The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Silenced Scientist: The Cure For Alzheimer's Already Exists?! Doctors Are Trapped In A Broken System! The Link Between Oral Infection & Cancer!
Mon, 14 Apr 2025
What if the cure for Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and erectile dysfunction already exists? Dr. Nathan Bryan breaks the silence on the missing molecule that could reverse disease. Dr. Nathan Bryan is a renowned nitric oxide biochemist, entrepreneur, and bestselling author. Over the past 18 years, he has made groundbreaking discoveries that have transformed our understanding of nitric oxide’s critical role in human health. He is also the author of books such as ‘The Secret of Nitric Oxide - Bringing The Science To Life’. He explains: Why nitric oxide deficiency is the hidden cause behind major chronic diseases How oral infections can trigger cancer and heart disease Why blood pressure medications often fail and what truly works How nitric oxide therapy can make you biologically 15 years younger Why the healthcare system keeps life-saving treatments hidden 00:00 Intro 02:33 Nathan's Mission 04:38 Decline in Nitric Oxide (NO) Production 05:40 Symptoms of Low NO Levels 06:55 Diseases Linked to NO 08:21 What Prompted Nathan's Interest in NO? 10:35 Your Experience With Your Dad Setting You on This Path 12:07 Who Are You & Your Experience 13:14 Nitric Oxide Breakdown 14:24 Is Everything You See Just Aging? 16:07 How to Measure Vascular Age 17:50 Chronic Diseases Associated With NO Deficiency 21:54 The Medical Industry Is Broken 27:40 Doctors Are Trapped in the Broken System 29:18 The Molecule of Longevity 33:00 What Do You Think of Bryan Johnson? 34:38 Can NO Be Overdosed? 36:33 NO’s Role in Increasing Telomere Length 38:33 Relationship Between NO and Oral Microbiome 40:54 Nathan's View on Antibacterial Products 44:04 Negative Impacts of Using Mouthwash 46:08 Oral Microbiome and Blood Pressure Connection 48:25 Link Between Oral Health and Cancer 54:10 Ads 56:19 How to Improve Our Oral Microbiome 58:21 Are Tongue Scrapers Beneficial for Oral Microbiome? 59:26 Relationship Between NO and Hormones 1:00:14 Should We Be Seeing Dental Hygienists? 1:00:45 Mouthwash Eliminates Benefits of Exercise 1:01:05 Foods to Boost Nitric Oxide Production 1:03:54 Wound-Healing Properties of NO 1:05:02 Foods for NO Production 1:05:36 *Beet the Odds*: Why Nathan Wrote a Book About Beetroots 1:09:06 Growth of Interest in Antacid Medication 1:12:22 Link Between NO Levels and Nasal Breathing 1:15:05 Humming Increases NO Levels 1:16:23 Things to Stimulate NO 1:17:45 The Future of Medicine Relies on This 1:20:01 Are You Happily or Unhappily Mated? Follow Dr. Nathan: Instagram - https://g2ul0.app.link/bRZbIr6ZtSb YouTube - https://g2ul0.app.link/urFHgP9ZtSb Website - https://g2ul0.app.link/AJpc3jc0tSb You can purchase Dr Nathan’s book, ‘The Secret of Nitric Oxide-Bringing The Science To Life’, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/uHJ9hcf0tSb The 1% Diary is back – limited time only: https://bit.ly/1-Diary-Megaphone-ad-r… The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb Get email updates: https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt Think like a CEO – join the 100 CEOs newsletter: https://bit.ly/100-ceos-newsletter Follow Steven: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Independent research - https://nathanbryan.tiiny.co Sponsors: Perfect Ted - https://www.perfectted.com with code DIARY40 for 40% off Vivobarefoot - https://vivobarefoot.com/DOAC with code DOAC20 for 20% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Nathan Bryan and what is his mission?
Chapter 2: What is nitric oxide and why is it important for health?
That molecule is nitric oxide.
Nitric oxide is a signaling molecule in the human body which regulates things like blood flow and oxygen delivery. And the loss of nitric oxide production is the earliest event in the onset progression of age-related chronic disease.
So things like erectile dysfunction, diabetes, Alzheimer's, high blood pressure, which is the number one driver of cardiovascular disease, which is the number one killer of men and women worldwide. And 50% of the patients that are treated with prescription medication don't respond with better blood pressure because they aren't targeted toward nitric oxide. But most people have never heard of this.
They don't know that if you can't walk up a flight of steps or exercise moderately for 15, 20 minutes, then you're nitric oxide deficient. They don't know that most toothpaste and mouthwash is killing the oral microbiome that's partly responsible for production of nitric oxide. But no one is interested in curing human disease because medicine is a business.
And the epiphany for me came because my dad had a car accident. And he developed these non-healing wounds. And I saw the failure of the standard of care to treat dad's wounds. And so I just thought that there had to be a better way. And simply by giving nitric oxide, I've healed this wound within six months.
That's crazy. So how do I improve my nitric oxide levels?
It's what you shouldn't be doing. And we'll cover those step by step.
Number one, you have to avoid... Quick one before we get back to this episode. Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us. And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.
But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.
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Chapter 3: Which diseases are linked to nitric oxide deficiency?
Well, you're going to have high blood pressure or hypertension. And at least in the U.S., and I think these statistics probably are worldwide, but two out of three Americans have an unsafe elevation in blood pressure. And 50% of the people that are given prescription medications to treat their blood pressure do not respond with better blood pressure.
It's because most of the drugs out there, whether they're ACE inhibitors, what's called angiotensin receptor blockers, calcium channel antagonists, the main classes of drugs that treat high blood pressure aren't targeted toward restoration of nitric oxide. So that's why we call that resistant hypertension. They're resistant to traditional therapies.
And the reason they're resistant is because it's a nitric oxide problem. And those drugs aren't designed to affect nitric oxide production or improve it.
Was there an aha moment in your career where you became particularly interested in this subject? Because you could have committed your life to studying any facet of health or science. But for some reason, you chose nitric oxide as the thing that you chose to focus on. What was that eureka moment?
You know, for me, I was a student at LSU School of Medicine. This was the late 90s, maybe early 2000s. But a Nobel Prize had just been awarded for the discovery of nitric oxide. There were three U.S. scientists that were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1998. And I was very fortunate at the time. I was a young student, probably a first-year student.
And Lou Ignaro, who had just won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of nitric oxide, came and spoke and gave a lecture before the student body. And I had a chance to have a conversation with him afterwards, and I was fortunate to be invited to have dinner with him that night. And he made a very poignant statement to me.
He goes, if the scientific community can figure out how to restore the production of nitric oxide, it'll change the world. And it'll change the landscape of medicine. Because even then, what is that, 25, 26 years ago, that it was recognized that a loss of nitric oxide production is leading to the onset and development of many poorly managed age-related chronic diseases.
So I go, that's a very profound statement from a guy who just won the Nobel Prize. But that was the first kind of eureka moment for me that stimulated the interest. But then my dad, and I talk about it in the book, his dad is 76 years old. In 1984, he had a car accident that left him paralyzed from the mid-back down.
So the majority of my life, even as a kid, I was treating dad's wounds, the cubitus ulcers, pressure ulcers on his feet, on his butt. And he developed these non-healing wounds. He was diabetic, he was paraplegic, poor blood flow, hypertension, and he developed a non-healing wound, and no wound care doc that I took him to could heal this wound.
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Chapter 4: How does nitric oxide relate to aging and longevity?
Chapter 5: What was Dr. Bryan's personal motivation to study nitric oxide?
So I go, that's a very profound statement from a guy who just won the Nobel Prize. But that was the first kind of eureka moment for me that stimulated the interest. But then my dad, and I talk about it in the book, his dad is 76 years old. In 1984, he had a car accident that left him paralyzed from the mid-back down.
So the majority of my life, even as a kid, I was treating dad's wounds, the cubitus ulcers, pressure ulcers on his feet, on his butt. And he developed these non-healing wounds. He was diabetic, he was paraplegic, poor blood flow, hypertension, and he developed a non-healing wound, and no wound care doc that I took him to could heal this wound.
So I started making a topical nitric oxide, and I healed this wound within a period of four years of non-healing. I healed it within six months simply by giving nitric oxide and getting blood flow to that wound, killing the infection in the wound. And this was in a 60-something-year-old paraplegic, diabetic, sedentary old man.
What you went through as a young man, to me, appears to be such an important sort of through line with all the work that you do and chose to do. There is this overarching question, which is even like, why did you go into medicine? Why did you want to help people? Where did that come from in you?
And I feel like there's clues in that to some degree, based on what I read about your family, your early upbringing, the divorce of your parents, and then ultimately your dad getting in a car accident and being paralyzed. Is that an accurate suspicion?
You know, certainly it directed kind of my life because I witnessed the failure of the standard of care to treat dad with what I thought should be pretty simple. I mean, we have, again, the most advanced technology, medical technology, best medical schools in the world, and yet we can't treat a wound. We can't address the hypertension. We can't address the diabetes medically.
And so I just thought that there had to be a better way.
It's still with you now, isn't it?
Yeah, but I see... You know, Dad, when I think I'm having a bad day, I just think, look, I'm not in a wheelchair. I got my health. So no matter how bad I think I got it, it could always be worse. So I just wake up every day with a grateful heart. And, you know, some days are good, some days are bad. But I always realize it could always be better, but it could be a hell of a lot worse.
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Chapter 6: Why is the current medical system failing to address nitric oxide deficiency?
So let me get this straight. I'll repeat back to you what I think I understand about nitric oxide, and you tell me if it's accurate. So this nitric oxide is a chemical that is in all the blood cells of my body, and it allows my blood cells to basically expand, open up, so blood can flow through there.
Well, it dilates the smooth muscle. It's not affecting the cells per se, but it's dilating the smooth muscle that surrounds the blood vessels, and that leads to relaxation and dilation.
fine, so my blood cells would then expand and more blood would go through there. But if I'm deficient, that mechanism doesn't work and my blood cells wouldn't expand, ultimately expand through the relaxation of the muscles.
That's right.
And therefore, I would have higher blood pressure, which can lead to a series of downstream diseases and consequences. And so when we look at the graph that I showed a second ago, where we're seeing, for anyone that can't see this graph because you're listening on audio, we're seeing... Nitric oxide levels in young people up to the age of roughly around 20 are optimal.
And then from about 30 to 70, there's this tremendous sort of 80, 90% drop. When I look at that graph, though, my question becomes, is that not just aging? Is that not just normal? Is that not just inevitable?
Well, yeah, there are a lot of things that occur with aging, right? We lose growth hormone with age. We lose many hormones. Nitric oxide is a hormone. We first discovered nitric oxide as a hormone back in 2007. But to understand aging, you have to understand what leads to aging. So aging, from my perspective, is the inability to repair and replace dysfunctional cells.
Every day we wear ourselves out, and if we can repair and replace dysfunctional cells, then we combat aging. or at least prolong the aging process. So what the science tells us in nitric oxide is this, that loss of nitric oxide production is the earliest event in the onset progression of age-related chronic disease.
So as that graph implies, it is part of the aging process, but it doesn't have to be. Because today we know we can shift that curve to the left or to the right. So we can accelerate it. And you see this today with 18-, 20-year-old kids that have high blood pressure. They have diabetes. They have erectile dysfunction. They have learning and cognitive impairment.
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Chapter 7: How does the oral microbiome affect nitric oxide production and health?
Chapter 8: Can nitric oxide be overdosed and what are the risks?
And then basically everything can manifest from that. But what I quickly realized when you go to, for instance, MD Anderson and trying to treat cancer, no one is interested in curing cancer. No one is interested in curing human disease. Because the epiphany for me came because medicine is a business. It's a for-profit business.
In fact, it's the largest business and economic model in the world, trillion-dollar annualized market. And most of these drug companies who influence and pay and support scientific journals, JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, the major publications, the major journals, and they're influencing regulation and policy and FDA.
And so when you figure out that there's undue influence by these for-profit companies, because the number one rule of business, as you know as an entrepreneur and a business guy, is acquire a customer and keep that customer as long as you can. Call it lifetime value of that customer. And that's what medicine is. They get you, they acquire you as a customer. They put you on a drug.
That drug has side effects. They have to put you on another drug to mitigate the side effects of that drug. Now you've got side effects from that polypharmacy. They have to put you on another drug to mitigate those side effects. And now you look up and people who are 50 to 60 years old and older are on 10, 12, 18 different medications. That's the best financial model in the world.
So it's a great financial model, but it's at the expense of our health and the health of everybody living in the world. And in the U.S., you know, we have the sickest population in the world. Now, for the first time in the history of Western medicine, have discussions between physician and patient, how do we wean you off this drug?
That conversation has never had before because it's always, if this doesn't work, come back and I'll prescribe you more drugs. Let's do the opposite. You come back and let's understand the root cause of disease. Let's say, okay, well, if we are addressing this, you don't need this medication. And if you don't need this medication, you don't need this medication.
And now for the first time, you start weaning patients off of drugs. And what happens? You're now impeding upon the market share of these multi-billion dollar drug companies who make their living buying influence, regulating policy, influencing policy, And the FDA is a stepping stone to a board seat of Big Pharma. Every former FDA official in the U.S.
for the past 20 or 30 years goes on to become multimillion-dollar salaried employee from Big Pharma. It has to stop.
Despite spending nearly 20% of the United States GDP on healthcare, the US ranks last overall on health outcomes among high income countries, including having the highest infant mortality rates and lowest life expectancy. It's like unbelievable.
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