Dr. Mary Newport and Dave Asprey discuss ways to improve blood flow to the brain, including microdosing Cialis and nitric oxide treatments. Newport explains how these therapies work at the physiological level and their applications in clinical settings.
One of the other longevity therapies that I do specifically for Alzheimer's and just for general health is I take a microdose Cialis. Now, Cialis is a erectile dysfunction drug at full dose. You know, you use it for, for sexy time, but we're talking 6 milligrams, which is a very, very low dose to increase blood flow in the brain.
Yeah.
In my case, I know I need that because of all the health problems I used to have. And when I did my first scan with Dr. Daniel Amen many years ago, I was several standard deviations lower on blood flow in my brain than average. And I had damage to my brain from mox. So since then, I've brought my blood flow in my brain back up to slightly below normal levels through great effort. And I'm actually doing things to keep my blood pressure high enough to make sure my brain is perfused. And it turns out Cialis helps.
Yeah.
So it seems like if you were to take Cialis or something like N101 the nitric oxide lozenges and do nasal insulin at the same time, you'd probably get really good perfusion of it and then you'd have a brain that's like, wow, I remember my brain used to feel this way. I want that back.
Yeah, yeah.
I haven't stacked them, but I think I, I would try that.
Yeah. Well, they're actually doing studies for Alzheimer's with that to try to improve blood flow to the brain. So. And I. They're also doing studies in newborns with the others. Yeah. And it's. There's a condition called persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn. And it is a terrible, it's a horrible thing. You know, I dealt with it a lot, you know, as a neonatologist. And this would be usually a full term baby. And the arteries, like after a baby's born, the lungs have to expand and the arteries open up and blood flow just starts pouring out to the arteries. It's before the baby's born. It's about 10% of what it's going to be after the baby's born, the blood flow to the lungs. So this has to happen very quickly. But in some cases, the baby's arteries don't dilate normally.
Oh, of course it would work for that.
It's serious. It's very serious. And you know, we, you know, they would be on a ventilator, you'd have to hyperventilate them, you know, for days and days. And, and Eddie had a pretty high mortality rate. And then Someone had a brilliant idea to actually use the gas nitric oxide directly that we would, you know, put in with the oxygen. And I. I had so many babies that, like, almost immediately responded to that, and then, you know, they were off a ventilator a day later, you know, got to go home. But they're also studying Viagra to. And maybe Cialis to see if it could have a similar effect, you know, medication that would help dilate the arteries. So just another point opposite end of.
The spectrum, you know, but it makes so much sense. My gut says for that, you should just give them one breath of carbon dioxide. And. And that's gonna fix everything, because you get a physiological response from that that's gonna increase oxygen uptake. Everything will. Will dilate.
Yeah, it didn't. It didn't work in the newborns.
You guys have tried that?
Well, the babies would actually have very high carbon dioxide levels, too. Their lungs weren't really expanding normally or getting blood flow. So for carbon. Carbon dioxide will build up in the lungs and in the blood.
Yeah, you don't want to. You don't want to build it up.
So that's why we hyperventilate them to get their carbon dioxide levels down, you know, and that, you know, the babies, you know, before we had nitric oxide that came along. That's what we did, you know, to save those babies, to drop it.
It's. It. It's. It's a different thing.
It's very complex.
Yeah. James Nestor and I talked about something like this, and, yeah, complex. I mean, you're. You're an expert in the neonatal care. It. It's just one of those things where you take people who are having, you know, panic attacks and having constriction in just one breath. It's not going to raise levels physiologically over time, but it. The body goes, oh, I should do something about that. It's like a strong enough signal to then cause an opening, but who knows? I mean, there, like I said, it's way more complex outside my pay grade. But I always. I'm always interested in what happens with carbon dioxide, oxygen, and ketosis.
