Mitochondria, Nitric Oxide & Creatine for Fatigue: Real Benefits & Limits with Luke Bucci, PhD

Mitochondria, Nitric Oxide & Creatine for Fatigue: Real Benefits & Limits with Luke Bucci, PhD

00:00

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the energy MD podcast where we help you resolve your long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome naturally so that you can get back to living your best life. So very excited about today's episode. We're going to go deep into cellular energy and mitochondrial function. And we're going to be talking with Luke Bucci. Did I say your last name right, Luke? Yes. Thank you. Wonderful. And so let's learn a little bit about Luke.

00:28

So Dr. Luke Bucci is the chief scientific officer of Juvenon, a clinical nutritionist and a recognized leader in nutritional science with 37 plus years in the dietary supplement industry, working with Nobel prize winning scientists. Very cool. He's also the recipient of the science and innovation icon award for his decades long leadership and innovation in nutritional science and the dietary supplement industry. Thank you so much for joining me today, Luke.

00:58

Oh, Evan, it's my pleasure and I hope everyone can get something good out of this. Yeah, that's our goal. Hopefully, hopefully people listening to this are going to be educated and learn something new that will help them on this journey. So let's start off. uh know, most of the people who who's who are listening to this have had an instance where they went to see a provider and usually a conventional provider and they ran lab tests and they said your labs are completely normal.

01:26

And yet the person still feels tired. So what is going on there? What is the conventional laboratory panel missing? Everything. Almost everything, I should say, but uh it has no bearing on what's going on inside your cells. It just measures a few things looking for diseases that are well along in their pathway. So it is kind of a resort of seeing something.

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And it doesn't really tell you anything about what's going on inside your cells and how they generate energy and and that's also what we call metabolism and That is just uh it's just not part of the medical lexicon right now They just don't look at things that way however when you get into nutrition you immediately get into metabolism because you have to metabolize all that food you eat and You want to make sure you're giving your body the right things so that you can have the most active and well-running

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metabolism and thus energy and everything that we want. Excellent. So, know, what you're talking about really is mitochondrial function mainly, is that correct? Yes, yes. oh We don't really realize what mitochondria are. They're like archaic weird bacteria or bacterial precursors, if you will, that kind of merged with plant-like things or spongy type things.

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real primitive creatures and they coexisted and it's evolved over the billions of years to be mitochondria. And one fun fact about mitochondria that really nobody knows about hardly is that when I was a grad student I saw this very eminent professor, I completely forgot who he was, but he was supposed to be a mitochondria expert and being a student I was forced to go see his boring lecture and it wasn't boring! I was shocked!

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And what shocked me the most is he had black and white motion picture of mitochondria in cells live. And nobody seemed to have done that before. Of course, we're talking a long time ago, but uh those little mitochondria were zooming around and you could see them zip, zip, zip. He had to slow it down, slow mo to even see them zipping along. Just like zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip.

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And we don't realize that our mitochondria, they cluster where your cell needs energy. If you're making an RNA to make protein later, they zip into the nucleus and give energy so those enzymes can run. And same thing for making protein, same thing for uh helping out your free radicals and generating uh antioxidants inside the cell. So wherever they're needed, they go and they just boom, give energy.

04:24

It's kind of like having the taco truck come right to your door whenever you're hungry. So then for people who don't have energy, is is other mitochondrial functioning correctly or working correctly? That's I think the biggest issue. They still work. Otherwise you drop dead. And this is another thing I like to tell people about how important mitochondrial function is, is that we all seen the spy movies where the spy gets caught and he

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bites on the cyanide pills and drops dead instantly. Well, the reason they drop dead that fast is because the cyanide completely gets, it goes through all your cells, gets in the mitochondria and stops them cold. So you have zero energy production and that's why you don't drop dead immediately, but it's sure pretty darn fast. So you can't spill any beans. So that's how important mitochondria are. They have to work all the time and at a very high rate, even when you're sleeping.

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even when you're tired. But when you're tired, of course, they don't work as well as they should. And that's kind of what we need to get into. And they're in every cell in the body except for red blood cells, right? So essentially, we need them for every function. So I would imagine the cyanide is probably stopping the mitochondria in the heart potentially or whatever. I mean, it sounds like it's working in every part of the body, but it's probably the heart that's stopping.

05:48

Yeah, the heart stops, but you're still alive after it goes, but when the brain cells stop, you're dead. And it doesn't come back because cyanide glues onto those mitochondria. And so does mitochondria make all of our energy or is it a certain percentage? Oh, gosh, that's a very good question. I think it makes all the intracellular energy pretty much. Everything that you eat, your protein, your fats and your carbohydrates get uh converted into smaller and smaller compounds.

06:18

until they get into the cell and those are broken down into uh tiny pieces and combined with oxygen that's the spark of energy that makes ATP production. In other words ATP is constantly oscillating between its almost ready form ADP, I'll leave the chemical names out, and you have to get one more P on there to make it ATP, di and tri, phosphate, adenosine.

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So that ATP is like a battery. So it goes and gets plugged into your muscles so they can move or your brain cells so they can have a spark of thought. obviously for muscles, your heart is beating all the time and it's loaded with mitochondria, uh far denser than other tissues because it doesn't want, you can't let it stop either.

07:13

So that's the fun thing about mitochondria is that they're all over the place. They are our major energy source. um that, all that energy that runs cells, that runs you, really goes to the mitochondria. It's just a matter of, uh has many ways to get there from food and including auto autophagy or eating yourself. If you don't eat enough, you will break down your own uh body.

07:40

You have a limited storage of amino acids and sugar, very little, and after that it tries to burn fat, but that's slow and it throws off a lot of free radicals. So you want to keep eating regularly and that will help keep your mitochondria able to supply the energy you need. um Yet autophagy also can be helpful, right? So it can also digest

08:08

some of those waste products and other pro-inflammatory molecules, right? That can be causing harm in the body. Yeah, absolutely. It is another essential process. The mitochondria are very involved with that. And there are some supplements that are known to help with autophagy or autophagy is how it's spelled. I like to say autophagy and you have to get rid of the garbage. most of that garb, a lot of that garbage is your mitochondria because

08:37

They're in a cauldron of free radicals. They generate them, they spin them off just because of the process of burning our fuel. And that's just a normal part of metabolism. It happens just like all of us humans make waste one way or another. So the body has ways to take out the garbage and that's to recycle the what are called zombie mitochondria, which means that they have a lot of free radical damage and they're spewing more free radicals than they should.

09:07

That's not good because then it starts to hurt your DNA your RNA proteins everything just doesn't work as well And that's why you kind of feel tired when you don't think you should feel tired It's one of those things that you can't pinpoint. Well, I just don't have my my got my my Zest I got up and go got up and went and that's that's kind of what's going on is your mitochondria are not giving your cells enough energy

09:35

That could be tissue specific like your brain or it could be your heart so you just can't exercise. But really if it's a problem with aging, we all have to deal with that. And there are ways to keep your mitochondria happy and healthy too. So let's talk a little bit more about autophagy. So it sounds like you know the mitochondria are...

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producing a lot of waste products and if you're not doing things for autophagy, then you are going to feel worse, you're going to have fatigue, things aren't going to function well. So before we get into the supplements, what are some of the ways that we as humans can increase our own autophagy? Well, it usually takes care of itself and it goes downhill with everything else. again, exercise is I think the best way.

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and regular exercise. You don't have to run marathons or bench press a million pounds or go crazy with exercise. You just need to move. You need to get your heartbeat up into a safe zone for yourself or just move as much as you can. uh making the muscles work is the key. So some kind of resistance or strength training, it doesn't have to be pumping weights. You can move chairs up and down or something.

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Anything to get your muscles to not wither away from disuse and that I think is what makes everything Keep running smoothly so that when your mitochondria are getting kind of beat up and tired. They're recycled and and that's healthy Yeah, and that's really challenging for a lot of people because you know if they're especially who are watching this, know You're really tired. So I tell people you know to get your Goldilocks a dose of movement

11:27

You know, which is kind of like the ideal dose of movement that doesn't make them feel worse, right? So they're not stressing out the human organism as well. Is that something that that you would agree with? Are there any other ways where people can get that sort of benefit? But contracting muscles while they're sitting there, you know, some sort of like mild exercise? Yeah, there's a term for for just contracting your muscles as hard as you can and not moving. uh

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Gosh, I forgot it at the moment and I think it's ice is that isotonic right? Yes isometrics. Yes. Yeah, so and That that can help so you can actually just say okay. I'm gonna flex my right thigh So you flex your right thigh in your your bottom leg comes up a little bit and you can do that Well, not hopefully not standing up. You can do it standing up sitting down laying down even ah

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You can treat that just like you're you're doing a weightlifting program, but it's not way that you okay I'm gonna flex my right thigh You know, I'm trying to do it right now. So I'm making some movement and and you just do it like okay I'm gonna do ten reps. Well, that was easy. Well next time do ten fifteen reps Or or keep it keep it taught keep it tight keep it flexed as long as you can and then it starts to

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Get tired so the longer you can keep that muscle Maxed out rigid that's just like weightlifting without the chance of hurting connective tissues or pulling anything and anytime anywhere Yeah, don't do it when you're driving if because you might hit the gas and not get up Yeah, I was just doing it the other day. um I Was I was doing a wall squat

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You know, and so I was kind of, went down the wall and I was kind of sitting in that position and just waiting until my thighs started to burn. And then I kind of like, you know, pushed myself up. And normally I do other squats, but I was kind of experimenting with that. But that's an example for folks where you're just maintaining a certain length of the, of the muscle. And that can cause that contraction and you're, you're still working out. Absolutely. And I think everybody doesn't realize you can do this at home anytime.

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Even especially if you don't feel like doing anything ah It's almost like yawning and stretching a little bit that that way your body's still moving But this way you can actually have a workout without really um Damaging any of your your connective tissues and also within your limits, but you do have to push it You can't just like okay. I did that. I'm done. No, no, you got it You got to do it. Like you said it you're getting you're getting some talk back from the muscles. They're getting some

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some burning, ah you wanna make sure you're not past the point of no return, but you wanna make sure you're stressing the muscles, just it's a good stress. Yeah, and that stress is called hormesis, right? You know, it's like this stressor that we're putting on the body that, you know, the body builds back stronger. Now the challenge for people listening to this is that if you feel worse after you're doing it, then you've done too much. So, you you wanna find that Goldilocks dose.

14:44

Yeah, that's right. Now if you go bonkers on this, uh there's supplements like creatine, are good for muscle. In other words, they're good for muscle anaerobic work, which is just like weightlifting or when you start to get the burn, that's anaerobic or it needs more oxygen and it kicks in and gives your muscles, guess what, more ATP right on demand. uh

15:12

And you can also it works for the brain, which I think is something that's just beginning to be uh looked at. and now is realized that, boy, it makes your brain better. So if you're one of those that I just don't feel like doing it, I have an idea that creatine might help your brain say, I feel like I need to do something. And I've tried that on myself. And when I'm

15:38

And I'm not giving up my creatin anymore. I gave it up for a few years and then it got back on it it's like, wow, I'm jazzed. I'm happier, healthier. And it's also the brain. The brain, um I don't have the memory lapses I was starting to get. And at my age, that's important. So yeah, but then you just have to look at what's in the body. Where's creatin in the body? Well, muscles and brain. And everybody thinks, oh yeah, it's just for those crazy bodybuilders.

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No, no, it's for your brain first. It's the backup. So anytime the brain gets any kind of stress and it could be just one cell or a part of the brain or just that organelle of the brain, it's there and it keeps it going at its maximum. So you keep your edge is what I'm trying to say mentally with creatine. And you don't have to take massive amounts. I mean, you take a little teaspoon of powder and that's

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good. I prefer a liposomal form, so lipocreatine, and that makes it easier to mix up. Otherwise it's kind of like sand and you have to uh wash it down. Taking it with a little bit of carbohydrate, not sugar, not sucrose sugar, but just like a little starch, that helps it get in to your muscles and brain faster. So even with a meal.

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And especially if you're vegetarian too. So what's the mechanism of action? Why does creatine help with the brain and the muscles? Okay, when you when you get creatine, it goes in the cell and your body uh will in times when it's not overly stressed, which is like sleep or just general everyday time, it will add an ATP to the creatine. So you get creatine ATP and it keeps it stable for a while because ATP is like

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It's tense. It's ready to blow up and release its energy. That's so your body can easily get energy and give it to lots of different kinds of molecules and proteins. So the creatine is sort of like, it's your storage. It's your battery for more ATP. You can't have a whole lot. It can't run your whole life. But when you have that surge of demand, then it can pick up that slack.

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and extend your muscle performance or your mental performance via more energy. And so it sort of spares the mitochondria from having to uh make it instantly on its by itself. Nice. And so does it's creatine one of the supplements that you generally recommend for mitochondrial support? Actually, yeah, but for people that are of any age,

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I think it is important for people over 40 because and over 50 and beyond because that's when you start losing muscle mass and what it will do and people may not understand or like this, but it's a good thing. If you take creatine, you gain weight. You might gain a pound or two or three. It depends how much muscle mass you have. It's not bad weight. It's this that creatine with that ATP on it needs a lot of water to keep it soluble.

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Being able to move to the spots inside the cell. It's really needed So that water weight is what it's been called is actually your creatine with Helping your muscles in a different way than just ATP and here's my analogy um Okay, you're in a water balloon fight, okay, so you have a uh real Barely filled balloon and it's real floppy

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You throw that and it just bounces off of your opponent. Like, that was dumb. Why would you do that? That's an old flabby muscle without creatine. Now you add creatine, makes it nice and taut. You throw it and you hit them and bluey! That blows up. So it's that tautness that transmits the physical forces when you contract the muscle. This gets into kinesiology and things that I know little about, but it's really common sense. If you have something

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that is more taught like a muscle, it'll transmit those forces and that's what gives you the strength. So that makes whatever muscle mass you have, if your muscles are filled up with water more, they are automatically stronger. So it's a physics thing more than a... it is a biology thing, but it gets into the physics of it. So I hope that helped explain why creatine is really helping

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muscles out is more than just ATP. It's also that holding water, making the muscle fuller so that it transmits the forces easier. And so what are the supplements that can really help with autophagy? Well, anything that helps the mitochondria will help. But there are also some control signaling that's going on uh for feeding the mitochondria. The standard standard has been around for a long time. And this is where the Nobel Prize winning

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research kind of came from is that it's you have your food is all broken down to the smallest pieces whether it's fat protein or or carbohydrates and it's all acetate which is what vinegar acetic acid is and it's also boils down to acetyl l carnitine which means that's the smallest unit of fat fat is just a string of carbons so your

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Shortest string of carbons is two instead of one and that is an acetyl group and that gets stuck to a quarantine and that it moves that that little bit of fat into it makes it water-soluble, of course So it goes into the mitochondria and is very quickly burned Just like all your carbon amino acid stuff is turned into acetate itself. So everything boils down to getting that little acetate uh

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carbon things into your mitochondria and boom then it it just runs it through zip-a-dee-doo-da-day making out pops ATP in a very very complicated uh little pathway inside of each mitochondria. I won't get into that it's utterly fascinating but it is it works and it has to go one direction and if you don't give it enough it's going to start misfiring and that's why you get the uh

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degradation and free radical generation and that just makes all the factors that are lined up literally in a line of enzymes to put in the food, the acetates, and to pop out the ATP, that spark of energy gets turned into water and carbon dioxide. So that carbon dioxide just goes away. It's the gas. It goes out. You breathe it out. And uh the other part is what makes the ATP.

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become ATP. You do have some acid that comes out of that too and that needs to be buffered as well. So that's kind of the fun part about it. It's a very nice self-sealing system. ah Now, so what you can do is by adding more of what the mitochondria like to get that process going in several things. One is coenzyme Q10 or ubiquinone it's called or ubiquinol form.

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And that's kind of what makes generates that last hit reaction to give the spark. uh But to start it off, you want things that are called carnitine and acetyl carnitine or L carnitine because it's an uh X amino acid. So it's a twist. That means that that's what feeds the mitochondria and it helps feed your mitochondria uh breakdown products from amino acids, but especially from fat. So we all want to burn fat. And that is your most

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prodigious amount of stored energy. It's just hard to unlock because it's not soluble in water. Fat and water don't mix, right? Oil and water don't mix. A little process there. So that's one thing. uh Then, so what the CoQ does is it helps keep that part of the mitochondria going. And then everything else is for protecting the mitochondria. And there's a lot of antioxidants that do that as well.

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I think lipoic acid is probably the premier antioxidant for that because it not only keeps the mitochondria under control with spewing free radicals, normally it gets rid of that. It's your most important antioxidant inside your cells. And it's a little group of three amino acids, one of them a sulfur amino acids, and that's what gets recharged from the energy that is made by your mitochondria.

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NAD, for example, is what recharges that antioxidant so that unlike vitamin E, it's one and done. It gets hit by a free radical. Oops, it's rearranged. It's get it out quick before it hits something else. Nope. Glutathione will take the hit, go back to its original form. Boom, bam, boom, bam, boom, bam. It's like a tennis match. It's kind of hitting those free radicals out of the park. Baseball seems hitting the baseballs out of the park. And you wind up for the next bat.

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So that's kind of, um I think, the basics of what is the most helpful for mitochondria. There's a few other little things too, but they get to be expensive and I don't think they have the same effects. these are the compounds that are very well studied for mitochondrial function. And I think that's the things that you do notice when you're aging. And uh that's what Dr. Bruce Ames was into after his other...

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uh scientific conquest and that's what he found was the missing link. Yeah, I think that those I agree. I think that those products can be incredibly helpful for people and we boost those up in step two of our program. The only challenge that I find with um with taking those products is that a lot of people don't realize that they are not um full solutions like they can definitely make you feel better. But the reality is is that

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You there are heavy metals or chemicals or molds or infections that are all damaging the mitochondria and you have to remove those in order to really make sure that those supplements are most efficacious. But in the meantime, while you are like working on those, because those are definitely longer term propositions, boosting them with the the supplements that you mentioned, I think are a wonderful idea. You're absolutely right. There's all kinds of blocks that are that that harm the mitochondria and make you feel bad. And you named it, you named them.

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And that's your expertise. And being the kind of clinical nutritionist I was, I got exposed to a lot of that. And that's, I think, something that everybody needs to get figured out and find out what's really just impeding your body to help itself. And once you get rid of that, then you get give it, you don't have to take massive amounts for these things. Just a normal serving that the bottle says is plenty.

27:13

It's also I think important to be consistent with supplements People think it's like caffeine if oh, I don't feel anything after the first pill a half hour later. This stuff's junk I'm not body but yet you're you're fakes your phonies and blah blah blah. It's like no you're the dummy actually because You know where you grown and you grew up all in one day or an hour No, it took you years and years and supplements don't work that slow. They do work in a time frame You may notice something

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If it's if your brain really needs it, you can notice it pretty soon. A hours, few days, little things. Physically, you start seeing things and it usually you have to look at the body's turnover of cells, you know, which cells are replaced because everything's replaced. may not. You're a whole different. Organism than you were a few years ago, right? Every seven years, all of our cells get replaced.

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Yeah, you're somebody else every seven years. Yeah, and yeah, seven years ago. I had hair. I mean, I was a very different person. Amen. That's why we're at. But absolutely. But you're still you. And that's that's where memories are something that stay around. And we definitely want to keep our brain going. And uh brain uses a lot of mitochondrial energy, too. Even when you're sleeping, we may not.

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be awake, it's actually some areas of the brain are really cranked up more when you sleep than when you're awake or even then when you're focused and concentrating. But that's the nice thing about the body. It's plastic. It's malleable. It'll try to do the best it can with what it has. And uh if you have those blocks, like you mentioned, that makes it harder. So you may not be as good as you were or you want to be.

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And that's, I went to a lot of environmental medicine meetings and was just, uh geez, I know I have something going on and that's why you gotta take care of yourself and more than just what you eat, more than just what you supplement. But you really, if you're not doing as well as you'd like, then see Dr. Hirsch. uh Thanks for that.

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So we've talked a lot, em you know, about different ways to support the mitochondria today. We talked about autophagy. We talked about the supplements. um We've got just a couple of minutes left here. You know, in terms of lifestyle habits, we talked a little bit about sleep, fasting, um exercise. Is there anything else that you want to touch on in terms of ways to support the mitochondria that people could potentially do right now from their homes?

29:59

Yeah, it all revolves around oxygen, which is the kind of final step to make the spark of energy to make ATP. oh that's you're always permeated with oxygen. So that's not the problem. getting it, getting the oxygen to the cells relies on blood flow. And after all the things I've looked at about what's going downhill with aging, blood flow is probably the worst thing.

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I mean, if it was a nutrient, we'd all be popping it like crazy or eating a lot more of it. uh Just real quick fact on that is uh you look at the curve of nitric oxide production because your body uh feels where it wants blood to go by making nitric oxide change your blood vessel diameter so you can get more or less. And it happens all the time. And it happens when you exercise, when you notice it.

30:56

But it's there all the time, but it need to make nitric oxide on demand. And it's an enzyme on the inside of your blood vessels that makes it from the amino acid, arginine, which is always there. But what's happening is nitric oxide production is going downhill when by the time you're 20, it starts to go downhill. And when you're healthy.

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it's starting to go down like a third by the time you're 50 and you still think you're okay. When you're 70 or more, you're down to around 30%, 20 % of your original production of nitric oxide, which means your circulation is going downhill. Now, if you're not healthy, the other curve is that by the time you're 50, you're down to that 20 or 30 % of

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Reduction of nitric oxide production. So you do have very sluggish circulation and that that may be lot of reasons why but if the blood is not moving fast enough or Enough in the right places at the right time those mitochondria don't get enough oxygen and If it's the brain brain fog if it's the muscles weakness tiredness uh Same for brain. Yes tiredness too. So that's

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So I'm kind of thinking, wow, this blood flow is a lot more important than we thought. And there are ways to make your nitric oxide synthase enzyme work better. And it's not just giving more arginine because there's plenty of that. And it just needs teensy weensy amounts. And nitric oxide is a free radical. You don't want too much. But it blows up almost in a second or two. So it doesn't really do much harm unless you have inflammation. Then.

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Your white cells make it to kill bugs, to oxidize the bugs too as part of its peroxide and nitric oxide shower to kill things. So that's why you don't want inflammation. Um, it's kind of happen all up. anyway, yeah. And there's things that can do that. Polyphenols are super important for your nitric oxide. They protect the enzyme so you can keep making as much as you can. And that's a high plant food diet. And that, and there's

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plenty of polyphenol supplements, you name it, they're there. There's all sorts of plant polyphenols, the electrosperitrol and those things. Yeah, that's how they really work. Yeah. And so I'm glad you brought up nitric oxide and how low levels can be helpful because I do. You know, I haven't been able to rectify this in my brain and I don't recommend nitric oxide right now because of some of the concerns I have. And so I'm hopeful that you can.

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uh potentially address some of these. So one is you talked about it as a free radical and how it can, you know, how it can create peroxy uh nitrite. uh You know, it can turn on oncogenes, so it can potentially increase cancer risk. I know there was that study back in last year, 2025, and the fact that if you take too much nitric oxide, it can actually increase heart attacks. And then for people who've got low blood pressure, kidney issues, prior heart attack history, liver issues,

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you know, sometimes it's really just not recommended for those people. how how should I be thinking about nitric oxide? When is it appropriate to give it to somebody with some of these caveats or how do you dispute some of this? Yeah, I know it all fits together. Actually, most of the nitric oxide in your body is generated from your immune system via inflammation. So inflammation is really the root cause of too much nitric oxide in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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So that's enough to start really damaging and pickling your tissues, just like drinking too much hydrogen peroxide. It's the exact same kind of mechanism. ah But the blood flow is important for clearing all that, too. So if your blood flow is slowing down, you're going to build up these toxic substances in your tissues and not remove them faster. But you can't really direct...

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where it's going. mean if you have inflammation, which everybody does who's watching this right now unfortunately, so they're producing their own nitric oxide, know, and so they're getting the most amount of vasodilatation that they possibly can. So putting more nitric oxide on that seems to be fanning the flames, right? Well, not really because the nitric oxide from inflammation is a different enzyme and it's on your immune system cells and they can go anywhere in your body.

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and they literally spew a bunch in a very tiny area like a cell-wide area and that's what will start damaging your other tissues. The nitric oxide you need for your blood flow is from the enzyme that's stuck on the side of your blood vessels and it has plenty of arginine so it just needs the blood pressure triggers

36:02

the brain to send nervous impulses to uh make the ENOS, the endogenous nitric oxide that's in your blood vessels, uh get more active and grab the arginine and make it locally. it's a nice thing that nitric oxide is that it disappears so fast that in a small amount, it'll tell your arteries to relax. It relaxes. And then after a couple seconds, that will stop relaxing.

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So they'll go back to its usual tone, which means less blood flow. so thus, it's an elegant system to give you just the right amount of blood where and when it's needed because nitric oxide in small amounts just disappears quickly without damaging things. then your normal antioxidant levels can handle that. But when you have an inflammation,

36:58

It just goes way over that amount that your cells can't handle it all at the same time. So it's not really, I mean, it's making your blood vessels, it's not make your blood vessels expand too much. It's actually damaging them so they can't expand too much. So I just, the way I look at it. Okay. And what's considered low dose? Um, let's see. There's the doses. You don't take nitric oxide itself. mean, uh, it's, um,

37:29

Arginine is always there, but what's really interesting is that the arginine, there is a form of arginine called arginine silicate and silica actually sticks to blood vessel walls. So it is like spoon feeding the nitric oxide in your blood vessels. And then the nervous impulses will activate the nitric oxide enzyme to work and then use that arginine boom right there. uh

37:58

And antioxidant polyphenols help keep that from being destroyed by its own nitric oxide or the inflammatory nitric oxide as well. So yeah, it's a push-pull when you have inflammation and there's a lot more, I'd say, pushing than pulling. And that's why inflammation and the conditions behind inflammation are really terrible for aging, obviously.

38:23

Yeah, and so and so then did I might have missed it. So then what do you take in order to increase oxygen at this low dose? One way is nitrates and nitrites like beetroots and other green leafy vegetables, but that kind of backs up the system. It's not feeding in nitric oxide synthase. It's actually uh stopping it from having his control to stop and start. So it's

38:52

starts and it doesn't stop so it's kind of overdosing and the nitrates and nitrites are great for forming the peroxynitrites, which you don't want. the only saving grace with those things is that what they should come with is polyphenols. Beets have polyphenols and green leafy vegetables have polyphenols. So that's the saving grace uh because that's why we're getting rid of

39:21

tiny amounts of nitrites and nitrates in preserved meats and other food preservative uses, when it's a drop in the bucket compared to a nice healthy salad or a glass of beet juice. you ah know, it is a push-pull thing. So if you have something that's the right kind of that arginine silicate along with polyphenols, then you don't have any excess nitrates or nitrites to deal with later.

39:51

That way you get more in oxidant functions, which we know are healthy and then you have better control over your blood flow Which is really? uh very Positional, mean this this little vein in your arm needs it right now So it gets it and if you get it all over the place and you don't need it. Well, it's May not be bad, but it's not helpful either so that's kind of why I favor an arginine based kind of uh supplement versus just

40:20

more nitrites and nitrates even from beetroots because even though they have the polyphenols you still have a risk of too much nitrites and nitrates. Gotcha. Okay. And so we've talked a lot about supplements today and I just want to remind everybody that these are not recommendations.

40:44

We're just providing education and that you do need to speak with your provider about whether or not these are appropriate for you. We just want to make sure you're educated. Now you have worked with Juvenon to formulate products, right? And so can we send people to juvenon.com in order to check out what you guys have going on and whether those products are appropriate for people? Yes, yes. And they could ask you what you think too. ah

41:09

We try to give information on there as much as we're allowed by law, which isn't much. It's not what we really should be able to say, but that's out of our hands. So we do try let you know what it's for. um I don't write that, all those marketing things. um I do help them out. But you need to have a little pizzazz in the marketing so people will at least stop and read and comprehend.

41:36

So I've been a scientist, you know, I'm kind of stuffy or fuddy duddy that no, no, it has to. I'm a perfectionist. So I was like, no, it has to be this. And then people like they fall asleep. It's like, oh, I did it again. I talked too much. But but you got it. You got to know how the body works first. I think that's super important. You can't just say, yeah, you take this creatine and it's going to do all this stuff. Well, it can. Right. Can. But it may or may not.

42:04

And that's where you come into play as a practitioner to see what somebody can really benefit from because and I experiment with myself. I try things out and see if it does what it's supposed to do. And it you go with the body's average cell turnover time. Like, OK, we have every new red blood cells every three months. Each one lasts three months, roughly. Brain cells should last forever. uh

42:33

For lot of us, they don't, but uh most of us it does. uh the lining of the blood vessel cells, they change over fairly frequently too. Bone takes a long time, cartilage two years at best, and everything else in between. So the average is around three to four months.

42:56

And that's when you start noticing if a supplement is really going to work. everybody wants instant results. It works in a week. It works in a day. It works in two weeks or three. No, keep going for at least two, two bottles, two months to three months. And then things start working. A little, little emphasis on that is look at the human clinical studies. Which I do too much of.

43:24

I find that the longer a study goes the better the results are automatically everything and if you could Cosmin chondrotin is a prime example Turnover time of your cells and cartilage two years. So you're gonna do a big study You might you're probably gonna not see anything and sure enough you can do a sloppy study. Oh, we don't see anything This stuff's junk do a two-year study if you rebuilt cartilage you're walking again You don't need a knee replacement and you don't hurt

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and can exercise. Wonderful. And that's why I've been taking glucosamine and chondroitin since, gosh, early 90s. This has been wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on. For those of you who um learned something from this, please give it a like and subscribe so you don't miss any more of these videos. And if you do have a comment or a question, please drop that below and I'll be happy to address it. And we'll drop those links for Juvenon and so you can learn more about.

44:23

products that Luke has helped to create. thanks so much for being with us today. Thank you very much, Dr. Hirsch for this opportunity, and I hope it helps everybody. So if you have chronic fatigue, whether it's from long COVID or chronic fatigue syndrome, go ahead and click the link below to watch my latest masterclass, where I go deep into our four step process that has helped thousands of others resolve their symptoms naturally. After you watch that video,

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If you're interested in seeing if we're a good fit to work together, you can then get on a free call with me. All right. Thanks so much. I'll see you over there.