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If you have a belly sticking out, you have a problem because the fat that's in the stomach, that's called visceral fat.
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This is very detrimental fat. And that's the epidemic that we have today. But the
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only thing that will make you lose that fat very quickly. Dr. Praep Jam Nadas is a worldleading
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cardiologist who has treated more than a quarter of a million patients with chronic heart disease.
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Now he's using his voice to help millions more prevent ending up on the operating table through simple lifestyle
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techniques. This is crucial. Glucose actually is toxic inside the bloodstream and the body cause insulin into the
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bloodstream to push glucose out. But frequent consumption of carbs, sugar, processed foods is causing insulin to
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stay up which can lead to insulin resistance and you're going to be more prone to heart disease which is the
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number one cause of death all over the world right now. But this is where fasting comes in because after 12 hours
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you start pulling the fat out. And the first place the fat comes out of is going to be visceral fat. But with
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modern living, we have lost this physiology of fasting. So we'll go into that. And there must be certain things which
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people aren't aware aren't healthy as it relates to my cardiovascular health. Yes. So I see that people who overly do
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aerobic activity, they end up with more coronary artery disease than patients who do short sprints and resistance
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exercises. Then there's mold. And almost 70% of homes these days have some form of mold toxicity in them. But also one night of bad sleep, you become insulin resistant the next day. And there's
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calcium supplements, excessive fruit. White rice. White rice. You'll be surprised how much arsenic
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there's in rice these days. I watch a lot of true crime. People kill each other with arsenic. Yes. And it'll slowly kill you. And
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lastly, this is going to surprise you. I see messages all the time in the comments section that some of you didn't
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realize you didn't subscribe. So, if you could do me a favor and double check if you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated.
00:01:52
It's the simple. It's the free thing that anybody that watches the show frequently can do to help us here to
00:01:57
keep everything going in this show in the trajectory it's on. So, please do double check if you've subscribed and uh
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thank you so much because in a strange way you are you're part of our history and you're on this journey with us and I
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appreciate you for that. So, yeah, thank you [Music] Dr. Pep Gnardas. What is it you spent the entirety of your career especially the last few
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decades of your career focusing on prevention of heart disease which is the number one cause of death all over the world right now. You see the heart is made up of many parts. So this is
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important. It's a pump. So it's a muscle. So you have diseases of the muscle and it's rampant these days.
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Cardiomyopathy, weakness of the muscle. Then you have the arteries on top of the heart and
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that's called coronary artery disease. Diseases of the arteries they block up. Then you have the valves. The valves
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tend to get damaged as well. For example, aotic stenosis. And then you have the peripheral circulation. All the
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blood vessels that go to your corateeds, your brain, your legs and to all the organs of your body. And then you have
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microvascular disease which is the tiny capillaries that they become dysfunctional as well. What's a capillary? Capillary is the branch of the branch of
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the branch. Okay. So like the tiny little veins final ones. Yeah. So when they become dysfunctional that organ becomes
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dysfunctional as well. So cardiology affects all these aspects. And how long have you been operating on people's hearts? about 35 years now. And how many hearts do you think you've
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treated? In excess of 30,000. And what what's the age range of those patients? They were used to be mostly older people over 65. Now I would say 50% of them are
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under 65 and 50% are over 65. So the demographics is changing. The younger people are developing heart disease. So, the youngest patient you've ever treated?
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28. And what what was the predicament in that case? He was having a full-blown heart attack.
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So, that means that one of his arteries was completely clogged up. It had a blood clot in it. There was no circulation past that artery and
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therefore he was having acute chest pain, sweating, blood pressure was low. He comes straight to the hospital. I rushed to the hospital, take him straight into the kath lab and try to
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open up that blockage. And we did open up that blockage and put a stent in it and got rid of that blockage immediately
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to restore that blood flow to the heart muscle. And at 28, how does one get a heart
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attack? You said it was blocked up. There's a lot of nuance in that. Most people don't understand what a heart attack is. So, in a nutshell, I'm going to tell you what it is. When you have a
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plaque, a plaque is a buildup of a little fibrous material inside the artery and that doesn't cause a heart attack. A heart attack is caused when one of those plaques
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cracks. Now in this diagram for example, it's showing that the plaque is closing
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up the artery and this will cause angina. That means a lack of blood supply over here. So this patient may
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complain of chest discomfort or he may not complain of chest discomfort because remember when you have a blockage like
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this only 20% of the patients actually get chest pain. That means that you could have a
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blockage like this in a patient and you may not have any chest discomfort and the only way you're going to pick that
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up is by doing a stress test or a coronary calcium score or some other modality to see whether he has blockage or not. A heart attack is when a minor
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blockage which is not causing much flow disturbance suddenly cracks and what happens to the the plaque that
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come that cracks off and when it cracks open the blood that's going past it sees the crack and wants
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to repair it and forms a blood clot on it. So the final thing that shuts down that artery is a blood clot. It's not the plaque that shuts it off, it's a blood clot. So a heart attack is caused
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by a blood clot at the sight of a rupture and what causes rupture is inflammation. Okay. So when people say that heart disease is the number one killer of
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people generally that are that are diseased. Is it that process that's causing it alone or is there a multitude
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of processes that lead to heart disease? There's a multitude of things that lead to heart disease. Look,
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that was a heart attack. That's right. So, one, you're making plaque. You shouldn't be making plaque. A plaque is an inflammatory
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area inside your arteries. It's reacting to something. And I can go into the nuance of what's actually what's the
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body reacting to? What's inflammation? Inflammation is reacting to something. What is that something? And I think it's
00:07:00
important for your audience and everybody to know what that something is. Now, you've got this pimple. Think
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of it as a pimple on the inside of the artery. Now, one day when there's enough inflammation in your body systemically,
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that pimple is going to crack open just like a pimple on the skin breaks open. Now, that artery has this little pimple on the inside and it cracks open and a blood clot forms on it and that's a
00:07:25
heart attack. So, you don't want plaque formation. You don't want plaque instability which is rupture of that plaque and you don't want a blood clot to form on it. There are factors that
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affect each of these processes and all three processes are going wrong today and that's why we have so much plaque formation and instability of the plaque
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which then leads of course to heart attacks and our blood in general. We have more coagulation issues today than we ever did before. Which means our blood because of inflammation is more
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ready to clot more easily. So we having the perfect triad. It's the perfect storm. That's why we're seeing an epidemic of this. And that's why we're not making a dent in it. Yes,
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you can have a plaque rupture and have a heart attack and we put a stent in you. Okay, that's fine. But what did we do to
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look at the underlying reason as to why you formed that plaque and why did you rupture it and why was your blood so
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clotty in the first place that made you actually seal off the artery? Is this an increasing problem? Yes, it's a it's a huge problem because
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those factors have been identified now and that's what we go for in my practice. We look for the factors. Why
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did you make this plaque? Why is there so much inflammation in your body? Inflammation is a reaction to
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something foreign. What is that foreign stuff? What is that abnormal physiology in you that your body is reacting
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against? Cuz that's what inflammation is. And inflammation, of course, whenever there's going to be
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inflammation, there's going to be increased tendency to make blood clots. So, we go in, we chase all these things
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in patients to find out. And that's the real prevention. that 28-year-old that came in um and you treated him, was it was that a surgery
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you did? We call it a surgery, but it's not. It's a it's a angoplasty. So, we go in from
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the wrist. Yeah. Or we go in from the groin with a catheter and we go into the coronary
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artery. A catheter being like a tube. It's a hollow tube. And we put it into the coronary artery. We shoot the dye
00:09:36
inside. We can see where the blockage is. And then we thread a tiny wire into that artery through the blockage and then bring in a balloon and squash the blood clot out of the way. Restore the
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circulation and then bring in a stent. A stent is like a spring that opens the artery up.
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We leave the stent inside there. We remove everything else and now you have an open artery and you have blood flow
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going down that artery. And what had that 28-year-old done to end up in your surgery? What were the
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decisions that they had made that brought them there? So, he was number one, he was
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overweight, but he wasn't just overweight. The overweight was all in his belly and he had a fatty liver and
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he had what is known as visceral fat. He was not a diabetic, but he was a pre-diabetic. That means he had a lot of insulin in
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his body and his glucose levels were good. So, if you went to his family doctor, they would say, "Oh, you're not a diabetic. your hemoglobin A1C which is
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a blood test that you do for diabetes is actually okay but actually that patient had a very high insulin blood level. Now
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insulin is a very aogenic molecule. It causes smooth muscle proliferation. Smooth muscle is in the walls of the arteries. It causes vasoc constriction. It makes your blood more clotty and it
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causes inflammation. So this patient was a pre-diabetic and this is very important and this is
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what caught my attention because when I looked at my patients that were coming in with heart attacks and hardening of
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the arteries and when I tried to identify why they doing this none of them were diabetics
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but then I did a glucose tolerance test on them and what happened it was just by
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chance that I happened to have these tests in my office where you can measure the blood glucose. So I had about 120 of
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them. So I said, "Look, let's just do some random testing on these patients and I found that at least half of them
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had no diabetes but their glucose intolerance. That means that the sugars went up but not enough to make them a
00:11:47
diabetic but it did go above the normal range. We did not have insulin testing at that time. About 10 years later, we started testing insulin in the office. And I bought a machine for this purpose
00:12:00
in my office to measure insulin levels and life was never the same again. Why? Because it's all about insulin when it comes to the metabolic derangement. So I found that these patients the sugars
00:12:12
were going up to 150, 160 after giving them a glucose drink. Mhm. So you say, okay, he's not a diabetic. Look, the sugar didn't really go high, but when you measured the insulin level,
00:12:25
the insulin was off the roof. So, when you say this is an insulin problem, can you explain this to me? Like, I have no idea what glucose and
00:12:32
insulin are for for any of my listeners out there that have a inexperienced understanding of these these these terms
00:12:38
and what they what they do and mean. It's crucial. Everybody needs to understand the relationship between
00:12:44
sugar, which is glucose, and insulin. When you consume sugar or glucose, the body has to get rid of that glucose very quickly from the bloodstream because glucose actually is toxic inside the
00:12:57
bloodstream. Even though it is what the body uses for energy in the bloodstream,
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it glycates all the blood vessels and the walls and the components in blood and hemoglobin as well glycates it. That
00:13:10
means a glucose attaches itself to that molecule. So now that molecule can't work properly. That is why the higher
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your blood glucose, all your chemicals don't work well, your enzymes don't work well, your hormones
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don't work well, nothing works well, and you age prematurely because you're getting glycation. Glyca, a glycated
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molecule can't work normally. It doesn't function normally. So when you consume the glucose, the
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glucose has to come out of the bloodstream. And how does the body do it? It sends a message to the pancreas.
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The pancreas says, "Aha, I'll make some insulin." It pours insulin into the bloodstream. Insulin comes into the
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bloodstream, pushes the glucose into the cells. And where does it pushing it? Into the liver, into the muscles, into
00:13:57
every cell in the body. Insulin will push glucose out. Now, how much insulin is the question. If I'm eating every 3 hours and I'm
00:14:10
consuming glucose or I'm consuming starchy foods or I'm consuming carbohydrates. Now watch where I'm going
00:14:16
with this because you're already beginning to know where I'm going with this. I'm consuming glucose and carbs
00:14:21
every 2 three hours. I'm stimulating my pancreas. I'm stimulating my insulin. My
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insulin goes up, it comes down. But before it even gets a chance to come down, it goes up again.
00:14:33
So the repeated consumption of and frequent consumption of glucose is causing my insulin to stay high because insulin stays a little bit longer in the bloodstream than the glucose. The
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glucose will come down in about 2 to 3 hours but the insulin stays higher for about 4 hours. Now what happens is that
00:14:51
you continue this lifestyle for a few years. Now the body because these are all hormones will say well you know it's I'm going to need to make more insulin now
00:15:03
you become insulin resistant. Any hormone that stays in your body for a long time the body becomes immune to it.
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So the next time I eat the sugar I'm going to have to make more insulin to produce the same effect. That is called
00:15:17
insulin resistance. So now you got this patient who's been eating carbs, sugar, processed foods. What does that mean? Processed foods that means foods that
00:15:30
are quickly absorbed into the bloodstream. Processed foods, these are products without fiber. So the
00:15:37
absorption is very quick. So the poor pancreas has to react just like that. Produces a whole bunch of insulin. And then the frequent eating and the frequent consumption makes you insulin
00:15:50
resistance. So now you produce a whole bunch of insulin in order to bring that sugar level down. So then you say, okay,
00:15:57
well it doesn't matter because insul the insulin is bringing the sugar level down. So what's the harm done? Because your A1C is still good. You're not a
00:16:03
diabetic. No, but it's that background high insulin that is destroying your metabolism. It's that high insulin level in the background. So insulin pushes glucose
00:16:16
into the liver and you develop a fatty liver. It pushes the calories into production
00:16:22
of new fats around your viscera. The viscera means in your belly around your pancreas you get visceral fat. Now this fat is produced from glucose. It's a
00:16:34
different kind of fat. Look if I gave you a high calorie diet right now of all sorts of foods you put on weight
00:16:39
everywhere. Okay? But if I give you glucose, you put it on mostly in your stomach and your stomach will protrude and that's called visceral fat. It's on the inside. You can't pinch
00:16:51
it. It's on the inside around your organs around the organs. This is very detrimental fat. And that's the epidemic that we have today. And that's a direct result of eating, you know, starchy
00:17:04
glucose, carbohydrates, which creates insulin, which creates this downstream effect on wrong foods and eating too frequently.
00:17:12
Too frequently. Okay? Because remember, it's also the frequency of eating because before that insulin gets a chance to come down.
00:17:17
You're already popping yourself with more food and hence you develop insulin resistance. You get a very high insulin.
00:17:24
It takes this much insulin now just to bring that sugar level down. And then the one day when you cannot control that
00:17:32
sugar now that sugar will go out and now your doctor will say you're a diabetic but by that time you've already had 10 years of hyperinsulinemia. So what happens if by the time you make
00:17:43
a diagnosis of diabetes to say well now your sugar is really high it is high because your body has not had the
00:17:50
ability to keep it down. Why? Because even that high insulin could not keep your sugar level down. You became a
00:17:56
diabetic. You lost that whole opportunity of prevention. It's those 10 years. Look, by the time you're a
00:18:02
diabetic and you come and see Dr. Jay in his cardiac clinic, you already have coronary artery disease. Like that
00:18:08
28-year-old, that 28-year-old didn't have diabetes. He already has coronary artery disease. By the time you are
00:18:15
diagnosed as having diabetes, you already have coronary artery disease. We have a great opportunity here to
00:18:21
actually start screening these patients with insulin levels very early on. But most doctors don't have the ability or knowledge to do the insulin level testing, but it should be done.
00:18:33
In someone like me, I'm 33 years old now. When does the damage begin? It starts right now. It starts right now. As soon as you around 30, you're
00:18:47
already starting to have trouble. You have to But you know, this is what I do. I look at that patient walking into my
00:18:53
room and if I see that he's got a belly sticking out, I already know he's probably got insulin resistance because all the fat is in here. Because the fat
00:19:04
that's in the stomach, sideways, he looks terrible. From the back, he looks great. His waist is increased.
00:19:12
Mhm. He doesn't have all the fat everywhere else in his body. That's the phenotype of somebody who has
00:19:18
hyperinsulinemia. That same person goes on a cruise, he'll come back 5 to 10 pounds more because
00:19:24
he's got so much insulin in his body. Insulin is a storage molecule. Puts everything away. And it's very hard for
00:19:31
him to lose weight. Why is it harder? you the only thing that will make you lose that fat very
00:19:36
quickly is to change your diet of course but you have to do fasting because fasting brings your insulin level. See
00:19:42
this is where fasting comes in. So what does fasting do? Do you mean fasting or a calorie deficit? Is it or is it the same thing
00:19:48
in your view? No, they're not the same thing. They are not the same thing. You see when you
00:19:54
don't eat your insulin levels come down because you not stimulating your pancreas anymore. So you want to bring
00:20:01
your insulin levels down. the best thing you can do in the world is to do fasting because there's no look if I just simply
00:20:08
cut down on my calories then there's a different physiology that's going to take place in the body and when you fast there's a totally different physiology when you cut down
00:20:21
on calories the body senses that this caloric deficit your metabolic rate changes actually slows down and the body will start breaking down everything
00:20:31
muscles included. So you lose fat and you also lose muscles. On the other hand, when
00:20:37
you're fasting, it's a different physiology. Fasting is I've put on fat. Now I'm
00:20:43
going to take it out of the bank. Now the bank is going to be available for me to pull out my calories and use it now.
00:20:50
And you start burning the fat. So in the first 12 hours of a fast, you take out all the glucose in the form of glycogen
00:20:56
from your muscles and your liver. After 12 hours, you start pulling the fat out.
00:21:02
And the first place the fat comes out of is going to be visceral fat. That is why
00:21:07
fasting benefits you so much because it gets rid of that worst fat. The fat that is very inflammatory. You see, if I did
00:21:14
a biopsy of your visceral fat versus a biopsy of let's say a fat form on your buttock,
00:21:20
two different types of fat. One is full of inflammatory molecules. The other one is not full of inflammatory molecules.
00:21:27
One is producing interlucan 6 and tumor necrosis factor and this other fat is not. These are two different fat stoages. Visceral fat is very toxic. It's very
00:21:39
inflammatory. And that is why patients who have visceral fat make all these molecules. So when I do the blood test I see that oh you've got so much inflammation. You've got interlucan 6 is
00:21:50
high tumor necrosis factor is high. Your CRP is running high. And one of the reasons for this is not just leaky gut
00:21:58
and other things that I look at, but in your case is also because you have a lot of ectopic fat. Ectopic fat. Ectopic fat
00:22:06
is now we realizing is not just only around the liver and around your pancreas, it's also around your heart.
00:22:13
So when we look at the coronary arteries and we see all those fat around the coronary arteries, you had a very nice
00:22:19
diagram right there and you can see that around each artery there's that yellowess that yellow is all plaque
00:22:32
fat. There's fat around that and it's plaque forming. It's plaque forming. It stimulates plaque. It's inflammatory.
00:22:40
And now we can do CT scans that will actually detect how much inflammation is in the fat around the arteries as well. Ectopic fat is in the around the
00:22:52
coronary arteries. It's in your liver and in your pancreas and it is very inflammatory. On this point of fasting, so if you have
00:23:00
someone come to you and that, you know, they have that physique where there's a bit more of that protruding belly fat, you said that fasting is a much better
00:23:07
approach than just sort of a calorie restriction. was looking at some studies that said research shows that calorie
00:23:12
deficits of any kind can reduce fiscal fat, but fasting will give it an edge because of the insulin sensitivity stuff
00:23:18
that you talked about as well. What kind of fast should one be doing? Because there's so many different names for
00:23:24
these fasts. People do these 40-day water fasts and they do intermittent fasting. It's a great question. So, there are
00:23:30
many, many different types of fasting depending on your goal on what you want for that particular patient. So if a patient is just simply looking to reduce
00:23:41
his visceral fat then I start with 1212 which means 12 hours you don't eat anything. You just drink liquids with no calories in it and then 12 hours is your
00:23:53
feeding period. We start with that and we do that for about 2 to 3 weeks. Then we quickly move to 186. 186 means 6 hours you get to eat. 18
00:24:05
hours. It's only water, black tea, black coffee, green tea, no calories. 186. 186. And then that's one type of
00:24:19
fasting. Now, if a patient is very overweight, a patient has diabetes and your goal is to reverse the diabetes,
00:24:26
the patient needs to lose 60 pounds, then those patients have a special type of need. For them, I will take them to a
00:24:35
48 hour fast once a week. Sometimes I'll go to a three-day water fast every 9 days. Every 9 days, you will do OMAD. OMAD
00:24:48
means one meal a day only, every day for 9 days. And then you're going to give me
00:24:53
a three-day water fast. Is the same advice applicable to women? because obviously they're contending
00:24:59
with a variety of hormone fluctuations and estrogen and I know that the the female body responds differently to these kinds of stresses like fasts. I've been asked that question so many
00:25:11
times from patients as well. Most of the women can actually handle it. The only women that cannot are those who are
00:25:18
trying to become pregnant or or they have um or they're already pregnant. I I I think that women are not that different when it comes to the fasting programs. So, in my experience, I've
00:25:30
been able to get women to fast. I just finished a fast on one lady just now for 72 days. 72 days. She was terribly
00:25:40
overweight. She had diabetes. She had hypertension. She had hyper lipidmia. She was having hip replacements, knee replacements, joint problems. She had skin problems. And we fasted her for 72
00:25:53
days. What did she have in those 72 days in terms of drinks, electrolytes, coffee? What was she?
00:25:58
Great question. So she would have black tea, black coffee, water, and in the water once a day I tell her to put some electrolytes in there. So there's a electrolyte called element or sometimes
00:26:11
I just tell them to go buy some Celtic salt and put half a teaspoon in there and once a day you take that. If you get
00:26:17
cravings and you feel really really hungry, take some MCT oil, a teaspoon, and put it in your water and you can drink that as well. I think it's worth saying that probably
00:26:29
you shouldn't try this at home, ladies and gentlemen, because obviously medical supervision is critical here. But in the
00:26:34
case of that lady, what was the before and after of that 72-day fast? So, diabetes gone, blood pressure normalized, weight loss, tremendous weight loss. I
00:26:47
mean, I think she lost about 55 60 lbs. Wow. Okay. And not only did she lose all that
00:26:53
weight, yes, all that weight from her belly was gone, but even her face under the arms. So, when you lose weight in a
00:27:00
fasting program, it's very different from losing weight when you are restricting calories. you actually
00:27:07
retract your your skin. So you get real changes in your entire body. These patient I had one patient that fasted for 183 days under supervision. Okay. So
00:27:22
he went from 400 lb to 210 lb. And when he walked into the office, you would not recognize that he's just lost all this
00:27:29
weight because he did not look like skin on top of bones and then having to have
00:27:36
surgery to remove all that excess skin. Fasting is a totally different physiology.
00:27:42
In fasting, you you you you the body is doing a whole lot of things that are very different. And we can go into the physiology of fasting because that's fascinating. It's a physiology that has
00:27:53
not been used by us. We've lost it. So one of the things about modern living, modern living, we have lost this physiology of fasting. First of all, why do we still have that physiology in us
00:28:06
is because it's supposed to serve a purpose because we're supposed to be fasting and feasting, but now we're only
00:28:12
feasting all the time and we're not fasting. In order to go back to normal, you should be fasting. Fasting is supposed to be a normal part of your existence. That's the way you were designed. Not
00:28:26
this modern industrialized living that we've been doing in the last fraction of a millisecond in the total existence of the human race. We've changed our
00:28:37
lifestyle so much. Modern man has. But our genetics and our physiology has lagged behind. We were supposed to use fasting and feasting as part of our
00:28:48
normal program, as our normal physiology. That's why we still have it. That is why after 12 hours you start
00:28:55
making some more ketones in your body and the ketones come from fat. You're moving that fat out of storage.
00:29:02
What is a ketone? Ah ketones. So ketones are a energy molecule produced by the liver. How does
00:29:09
it make it? It makes it from fat. So the fat gets liberalized. And by the way the fats only start moving when your insulin
00:29:15
levels are down. So because of fasting your insulin levels are really low now. Okay? Because you've been fasting right?
00:29:21
So now the fats start dissolving. So you get free fatty acids. The free fatty acids float into the bloodstream. Free fatty acids are fat products. They float into the bloodstream. They go to your
00:29:33
liver. Your liver converts those into ketones. Now ketones are an energy source of the body, an alternative
00:29:39
source to glucose. So in general terms, you are either going to be running on glucose and glucose metabolism or you're running on ketones. Okay? And so ketones
00:29:51
basically show up in the when glucose isn't around. That's absolutely right. So ketones and
00:29:57
ketones are actually a cleaner fuel for the body. And in terms of producing reactive oxygen species in the metabolism, the way your mitochondria work, you actually produce less reactive
00:30:09
oxygen species, which is damaging to your physiology when you're in ketones. And ketones are signaling molecules that also change your physiology in a number of ways. Number one, it causes the
00:30:22
production of brain derived neurotropic factor that occurs under ketogenesis. Brain derived neurotropic factor which means that you become smarter, you're growing new cells, your reflexes are
00:30:35
better, your visual acuity is better. Why? Because nature wants you to become a better specimen so you can go out and
00:30:41
get your next kill. So, why don't we all just stay in a state of ketosis then if it's so miraculous?
00:30:47
Well, that's a great question. You don't want to be in ketosis all the time because that's not what ketosis what
00:30:53
what our physiology was made for because then you'll just be burning fats, burning fats, burning fats all the time.
00:30:59
And that's not a good state to be in constantly either. So, you want to be able to do both. You're supposed to get
00:31:06
your current account and your deposit account. You're supposed to work with both of them. That's the normal
00:31:12
physiology. So not only brain derived neurotropic factor increases but also stem cells. Stem cells are amazing. And in my patients of course I see that
00:31:25
what what is a stem cell? Stem cells. So stem cells are we all have stem cells and we all still make
00:31:32
stem cells and they are produced by the bone marrow. These are pur potent cells.
00:31:38
Cells made that will then go out and become whatever they need to become. So they can go out into your circulation, become a muscle cell, they can become a retinal cell, a skin cell. They can
00:31:49
transform into anything. So what happens is that when you break your fast Mhm. you get a surge of stem cells coming out of your bone marrow. Some of them become immunocytes. That is why we know that
00:32:01
fasting also boosts your immunity. People who fast get less infections, get less sore throats and coughs and colds
00:32:09
and the viruses that are going around. The immunity is better. The stem cells are not I'm particularly interested in
00:32:15
the stem cells because of a thing called the progenitor cells, endothelial progenitor cells. Progentor cells are you see you're always hurting your blood vessels the lining of the blood vessels
00:32:28
and the lining of your blood vessels have to be constantly repaired and they they are repaired by the progentor
00:32:33
cells. When you do intermittent fasting and timerestricted feeding you will produce more and this has been shown in numerous studies more progenitor cells
00:32:45
and these progentor cells go and repair your blood vessels. So I do what why am I interested in this? Because I'm a
00:32:51
vascular doctor, I want my blood vessels to constantly be repairing themselves from the damage that we do in day-to-day
00:32:58
life. So stem cell mobilization, brain derived neurotropic factor, growth hormone, you make more growth hormone in fasting. So when should you exercise when you're
00:33:10
fasting? At the peak of your fast. So, if I'm going to break my fast at 6:00 p.m., I tell patients to go out to the gym at 4:00 in the afternoon.
00:33:22
But I said, "But doc, how can I do that?" You will find that you will put on more muscle and you'll retain more
00:33:28
muscle as well because you have higher growth hormone. The fastest way and the best way to actually increase your
00:33:33
growth hormone production is to do intermittent fasting. When I sat with um Dr. Stacy Sims, who
00:33:40
does a lot lot of um work on women's physiology and women's performance. One of the things she said to me is that if
00:33:47
a woman in particular tries to do a workout fasted, the body will break down the muscle in a woman because she said a woman's body is much more the hippamus. It's much more
00:34:01
sensitive to changes in a woman's glucose levels because it's trying to defend against, you know, pregnancy and,
00:34:06
you know, all these kinds of things. So it shuts down the menstrual cycle if there's not enough glucose in the blood and and so she said for women in
00:34:13
particular you do you do want to have eat something before you work out or it will your body will take from the muscle
00:34:19
and it will definitely won't the body's very sensitive. It won't want to to help you build muscle if there's not enough
00:34:24
glucose energy in the body. She said for men it's slightly different because we're a little bit more robust and we were meant to hunt. So if we were
00:34:31
fasted, our body is, you know, designed to kind of keep up its normal processes to help us complete a hunt, per se. So I
00:34:39
guess I throw this question out to you about about women exercise and fasting. Yeah, I think that's a great
00:34:44
observation. So again is what kind of exercise is the woman doing? You see, now there's two kinds of basic
00:34:50
exercises. One is aerobic activity and one is uh resistance exercises. And you can also throw into that highintensity interval training. Mhm. So
00:35:01
when it comes to the training that I'm talking about in a fasting state, I like resistance training. So in resistance
00:35:09
training, that glucose issue is not going to become a problem. Now, if you're going to put that female patient on a treadmill and make her run for a
00:35:14
long period of time, let's say you're going to make her run for 40 minutes on the treadmill. I think that yes, you're absolutely right. You are going to
00:35:20
deplete her glucose and you may cause some problems and then the muscle will start breaking down. But I do believe
00:35:26
from all the experience that I've had with my patients that when I tell them to do HIT, which is high intensity
00:35:32
interal training, all the women do just as well as the men because all you're doing is you're intensely working the
00:35:39
muscles and you're doing some resistance exercise and then you're totally resting as well. And I see fantastic results
00:35:44
with that. In terms of ketosis, do you cycle in and out of a ketogenic diet? And just for anyone that doesn't know what know, a ketogenic diet is a diet that's very, very low in carbohydrates. So less than 50 grams of
00:35:57
carbohydrates a day typically. Do you cycle in and out of that diet? Yes. Yes, you have to because I don't
00:36:04
want them to stay in a ketogenic state all the time. So I do I do I do I tell them, look, look, what is your goal here? What is your goal? If your goal is that, okay, I need to lose 70 lbs. Then
00:36:17
you're going to do this till you get to your goal. Once you get to your goal, then you're going to go back to timerestricted feeding, which means 186.
00:36:23
So, you'll still make some ketones. And then intermittently, you can still do a 36-hour fast. That means normal, healthy
00:36:32
people, you and me, we should still be doing one 36-hour fast at least once a month. So, we'll go to that. We'll go to that. Fasting must still become part of your pro, but you don't need to stay in
00:36:44
ketogenesis all the time. Remember also that when you are in ketogenesis you are
00:36:50
you are also in autophagy. How much autophagy can you do? That means you recycling all your your partic all your organels inside your cells.
00:37:02
What does that mean in simple terms for someone that doesn't know the term autophagy? So bottom line is the cell senses that
00:37:12
there is no new parts coming in here. So it takes the redundant organels inside the cells and breaks them down, packages them up into these
00:37:24
little packets and exports them out of the cells. So these cells, all your cells in the body now are functioning at a much more efficient level. So
00:37:36
mitochondria also have autophagy. So you're getting new mitochondria. You're repairing your
00:37:43
mitochondria. And you know it's all about mitochondria, right? Your energy mitochondria are those organs organels
00:37:49
inside each cell. And we just think of them as only an energy source that oh yeah my mitochondria they make ATP. That's not the whole story. Yes, they
00:38:00
produce ATP, but they also produce this thing called reactive oxygen species and thereby they influence the metabolism of your of your cell as
00:38:14
well. They send signals they send signals to your to your chromosomes so you start producing new proteins. You start producing new molecules. So your
00:38:24
mitochondria are very important. If you have old mitochondria, you're going to have fatigue, tiredness. But when you
00:38:31
get mphagy, one reason why you feel so good after a fast because you have new mitochondria, they are much more
00:38:37
efficient in producing ATP and less reactive oxygen species. So you have mphagy, recycling of your parts,
00:38:45
cellular function improves, toxins get out of your cells as well, toxins. Do you think there's a preferable or a best exercise for heart health? Like if
00:38:58
you were going to say Stephen to make, you know, my my I think my family has a history of heart related issues. One of
00:39:03
my my uncle died from a heart attack. So I'm very aware of my own susceptibility to heart related illnesses. I think there's other people in my family um that have heart related
00:39:13
issues as well. Is there a particular exercise that is best for the heart? Cuz I'm guessing resistance training, i.e. strength training might not be the the
00:39:23
number one recommendation for good heart health. You mentioned HIT. I'm wondering if that's
00:39:30
Yes. So, I'm just going to tell you broadly speaking what I see in my practice. I see that people who do
00:39:37
overly do aerobic activity. That means they cycle 100 miles a day or they're running on their treadmill for two hours at a time every day. They're doing a lot of lot of marathon training all the
00:39:50
time. They actually end up with more inflammation in their body and they end up with more coronary artery disease
00:39:56
than patients who do short sprints and patients who do resistance exercises and patients who do hits. So in terms of cardiology, you look, you need some
00:40:08
aerobic training. Why? Because you want to develop some endurance, right? You don't want to be running behind the bus and and get short of breath just in a
00:40:16
few hundred feet. So for some endurance, you do aerobic activity. How much aerobic activity which is running on the
00:40:23
treadmill for example or just sprinting? Only about 15 to 20 minutes. That's it.
00:40:29
So I tell patients you want to run on that treadmill, you want to bicycle 15 to 20 minutes and then you got to go
00:40:35
into resistance exercises. The resistance exercises that I have seen work best in my patients is simple
00:40:42
things. You don't have to go crazy. You do flow exercises. You use your own body weight as resistance. So you can do the
00:40:49
planks and leg lifts and all these other exercise and you can do hit but they have to be very specific. So you
00:40:56
exercise really hard for about 30 seconds to 45 seconds and then you completely rest for another 30 to 45
00:41:04
seconds. Okay? And that's allowing your body to clean up the reactive oxygen species you just created through that exercise. Because your rate limiting step in cleaning up
00:41:17
the metabolic mess that you get when you get too much exercise, it's a rate limiting step. your glutathione
00:41:22
production, your superoxide dismutase production. These are chemicals that clean up the metabolic mess that you get
00:41:29
when you get too much activity. That's a rate limiting step. So when you rest, you exercise and you rest, you exercise, you rest, you are going to get a cleaner physiology
00:41:41
with your patients. How many patients do you think you've treated or worked with in your career? Did
00:41:48
you have to guess to the nearest thousand? It would have to be at least nothing less than nothing less than quarter
00:41:55
million. How do you deal with the heartbreak? And that's no pun intended, but I'm saying like how do you deal with the heartbreak of watching people's lives
00:42:08
either them losing their life or their their lives being changed permanently forever or dealing with the families of
00:42:14
of people who lose their husband or wife or or or son or daughter. It it's very difficult especially when we've been trying everything and still things can go wrong. Based on that, I've
00:42:28
realized that sometimes you can do everything to try to extend life, but you cannot. Life is still finite. We
00:42:35
will pass. Yes, but we want better health span and we want a longer lifespan. I want to give the patients a better quality of life also. I can't
00:42:46
make you live forever. I will see people die. Sometimes they die in front of me while I'm even holding their hands. They'll pass away in the hospital right there. But what I do want to do is to
00:42:59
give them a quality of life until then that's going to change. And in all this education,
00:43:05
it's all so that you can live an optimal life and then pass away just like that.
00:43:12
Have you seen many people that made all the right decisions? They were healthy. They had a good diet. They were doing
00:43:20
exercise and they still end up passing away on your hospital table because of heart related illnesses. Yes. Yes. Give me one such example. Typical example of fellow in the 60s.
00:43:33
His coronary calcium score was over 1,000. So you know that's a CT scan that we do and it looks at calcium on the
00:43:40
arteries of the of the wall. So all this plaque that you you you showed this yellow stuff here, all that has calcium in it. So the more calcium you have, the more plaque you have. So he had a
00:43:52
calcium score of over a thousand. So sit down and talk with him and say, "Okay, so tell me why do you have all this
00:43:59
calcium? No diabetes, no high blood pressure. Doc, I don't even drink. I don't do anything. I don't smoke. I exercise regularly. I go to the gym."
00:44:09
And then the question is, why do you have all this coronary calcium in your coronary arteries now? And it turned out
00:44:16
that ever since he was a kid, he had a bad microbiome. And in him, I found that that was the
00:44:23
reason why he got it. So he was shocked when he left the office. He was totally shocked because he thought that being constipated and having a bowel movement every three or four days
00:44:36
is just normal because it was always like that for him until I dug into it and found out that he's actually got a lot of GI problems and that's what
00:44:46
probably caused him to have inflammation and that's what's probably caused him to have coronary artery disease. That's why
00:44:53
he's got all this coronary calcification. Yeah. So let's talk about the gut microbiome then. You you mentioned
00:44:59
earlier that that's really pertinent in cardiovascular issues. Can you explain to me exactly why and how that happens?
00:45:08
The biggest difference between you and your outer environment is actually your gut, not outside your skin. It's actually the gut. There's a 100 trillion
00:45:19
bacteria sitting in there and there's probably 400 trillion viruses sitting in your gut and they're not just hitching a
00:45:26
ride for you. They are there doing something. There's a symbiotic relationship between the gut and you.
00:45:34
They produce micronutrients which get absorbed into your bloodstream. If the right microbiome is not present, you are
00:45:40
being deprived of those micronutrients. For example, short chain fatty acids which are special kind of uh thing but
00:45:47
also they maintain the integrity of the lining of the intestines. If the lining of the intestines is breached then bacteria wall products get into the
00:45:59
bloodstream and the first place they'll get to is the liver. Hence you get a fatty liver. There are basically three reasons for fatty liver. Either you're drinking too much alcohol or you get a
00:46:11
leaky gut or you have too much insulin because insulin causes the conversion of glucose into fat. Right? So you get a
00:46:18
fatty liver. When you say leaky gut, so that's a leaky gut. Oh, okay. So leaky gut is when the
00:46:24
microbiome is dysfunctional. The microbiome that is dysfunctional causes the integrity of your intestinal
00:46:31
lining to be compromised. Ah okay. Yeah. So now molecules that are supposed to stay in the gut, dead bacterial wall products, they call lipopolyaccharides,
00:46:44
they're supposed to stay in the gut, but now they get into the bloodstream, they go up the portal vein, and up the portal
00:46:51
vein, they'll end up going straight to the liver. And when they end up in the liver, they cause that fatty liver. Now
00:46:57
you get this big fatty liver, which causes a lot of inflammation. a fatty liver. There's an epidemic of this going
00:47:05
on today. At least 25% of the population now have a fatty liver. And what is upstream from that? Is it is
00:47:12
it alcohol and all these processed foods and things like that or it's basically processed foods, sugar
00:47:20
and leaky gut and of course toxins. Alcohol being the biggest toxin. Okay. This is the seat of metabolism. So, as a cardiologist, I became interested in this because I found that if you have a
00:47:32
fatty liver, you're going to be more prone to inflammation and you're going to be more prone to
00:47:38
coronary artery disease. When we fix the fatty liver, we change the diet through fatty by by changing your diet and now
00:47:46
you start eating real food and not processed foods and products. when we increase the fiber intake so that the
00:47:52
good bacteria start coming back into your gut and when I give you certain supplements to restore all your
00:48:00
nutrition in your body then all of a sudden the progression of coronary calcium flattens out. You see let's say
00:48:08
you came to me for a test and I did a coronary calcium score and it's 500 and two years from now it's 800. That means,
00:48:16
wait a second, something's not right here, right? Your coronary calcium should not be going up. Now, I can't get
00:48:23
rid of the coronary calcium because that's plaque in the walls of your arteries, but it shouldn't keep going up
00:48:28
because one day it's going to be 2,00. So, how do I follow how well my treatment for you is? Is I follow the coronary calcium score. And again, the coronary calcium score is
00:48:38
a marker of the amount of plaques, correct? around the heart and in the vessels of the blood. Yeah. In the walls. In the blood vessels. Okay. So, you want low coronary calcium.
00:48:49
Like my calcium score is zero. You shouldn't have any coronary calcium in the walls of the arteries. So, we have
00:48:56
the yard sticks now. We should probably we should probably differentiate between calcium supplements and the calcium that you're
00:49:03
talking about. So, pertinent. Calcium supplements actually increase the risk of cardiovascular events. Calcium supplements should not be taken. The problem is not calcium supplements. The
00:49:14
problem is lack of D3 and lack of K2. So, we shouldn't be taking calcium supplements.
00:49:20
Absolutely not. Absolutely. I stop all calcium supplements on all my cardiac patients
00:49:25
and I tell them you should take vitamin D3 so you'll absorb calcium better into your gut and you take vitamin K2 because vitamin K2 is going to make sure that
00:49:37
you don't get the calcium build up in the wrong places in your vascule for example just to give some context on the
00:49:43
research some some large observational studies suggest that highdose calcium supplements which is especially um above
00:49:49
1,000 milligs a day from pills may increase the risk of heart attack and stroke while others find no clear link.
00:49:55
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, I look also they advise high calcium supplements in women to prevent osteoporosis for example, right? And osteopenia. I live in Florida and all
00:50:08
these young women they come to me in their 30s. They all have osteopenia. And the question is that they got calcium
00:50:13
supplements put inside the milk in the orange juice has calcium in it and they're taking calcium supplements. Then why would they and they have sunshine and why would they have osteopenia? And
00:50:24
the reason is D3. You need D3 and K2. That's what you need. It's a hormonal thing. It's not the elemental thing. So when people are on blood thinners, do
00:50:35
they typically have low vitamin K1? If you're taking couadin, couadin is a type of blood thinner. Yeah. That lowers your your vitamin K1 levels and it'll also lower K2. So couadin will
00:50:50
lower K2 as well. So you will get increased coronary calcification and that's been documented. So patients who have who are taking warrin for example or couadin have been shown to have
00:51:02
increased coronary calcification because of the fact that the K2 levels come down
00:51:08
as well as the K1 levels both come down both. So you need vitamin K2. And you just do you supplement that or do you get it from dietary? I supplement it on all my patients because diet comes
00:51:19
from fermented foods and we don't eat enough fermented foods to contain enough vitamin K2. So one of the reasons why I
00:51:27
do like my supplements is because today's food is not as rich as it was in the past. So we're not eating the variety of foods, but also we're not getting enough
00:51:38
vitamin K2 in our regular diet. So, if you want to give me advice then on having a great gut so that I don't end
00:51:43
up with leaky gut which will cause all of these downstream effects. What is um what is the advice you'd give me to have
00:51:49
a perfect gut? Number one, lots of fiber because the fiber is going to be eaten by your bacteria and you're going to get a wide variety of good bacteria eating fiber. If you eat a lot of sugar, you'll
00:52:04
get bacteria too, but there are the bad ones, the ones that you don't want. So you're going to get a condition called
00:52:09
SIBO, for example. But you want to eat lots of fiber. So because our diets today don't give us enough fiber, I do advise all my patients to take inulin
00:52:22
with FOS. It's called inulin with FOS. It's a powder. It's a soluble fiber. And I just tell them to take one scoop in your water every day or put it in your whatever you're going to have, whatever
00:52:33
liquid you're going to have. Number two, fermented foods. The fermented foods will give you not only the bacteria themselves because,
00:52:44
for example, kefir has so many different strains of good bacteria, but they also have the postbiotics. What is a
00:52:51
postbiotic? A postbiotic, for example, vitamin K2. It's a product that the bacteria make.
00:52:59
Short chain fatty acids. That's a product that the bacteria make. So, you want bacteria. You want good bacteria in
00:53:06
your gut and they will stabilize the ratio of all the other bacteria in your gut. So the keystone species have to come back into your gut. I was reading some research around fiber
00:53:19
and it says that in the United States women are 40% fiber deficient and men are roughly 50% fiber deficient. And in the UK we're about 40% fiber deficient.
00:53:33
I don't think people know that. Where do I find fiber? What what do I need to be eating to increase my fiber?
00:53:40
Fiber is found in anything that's nonprocessed because the very act of a processed food
00:53:46
is to take out the fiber so that you can increase the shelf life of it. So any processed food, anything that's
00:53:52
manufactured in a factory for example, anything that already comes ready made, they've taken the fiber right out of it.
00:53:58
So you got to eat real food. So you're going to eat real vegetables and that to a variety of vegetables. You see, you're
00:54:05
supposed to eat 30 to 40 different types of vegetables a week and we don't tend to do that. So you want fiber from a
00:54:11
variety of sources. So we got to eat a little bit of all these different different kind of vegetables including
00:54:17
spices. They all count as one vegetable. So that's something I I stress to everybody that you got to have variety.
00:54:23
You got to have all these different fibers because they will foster the growth of different types of bacterial species in your gut.
00:54:29
What about lifestyle? recommendations for improving my gut things like I don't know stress sleep exercise anything sleep absolutely important so the the
00:54:39
the next thing is actually actually sleep and stress because lack of sleep causes a change in your gut microbiome
00:54:47
you got to sleep 7 hours a night and cutting down on sleep is going to affect your entire physiology in your body and your repair processes and your vagus nerve and your delta sleep
00:55:00
But also your gut microbiome. One night you'll get insulin resistance. One night of bad sleep, you become insulin
00:55:07
resistant the next day. If you're changing if you're changing time zones very frequently, the liver dysfunctions
00:55:19
and the gut microbiome also dysfunctions. So we got to be more cognizant of that.
00:55:26
That lifestyle is very important. And we have to have plenty omega3 in the diet. If you're starting a business, that means you're one person doing the workload of probably about 50 people.
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00:56:37
You talk you talked earlier on about toxins. Yeah. What do you mean by toxins and how what role is toxins playing in my physiology
00:56:44
and my heart health and my gut health? Yeah. So, and what is a toxin? A toxin is a molecule that should not be in your body. You
00:56:54
should not have been exposed to it. So, let's take a pesticide or a herbicide. These are chemicals which man has made and not perhaps
00:57:06
adequately tested it in in um in rigorous studies. And yet these chemicals get into the body and we know that many of them are estrogen receptor disruptors and that causes inflammation
00:57:19
as well. So if you look at pesticides and herbicides, we look at plastics forever chemicals for example PAS and
00:57:31
other chemical BPA. These chemicals all disrupt our metabolism in our body. And then of
00:57:39
course mold is a toxin. And lastly, heavy metals are toxins. When the gut is not working properly, you're going to be more prone to
00:57:52
toxicity because the gut bacteria normally grab a lot of those things and take them out in your stools. So when we
00:57:58
look at toxicity, we look at gut health and the liver health. The liver is supposed to get rid of lot of toxins.
00:58:05
But in today's day and age, because of the foods that we're eating, the environment that we breathe, the
00:58:12
environment that we walk out into, we getting too many toxins and this poor organ here is getting overwhelmed and
00:58:19
cannot detoxify adequately. So when I do a blood test, urine sample, and a stool
00:58:25
sample, I get a very good bird's eye view of what's going on with their ability to detoxify and which levels are
00:58:33
high. And I'm finding that many of my patients who have gut issues and liver issues are very, very high with not only heavy metals, but they also have a lot of pesticides,
00:58:47
herbicides, and mold in their body. and mold. I'm finding a lot of mold and mold and all these extraneous toxicities cause inflammation. Inflammation is a
00:59:00
reaction to something that your body shouldn't have. Where is the mold coming from? Mold is very interesting. I've only
00:59:06
started researching it in the last one year. Basically, almost 70% of homes these days have some form of mold toxicity in them, either
00:59:17
from previous water damage or exposure. And mold is ubiquitous. It's it's just about everywhere. And it can reininoculate you every time you're in that environment. and it causes your
00:59:31
innate immune system to start reacting to it and causes lowgrade inflammation in your body. And when I get rid of the mold, all of a sudden I'm noticing that the patients are not only feeling
00:59:44
better, but the rate of progression of coronary artery disease flattens off. I have this uh steam room in one of my houses and uh I went in there the other day and I smel I could smell it smelt a
00:59:55
bit funny and I recognized that smell from when I was younger as being mold. So I like I googled it what what is that
01:00:03
like earthy strong pungent smell in my steam room. I think what's happened is part of the like seat has come away from the wall so it's not sealed anymore and I think the moisture has got in there
01:00:14
with the water and I think it's moldy and chachi said to me when I was asking chap said smell near the like cracks
01:00:21
yes and if you smell if it smells really strong near the cracks then that's mold and I smelled near the crack and it was really really strong remember thinking
01:00:28
oh like so I had I not known that would have been sitting in there 30 minutes a day inhaling all of that strong mold smell. And from doing this show, I've
01:00:40
I've learned that the downstream impacts that can have on your body and your cardiovascular health and everything in
01:00:45
between is really, really bad. So, I I had a team come over and just uh fix everything, repair it, and do a deep
01:00:51
clean. But I don't think people are very aware of how mold, which we kind of think of as like, oh, the the the bread
01:00:57
has gone green, whatever, can have a chronic downstream impact. And also this mold can come in
01:01:03
and then become part of your microbiome. So it can actually come into your so let's say you get out of this place. But
01:01:10
if the mold is still in your gut or if it's in your sinuses for example and you get chronic sinusitis you're
01:01:16
reininoculating yourself over and over again with this mold. And this is an area of great interest and a lot of research needs to be done. It is real and we've known about it for a long
01:01:27
time. But the medical profession as a general has not really taken this and run with it, but it is very important
01:01:34
and we certainly looking at mold toxicity in our practice because we find that it is actually more prevalent than we ever ever imagined before and we know the chemistry. We know that it causes a
01:01:46
a systemic inflammatory reaction in the body and it's reflected in the blood work. We see that the CRP is up. We see
01:01:52
that the compliment levels are high. we see that the certain ratios of certain inflammatory molecules are off. So we do
01:01:59
want to treat mold. Um we want to treat sources of mold toxicity both in the gut as well as in the sinuses. And yes,
01:02:07
people are surprised when I tell that that affects the cardiovascular health. When we talk about the clogging of
01:02:13
arteries, why is it that healthy people still end up sometimes with these clogged arteries? I think it's because they have sources of inflammation that we have not identified. For example, we
01:02:25
say, "Oh, you have no cholesterol, you have no smoking, you have you're exercising, you're not overweight, you
01:02:31
don't have diabetes." Well, then I don't know why you got all these odd. No, there's always if you dig deeper inside,
01:02:37
there's always something. And we'll find the source of the inflammation. There's always a reason why you get hardening of
01:02:43
the arteries. What's in that list? In that list is mold. Mold. Yeah. Licky gut. Yeah,
01:02:49
huge food sensitivities. Oh, let me tell you about food sensitivities. So, another reason for the leaky gut is that certain foods punch holes into your
01:03:02
intestines in a in a in a sense and causes a leaky gut. And I've had at least one patient in the last 6 weeks
01:03:09
that I can remember who actually has celiac disease and he didn't even realize he had celiac disease because he had no constipation, diarrhea and he had premature coronary artery disease and we
01:03:22
identified that he had celiac disease. We cut out all weight from his diet and that's going to stop this inflammatory
01:03:29
process from occurring. See, it's all about inflammation. We need to get rid of inflammation in order to get rid of
01:03:34
coronary artery disease. Any source of inflammation, get rid of the source. So if the
01:03:41
pesticide levels are high, herbicide levels are really high, get off that source. Maybe you maybe you're living on
01:03:48
a golf course and you smell those chemicals every day. Maybe you're using it yourself in your yard. Maybe you have
01:03:54
toxicity coming from mold as you mentioned. But we got to find the source of it. So, a thorough evaluation of the
01:04:01
gut microbiome, a thorough evaluation of toxins in your body, and a nutritional status. Your body is able to work and get rid of
01:04:14
this type of pathology if you have good nutrition. We don't have good nutrition today. Let's talk about nutrition then. If I wanted to end up on your surgical table,
01:04:25
if I if that was my goal, what would you recommend that I ate and yeah consumed?
01:04:34
You should eat nutrient deficient processed foods every day. Give me some examples of of things.
01:04:45
Pringles and correct. So it'll be things made out of wheat, refined wheat, biscuits, cookies,
01:04:56
cakes, lots of bread. Basically, fast foods, foods that come in a box, readymade food with labels,
01:05:10
anything that comes in a packet that you open up, including some of these that are high protein bars or some of these because they have all sorts of other chemicals in them.
01:05:23
And I would have lots and lots of um artificial colorings in my food in all those processed foods. Um artificial sweeteners, lots and lots of diet drinks and sugary
01:05:37
drinks. Orange juice. Orange juice is is certainly on my list because that produces such a profound
01:05:44
increase in my glucose level and then my insulin spike that I'm going to get afterwards will cause me to become very
01:05:49
hungry 3 to four hours later. So yeah, I would not eat real food and you'll end up on my table. See, alcohol, smoking, alcohol, no fiber because none of those
01:06:04
foods will have fiber in them. None of those processed foods have fiber in them. Your patients must come to you at times
01:06:11
and tell you what they're doing in terms of what they're eating and lifestyle choices. And there must be certain
01:06:17
things which very people aren't aware aren't healthy. You actually mentioned bread. Yeah. Is all bread bad? No, not all bread is bad. Most bread is
01:06:30
bad. I don't mind some sourdough because it's fermented. So, it's going to get rid of some of those lectins that are
01:06:36
already in the flour. So, those lectins are gone out because they've been fermented. So, it's probably a little
01:06:41
bit okay. But again, not large amounts of it. You know, a slice once or twice a week is fine, but really it's a survival
01:06:49
food. Bread is a survival food. Just empty calories. That's all it's going to do. Is there like a worse bread? Is there
01:06:55
like one bread which is Yeah. Pure white bread. Simple white bread. The simple light white bread.
01:07:00
It's pure calories, 70 calories right there. You're talking about just eat have 10 teaspoons of sugar instead in
01:07:07
one slice. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. White rice. White rice. I white rice is a staple
01:07:15
food of many people and they cannot live without it. So I run into this problem all the time. So I tell them that this
01:07:20
is what you're going to do. You're going to first and foremost soak your rice in water and then discard the water after
01:07:26
an overnight soak because it contains arsenic in it and other heavy metals. You'll be surprised how much arsenic
01:07:32
there's in rice these days. You see see the problem we have our sourcing of our foods. I mean here as a cardiologist has
01:07:40
to talk to his patients about how to cook rice. What is arsenic for people that don't know? It's a heavy metal that is found in the
01:07:48
soil and the water is in contaminated soil and water and in these patty fields are now full of arsenic. It's a poison, isn't it? People I watch a lot of true crime. People kill each other with arsenic.
01:08:00
It's a very very strong poison and it'll slowly kill you. Is there anything else
01:08:06
on that list of thing misconceptions? So, so the rice has to be soaked. Then you get rid of the water. Then you cook
01:08:13
it with lots of water. Throw away the rice again. I mean the throw away the water, not the rice. And then you cool
01:08:20
the rice in the refrigerator and then you eat the rice the next day by reheating it. Now what you've done is you've created resistance starch. Now, what's going to happen is that that
01:08:31
rice is not going to have the same insulin effect in your body and weight gain effect and changes in your metabolism because it's now got resistant starch. Resistant starch means
01:08:42
that those molecules have all bound to each other. They don't they resist absorption and digestion until they get
01:08:48
to your colon. And then who's going to eat it? Your bacteria. So, you're basically feeding the bacteria with your
01:08:54
rice. So, if you're going to have rice, this is the way you're going to do it. So, is there anything else on that list that
01:09:02
people should be thinking about that they probably consider to be healthy right now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So,
01:09:07
it's also what you do to your food. Look, you take a nice piece of fish, for example, and if you burn it and you blacken it really bad, you're creating
01:09:19
what is known as advanced glycation end products. You fry something, you're creating advanced glycation end
01:09:25
products. So, let me define that for you. If nature does not have the ability on its own to take glucose, protein and fat and combine
01:09:38
them at very high temperature, but you can do it in your air fryer and you can do it outside when you when you're blackening your food and over blackening your food. It's called
01:09:49
advanced glycation end products. So when you over burn your food, when you overcook your food, you're creating
01:09:55
these molecules. Now you're consuming these molecules and they have been shown to cause a radical increase in the
01:10:02
inflammation in your body because your body reacts to those products. There's receptors to get rid of those they
01:10:07
called rages and they get rid of these products but you overwhelm them and now you get inflammation.
01:10:13
And is there any other watch out foods that you know people think are healthy but maybe if if I was trying to have an
01:10:20
optimally healthy heart I should avoid it. Is this going to surprise you? excessive
01:10:25
fruit because I'm not a very big follower of fruit. Fruit should be eaten only in
01:10:31
season because it has too much fructose in it. Fructose being the sugars. Fructose is sugar and fructose causes
01:10:38
fatty liver. So our overconumption of fruit is another factor that is contributing to coronary artery disease and diabetes and fatty liver. And we think of fruit as being a healthy thing.
01:10:52
You see, but fruit should only be consumed really in the fall and in season and in small amounts because that
01:10:58
high fructose level really causes major changes in your metabolism. So, I'm not too front of fruit. You can eat fruit in season, small amounts of it, but you know, people go crazy about fruit. I
01:11:11
mean, I had a patient who was having mental problems as well as cardiovascular disease. And he that's
01:11:17
all he lived on is fruit morning, lunch, and dinner. And the moment we stopped that his health changed completely. He
01:11:23
got so much better. So excess of fruit is also no good. Excessively cooked foods, processed foods, refined products. And another one, vegetable seed oils. So any food
01:11:36
that you prepare or you buy that contains vegetable seed oils is a no no because vegetable seed oils are a product. And if you look at all of them,
01:11:48
they're exceedingly high in omega6. And the ratio of omega 6 to omega3 is what the problem we have today. We have far too much omega6, very little
01:12:00
omega3. So anything that contains vegetable seed oils. So I always tell my patients, get rid of that vegetable seed oil bottle from your home. So what oil should I use instead? The
01:12:12
oil at home, if you're going to use any oil, is going to be olive oil, extra virgin olive oil for your for your
01:12:19
salad. And if you're going to do high temperature, put a little pat of butter or use a little bit of ghee or you can
01:12:27
use a little bit of coconut oil. This is a bit more of a different question, but you said earlier on that when a patient
01:12:32
walks into your office, you can kind of look at them and generally see if their cardiovascular health is intact. And
01:12:39
we're generalizing here, but if I'm sat at home right now and I'm trying to figure out if I'm healthy as it relates
01:12:47
to my cardiovascular health, what are the symptoms of cardiovascular poor health? Like what throughout the whole body? What what should I can I sort of obviously don't want anyone to self
01:12:58
diagnose at home, but what kind of symptoms should I be looking at when I you when you look at me? Let's do this
01:13:03
on me to make it easier. Yeah. So number one, look at your weight. Okay. If you're overweight, that's a
01:13:10
that's a that's one strike against you already. Number two, if you're overweight, where is it? It's mostly on the belly.
01:13:15
I'm overweight according to the BMI. But again, you got to look at BMI, you know, is a little crude. It's not a very accurate way of actually looking at it because some people are very muscular
01:13:27
and the BMI of 28 is actually perfectly okay for them. It's the constitution I look at and it's visceral fat. Now, I
01:13:34
can't measure your visceral fat by looking at you, but I can tell if your belly is protruded. Now, in my office, I
01:13:40
do visceral fat analysis. So, what else? I've I've I don't have a protruding belly per se. Um, what else
01:13:47
should I be looking for to understand if my cardiovascular health is intact? Is there I know
01:13:52
just by looking at you physically. Yeah. No, I that's it basically is your BMI and your overall weight and must not
01:13:58
have a belly. Just don't have a belly. If you have a belly, you have a problem. And what about my joints and stuff like that? Is that an indicator of Yes, if you have joint now symptoms, if
01:14:09
you're having joint pains, look, if you're having joint pains, people think, "Oh, it's just degenerative joint
01:14:15
disease." In my experience, what I have seen, it's all inflammation. Because when I change the diet, when I fix the gut issues, when I fix the inflammation in the body, they all come back and say
01:14:27
the joints got better. All of them uniformly. Especially patients who have autoimmune disease.
01:14:33
For example, many patients have rheumatoid and the moment we change their diet, their lifestyle, the
01:14:39
frequencies of eating, introduce a little bit of fasting. So, we do everything right. Right. We've changed the gut microbiome. We've we've made the
01:14:46
liver better by by by giving them some supplements. We do intermittent fasting, we do some exercises, we give them some
01:14:53
stress management, we improve their sleep. All of a sudden the joint pains get better, rheumatoid gets better, skin
01:14:59
diseases get better, psoriasis gets better because it's the fundamental underlying part is all inflammation.
01:15:06
This is a random one, but I'm just connecting dots from different podcast guests I've had on the show. What about bad breath?
01:15:13
Bad breath. Bad breath is real. But what is it? Is my oral microbiome linked to my heart health? Yes. There's a there's a microbiome that goes all the way from your nose, mouth,
01:15:25
all the way down to the anus. And each one is specific and can predict whether you're going to get cardiovascular
01:15:31
disease or not. There's unequivocal data to show that if you have bad teeth, bad dental hygiene, bad bacteria in your
01:15:38
mouth, you're going to get valvular disease such as aotic stenosis, premature calcification of your aotic
01:15:43
valve, and you're going to get coronary calcification. That's been proven unequivocally. Patients who have chronic
01:15:49
sinusitis in your So you think that that's benign? If you have chronic sinusitis, what's chronic sinusitis?
01:15:55
Chronic sinusitis, infections inside your maxural sinuses, frontal sinuses constantly and you get these headaches
01:16:02
and and you get the cold and your block nose and you constantly cog up inside here. That's inflammation. And often
01:16:10
times that's also linked to premature coronary artery disease and inflammation in your body. Especially when it's
01:16:15
fungal. There's a condition called fungal sinusitis. Again it comes down to mold. And this mold it causes that lowgrade inflammation in your body. And this has been linked to coronary artery
01:16:27
disease. See what's happening is we transforming the whole definition of the causes of coronary artery disease. We
01:16:35
have been so myopic in our definition of what causes coronary artery disease whereas everything your entire lif style mental physical eating everything will
01:16:48
affect your coronary arteries everything everything do you think much about over stimulation so I mean really mean like too much caffeine does does too
01:16:59
much caffeine play a role and I say this in part because I think there's been a few times where I've had like a pre-work workout or too many glasses of coffee
01:17:07
and I've got like heart palpitations and you almost like feel like you're dying. Yes. Yes. Yes. Caffeine. Caffeine is
01:17:13
very similar to the adrenaline molecule. Now, why would you want to have too much adrenaline in your body? Because then
01:17:19
you're living in a state of existential threat constantly and then what happens?
01:17:25
You don't get the offset either. So, you don't get the parasympathetic. You're only in sympathetic all the time.
01:17:31
Fight or flight all the time. So caffeine generates that and the physiology it'll look caffeine
01:17:37
is not as benign as we think it is. Now there's nothing wrong with having one or two coffees a day. That's fine. Okay.
01:17:43
But I know people who drink about six glasses or six cups of coffee a day and and I think that that's just that's
01:17:49
toxicity. You see that's toxicity. Too much caffeine. And it's a diuretic. And a diuretic will cause intravascular volume depletion and that also turns on your neuro hormonal activation. So you
01:18:01
become more sympathetic. You see? So it's a vicious cycle makes you dehydrated. I was reading about this earlier cuz I did have heart health palpitations one day because I think I drank too much coffee. Um and what I what I see here in
01:18:14
the research says that moderate caffeine is safe and even heart protective for most people. But excessive caffeine when
01:18:19
you get, you know, above 600 milligrams a day um can raise blood pressure, trigger
01:18:27
arythiums, arrhythmias. Arhrihythmias and stress the heart. Yes. Now, I want to tell you why coffee is
01:18:32
good. It's not good because of the caffeine. And so, it's not good that, oh, I'm getting that caffeine, so it's good for me. No, cuz believe it or not,
01:18:39
coffee has a lot of soluble fiber in it. So, there is some soluble fiber in it and it has polyphenols.
01:18:46
So, coffee has polyphenols just like how cocoa has, you know, cocoa, cacao, 85% cacao, chocolate, that's fantastic. It's got soluble fiber cuz who's going to consume the soluble fiber? It's actually
01:18:57
the bacteria. So a coffee a day is actually good for you for a different reason. It's good because it's good for
01:19:03
your bacteria because it's getting soluble fiber and it's getting polyphenols and all those polyphenols
01:19:08
are consumed by your bacteria. They they call cacao, don't they? The something of the heart. My girlfriend's
01:19:14
quite spiritual and in her practice they call it like the heart medicine. Cacao. Cacao. It is because it has a lot of
01:19:22
antioxidants and it has a lot of soluble fiber. So wait a second. It's a soluble
01:19:27
fiber. Yes, because that's fostering the growth of the good microbiome. The good microbiome is then going to produce
01:19:33
postbiotics and the postbiotics are going to give you all the benefit that you're going to need. So, it's going to
01:19:39
cause less leaky gut, less inflammation and your entic nervous system, your vagus nerve, your vag nerve is going to
01:19:47
be protected because we're destroying our vag nerve right now with the leaky gut. When people get heart palpitations,
01:19:53
I imagine a lot of them message you because it's quite scary, isn't it, when you feel your heart beating,
01:19:59
what is typically going on and when is it cause for concern if you've got heart palpitations?
01:20:04
Yeah. If you have underlying structural heart disease, let's say you have blocked arteries, let's say you have a
01:20:10
cardiopathy, a valvular disease, and you're having an arrhythmia, which is palpitations, that is definitely life-threatening. They need to come
01:20:16
straight to the office and we need to monitor you and find out what's going on. But let's say you're otherwise perfectly healthy, young person,
01:20:22
perfectly healthy, no heart disease whatsoever, and you're having palpitations, then it's usually an
01:20:27
imbalance of your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. You're too stressed. It's basically either too much
01:20:34
sympathetic or not too much sympathetic, but you have too little parasympathetic.
01:20:39
And that is one thing that I want people to realize that if you've knocked your vag nerve off because you have a leaky
01:20:46
gut or because of your lifestyle and your vagus nerve is not working very well, you will have this imbalance
01:20:53
because the imbalance is not with absolute levels. It's the relative levels of sympathetic versus parasympathetic. So for example, I see a
01:20:59
lot of young women in their 30s and 20s who come to me with tachicardia. They have a rapid heartbeat all the time and
01:21:05
especially when they stand up, they get a rapid heartbeat. This is called postural orthostatic tachicardia. And
01:21:11
when they come to me, I find out that it's actually the gut. I fix their gut and the tachicardia gets better because
01:21:18
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And I'm so honored that once again, a company I own can sponsor my podcast. Let's talk about the V Vegas nerve then.
01:23:44
Um before we do that, I had a little a little incident actually caused by Jamaima who's out there. Jamaima We were in this little fitness competition and Jamaima decided that she wanted to beat
01:23:56
me and so she cycled 100 kilometers one day. She cycled for 4 hours which meant that she had more minutes in this
01:24:03
fitness competition than I did. So my rebuttal was to do the same but more. So the next day I cycled just over 100 km on my Pelaton at home. Funny enough, it took me like 4 hours to do it. And then
01:24:15
I came off the Pelaton. I was celebrating whatever, you know, won this gold medal emoji as my reward that
01:24:21
month, but also I won heart palpitations that stayed with me for a little while. And I was wondering like why that
01:24:27
happened. So I did this big vigorous exercise which was kind of outside of my usual exercise regime and then for a a
01:24:34
couple of weeks I could like feel these heart pulpitations and is that because of what you were
01:24:39
saying about my parasympathetic? What do you think happened there? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. over exercise.
01:24:48
This has been shown when you do what you just did, you're diverting blood from your gut to your muscles because your muscles at that point really need all
01:24:58
that blood supply. And this has been well documented. So what happens when you overly exercise like that? You're
01:25:04
causing relative eskeeia to your gut. Essia. Essia. What does eskeemia mean? Lack of circulation to your gut. So your
01:25:11
poor gut at that point had lack of circulation relative. Not to the point where it's going to go gangrous. No,
01:25:17
don't don't get me wrong. But it affects your gut and in the gut is the entic nervous system. The vagus nerve ends in your gut lining and the vagus nerve got
01:25:28
affected. So your vagus nerve didn't work very well. When you get vagus nerve not working well, you get too much
01:25:34
sympathetic. You're going to get tachicardia. You're going to get arrhythmias, palpitations. So tell me
01:25:39
what the vagus nerve is and what I can do to get my vagus nerve in check. By the way, Jamaima, it was totally worth
01:25:45
it. But just tell me what I what I can do to get my Vegas nerve in check and like what role my Vegas nerve plays. I've got this photo here of the Vegas
01:25:52
nerve. Yeah, you know, the Vegas nerve is fascinating. It is the largest nerve in the body and it it it basically is sending
01:26:05
messages from the brain to the whole body and receiving messages back to say what is the state of affairs and the largest distribution believe it or not is all in your gut. Now that tells you
01:26:17
something right there that what is the brain most concerned about? It's most concerned about the most treacherous border in your body which is
01:26:28
your gut. Your gut health is so important that the body has dedicated a huge nerve called the vagus nerve just to take care of
01:26:40
your gut because your gut is that important. That is why by the way it also has endings on the heart in your lungs in your face. So there's lots of endings of the vagus nerve
01:26:53
and what is it doing? Is it telling is it basically the communication channel between all your gut, your heart, your
01:26:58
brain state of affairs? What is going on in the gut? What should I be doing? Back and forth traffic information going back
01:27:04
and forth. So when you when you the body is supposed to be in a state of sympathetic followed by parasympathetic. What does that mean? You run away from the tiger. You hide
01:27:17
behind the rock. The tiger is gone now and now you're supposed to be parasympathetic. So sympathetic is the fight.
01:27:24
Parasympathetic is the the relaxation, rest, relaxation, repair. Guess what? We're not getting enough repair these days because we constantly in the fight flight fight. We never give our chance
01:27:35
to go into repair. That's what the problem with the Vegas nerve that we have today is. So we don't get a chance.
01:27:42
So that is why don't we do it? Well, one is our lifestyle. Two, our gut is not right because it has disade our vagus nerve dysfunctional. When I fix the gut,
01:27:54
one of the things I notice is heart rate variability gets better. What does that
01:27:59
mean? Heart rate variability. That means your pulse with each breath in and each
01:28:05
breath out, there's a little variation in your heartbeat. H that's called heart rate variability. Now, when you lost
01:28:12
your heart rate variability, it means that your vagus nerve is not working very well. In all patients when I fix
01:28:17
the gut the heart rate variability gets better as well. When you fix the gut your vagus nerve will be able to work
01:28:24
more efficiently and you'll be able to repair yourself after the sympathetic drive. So you get the ying and then you
01:28:31
get the yang as well. And the nice thing about the vagus nerve that I find is that you can repair it through the gut
01:28:36
but you can also hack it and you can give it some nutritional supplements. The nutritional supplements are omega-3
01:28:44
which right now 50% of the population is very low in omega-3 and you need DHA and
01:28:49
omega-3 to to to make their vag nerve work optimally. You need to fix the gut and thirdly you can hack the vagus nerve. So how do you do that? You do the breathing exercises. So when you do the
01:29:02
deep expiration, you stimulate all those parasympathetic nerve endings and your heart rate goes down, blood pressure goes down. What kind of breathing exercises?
01:29:14
So breathe in to the count of four, breathe out to the count of eight. Very simple. I tell that to all my patients.
01:29:21
Breathe in to the count of four. Breathe out to the count of eight. It's a deliberately long expression. You do
01:29:26
that for about 10 minutes a day. And when you do that, your vagus nerve is getting stimulated. And any nerve
01:29:33
that is stimulated frequently enough will work more efficiently. What about this eyeball thing that I've
01:29:38
heard you talk about where you eyeball does affect the vagus nerve function too. So when you look to the
01:29:44
right, look to the left at the top, look down, look left, it stimulates the vagus nerve. There's a nerve on the ear.
01:29:51
There's also the vagus nerve that can be stimulated here in the neck that can be stimulated. The facial nerve also uh has
01:29:58
branches that go to the vagus nerve. So there are a few hacks that people can use. I even have a small contraption
01:30:05
that I give patients that wear around the neck and it it it releases little signals onto the vagus nerve over here
01:30:12
and I've placed it on patients and they in front of me and they'll say, "Oh my god, I really feel so relaxed and nice." And it's I was shocked when they did
01:30:23
that. I heard you talk about massaging the eyeball. Yes. And cold water on the eyeballs. So,
01:30:30
I don't advise massaging too often, but cold water and gentle massage on your eyeballs stimulates the vagus nerve. And
01:30:36
you can do it yourself. You'll notice that if you're on a monoton, you do that, your pulse rate goes down. It's the deep dive reflex that we have in all
01:30:44
of us. We dive into water. What about putting an ice pack on the back of your neck?
01:30:49
I think that's fantastic. Back of the neck, but I prefer the front of the neck. Okay. Because the front of the neck is closed.
01:30:55
The vagus nerve is very close to the karate sheath over here. And when you put ice packs on it, the vagus nerve is
01:31:01
stimulated. Humming for 10 minutes. 10 minutes. Both sides. What do you mean by humming? Give me an
01:31:06
example. Oh, humming. Oh, humming. Oh, yeah. That sound is transmitted to the vagus nerve. So, it's like shaking that vagus nerve and it creates electrical impulses uh in the vagus
01:31:18
nerve. That's been shown. Singing, singing, singing. humming, laughing. You know that there are laughing clubs. Maybe you should start a laughing club.
01:31:29
Laughing clubs. Yeah, laugh for no reason. Just sit there and laugh. So that diaphragmatic movement, that
01:31:35
constant diaphragmatic movement in laughing stimulates the vagus nerve. I heard you talk about this valva
01:31:41
maneuver. Yeah. What's that? The valva is when you breathe in and then you breathe out, but don't let the air out and you're straining. And that straining compresses the thoracic
01:31:53
cavity but also the abdominal cavity and stimulates the vagus nerve. And that is also found to be very very helpful.
01:32:00
And remind me again if I have a healthy vagus nerve, if I have a calm healthy vagus nerve, what is the downstream
01:32:07
impact going to be across my life? Downstream impact is going to be faster healing,
01:32:12
less coronary disease, less high blood pressure. Your blood will not be so sticky and make blood clots less
01:32:20
inflammatory markers. The blood tests that we do, the interucan 6, the tumor necrosis factor,
01:32:26
the CRP levels, small dense LDL, we didn't even talk about LDL, but LDL, the bad cholesterol, all those get better. And what is the the the role of LDL as
01:32:38
it relates to heart disease? Because I've heard this word cholesterol. I really don't really understand what it is. or I know there's good cholesterol,
01:32:44
there's bad cholesterol. I I guess that bad cholesterol comes from fast food and processed foods and stuff, but simply
01:32:51
what do I need to understand about the role cholesterol plays in heart disease and how to not have bad cholesterol?
01:32:58
The LDL car carries most of the cholesterol in the body. It's not complicated. LDL is what is LDL is a lipoprotein. Yeah. Right. And you have HDL which is good
01:33:10
cholesterol. LDL, bad cholesterol, total cholesterol and triglycerides. Okay, these are the four tests.
01:33:15
So the LDL is a reflection of your cholesterol. Now cholesterol is a normal molecule in your body and you should have cholesterol because if you don't have cholesterol, I don't think you live
01:33:28
too long and you need to move this cholesterol around your body. Every cell in the body makes cholesterol. Your
01:33:34
liver makes most of the cholesterol actually. Now what happens is that when that LDL molecule becomes damaged, it
01:33:41
becomes a small dense LDL particle. A damaged LDL causes inflammation because now you have a molecule that's floating around your body. It's been damaged. It's small. It's dense. Now your white
01:33:56
cells, your macrofasages see that and want to gobble it up. That's number one. Number two, these molecules get oxidized in the lungs and then they the first place they come out from after the lungs
01:34:08
is the coronary arteries. So it's the small dense LDL particles which are now oxidized they destroy the glycoalix which is the lining of the coronary arteries and they
01:34:20
activate the endothelium. When they activate the endothelium which is the lining of your coronary arteries
01:34:27
that's when you're going to start getting aosclerosis. So atherosclerosis and LDL are related but it's not the the
01:34:35
total cholesterol. It's when you have small dense damaged LDL. So let me explain the impact in my practice. Patients come to me because they either
01:34:47
cannot tolerate cholesterol medications or they don't want to take cholesterol medications. What I do then is I look
01:34:53
and say okay your LDL is it high or low? Is it is that what I'm really concerned about or is it that
01:35:00
it's small dense LDL? So I do a subfractionation and this is important for you to understand because they don't
01:35:07
do it in every country in the world. It's very difficult to get some of these blood tests abroad. But in the United States is easy to do it. It's called
01:35:13
subfraction of your LDL. So it tells you whether you have small dense LDL or not.
01:35:18
So let's say you came to me and your LDL is 150. But if it's all made up of large, fluffy, good, normal LDL, it's
01:35:30
not going to be implicated in your inflammation or in your coronary artery disease. I leave that alone. But if you
01:35:37
have small dense LDL, that also is a problem because it's pointing me towards inflammation. Because what causes small, dense, damaged LDL are glucose, omega6,
01:35:50
advanced glycation end products, toxins, and lipopolyaccharides that come from the gut, leaky gut. So now I just gave you the primer
01:36:02
for treating coronary artery disease. These five things promote coronary artery disease and it's small dense LDL. Those macrofasages they
01:36:14
engulf small dense LDL and those macrofasages become foam cells. The endothelium has been already activated. So they
01:36:25
bind to the endothelial lining. What's the endothelium? The endothelium is the lining of the artery in your coronary artery. So these
01:36:32
white cells that are full of fat, the bad fat attach themselves to it and then become endothelialized. That means they become part of the wall. So they become a plaque. That's now you got it. That's making the
01:36:44
plaque. You just hit it right on the head. So how would I naturally lower my LDL
01:36:49
without taking statins or any of these other medications? Is there a way to to do it naturally?
01:36:55
You you stay away from from meat. Yes. You've gone on a vegetarian diet. Yes, it'll come down. But there's no need to
01:37:01
or meat. Or meat because they'll all have cholesterol. Even chicken. Even chicken. Yeah. If you want to bring it down. But the question is, do you
01:37:08
really want to bring it down? Do you really want to bring it down? Later. The most recent data is very scary. It shows
01:37:14
that patients who have the highest LDLs actually make it into the '9s and live a healthier life. It's not the LDL, it's
01:37:22
the damaged LDL that's the problem. So this the medical profession as a whole and all of us are having a problem grappling with this. Is it the total LDL that we should be concerned about? Point
01:37:35
to your question. What is a normal cholesterol and should we be lowering cholesterol and the answer really is not
01:37:41
that simple. What we should be doing is not to have small dense LDL. So the question is that's the issue and small dense LDL five things. Sugar causes it. Omega6,
01:37:54
advanced glycation end products, toxins, and leaky gut. They make your cholesterol become small, dense
01:38:00
particles. A lot of people are concerned about eating eggs because they think it might raise their cholesterol levels.
01:38:05
Absolutely no concerns whatsoever. And what about statins? So a lot of people are prescribed statins when they have heart related issues. Are they safe
01:38:13
in the long run? Are they effective? Okay, first part, are they safe? For the most part, they are. But at least 20 to 30% of patients will suffer from psychopenia which is loss of muscles. So
01:38:25
they'll get weakness, aches, pains. They'll get diabetes because it causes mitochondrial dysfunction. So they'll de sugar problems and many of them also do
01:38:38
developmental diseases. So I've seen that they become forgetful and they just can't think right and I stop the statins
01:38:44
and all of a sudden they start feeling better. So no, not all statins are safe. You need to monitor statins also. They can cause liver dysfunction. So you need to watch that. Number two is that the
01:38:57
statins are they effective. Effective in what? If the end point is to reduce your
01:39:04
LDL. Yeah, statins will bring your LDL down. But does that translate to a decrease in cardiovascular event rates? That's a totally different question. You see? So, is your goal just to reduce the
01:39:17
LDL or is your goal to reduce the damaged, oxidized, small, dense LDL levels? And when people say they have high blood pressure, that's because
01:39:28
there's potentially a narrowing of their blood vessels. So, the the the blood has
01:39:34
less space to go through. So, it's kind of like squeezing a host pipe that it gets it gets shoots out faster. Is that
01:39:39
typically what it means by high blood pressure? Sort of. Let me explain. When your insulin levels are running high, all
01:39:46
your blood vessels and your capillaries all don't vasoddilate properly. Oh, okay. And vasoddilation is the
01:39:53
expansion and shrinking. Yeah. So, they don't vasod dial properly. So, you will get high blood pressure. So, one of the biggest things
01:39:59
I've noticed with diabetes patients is when I bring the insulin levels down through my fasting program and dietary
01:40:04
changes, the blood pressures go away. See, that's another thing that there's no such thing as essential hypertension.
01:40:11
Essential hypertention meaning that you just have high blood pressure. There's always a cause. Either you have sleep
01:40:17
apnea or you have hyperinsulinemia because sleep apnea also causes hypertension. So hypertension does not
01:40:24
always necessarily mean that you're going to be committed to blood pressure medications for the rest of your life. I've heard you talk quite a lot about
01:40:30
breakfast. People ask you about what they should have for breakfast because everybody wants to know um how they
01:40:35
should be starting their day. What is your advice on what we should be eating for breakfast to have a healthy heart and cardiovascular system?
01:40:44
Breakfast is a tough one. I tell most of my patients that if you absolutely have to have a breakfast, have a couple of
01:40:49
eggs and if you are a vegetarian, it makes it a little bit more tough. Um, but you can have some kefir with two to three blueberries, two to three blackberries, and about four blueberries
01:41:03
in it. And then you put your inulin powder in it and that's your breakfast. That's all you should have. But a heavy breakfast and also breakfast in my
01:41:13
opinion breakfast should be we should pass breakfast for most adults and just go for lunch and dinner only cuz then you can do your 18 six. If you absolutely going to have breakfast then
01:41:25
you have breakfast and lunch and then no dinner. But you got to plan 18 hours. 18
01:41:31
hours is optimal and we can do it. A lot of people say they can do it, but most of us can do it. You will notice how
01:41:37
much more energy you have. You know, when I do my OMAD, which I do at least 3 to four times a week, which I only have one meal a day, at 6:00 in the evening, I actually have more energy than I do in
01:41:49
the morning. What does your diet look like, doctor? My diet? Yeah, I do eat meat and I do eat fish, chicken, and turkey and but I'll have I
01:42:00
source it right. Always make sure that it's grass-finished. Always make sure it's organic and I'll have small amounts
01:42:05
of it. Grass-fed, grass-fed. Grass finished. What does that mean? Grass-fed just means they took it out one day and put it out in the field and they fed it some grass. So, this
01:42:17
advertising that industry does is a little deceiving. And I had to investigate this to find
01:42:23
out. It's a lie. It has to be grass-fed from beginning to end. So then it's going to have more omega-3 in it. It'll have more K2 in it. It'll have more nutrition and have less toxins also in
01:42:34
it. So less omega6 because if your cows are eating corn, then you're going to get all that omega6. And the cow is not supposed to be eating corn. Cow is supposed to be
01:42:46
eating grass. So I do eat some meats and I eat some vegetables with it. Coming from a
01:42:53
background, my great-grandfather's from India. We do eat Indian food as well. So we have some lentils
01:43:00
and some curries of course. So we can cook the meats in a in a curry form as well. I don't eat much chapatis because
01:43:07
those are very full of carbs. I love the taste of it. I love naan once in a while. And what do you supplement with? What's your supplement stack look like? I take D3, K2,
01:43:19
omega3 fish oil. So I take two two capsules every day. Vitamin C 1 g inulin kefir. I drink that every day and I count it. Magnesium
01:43:32
and I take nattokynise. Nattokynise. Nattokynise I take about 8,000 units a day. What it is is that it does thin the blood a little bit so
01:43:46
that you're less likely to make blood clots. Part of metabolic syndrome is a tendency to make blood clots and have a
01:43:52
high fibbrin level. My frigen level was at the upper limits of normal. So I just take nattokinise. It doesn't cause any
01:43:58
bleeding or any problems like that. And then I also take a probiotic and I it's it's basically is called mega spores
01:44:10
probiotic. So there's it's spores. There's no real bacteria in there. It's all spores. What's a spore? A spore a bacteria can survive
01:44:23
by sporulating. So it becomes a spore. So it's no longer a bacteria, it's a spore, but it'll germinate under the
01:44:29
right circumstances. So these little things, they have they are the spores of the bacteria that are in soil. So soil has certain species of bacteria, the
01:44:41
basilus species. The spores I consume, they go in my gut because remember if I take a probiotic, the acidity in my stomach is going to kill most of the bacteria.
01:44:56
So what does a spore do? Sorry. So the spore passes through the stomach, goes all the way down to your intestines
01:45:02
and then it germinates there. It grows there. So now the spore becomes a bacteria.
01:45:07
Okay? So it gets past that acidity of your stomach. So, I do take that as a supplement as well. Dr. Jay, what is the most important thing we didn't talk about that we should have talked about for the people
01:45:19
at home that have clicked on this episode? And you know, I guess one way that you might tackle this question is
01:45:24
just by thinking about the most popular questions you get asked from your audience on a daily basis that we might
01:45:31
not have covered today. How can I screen myself right now? What test should I do right now to see at what stage of inflammation and
01:45:43
coronary artery disease am I in? Because coronary arteries is the number one cause of death and inflammation is the
01:45:48
underlying cause. So what test should I be doing right now? That is an important question. If you're over the age of 30
01:45:56
and you have concerns, one, get a coronary calcium score. If your coronary calcium score is zero, you have no calcium, then you're in a good place. If you have
01:46:10
coronary calcium, you need to go see a good cardiologist that's going to do a prevention program
01:46:15
because it means you already have athoscerosis. Athoscerosis meaning plaque hardening of the arteries.
01:46:21
Yeah. Number two, you need a good blood test to look for inflammation. The blood test
01:46:27
that I order is called a Cleveland heart labs. In it you get your HDL, LDL, cholesterol. But you look at particle sizes. Is my LDL small dense? If it is small
01:46:42
dense particles, is it oxidized? Yes, I have a problem. My CRP level, other inflammatory interucan 6, timonucosis factor, hemoglobin A1C,
01:46:56
sugar level, all these are part of that panel of tests. So you should get a good
01:47:03
inflammatory panel which is the Cleveland Heart Labs. So those are the two things that everyone must do. Get a
01:47:09
coronary calcium score all adults and do an inflammatory panel. Inflammation you
01:47:15
got to know whether you look you know you may not feel inflammation. It's not like you get a big pimple and it's going
01:47:21
to hurt you but if you have inflammation in the body yeah you could know about it. How you have mental fog? I'm not
01:47:28
optimal doc. My memor is going down. I'm depressed. Depression is inflammation. Depression is not something psychological. Okay? Now, this I have to stress to you and I tell all my
01:47:40
patients, you come in, I'm depressed. You're depressed because that very symptom of depression is a
01:47:47
symptom of your inflammation. You can't be depressed about something that oh my car is not working very well.
01:47:55
That's a difference from depression. Depression is is is inflammation in the brain. So you'll be surprised how many patients go on my anti-inflammatory diet, which is I change the diet and fix
01:48:06
them all up and the depression goes away. So ask yourself not just questions about physically how you're feeling but mentally also. And if the answer is that doc I'm not
01:48:19
optimal I'm forgetful I'm depressed I'm having sleep dis disturbance I'm relation things my I've changed my body
01:48:27
is also you have inflammation we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for and the question that's been left for you is
01:48:38
what was the most difficult day of your life and how did you overcome it the most difficult day of my life
01:48:46
was was a very personal one for me, you know, when when when when my my dad passed away and you know, and I'm Dr. Jay
01:48:57
and uh and when he he was sick and he didn't want to go to the hospital and then he passed away in his sleep and
01:49:08
then you always ask yourself, could I have done something differently? you know you second guess yourself and that
01:49:15
second guessing happened with him of course it was very very painful but it happens with patients as well but how
01:49:23
did I overcome it it taught me a lot about my own limitations as well as a physician as a son as a scientist as a reader
01:49:33
and that's why I'm motivated to do what we are doing here also is to do the best you can to educate people What was he
01:49:41
sick with? What was his predicament? He was a cardiac patient already and he's he's got a very interesting story actually. He was told that he only had a few years to live after he had bypass
01:49:52
surgery. But then I put him through all the things we talked about today. He lost a lot of weight. He went from 185
01:49:59
lbs to 135 lbs. He changed his diet and he lived another 30 years and he did another six world tours and traveled and
01:50:06
he had a wonderful life. Okay. the impact of simple things that we can do to change his life. So he stopped drinking all alcohol as well and he he really had a very clean diet and
01:50:17
everything else. But that night he came down with some sort of infection. He had
01:50:22
massive diarrhea and massive massive explosion. And I think that what really happened is he he got overwhelmed. You see it's the gut. He got overwhelmed with a toxin from his gut and then he
01:50:35
passed away. But but here's a man who who lived to 89 who was supposed to have passed away in his 60s and the impact but but the thing is that you know we we
01:50:47
we shouldn't second guessess ourselves. We don't want to live in the past. I want to live in the present moment not
01:50:54
even in the future. So all these things have taught me to live in the moment. And one of the
01:51:02
skills I've developed is just that that when I'm with you, I'm only with you. If
01:51:08
I'm doing your surgery, I'm only doing your surgery. If I'm having a conversation with you, you and I are the
01:51:14
only people that matter right now. And this being in the moment, that that ability to be that is something I learned over time because before you know something bad happens, your next
01:51:26
case, you're still reminiscing about that and you're regretting that. You can't do that. Life is only expressed in
01:51:33
this moment right now. So learning how to live in the moment applies not only to me but to everybody. We all living in the past otherwise and or we're worried
01:51:45
about the future. So how do you learn present moment awareness and live in this moment so that we will be happier. We can do what we want to do. Make the
01:51:56
changes we need to make. get the courage and make the and have the willpower to go out and make a difference to yourself
01:52:03
and to everyone around you starts with you being here. Are you here or are you in your past or have you gone off into the future? That's a skill that medicine
01:52:16
has taught me and I've become humbled by it. And this is something that I have learned and I want to pass on to all my patients too as well that okay you've got all these things going on but learn
01:52:29
to live in the moment. Dr. Jay, thank you so much. Thank you so much for the wisdom that you've shared with so many people. If people aren't
01:52:35
familiar with you, you're extremely prolific and well loved across the internet for the the public education
01:52:42
work you've done and the the heightening of awareness of people's heart and their cardiovascular health more broadly. And
01:52:47
until really before you started making videos online, a lot of this stuff was opaque. It was a mystery to a lot of
01:52:54
people. And your YouTube channel has almost a million subscribers now. And you you go through some of these
01:52:59
subjects that we've talked about today in even greater detail. So I'd highly recommend people go and check you out there. But also just thank you for
01:53:05
saving so many people's lives cuz you know that's what you do day in day out and that's an incredibly I mean there's probably not a higher calling one can
01:53:12
answer. So thank you for doing what you do and I can see now why people love you. so much on online and on YouTube
01:53:18
because you're so incredibly engaging, I guess is the word, engaging, wise, and you make the information accessible in a way that I don't think has been done before. So, thank you so much. It's a
01:53:29
pleasure to meet you and to have this conversation with you, and thank you for enlightening my audience. The pleasure was mine. Thank you.
01:53:35
This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the
01:53:41
show. So, could I ask you for a favor? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just
01:53:47
that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my
01:53:52
power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback.
01:53:58
We'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.
01:54:05
[Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] [Music]