Become Your Patients’ BFF by Increasing Blood Flow and Circulation
NUTRITION
Doug Grant
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re fine. Research shows that blood flow starts declining by your thirties whether you’re healthy or not.
So don’t ignore the early warning signs. They may be your only signs. Part of the aging process means a steady decline in many bodily functions and processes, including blood flow.
We experience the telltale signs via poor circulation, high blood pressure, brain fog, achy joints, cold hands and feet, numbness, and more. It all depends on where circulation is suffering the worst. If your circulation has been struggling for a while, it manifests as coronary artery disease, pulmonary disease, nervous system issues, Raynaud’s disease, kidney damage, hypertension, stroke, and so on.
Where’s the root of poor blood flow? Nitric oxide (N-O) production.
Research shows N-O levels start dropping in your thirties, meaning it’s down 75% by your seventies. So the poorer your health, the faster the decline. Poor circulation makes you prone to a gradual buildup of plaque in your arteries. It’s so gradual that it can take decades before you notice what’s happened—usually in the form of a heart attack.
Statistically, that’s the only warning most people ever
“Research shows N-O levels start dropping in your thirties, meaning it’s down 75% by your seventies."
get. “In more than 50% of people with heart disease, a sudden, unpredicted, deadly heart attack is the first sign of heart disease,” said Nathan Bryant, Ph.D., author of
The Nitric Oxide (NO) Solution.
Your body depends on your circulatory health when it comes to getting enough oxygen. Perhaps the most important thing your body needs is oxygen, so this isn’t just a blood flow issue. If your cells don’t receive an adequate supply of oxygen, you’re not going to reach or maintain optimal health no matter what you do.
You can turn this situation around by supplementing with nutrients that boost nitric oxide. However, before we get into those nutrients, let’s talk about N-O.
The Nobel Prize-Winning Molecule
Nitric oxide (N-O) is a gas produced in every tissue and organ in your body, specifically in the lining of your blood vessels. This gas triggers a chemical reaction that
tells arteries to relax, which leads to increased oxygen and blood flow.
Poor circulation leads to so many health problems because blood is what transports oxygen, nutrients, water, and hormones all over your body. Reversing this with N-O is the simple, safe, and effective approach.
It helps boost oxygen levels, which means energy levels go up. It also ensures nutrient and delivery, which means faster repair and excellent recovery, and your risk of multiple health issues just about vanishes.
You see, when your blood doesn’t flow freely, your body undergoes similar die-off. Without adequate blood flow, your body doesn’t receive the oxygen and nutrients it needs to flourish. It slowly withers like a dying plant.
When your body senses sluggish blood flow, it tells your heart to pump harder. The poorer the flow, the harder your heart works, and the higher your blood pressure. If this vicious cycle goes on too long, you suffer cardiac events. There’s no telling when your heart will finally give out, but it will if you don’t do anything about it.
You can divert your health away from such an impending disaster by giving your body the nutrients it needs to clear out plaque buildup and restore optimal blood flow. We’re often taught to reach for 1-arginine, citrulline, and ornithine, which work great together through the urea pathway. They are the best nutrients used before bed. They boost N-O and growth hormone.
However, ifyouneedto immediately improve blood flow and blood vessel flexibility, then you want nutrients that promote methylation and anabolism and protect from oxidative damage. This means reaching for nitrates instead.
The Three Facets of Flexible Blood Vessels and Great Blood Flow
1. Nitric Oxide: Natural Vasodilators from Fruits, Vegetables, and Cre-
aline Nitrate
If blood flow’s weakest point is near your heart, it develops into coronary artery disease. If it’s around your lungs, then it’s pulmonary disease. If blood is struggling to reach your brain, you’re well on your way to having a stroke. The list goes on and on. No matter the problem area, when it comes to poor circulation, nitric oxide levels are almost always low.
Food nitrates are perhaps the most important nutrients you can give your body to boost N-O levels and turn your health around.
Nitrates, like the ones found in foods such as beets and berries, increase blood flow by helping your blood vessels expand. When your blood is flowing freely, that means every organ in your body is functioning better, which in turn means your risk for disease takes a nosedive.
Be In-the-Know about Homocysteine
You can’t talk about blood flow and not mention homocysteine because we all have it in our blood. However, elevated levels can cause blood vessel irritation, showing an increased risk for atherosclerosis, which can lead to a heart attack, stroke, or blood clots.
You can correct homocysteine levels by eating more antioxidantrich fruits, which in turn helps increase N-O to levels that can effectively decrease homocysteine. Research shows that both creatine and nitrate-rich raw fruits and vegetables help lower homocysteine by 15%.
2.Creatine: Methylation and Anabolism
Creatine nitrate can be considered the rock star nutrient when it comes to promoting blood vessel flexibility and excellent blood flow. In addition to helping your body produce N-O, it’s an excellent catalyst for promoting methylation and anabolism.
Methylation is a process that adds select molecules to various
components of proteins, DNA, etc. so that they all function correctly and efficiently. A great example is serotonin, the feel-good brain chemical. If not methylated, it becomes dormant and leads to depression and anxiety. Creatine donates the select molecules your body needs to promote methylation.
Methylation is a vital metabolic process that happens in every cell and organ of the body. Life would not exist without it.
These normal reactions occur billions of times every second but, like N-O levels, it decreases as you age. So if you improve methylation, you improve function and overall health and wellness. You can make this easier by pumping yourself with an effective dose of creatine.
You know how food either gives you immediate energy or stores it for later use? Like how chocolate gives you a sugar rush, but athletes will
eat a pasta dinner the night before a game? Well, N-O is the nutrient equivalent of a sugar rush without the side effects. Your body can’t store it, and it doesn’t last long in your system.
Methylation is hugely important when it comes to the brief lifespan of N-O. Remember, your body can’t store N-O like it can other nutrients, so you have to create a biological environment for N-O to last long enough to get your arteries and blood vessels to relax and let blood flow.
Anabolism is the scientific term for the biological state of muscle growth. Your body is constantly breaking things down and building back up. However, when it comes to muscle, it’s easy for the body to consider muscle mass expendable for the sake of creating energy. This leads to weakness, poor posture, slower metabolism, and lowered immunity.
Creatine is a key nutrient when it
comes to promoting muscle strength. Since your heart doesn’t take a break and is made of muscle tissue and a network of blood vessels, you want your heart to stay strong and healthy.
Creatine has been proven to act as an antioxidant, promote proper muscle pH, and help with hydration at the cellular level—three things your body needs to repair and grow muscles, thus stay strong and keep your heart healthy.
Methylation and anabolism go hand in hand, which is why creatine is insanely popular in the fitness and athletics world. Creatine provides the nutrients necessary to promote methylation, which in turn promotes strong muscles.
This cycle leads to better blood vessel flexibility, better blood flow, and a healthy vascular system. With all that being healthier, your risk for dozens of diseases takes a sharp drop.
Hundreds of Studies Show the Benefits of Creatine:
• Increased muscle strength and size
• Enhanced recovery
• Improved speed performance
• Enhances brain function
3. Antioxidants: Total Protection from Free Radicals
There are 35 known fruits and vegetables around the world that are full of nitrates, which are converted into N-O in your body. They’re also pumped full of antioxidants, which protect N-O molecules from free radicals.
N-O is a free radical magnet because oxygen is present. Free radicals love to steal the very breath from cells and tear them apart. You can’t get away from them entirely. They’re a part of life. Since N-O excels at attracting free radicals, it needs a strong line of antioxidants ready to defend it.
In order for that defense to be strong, it needs to be able to neutralize all five free radicals: peroxyl, hydroxyl, peroxynitrite, superoxide anion, and singlet oxygen. Yes, they have big, crazy names, but they can deal damage that matches their namesake.
To beat such a foe and keep N-O alive long enough to be effective, you need fruits and vegetables picked at the peak of ripeness, such as pineapples, strawberries, noni, coffee berries, broccoli sprouts, acerola cherries, camu camu, and more.
When you put all these nutrients together, you can seriously turn your health around. When your blood vessels are flexible and blood flows freely, you experience better oxygen circulation, better lung capacity, warmer extremities, a stronger immune system, reduced inflammation (the bane of so many people’s existence), lower LDL cholesterol, healthier aging, healthier heart, and healthier hair and skin.
Don’t believe it? Not sure it’s possible? See the research for yourself.
References:
1. https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/sl2970014-0060-9
2.Improved Performance with Nitrates. T D Presley, A R Morgan. E Bechtold, W Clodfelter, R W Dove, J M Jennings, R A Kraft, S B King, P J Laurienti, W J Rejeski, J H Burdette, D B Kim-Shapiro, G D Miller.
3. Acute effect of a high nitrate diet on brain perfusion in older adults. Nitric Oxide. 2011 Jan l;24(l):34-42. A AKenjale, K L Ham. T Stabler, J L Robbins, J L Johnson. M Vanbruggen. G Privette, E Yim, W E Kraus, J D Allen.
4. Dietary nitrate supplementation enhances exercise performance in peripheral arterial disease. J Appl Physiol (1985). 2011 Jun; 110(6): 15 82-91.
5. M Murphy, K Eliot, R M Heuertz, E Weiss. Whole beetroot consumption acutely improves running performance. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2012 Apr;l 12(4):548-52.
6. M J Berry, N W Justus, J I Hauser, A H Case, C C Helms, S Basu, Z Rogers, M T Lewis, G D Miller. Dietary nitrate supplementation improves exercise performance and decreases blood pressure in COPD patients. Nitric Oxide. 2015 Aug l;48:22-30.
7.Creatine Nitrate and Nitrates from F&V LOWER Blood Pressure. A Jajja, A Sutyarjoko, J Lara, K Rennie, K Brandt, O Qadir, M Siervo. Beetroot supplementation lowers daily systolic blood pressure in older, overweight subjects. Nutr Res. 2014 Oct;34(10):868-75.
8. V Kapil. R S Khambata, A Robertson. M J Caulfield, A Ah-
luwalia. Dietary nitrate provides sustained blood pressure lowering in hypertensive patients: a randomized, phase 2, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Hypertension. 2015 Feb;65(2):320-7.
9. RET Smith, M Ashiya. Antihypertensive therapies. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 6, 597-598 (August 2007) | doi: 10.1038/nr d2354.
10. Creatine Helps with Methylation. McCarty, M F (2001) Supplemental creatine may decrease serum homocysteine and abolish the homocysteine ‘gender gap ’ by suppressing endogenous creatine synthesis. Medical Hypotheses, Volume 56 (1), pages 5-7.
11. Stead, L M et al. (2001) Methylation demand and homocysteine metabolism: effects of dietary provision of creatine and guanidinoacetate. American Journal of Physiology and Endocrinological Metabolism, Volume 281, pages E1095-E1100.
12. Taes, Y E C et al. (2003) Creatine supplementation decreases homocysteine in an animal model of uremia. Kidney International, Volume 64, pages 1331-1337.
Douglas Grant has been a nutritionist for many NBA teams and professional athletes for over 20 years. He owns Optimal Health Systems andformulates programs and therapeutic supplements for thousands of doctors around the world. He works to minimize the prevalence of disease and bring back optimal health. His most recentformulation is Opti-B.F.F. It dramatically improves your cardiovascular health by increasing blood vessel flexibility and blood flow. The ingredients in this formula are proven to increase circulation, improve methylation, and promote anabolism. Contact OHSfor more information at 800-890-4547.
