Your Thursday Three Things for April 23, 2026

Your Body Has Been Trying to Tell You Something. You've Probably Been Ignoring It.

One molecule controls your blood pressure, your brain, your sexual health, and how fast you age. After 40, most men have half of what they need. Here’s what to do about it.

There is a molecule your body makes that controls your blood pressure, regulates blood flow to your brain, determines your sexual performance, governs how well you recover from workouts, and influences how fast you age at the cellular level. Most people have never heard of it. After the age of 40, the average person is producing about half as much as they need. And the things most men are doing every single morning — brushing their teeth, rinsing their mouth, taking their heartburn medication — are making it worse.

The molecule is called nitric oxide. This week on Men Talking Mindfulness, we sat down with Dr. Nathan Bryan, who has spent 25 years researching it. He’s published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, holds dozens of patents, and has built a billion-dollar portfolio of companies around this one molecule. He also lost his oldest son to a car accident in 2018, watched his father become paralyzed in 1984, and still wakes up every morning choosing purpose over circumstance. We got into all of it.

What Nitric Oxide Actually Does

The short version: nitric oxide is the body’s master signal for blood flow. When your brain needs more oxygen to think clearly, nitric oxide dilates the blood vessels that supply it. When you start exercising, it increases blood flow to your heart and muscles. When you need sexual function, it’s what triggers engorgement — in men and women. It mobilizes stem cells that repair damaged tissue. And it prevents telomeres from shortening, which matters because shorter telomeres mean a shorter lifespan.

Three researchers — Fred Murad, Robert Furchgott, and Lou Ignarro — won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1998 for discovering how this works. Dr. Bryan trained under Murad. He describes it as the greatest discovery in the history of cardiovascular medicine. More than 200,000 papers have been published on nitric oxide since the Nobel Prize. And still most people have never heard of it.

The Low Battery Warning Your Body Is Already Sending

Dr. Bryan made a comparison in the episode that I haven’t stopped thinking about. He said the body is like a smartphone. When the battery gets low, a red light comes on. The problem is most men ignore that light. By the time they pay attention, the phone is already dying.

The hierarchy of symptoms as nitric oxide declines goes like this. The first sign — the very first red light — is erectile dysfunction. Not as a standalone issue, but as a signal that the blood vessels throughout the entire body are losing their ability to respond. Then blood pressure starts to climb. Then metabolic disease and insulin resistance. Then you start getting winded going up a flight of stairs. Then mild cognitive impairment begins, and eventually it tracks toward Alzheimer’s. Two out of three Americans have an unsafe elevation in blood pressure. Nine out of ten are metabolically unfit.

The flip side: when nitric oxide is where it should be, you wake up with energy, your mind is sharp, your physical performance is there, your body adapts to the demands you put on it, and you don’t develop vascular disease. Dr. Bryan is 52 years old. His vascular age tests at 29.

The Four Things Quietly Killing Your Nitric Oxide

This is the part of the conversation that will change what you do tomorrow morning. Dr. Bryan laid out four things that actively suppress nitric oxide production — and all four are things most people do without a second thought.

Fluoride. 72 percent of US municipalities still add fluoride to drinking water. The National Toxicology Program published a paper last year — one the previous administration suppressed for five years — confirming there is no benefit of fluoride in drinking water for cavity prevention, and that it lowers IQ in children by an average of seven points. It is a known antiseptic and neurotoxin. When you absorb it through your mouth, it kills the bacteria in your oral microbiome that are responsible for producing nitric oxide. Your blood pressure goes up. The benefits of your workout disappear.

Antiseptic mouthwash. Two out of three Americans use it every morning. Listerine still advertises that it kills 99.99 percent of bacteria in your mouth as if that’s a selling point. It isn’t. The oral bacteria it’s killing are part of a system that converts nitrates from your diet into nitric oxide. When you eradicate them, you lose a significant production pathway. There is no mouthwash currently on the market that doesn’t negatively affect the oral microbiome, according to Dr. Bryan’s testing.

Antacids and proton pump inhibitors. Prilosec, Nexium, Prevacid, omeprazole. These are among the most prescribed drugs in the country. They work by shutting down stomach acid production, which is also a pathway the body uses to produce nitric oxide. People who have taken PPIs for three to five years have a 40 percent higher incidence of heart attack, stroke, and Alzheimer’s compared to those who haven’t.

Sugar and simple carbohydrates. Glucose is sticky. When blood sugar spikes, glucose literally adheres to proteins throughout the body, including to the nitric oxide synthase enzyme. When that enzyme gets gummed up, it can’t do its job — and instead of producing nitric oxide, it generates a harmful oxygen radical called superoxide. This is the same mechanism that makes hemoglobin A1C a diabetes marker. The higher your blood sugar, the more your body’s ability to make nitric oxide gets locked down.

What to Start Doing

Switch to fluoride-free toothpaste. Hydroxyapatite-based formulas remineralize teeth without the antiseptic damage. Dr. Bryan has used one for over 20 years and says when people with high blood pressure make the switch, many see their blood pressure normalize within 30 days. Fire any dentist who tells you fluoride is non-negotiable.

Ditch the antiseptic mouthwash. If fresh breath matters to you, that problem is mostly solved by stopping mouth breathing at night — which also happens to be one of the most significant things you can do for nitric oxide production.

Nasal breathe, especially at night. The highest concentration of nitric oxide synthase enzymes in the body is in the nasal epithelium. Every breath in through the nose activates them. Mouth tape exists for this reason. If you haven’t tried it, this episode is a good reason to start.

Get sunlight early. Twenty to thirty minutes of direct sunlight per day, ideally in the morning, activates nitric oxide production through the skin. Dr. Bryan does this as part of his daily routine without exception.

Move your body for 20-30 minutes, most days. Moderate physical exercise is one of the most reliable triggers for nitric oxide production. This does not have to be aggressive. Brisk walking counts.

There’s much more beyond the paywall below. If you’d like to read more, hit that subscribe button and become a paid subscriber.

But before that…

This episode connected a lot of dots for me, and I think it will for you too. The science is real. The changes to make are simple. And the reason to make them is clearer than it’s ever been.

Speaking of that — if you’re ready to take what you’re learning and actually build it into how you operate, our Awareness to Action (A2A) course launches in May. Head to focusnowtraining.com/a2a-course-interest to stay in the loop.

As for how to get this week’s episode:

Audio: Search Men Talking Mindfulness on your favorite podcast platform — new episode dropping now

Video: Valor Media Network on YouTube — available later today

A2A Course: focusnowtraining.com/a2a-course-interest