38 - Speaker 2 I'm afraid you can't, for all the reasons I I've been pointing out. Nitric oxide again is it is a gaseous material. Uh, yeah, you can buy gases in a can, but the thing is that it's a very unstable gas. It would last, you know, for three seconds. And so even if the nitric oxide came in a can and there was no oxygen in it as soon as you let it out, it would be inactivated before you could. You could use it also, you know, that's, that's the primary thing. So you, you can't get it over the counter. You can't get it over the counter. You can't get it by prescription. The only way you can get pure nitric oxide is in a gas cylinder and it has to be administered under incredible supervision, like we just kind of went through yeah and the FDA strictly controls for what reasons the NO gas can be used.

56:29 However, I always tell people you know you don't have to breathe in pure NO gas to be used. However, I always tell people you know you don't have to breathe in pure NO gas to reap the benefits of NO. All you have to do is to make sure that you are producing a normal amount of nitric oxide in your body. You don't need the external nitric oxide in a gas tank.

56:47 - Speaker 1 What is a normal amount?

56:49 - Speaker 2 You make a lot of well, it can't be defined in terms of amounts. I mean we could talk about we can't go get a micromolar, but we can't you know, it doesn't make.

56:57 - Speaker 1 It's not like a biomarker we can get like our glucose or cholesterol. We can't not yet.

57:01 - Speaker 2 But again, industry is working on it. It's a tough molecule. This molecule is tough to deal with. Eventually it will be a biomarker and, in fact, eventually you'll be able to wear a device If you like to work out whether it's running.

57:17 - Speaker 1 A double-dipping device is over here.

57:18 - Speaker 2 Yes, you'll be able to wear a device over certain muscle groups and when you exercise it can measure the amount of oxygen you're utilizing in the muscle and the amount of nitric oxide that you're producing.

57:32 - Speaker 1 I imagine this kind of being like. I'm not wearing one now, but I do a couple times a year.

57:36 - Speaker 2 I wear a continuous glucose monitor yes, in muscle, uh to get real live feedback of metabolic health exactly spikes, and all that it could be something similar yeah, yeah, and the company working on have some devices out, but it's not perfected yet. We just need to wait until they're perfected.

57:58 But yeah, I do a lot of stationary biking indoors, you know, when it rains, and I use a program called Zwift. I'm really a big fan of it's not the Peloton, it's much better and I get my exercise that way. So I mount this device on my quad and I could see the amount of if I'm biking harder, climbing a hill, the amount of NO goes up and the amount of oxygen goes down because I'm utilizing the oxygen, and then when I stop, the NO goes down and the oxygen goes up as we get re-oxygenation of the muscle.

58:37 - Speaker 1 I love it, but maybe not that accurate yet my old exercise physiology days. We call that EPOC right Excess post-oxygen consumption.

58:47 - Speaker 2 Right.

58:48 - Speaker 1 Exactly All right. Moving on to L-citrulline and L-arginine Sure, what are your comments on those two? Which one is better? Okay, I'm assuming they mean in terms of stimulating or helping create NO.

59:01 - Speaker 2 Yes, yeah, both of them are good. Let me explain, because an explanation will serve a great purpose and you'll be able to understand why they're important. In boosting NO production, your body makes NO right. We've been discussing that. Your body makes it. What does it make it from? It doesn't pull it out of the air. How does it make nitric oxide? Well, it makes it from an important amino acid that you consume whenever you eat protein, any kind of protein. The amino acid is arginine Arginine if you Google the chemical structure, if you're interested, it has a lot of amino groups, a lot of nitrogens.

59:44 One of those nitrogens is converted to NO, to NO. So nitric oxide is made from arginine. But it's interesting that when arginine is converted to NO, there's a second product that is formed in that reaction citrulline. Citrulline is another amino acid. Citrulline is found in watermelon all melons, but especially watermelon. So what happens is that citrulline can be reconverted quickly back to arginine. So think about this you have a cell like a blood vat in your arteries arginine converted to NO plus citrulline. Citrulline is reconverted back to arginine.

01:00:37 - Speaker 1 Converted to no plus citrulline, citrulline is reconverted back to arginine and that arginine makes more no, so kind of it's like it's a feed forward, a feed forward cycle, a positive cycle.

01:00:45 - Speaker 2 I you know mother nature is beautiful. I mean, how could you have anything better than that? It's unbelievable. So why shouldn't you take arginine then? Why do you have to take arginine or citrulline? I should say they're both good in boosting NO production. Citrulline is better. That was kind of a surprise 15 years ago, but now we know why. When you consume arginine, when you consume any foods, the food is digested right In your GI tract and then all the little components get into the blood. So where does that blood go? First Goes to your liver. Your liver is a huge organ and it's a detoxifying organ.

01:01:28 Everything has to be detoxified first, right right detoxified in the liver before the healthy stuff gets out into your blood. That's how the liver protects us against ingestion of poisons and other toxins. When the arginine goes into the liver, it's completely destroyed. 99 of it really so only a small amount gets into the blood very little to make nitric oxide. Now there are supplements available. You could buy and take three, five grams, 5,000 milligrams, and you'll make NO.

01:02:01 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so does supplementing your diet with arginine actually have any effect, because the liver metabolizes so much of it?

01:02:06 - Speaker 2 A small effect but a positive effect. It's been measured. But the better product is citrulline because citrulline, when it goes through the liver, is untouched by the liver. So all of the citrulline you consume goes right into the blood. And remember I told you, the citrulline is converted to arginine in the cells.

01:02:28 - Speaker 1 So in the end it's all the same.

01:02:30 - Speaker 2 Yeah, oh, but you get much more NO produced if you consume citrulline than if you consume arginine. Wow, that's been measured. A lot of people did that. So if you take a you know, a spoonful of arginine and a spoonful of citrulline, consume each one separately and measure it's complicated and measure your NO, you get maybe five times more NO with citrulline than arginine. Outstanding so many products in the market now.

01:02:59 - Speaker 1 That's why many pre-workouts and supplements like this is citrulline, oh yeah.

01:03:03 - Speaker 2 And the most popular group of athletes who take these supplements to boost their exercise performance and endurance are weightlifters Apparently weightlifters, they claim that they get an incredible boost taking these products and they get less pain after a while because it improves circulation and that washes out your lactic acid and all your other pain.

01:03:29 - Speaker 1 Decreased recovery time.

01:03:30 - Speaker 3 Right Decreased muscle soreness. Right Increased endurance.

01:03:33 - Speaker 1 Right For my next question, I'm going to get. This one really blew my mind. It's one of those things that I'd kind of heard some stuff about in terms of breathing differently through our mouth, through our nose, humming and nitric oxide production. I actually I have a prop for this one. It's in my bag, for this one. It's in my bag. Excuse me guys, I got to grab this, all right. So the exact question is breathe through your, or the statement rather is breathe through your nose increases NO, so what about mouth breathing versus nasal breathing? Now and this is something, this is where we're going to bring the science to an application that I've been using for a while have you ever seen these mouth tape? Basically?

01:04:10 So, yes, I think so, I use this brand Shout Out Elevate, and I've been using it for almost a year now, and so what you do at night it's meant to put on your mouth so you don't mouth breathe at night.

01:04:23 - Speaker 2 Hey. And you put it on like this oh, so it forces you to breathe through your nose.

01:04:29 - Speaker 1 So you have to breathe through your nose at night. Now I was doing it to improve my sleep. I get measurable better sleep, but now I'm learning this is perhaps increasing nitric oxide production as well.

01:04:41 - Speaker 2 That's why you're getting better sleep, I think.

01:04:43 Okay, so this was a discovery made by a couple of friends of mine in Stockholm at the Karolinska Institute 15 years ago. Couple of friends of mine in Stockholm at the Karolinska Institute 15 years ago. Your nasal mucosal cells in the nose, the nasal cavity, the nasal cavity makes very large amounts of NO gas and that diffuses into your nasal cavity. So if you inhale or breathe through your nose, all that nitric oxide is immediately delivered into your lungs, well within the three second period where the NO would be destroyed. So your nasal mucosal cells make NO that goes into the lungs. Now we talked about this. Why did mother nature give us this? Why does our nasal mucosa make NO?

01:05:35 - Speaker 1 And why only breathing through our nose, not our mouth?

01:05:37 - Speaker 2 You don't make any breathing through your mouth. Okay, but the answer to the first question is more apparent than the second. When you breathe the NO through your nose, that nitric oxide, again we think. I mean we can't ask God for the answer. So you know, as scientists we have to think that the reason we make NO in the nasal cavity and breathe it into your lungs is three reasons, and I've mentioned those already. One increase the airway diameter to get more oxygen, more air right, air contains oxygen To literally be able to breathe in more. Yeah, breathe in more. Secondly, you improve blood flow because it knows a vasodilator, so you have more blood. I mean, what's the use of increasing your oxygen if you don't have any blood there to pick it up? So if you increase the blood and the oxygen, you get delivery of oxygen throughout your body. And the third reason and most pathologists believe that the third reason is the more important reason we make the NO in the nose to keep our lungs free of viral infection.

01:06:48 - Speaker 1 So having more NO at the front line of inhalation decreases our potential probability of contracting viruses Right because the NO can destroy a whole host of viruses, not just COVID-19 virus, as I explained earlier.

01:07:07 - Speaker 2 Remember, with the inhaled nitric oxide treatment of COVID, the NO acts as an antiviral to kill the virus. So every day, if you can inhale through your nose, especially when you sleep or even during the day, you are offering that much more protection against the possibility of getting a common cold, influenza or any other type of respiratory problem caused by a virus.

01:07:38 - Speaker 1 So this is what they say.

01:07:39 - Speaker 3 This is very important.

01:07:40 - Speaker 1 I hear. When I go to yoga classes or I do breath work, I hear all of these claims that now make sense. I've never heard this explanation. By deep breathing, breathing through your nose, it increases or enhances your immune system. I've always just kind of gone okay, but this is why.

01:07:55 - Speaker 2 That's why when you say enhances your immune system, it's not an accurate term, because there are a hundred different reactions in the immune system. What it does is protect you against viruses. That's an immune response. So, yes, it increases your immune system because it fights viruses and bacteria. By the way, I don't want to single out the viruses. Nitric oxide is very good at killing and knocking off bacteria and preventing bacteria from replicating or dividing this is that could be a very important reason for breathing in through your nose.

01:08:33 Also, when you exercise, it's good to breathe in through your nose. Now, that has nothing to do with antiviral effect.

01:08:40 - Speaker 1 Many people use mouth tape during exercise as well.

01:08:43 - Speaker 2 When you exercise, you want to dilate your blood vessels. You want to increase air, increase blood flow, so try as best you can to inhale through your nose instead of your mouth, but it's very difficult. Sometimes you just have to breathe in through your mouth in order to get that increased volume in. You know which is more efficient. Now, you use that. Now you use that. Now you use that. Now you use that. Now. You use that. Now. You use that Now. You use that. Now, you use that. Now. You use that. Now you use that. Now you use that. Sleep. And honestly, I mean, what is it? It could be a variety of things, but right now the only thing we know of for sure is the increase in nitric oxide delivery to your lungs. No has a lot of pulmonary effects. If you increase oxygenation and delivery of oxygen throughout the body, wouldn't that give you a more restful sleep? I think so, that NO could affect other cells in the brain to give you a more restful sleep.

01:10:04 - Speaker 3 I mean.

01:10:05 - Speaker 2 I'm sure there are other explanations, but clearly you know this is one of them. Now I don't use the tape, I just want to say what I use. It's a swedish product. It's a what should I? I forget it's called um breathe, right breathe right of this.

01:10:21 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah it's a.

01:10:22 - Speaker 2 It's um a tape goes over the rigid uh construction, and so what you do is you squeeze it over your nose and then it pops out, it's like elastic and opens up your nostrils. So I used to use that whenever I ran my marathons and I swear that helped me.

01:10:43 - Speaker 1 Before we move on and kind of getting towards the end here, I think we have one or two more questions. Let me define by what I mean my personal experience by using mouth tape at night. When I say I'm getting better sleep, what I noticed when I first started was I use a WHOOP, this wearable activity tracker on my wrist here. I've been using it for almost five years now and I got measurable better sleep. In terms of my sleep efficiency went up. I had longer and more deep sleep, all sleep cycles, rem. But the biggest thing for me was I actually I am getting by with less sleep.

01:11:16 Traditionally, for years, I prioritize sleep a lot and I have really made the same bedtime and same awake time as consistent as possible for about four or five years and for me that means bed 10 to 1030. And I'm usually waking up 715 to 8 am. When I started mouth taping, that went to me waking up, naturally with the same, if not more, energy and ready to go by about 20 to 45 minutes soon. Wow, so I am waking up. So this tells me I'm getting better night's sleep. My whoop tells me I'm getting a better night's sleep. I feel energized, ready to go. But it's also amazing because I'm getting more time back in my day.

01:11:58 Yes, I'm waking up sooner I can start the day, get to work, go meditate, go take the dog out, do whatever. It's been fantastic. But now I'm understanding. It's because I'm getting more nitric oxide. It's because I'm getting more nitric oxide it could be, and better recovery from workouts as well.

01:12:12 - Speaker 2 I'm not waking up anywhere near a sore or need more recovery time Because you could blame it on the vasodilator effect of it. Many people you know I'm not pushing supplements, but many people take these arginine supplements, citrulline supplements oh there's so many of them Nightworks by Herbalife.

01:12:30 - Speaker 1 What about cordyceps? What's your take?

01:12:32 - Speaker 3 on Cordyceps, the functional mushroom.

01:12:34 - Speaker 1 So it's a functional mushroom and it's a natural vasodilator.

01:12:37 - Speaker 2 Right. I can't comment on that. The only thing I can comment on, the only products I can comment on, are the ones I understand mostly, and that's the ones that generate NO. And that's the ones that generate NO, for example, beets, beetroot juice, products like that.

01:12:57 - Speaker 1 I put beet powder in my post-workout.

01:12:58 - Speaker 2 Yeah, that's been shown clinically Every time. Yeah, measurements have been made to boost. No, but other supplements arginine, citrulline. My wife never misses a dose. She likes to double the dose of her arginine and citrulline every day and she swears that she gets such an incredible night's sleep that she could and and she takes it at night she takes it.

01:13:21 She takes it an hour before she goes to bed, but you don't, because I've. I take it in the morning and it works for me too. But but what, what? What she says is that she's able now instead of. I mean, she goes to bed early every night anyway, between eight and nine o'clock, but she was having to get up like at six in the morning and and that was taking a lot of time out of our day, because we have two dogs we like to walk and feed and they're getting up now after taking the supplements. She's up at 4 o'clock every morning without an alarm. Wow, wow, not me. I'm saying what she does and then I get up a half hour later and she feels great for the rest of the day.

01:14:03 - Speaker 1 So many possible applications here.

01:14:04 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I blame it all on nitric oxide, you know.

01:14:07 - Speaker 1 The house that NO built over there Exactly. Well, Dr Liu, as we kind of get towards the end here, I just want to say what an outstanding career you've had, what a contribution to society, to human performance, to longevity, to endurance, to sleep. I mean, I feel like you've had decades in the world and we're still now finding applications and understandings of why and how NO works, how to use it for endurance, recovery, sleep viruses. I'm so excited to see where this goes and so excited to see where you continue to take it Sure, thank you.

01:14:42 I want to get into one other unique item here about NO. That was a question Some of these we've already kind of touched on in terms of it's toxic and only lasts a few seconds. Then how did you create it? And we've kind of went over all that. I would love to really talk about humming. Can humming stimulate? Can humming create nitric oxide in the body?

01:15:06 - Speaker 2 It absolutely can. It was published by the same group that published about 15 years ago that your nasal mucosal cells make nitric oxide. What they discovered is that humming increases that NO production by 15 fold.

01:15:27 - Speaker 1 Not 15%, 15 times 15 times 15 times.

01:15:35 - Speaker 2 So their names are Yun and Eddie. So I looked at that I had scheduled a trip to Stockholm to meet with them. For other reasons, you know we're good friends and I said listen, guys.

01:15:47 - Speaker 3 I don't believe this.

01:15:48 - Speaker 2 When I come to Stockholm. I want you to demonstrate that in front of me. And they did. They have devices that measure nitric oxide production in your nasal cavity, all kinds of sophisticated instrumentation. And so they did it with no humming, they did it with a little bit of humming, they did it with lots of humming and, sure enough, the more you hummed, the more nitric oxide you produced. And it went up to 20 times.

01:16:16 - Speaker 1 Now can we define humming? Does it need to be in a certain tone for a certain duration?

01:16:22 - Speaker 2 What it has to be is keeping the opening of your mouth. It's, you know, closing your mouth. Okay, I'm going to do it sort of on the air. And so when you make that humming sound, you are exhaling through your nose, right, but you're creating tremendous vibrations. It's the vibration that stimulates these special mucosal cells to make more nitric oxide, and the precise enzymatic mechanism, which I will not describe here, was worked out and they published it. And it happens not only in humans, but it also happens where did it happen? In cows that moo, they were able to measure the nitric oxide.

01:17:12 - Speaker 1 I'd like to see that set up. Excuse me, so cows aren't mooing, they're humming.

01:17:22 - Speaker 2 Well, they have their mouth shut, and so I didn't know this no, In many cases the noise is a part of it's coming out of the nose the snout, is that what you call it and part of it is coming out of the mouth. It's both, but it's the tremendous vibration in the face that causes this increase in nitric oxide.

01:17:48 - Speaker 1 I've also heard humming being used and recommended for people to introduce a calmer state. I've heard that humming can stimulate the vagus nerve which helps kind of activate more parasympathetic nervous system activity.

01:18:00 - Speaker 2 Okay.

01:18:01 - Speaker 1 So for high stress, high anxiety, panic attacks kind of just dropping in, so to speak.

01:18:07 - Speaker 2 I'm not too familiar with that. But, yes, that makes good sense. And you know, for those of us, those of you, because I don't do it yoga, I can't practice yoga, because I cannot move my limbs in those sorts of positions.

01:18:22 - Speaker 1 Oh, that's exactly why you should, dr Lou, without winding up in the hospital. I was the same way. That's why I started.

01:18:27 - Speaker 2 Oh God, maybe I should try it, but anyway, there are all kinds of things I've been doing in yoga for hundreds of years, thousands. I never knew anything about nitric oxide. I mean, they're humming.

01:18:39 - Speaker 1 So many different practices with the fingers and blocking certain nostrils.

01:18:42 - Speaker 2 But I hear my wife does yoga and at the end of each yoga class she's going that's a form of humming Anything right that increases the vibration in the nose. But to take advantage of that, if you're going to make all those sounds and have people turn around and look at you, what you need to do is, as soon as you finish making the sound, inhale through your nose. You just made a ton of nitric oxide. Don Don't waste it.

01:19:12 - Speaker 1 Make your humming sound and then breathe in, Can we?

01:19:15 - Speaker 2 this is the perfect way as we wrap up. That takes a lot of work.

01:19:18 - Speaker 1 Can we? Would you do a hum inhale with me.

01:19:21 - Speaker 2 Let's wrap up by breathing Okay, let's do that, okay, and then breathe out through your mouth, because if you breathe out through your nose, you're going to drive the nitric oxide out of your nose, but there's none in your mouth, so breathe out through your mouth.

01:19:39 - Speaker 1 So if somebody wanted, to boost nitric oxide in their body for whatever reason for sleep, for working out, they could, without reaching for beets or any supplement.

01:19:49 - Speaker 2 They could just hum, inhale mouth exhale Exactly and hope the police don't come to the front door.

01:19:57 - Speaker 1 Well, dr Liu, this has been incredible. I'm so honored to have you back here on the show. Maybe, if we get a bunch of more questions for this, we'll have to do round three.

01:20:05 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I'd love to. I love talking about nitric oxide. I want nitric oxide to become a household word. So few people know what nitric oxide is and how beneficial it could be for your health and longevity. So the more chances I get to explain to the world what nitric oxide is and how easy it is for you to boost your NO, the happier I am. So thank you for having me.

01:20:31 - Speaker 1 Let's make the tagline in every home. Let's say yes to no.

01:20:35 - Speaker 2 Say yes to no. I'm all for that.

01:20:37 - Speaker 1 My last question, lou, is maybe you remember this from our first interview. My goal in every episode and bringing people on the show is to highlight unique areas of life, expertise, experience that my audience and myself can practically apply to their life in one way or many ways, to help move our life forward and to keep moving ever forward, ever forward. Those two words today, sir, what do they mean to you? How do you live a life ever forward?

01:21:03 - Speaker 2 Well, I live a life ever forward, taking advantage of my own physiology, what my body can do, you know. I try to do whatever I can do to maximize the efficiency of my body, whether it's my brain, you know, thinking clearly, getting a good night's sleep, being able to make better, informed decisions the next day. I would like to live longer to continue to make my contributions to humankind. How do I do that? Well, I can do that by paying careful attention to what I eat and what I drink, I might add, and also not sitting down all the time, you know, walking as much as I can and also riding my bike as much as I can. So I mean that's sort of ever forward for me. It's very simple, it's very easy to do. Your body can do it, you just have to want to do it.

01:22:05 - Speaker 1 Never a right or wrong answer. I say I appreciate every interpretation. Thank you so much For more information on everything you just heard. Make sure to check this episode, show notes or head to ever forwardradio.com.