Transcription
Most people think aging only shows up in the mirror. Wrinkles, gray hair, sagging skin. But one of the most important changes as you get older is happening where you can't see it at all. It's happening inside your blood vessels. Your blood vessels affect every part of your body and how it functions every single day. And here's the thing. As you get older, your vascular system can start to malfunction. That resiliency, the ability of your blood vessels to adapt, dilate, lower stress in the circulation in your heart, well, that actually begins to decline. And it can actually help to explain why you feel lower energy, slower recovery, and even brain fog. The good news is that you can protect vascular resilience, and you can reverse the damage by using food as medicine. This is actually an important component. So, what are these foods? Let's take a look. You ready? Let's go.
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To start, I want to talk about one feature of healthy blood vessels, and that's a term that you might be familiar with, which is resiliency. Your blood vessels are constantly adjusting and adapting and being really resilient. When you exercise, your blood vessels widen to increase blood flow to your muscles. When you eat, your blood vessels help to direct nutrients where they are needed. And when your brain is active, the blood vessels in your brain, there's 400 miles worth, bring focused blood flow to the parts of your brain that need more of it in order to be able to focus on what you're actually doing. Now, this ability of blood vessels to adapt moment to moment is crucial for keeping your body functioning efficiently as you age.
First of all, let's take a look at what makes blood vessels resilient and how does that change as we get older. This flexibility I'm talking about resilience comes from a layer of cells lining the blood vessels called the endothelium. The endothelium is kind of like a saran wrap layer inside the tube of your blood vessels. Each of these cells in that lining produce biological signals and one of them is called nitric oxide. Not nitrous oxide which is laughing gas, but nitric oxide which is a biological signal and what nitric oxide does is it tells blood vessels to relax and get wider and this starts to lower blood pressure. It brings better blood flow to where you need it and it actually takes the stress off your circulation. You know, jetting blood puts a lot of stress on your blood vessels. So when you actually widen, the stress goes down and it also takes the burden off your heart.
Now, this is where things get interesting and important during aging because as we get older, that resiliency, the ability of your blood vessels to adapt, dilate, lower stress on the circulation in your heart, well, that actually begins to decline and your body produces less nitric oxide. So, there's less resiliency and the endothelium, that blood vessel lining I was talking about, also becomes much more vulnerable to damage. So, what happens with damage is inflammation. You can actually have accumulation of junk on it. And when that happens, inflammation will begin to actually form inside the walls of your blood vessels. And this further weakens the normal resiliency because now you don't have a normal thickness and function of the blood vessel wall, but now it's inflamed. Over years of this kind of stress, your blood vessels become less and less and less responsive. They're less able to dilate and regulate blood flow and they're less able to adapt to changes in order to be able to get the blood where it needs to go at the rate that it needs to go there. And this is, by the way, partly why we experience aging as fatigue, not enough blood flow, weakness, not enough muscle strength with less blood flow, less focus, the brain circulation isn't working as well, and overall our overall body has less resilience.
Sounds bad, right? Well, the good news is that you can protect vascular resilience and you can reverse the damage by using food as medicine. This is actually an important component that can add on top of whatever your medical doctor, your cardiologist could actually do for you. Now, certain foods contain polyphenols that can help boost nitric oxide production. Remember, that's a signal that helps your blood vessels widen and relax. And it can also reduce inflammation with the right polyphenols as well. So, what are these foods? Let's take a look. You ready? Let's go.
First food I'm going to talk about is something simple but surprisingly powerful. And that's my favorite breakfast food, blueberries. Blueberries contain polyphenols called anthocyanins. These are natural dyes that give blueberries their deep blue color. Okay? And anthocyanins can activate the blood vessel lining, the endothelium, and it can trigger the production of endothelial nitric oxide synthase or eNOS. To simplify this, let me just tell you the anthocyanins, the bioactives, the polyphenols in blueberries. When you eat them, they get into your blood vessels. They go through your circulation and it activates a trigger on the lining of your blood vessels called eNOS. This is an enzyme basically that uh produces more, you guessed it, nitric oxide. The very thing that goes down as we age, helps your blood vessels make more of it. And actually then your blood vessels widen and you get more resilience and you get more blood flow. All right? Blood vessels relax more, you get more blood flow. And in human studies, consuming blueberries has been shown to improve resiliency of your blood vessels. We measure that using a test called flow mediated dilation or FMD. Again, a function of resiliency and it reflects how healthy your blood vessel lining, the endothelium is. So, the question you should be asking is, what's a dose of blueberries needed to actually get better blood vessel function? Not much. Studies have shown one cup of blueberries a day, fresh or frozen, will have that beneficial effect. Anybody can actually do that. And the frozen blueberries also contain those anthocyanins. So if you can't get fresh blueberries, don't worry. Go to the frozen section and the frozen ones will have those polyphenols as well.
Second food I want to tell you about. Now this is one that people are always surprised by but love the fact that it's beneficial. You want to guess what it is? Dark chocolate. Now, chocolate itself is a confection, but to make chocolate, you got to start with a plant-based ingredient called cacao. Cacao is a pod that grows on a cacao tree in the tropics and uh there's seeds inside this pod. They are fermented, they are dried, they are roasted and then uh turn into a powder and that cacao powder is used to make chocolate. And the darker the chocolate, you know that percentage you see on the outside of the chocolate label, the darker the chocolate, the more the higher the percentage of cacao powder, the more plant-based stuff in there. And guess what? That plant-based powder has the cacao. It's got a natural polyphenol called pro-anthocyanidin. Okay? And proanthocyanidins also have powerful effects on blood vessel health. One of them is that chocolate proanthocyanidins, the polyphenols, can stimulate your stem cells. These stem cells come, they normally live in your bone marrow. They come out into your bloodstream when they're stimulated by proanthocyanidins like bees flying out of a hive. And guess what they do? They repair and regenerate your damaged blood vessels. They regenerate the endothelial lining. And the way this works, cacao works, is by stimulating nitric oxide in your endothelium. Same mechanism as the blueberries. That blood vessel lining and making nitric oxide is so important for resiliency. And clinical studies have shown that cacao flavonol can stimulate nitric oxide and dilation and also help to lower blood pressure. Very important to prevent cardiovascular diseases like stroke. Okay. So how much chocolate do you need? Well, the effective dose is about 2 to 600 milligrams of of uh of cacao flavonols every single day. And if you're like me, you go, what does that mean in terms of a chocolate bar? I would just tell you two or three small squares of dark chocolate, 70% or higher cacao will actually do the trick. Easy to do. And by the way, if you want to find a way to eat your high flavonol, high percentage cacao, dark chocolate, and you think it's a little bit bitter, my tip to you is to actually have those squares with a cup of coffee. Black coffee ideally. All right. Um, coffee is actually also good for your blood vessels. But guess what? Chocolate pieces plus coffee equals mocha. Everyone loves that. And if if you feel that the dark chocolate's a little bitter, that's the way that you get around it.
Ready for the next food? It's beets. Now, beets grow close to the ground and they're naturally rich in dietary nitrates from the soil. Okay? And when you eat them, your body converts the nitrogen in the form of nitrates that are found in those beets into nitric oxide. Now, how does it do that? Well, it turns out when you're eating beets and you're chewing it, chewing the beets, all right, let's say roasted beets, you're chewing them, chew, chew, chew. The contact of the dietary nitrate to your tongue microbiome, the bacteria will help to convert those nitrates into nitric oxide. So, when you swallow it, it gets absorbed as nitric oxide, goes into your bloodstream, and you have nitric oxide in your system. Now, your blood vessels actually dilate. This is very, very important for healthy aging and healthy blood vessels. So eating roasted beets is good for your circulation and heart health. What did I just tell you is that you need your tongue bacteria at work. So you want to actually have good oral hygiene, brush your teeth, you want to have good healthy gut bacteria. The gut starts here. Actually winds up down uh you know at your exhaust pipe, but actually uh starts in your mouth. And this is another thing you need to know is that some of the mouthwashes that dentists prescribe that contain chlorhexidine that is such a powerful antiseptic. It kills the good bacteria that actually can convert beet nitrates into nitric oxide. So that will actually kill it. Regular mouthwash actually doesn't really do it. But that super strong prescription stuff that you get after a dental procedure, that will actually do it. Now, good news is that your mouth will eventually recover. Just be careful about the mouthwash you actually use. Now, clinical studies have shown that beetroot can lower blood pressure. Very important for uh improving brain health uh overall muscle health and also eating beetroot or drinking beetroot juice can improve exercise performance. Remember I told you, dilate those blood vessels with nitric oxide, more blood flow to muscles, better performance. All right. Now, what's the dose of beets needed? Studies have shown that just one cup of roasted beets, that's not very much, or one cup of beet juice, also not very much, provides up to 500 mg of dietary nitrate, which is what you want to get that beneficial effect on your blood pressure from that nitric oxide that your body will produce.
If you're finding this helpful, this is exactly what I focus on in my videos, using food to influence how your body can actually make itself healthier at the biological level. So, make sure you're subscribed to this channel because I'll just keep breaking down the science for you and giving you these practical tips. Okay. So, you are seeing a pattern here now. There are different foods that can support your circulation in clinically meaningful ways. And so, I'm going to give you a food and that food is barley. I love barley. Barley soup. Barley in a stew. I've loved it since I was a kid. Barley, which is a grain, contains a bioactive called beta-glucan. G-L-U-C-A-N. And beta-glucan, that's a soluble fiber that can help to lower inflammation and activate your immune system. Beta-glucan has also been shown to lower blood cholesterol, which is something that also helps to protect your blood vessels. You don't want to have a lot of cholesterol floating around that can actually build up on the walls of your blood vessels and narrow them. So beta-glucan lowering cholesterol protects your the your blood vessels and protects blood flow by preventing this buildup of the LDL harmful bad cholesterol on the walls of your blood vessels. Again, you don't want the plaque building up. Those lead to blockages that can actually lead to a heart attack or a stroke or if it happens in your legs, you can actually wind up having cold dead legs that will actually start to kind of disintegrate and you'll have wounds. So lowering LDL cholesterol, beta-glucan which is found in barley can help to decrease the risk of blood vessel blockage and improve blood flow.
Now here's something else that beta-glucan does. Beta-glucan found in barley also feeds the gut microbiome. It helps to feed your healthy gut bacteria. And we know that when your healthy gut bacteria is fed, okay, uh the bacteria will metabolize its food and produce something called short-chain fatty acids, SCFA or SCFAs we call them. These substances produced by healthy gut bacteria when they're fed actually have powerful anti-inflammatory effects throughout the body. So it just lowers your inflammation in your body. And as you know, inflammation is one of those root causes of disease. So barley lowers inflammation by feeding your gut bacteria and it also protects the walls of your blood vessels as well. Okay. Now one more thing and this is coming from me as a researcher on blood vessels. Beta-glucan is also known to help the body produce a natural peptide protein called VEGF. That stands for vascular endothelial growth factor VEGF. Very important for helping to grow muscles. uh to help also helps to u keep blood vessel uh lining healthy. And so the question is, how much barley do you need to eat for benefit? Well, about 3 grams of beta-glucan a day is what you want to get in. And guess what? How much that is in terms of barley? About a cup of cooked barley. Everything seems to be about a cup. Right.
Now, the last food I'm going to tell you about is one of my favorites. Apples. An apple a day is supposed to keep the doctor away, right? But what's in an apple? An apple contains polyphenols like ursolic acid which is actually found in the skin and quercetin. Quercetin is also found in onions. It's also found um in capers and a lot of other places. Apples contain ursolic acid in the skin and quercetin in the flesh. These do a lot of different helpful things, but one of them is that they're anti-inflammatory that reduces oxidative stress. So that's kind of um cellular stress in your body. And the cellular stress uh can actually put a strain and damage your blood vessels. So lowering inflammation, lowering oxidative stress, lowering cell stress actually helps to protect the blood vessels as well. So both ursolic acid and quercetin protect blood vessels from injury. Ursolic acid also does another thing. It stimulates new blood vessels to grow. That's a process called angiogenesis. I study this. It's how the body grows blood vessels. And this is important. Wherever you need to heal a wound, if you've got an injury, surgery, trauma, or if you're exercising and you want to build more muscles, become more fit, blood vessels are actually needed or solicited to do this. Or if you wind up actually having a problem like heart blockage or brain blockage after a heart attack or a stroke, th this type of uh growth of new blood vessels can actually help to repair and salvage and make sure your tissues remain as healthy as possible. So, apple polyphenols very, very important. They do one more thing you need to know about and we talked about this already, but apples will do this too. The apple polyphenols help the body to produce nitric oxide. Again, helps the blood vessels to widen, relax, get better blood flow, better for vascular health, and nitric oxide stimulates stem cells, more regeneration, more stem cells helping to fix your blood vessels uh as you go along.
So, one of the tips for buying an apple, if you want to get ursolic acid because it's found in the skin, this is an example where you want to look at organic because in a conventionally grown apple sprayed with pesticides, some of those chemicals will seep into the skin and some studies have shown that like the chemicals will seep into about 20% of the thickness of the apple skin. You can't wash that off. All right, organic here is probably a better choice if you want to actually um get the benefit of the apple skin, which by the way also has dietary fiber, which is good for your gut microbiome, which will then produce short-chain fatty acids and help to lower inflammation as well.
So, you see, by thinking about foods in terms of what they actually do for you beyond simple nutrition, it actually activates your body's health defenses. In this case, what I've been talking about is your circulation. So when you think about aging and you want to think about vascular health, the health of your circulation, you can see this is way more than what you can actually see in the bathroom mirror in the morning. When your blood vessels are doing their job well, your organs and cells are able to do their job uh really well as well. They get the signals that they need like nitric oxide in order to be able to bring that blood flow to where it's needed as we get older. If you want to learn more about blood vessels and blood flow and foods uh that can actually help to activate your health defense systems, make sure you subscribe to my channel. This is where I break it all down for you and I will see you in the next video. Hey, if you like that video, then you're going to love this one. Check it out.