Special Guests:
Illias Tagkopoulos, Phd, LinkedIn
Quick Pulses of Full Conversation: Tachyons, Soundbites, Takeaways..
Discipline and Motivation in Weight Management
Well, look, there is no silver bullet. There is no panacea. At the end of the day, it's all about discipline. No matter what you're trying to do, you have to have the discipline to change your life. I mean, some people need help with these, and other people just have the discipline themselves to say, look, I'm not going to eat, or I'm going to change my diet, I'm going to change my lifestyle. And they don't need a drug therapy to help them do that. But I think what I'm seeing is that this allows people, and when you start to see results, people become more motivated.
siRNA: A Precision Approach to Genetic Disease
And so for us, this is a precision medicine-based approach. We use a modality known as small interfering RNA or siRNA. It kind of fits along with this oligotherapies that took, you know, obviously become very popular post-pandemic. So we're realizing the potential of mRNA therapies and siRNA therapies, you know, kind of in that same bucket as a way to treat disease. And so we don't have to deal with a lot of the side effects that some of these other therapeutics have traditionally been known as because we're specifically going in and targeting the genetic cause of the disease itself. And so that's why I think it's kind of the other side of the coin to the prevention and the therapeutic side of it in a way that's specifically corrects the defect in much the same way that you would be trying to do with the prevention side.
Finding Balance in Exercise for Longevity
Yeah, look, I don't have a scientific, I don't have the scientific credentials to answer this question. But from what I've read, it's really all about balance. I think what Dr. Bryan is saying is a good point. If you're a bodybuilder, then yeah, obviously go to strength training and limit the amount of cardio that you do. Although I've read about bodybuilders doing some cardio as a form of balance. But I think if you do anything to the extreme, if all you do is strength training to the extreme, that can have a negative impact on longevity. Just kind of tying this back to what we're talking about on the panel, right? I think what Dr. Bryan is elucidating here, which is a balance of a little bit of strength training, a little bit of cardio, that's probably the sweet spot.
The Role of Routine and Discipline in Staying Fit
For me at this point in my life, I'm 50 years old and I'm physically fit. And so my goal is about maintaining. And I've been plus or minus seven or eight pounds for the past 40 years. So I haven't had these extreme weight gains or weight losses. But I have to work at that. I travel every week 200,000 miles a year. But it requires a lot of discipline for me to get when I check in the hotel, go to the gym. I always do 20 minutes of cardio. I do resistance training. But in 40 minutes, I'm in and out. And then I just try to watch what I eat.
Role of Nitric Oxide in Disease Prevention
We know the hallmarks of all chronic diseases. This little microcosm that I live in, in nitric oxide biology, we certainly understand how nitric oxide production in the human body leads to optimal human performance. It's what leads to disease prevention. Through our efforts, we're developing rational therapies. But I think if you look at what leads to chronic disease, it's always vascular inflammation. It's oxidative stress and immune dysfunction. And it's typically the affected organ has low blood flow or circulation. We call that hypoxia or ischemia.
Avoiding Common Substances for Better Health
If you're using fluoride toothpaste, you have to get rid of fluoride. If you're using mouthwash, you've got to stop using mouthwash. You've got to support the oral microbiome, not destroy it. And then if he's on antacids, he's got to get off antacids. Proton pump inhibitors completely shut down nitric oxide production, leading to bone loss, Alzheimer's, heart attack strokes.
The Sticky Truth about Sugar in Our Bodies
Nine out of 10 Americans are metabolically unfit. And the sugar's the problem. I mean, we've all spilled soda or sugar on the counter and come back the next day and it's sticky. Well, that's what happens in our body. I mean, we measure this through hemoglobin A1C. Glucose, which the root is glue, it's sticky. And it sticks to hemoglobin. And what people don't understand is that proteins and enzymes have to undergo some conformational change to do their job. And if you've got too much sugar sticking to these, then these proteins and enzymes can't undergo their conformational change.
Cholesterol Fallacy in Heart Disease
Well, I think we have to have better biomarkers. I mean, the notion that cholesterol causes heart disease has been a fallacy for the past 40 years. And yet now, cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease. I think the data are indisputable. Now, you know, it was once thought, you know, 30, 40 years ago, and with the introduction of statin medications, these cholesterol-lowering medications, the American Heart Association in the 1980s and early 90s predicted that if cholesterol caused heart disease, they would completely eradicate cardiovascular disease by the turn of the century because they had cholesterol-lowering drugs. And now we know we have, cardiovascular is still the number one killer of men and women worldwide. So targeting cholesterol has had no effect. And I think it's contributed to the onset and progression of chronic disease.
AI and Nutrition: Key to Disease Prevention
Thank you, Tom. And you are almost there, almost there. So yeah, I completely agree with the idea that nutrition is a key, it's a key element. and we need to be more aware and we need proactively to actually act. But actually, there are many others. It's a handful of others, like, as we know, LDL is one, HDL, CRP, agutensin, and others that they do modulate and they are part of this. So the question is, how do we manage and how do we prevent disease? when we have a complex system as such, right? And this is where nutrition plays a huge role because it's not like we're taking a drug or having bazookas to kill a mosquito, but actually we have something that is more chronic, something that is part of our lives. And again, nutrition will play a role on nitrogen dioxide and other molecules. And AI, because here's where I'm coming from, right? The AI angle is the way to create that knowledge and process it in a way that is actionable. It will come with clear understanding and clear recommendations on how we can fight aging and how we can have a more healthy life.
Access to Health Information: Challenges and Solutions
So what is the problem right now? You know, with I mean, obviously, we know our health care system is is really it's got the reimbursement. It's after the fact. But what what needs to happen to make this as a starting point for today? Yeah, I think I think a key a key point. byproduct of how healthcare has been developed, at least in the US, right? And I think this applies to somewhat of a global scale, is the access to the information that you need and the resources you need to address some of the things that Dr. Bryan and Dr. Togopoulos just mentioned, right? So not everybody, so knowledge is the foundational piece, right? I don't think people are getting the information. Doctors are trained a certain way They're taught to underscore evidence-based medicine protocols as defined by this kind of payer system that we have. And again, I'm not trying to be provocative here, but the payers are a big component of U.S. healthcare. And so there are protocols that doctors kind of just stay in their lane and provide guidance to patients. So as a result, the onus is on the consumer, the patient, to kind of learn about these other elements, right? And again, there's nitric oxide and then there's nutrition. And I find that nutrition has, I've recently made a personal kind of change in my lifestyle. A lot of that is nutrition-based. Some of that is fitness-based. But I have found that the onus is on me to digest the volume of work out there and to kind of really digest filter through the noise and figure out what the good stuff is from the bad stuff. And when I quarterback that with my doctor, you know, he's pointing me in a different direction. And so I think it's a challenging environment to be in because of the construct of our healthcare system.
Nitric Oxide Tablets: A Revolutionary Technology
So I made an early disintegrating tablet that you put in your mouth and releases 20 to 30 parts per million NO gas. It goes systemic. We can see dilation of the carotids within 12 seconds. We see a normalization of blood pressure. We can mobilize stem cells. We prevent telomere shortening. We improve mitochondrial biogenesis. And so it truly is hormone replacement therapy. And that technology exists today. So to answer your question, yes. The challenge is, and the hurdles are, training physicians and practitioners, and there's 600 physicians here this weekend that I'll be training on how do we restore hormone replacement therapy and how do we replace and replete a missing gas.
Finding Balance in Exercise Routines
Yeah, look, I don't have a scientific, I don't have the scientific credentials to answer this question. But from what I've, From what I've read, it's really all about balance. I think what Dr. Bryan is saying is a good point. If you're a bodybuilder, then yeah, obviously go to strength training and limit the amount of cardio that you do. Although I've read about bodybuilders doing some cardio as a form of balance. But I think if you do anything to the extreme, if all you do is strength training to the extreme, that can have a negative impact on longevity. Just kind of tying this back to what we're talking about on the panel, right? I think what Dr. Bryan is elucidating here, which is a balance of a little bit of strength training, a little bit of cardio, that's probably the sweet spot. And depending on maybe your genetic makeup, depending on your nutritional protocols, you'll probably vary that a bit.
Proactive Health and Continuous Monitoring
Then they're fearful. So then and only then do they make changes. But the damage is done. I think we have to change the way we approach health and longevity and be proactive instead of reactive. And I think the only way we do that is to open people's eyes to what's going on inside their body. And I think these continuous monitoring devices that give them insight into things, the consequences of what they're doing or not doing, they can see it in real time and then start to correlate with how they feel, how their body responds and the onset of hypertension or erectile dysfunction and start to make these correlations. Then I think people will be more motivated to take action before there's an event and for there's fear of dying or not being able to have sex or losing a limb to amputation because of their diabetes.
The Future of Health Monitoring Devices
And so I think glucose is just the first of many of these continuous monitoring devices that we can, I think certainly you can probably do it with as technology improves for other hormones. maybe insulin and testosterone and growth hormone, things like that. But then that gives people a mental cue of when these substrates start changing and you start to see and you get an alert, then, okay, what did I do to do that? And then, okay, I don't want to do that again. So I think it's a good way that you can start to change people's habits because you may not feel your blood sugars 400 or 500. You may not feel when your insulin gets to 10, 15, 20. But if you've got a device that tells you that, they go, oh, that's not good. Then you can make changes.
Understanding Hormone Replacement Therapy
It's really hormone replacement therapy. If your body can't make testosterone, what do we do? We give you testosterone. We don't give you precursors and substrates and go, well, let's close our eyes and cross our fingers and hope your body can do it. No, we have to give you these molecules. And the GLP-1 agonists obviously are missing, and their secretory abilities are missing, and people who constantly eat and don't have the discipline. So if we give it, we induce satiety, and people start to lose weight. And that's just one molecule in a very complex biochemical roadmap that makes up the human body.
Nutrient Density Decline Since the 1940s
I think it's more foundational than that. It's getting the access to the, you know, the right information, the credible information. Yeah, I would agree. Look, all you have to do is look at the data. I mean, since the 1940s, the nutrient density of the food grown in America has declined by 85 percent, on average about 78 percent. And these are micronutrients like selenium, chromium, magnesium, iodine. So we live in a world and the food we eat is depleted of basic nutrients.
Additional Links, Resources
ARIZ Precision Medicine, CEO Brad Niles, PhD.
Dr. Nathan S Bryan’s company:
Dr. Nathan S. Bryan's Instagram
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128 NO (Nitric Oxide) + AI / nutrition + genetic therapy = keys to crack the nut to longevity with Thomas Kluz, Dr. Nathan S. Bryan, Brad Niles, PhD., Illias Tagkopoulos, PhD.