Spotting Hidden Heart Disease With Ultrasound, Artery Plaque Reversal From Natto, Why CIMT Beats Most Hospital Scans, & More With Joseph Ence

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, the layers of the artery are very important.

When the walls get thick, that's usually metabolic issues. Too much sugar, too much insulin causes this lining to get thicker, but also plaques will form when you have nefarious molecules— Lp, dense LDL— those come bombing up the pipe, and you would think the blood flows evenly But there's eddies in the stream, there's Bernoulli effects. Okay. And it causes damage to the walls, it gets worn out, and then those little dense molecules get pushed in. The body sends in a white blood cell, they gobble it up, but it turns into a fatty streak or a plaque.

Is that called like a foam?

Foam cells. Foam cell, yeah. Yeah, they aggregate and they're pussy and nasty and pimply. Yeah. And over time the body will calcify it. That's the traditional knowledge right now is that you'll get these calcified plaques at the end of your life., and those are measured with the coronary calcium score, which is a great test, but it's not a tracking test. Your score is only going to go up as your body calcifies more. So looking at this with ultrasound, you can map it. I can tell you where every plaque is. I can tell you how much plaque's there, and then I can compare you to the American population.

Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. Joe, we've hung out at conferences before, and I know you as the guy who does scans on people's necks to figure out what's going on with their hearts. Uh, and, and by the way, if you're listening to this episode, go to bengreenfieldlife.com/cimt for all the show notes because this one's gonna be pretty video rich. Um, but Joe, how do you describe yourself to people in terms of like what you do?

I like playing with technology, and, uh, there's a lot of tools that the FDA's used that aren't brought into regular practice.

Okay.

Most people don't—

do you just have the FDA's use?

The FDA uses this to track the efficacy of, uh, all the statins. Oh, there's a rich history of research comparing this test to every lipid profile.

Okay.

Blood pressure, every metric related to vascular disease.

How'd you, how'd you get into playing with FDA computers?

When I was a teenager, I broke into a hospital and fired up the ultrasound machine. I thought, this is fun. Well, my sister broke her leg and they said, don't touch that. Okay. So I, I of course fired it, and I was like, you can see live images in real time, and this is not taught to every kid. There's no— it's used on pregnancies, it's pretty safe.

Yeah.

So after that, I, after college, I got my degrees and stuff, and I'm like, I want to do something fun, and I couldn't make money with the degrees I got, so I worked with a guy who did ultrasound, and he showed me the ropes, how to be of service to some clinics, because they want tests that may not be cash paid. Yeah, this is one of them.

Yeah. So, so you didn't even get like a degree in medical imaging or anything like that? You just picked all this stuff up along the way? Correct. You're like the, the rogue diagnostic technician. Yeah, yeah.

I have no medical credentials, but I am the best in the world at this.

Okay, so by this stuff, what exactly is this, this machine that's in front of us right now?

So this is a standard hospital ultrasound machine. You'll see this in any— highest quality you could hope for. See, just the name brand, everything. I wanted to bring the best. But also these smaller $5,000 probes have— are just as compelling on the images. You can see fatty streaks in the arteries. You can see the vessels. You can track them all the way. You can see clots. And what's special about this is it does every body part. I need a different ultrasound probe for this, for your heart, your liver, whatever. This will emulate all of them. What is that? It's a digital ultrasound chip.

Digital ultrasound chip. Plugs into a tablet. This is different than what somebody would use if they want to look at a baby.

No, you could do that with this too now. Really? You can do hearts, you can do valves, the imaging is incredible. Eyes, MSK, muscular injection in joints, get that stuff exactly where you want it.

Is this like a new technology?

This is out about 3 years, and only in the last year has the quality gotten so good that my long-term techs are dumping the big machines for the smaller ones.

Okay, I know you're going to show me how all this stuff works, but like, For you in your day-to-day, are you traveling to doctors' offices to teach them how to use this stuff? Are you more kind of— because I've only run into you at conferences and expos before we decided to meet up at my house here.

Yeah. So, at the conferences, we do this for the wealthy, the powerful, the people who don't want to be famous. They want to live a good long life. They want to look and see and make sure their arteries are clean. There's no plaque. There's no buildup. But, about 80% of the people I scan, they'll have some plaque that I can show them. And, that's compelling.

Yeah. Okay, all right. I want to show you something. Um, I've got— you can stay there, I'm just gonna grab this from the shelf. I have this book. I've been wanting to do a podcast about this book. I don't know if you've heard about this one before, by Ford Brewer and Todd Eldridge called Prevention Myths. Oh yeah, why stress tests can't predict your heart attack and which tests actually do. And, um, I still haven't nailed them down to get them on the podcast, but this talks about all the problems with, you know, just relying on lipid panels for knowing what your cardiovascular risk potential is and you know, potentially some of the radiation issues with, you know, doing repeat CT angiographies like this CLEARLY scan that everybody's kind of into. And they talk about CIMT in here, carotid intima-media thickness score. And I immediately thought of you because I learned a ton in here. But see, here's the page, carotid intima-media thickness testing. So this book obviously was fantastic. But for people who are just watching this podcast and aren't going to read the book, how do you describe this, this whole CIMT thing to people?

Well, the layers of the artery are very important. When the walls get thick, that's usually metabolic issues. Too much sugar, too much insulin causes this lining to get thicker. But also plaques will form when you have nefarious molecules, LP, dense LDL. Those come bombing up the pipe and you would think the blood flows evenly, but there's eddies in the stream. There's Bernoulli effects that— Okay. And it causes damage to the walls. It gets worn out and then those little dense molecules get pushed in. The body sends in a white blood cell, they gobble it up, but it turns into a fatty streak or a plaque.

Is that called like a foam?

Foam cells. Yeah, they aggregate and they're pussy and nasty and pimply. Yeah. And over time, the body will calcify it. That's the traditional knowledge right now is that you'll get these calcified plaques at the end of your life, and those are measured with the coronary calcium score, which is a great test, but it's not a tracking test. Your score is only going to go up as your body calcifies more. Okay, uh, so looking at this with ultrasound, you can map it. I can tell you where every plaque is. I can tell you how much plaque's there, and then I can compare you to the American population.

You can do this in the heart?

Uh, I look right here as a window.

I was gonna say, because that's what I call the carotid, right? It's apparently— so, um, this test, the carotid intima-media thickness score, from what I understand, what I read in this book, it correlates decently to like a, you know, one of these fancy Cleerly scans that people are doing for plaque analysis. What are your thoughts as far as correlative power to going into the hospital for one of the fancier angiographies?

Um, Cleerly makes beautiful reports, and they will tell you what's going on in your vessels. They straighten it out all beautiful, and you feel like you got a thorough— but those, those scores traditionally go up. Plaques don't traditionally disappear according to peer-reviewed science that you and I get. We'll talk a little bit later about some other substances from the Blue Zones in China— or sorry, Japan and Italy. But yeah, they correlate pretty tight. But the technicians and I talk, we're like, when I see a bunch of plaque in the neck, I would expect the coronary calcium score to also be high. Yeah, it doesn't correlate when we gossip amongst ourselves, but the research is out there.

Okay, so then if you're just looking at the carotid, if somebody has like plaque break loose, it's usually not breaking loose in the carotid, right?

It's breaking loose For a stroke, yeah. Okay, for stroke, it's a good indicator. And this 6-inch is good of your 100,000 miles. It's supposed to be correlative.

Okay, it's supposed to be correlative, meaning— and this is kind of like what I'm wondering— like, if I were to get a test like this, which is ultrasound, so it's not super invasive, and we'll demonstrate what it looks like, and there's not a lot of radiation, could I use this instead of like an angiography for long-term predictive power on how much calcium or plaque I might have in my—

Yeah, this is the preferred tracking tool of the FDA for vascular health, cardiovascular health. Are the walls thin and limber? Are they getting thick and stressed? Is the plaque forming? You can see the process ongoing in this 6 inches of artery, but the rest of the body correlates highly compared to all the other reference ranges. But, uh, Yeah, this is, this is one of the best, most effective, no side effect. You can use it in your office. It's getting cheaper and better all the time.

Yeah, I mean, obviously you'd still need somebody who knows what they're doing because I think I even read this in this book, Prevention Myths, that it can be good as a predictive tool, but the skill of the person doing it and the ability of the person doing it to be able to actually interpret the data is pretty important.

Yeah, yeah. Having a technician that knows what they're looking for. But we're getting doctors doing this with 20 hours of training. Oh, 4 hours of training, and then they upload their scan every day and you build into it. But there's two parts that are important. The tracking of the lining is important because that's your, that's your tracking tool. How thick is this? What's your vascular age? But the plaques, those could be anywhere. And if they're soft and gooey and dangerous, or if they become a little more secure, the body will fibrous them up And then at the end of the cycle, they're calcified. They snap like chalk on cadavers. When they take it out, it snaps like chalkboard chalk. It's visceral.

So when you, when you talk about calcium, a lot of times I see it described— or plaque, I guess— I see it described as stable versus unstable. And for example, um, you'll see a lot of athletes who have high calcium scan scores, but it's supposedly like more stable, tightly packed calcium. And then in people who are less healthy, it is unstable. Um, as far as differentiating between stable versus unstable, does a test like this—

yeah, you can see the difference. When they're calcified, they're bright, there's a shadow underneath them. You can't— ultrasound can't see through calcium. When they're soft and gooey and fresh and gelatinous, that's when they're nasty and most dangerous. Yeah, because that rips open or pops, the cap comes off the plaque, and you get this thrombus or clot that goes up to your brain or heart, and that's That's the problem.

How many people have you done this on personally?

4,000, but my database has a quarter million, 300,000 in it.

I've seen at conferences where there's like, you know, biohackers and athletes and some people are probably not healthy. Like, have you found any correlative patterns? Like, have you seen like athletes have more stable plaque, or have you found like people who are supposed to be really healthy aren't? Like, what have you found?

Yeah, I've had a couple surprises. I was in Dallas scanning in some, uh, 60-year-old testosterone replacement dudes came up, and I've scanned enough that they always have a 20% ring around their arteries.

Pretty consistent.

Really? Yeah.

Yeah. Now, are you talking like therapeutic TRT, or are we talking like, like guys who are obviously juicing and, and are like way more buff than they should be at 60? Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, like, I'm on TRT, my levels are at like 800.

I'm not knocking it, I take it too.

Yeah, yeah. But, but you're talking about guys who are maybe abusing testosterone.

65, 70, just— okay, good for you. Okay. But, uh, I scanned and he had— I scanned enough of them that I know that there are plaques there. His was almost gone, and he's telling me he's on this natto diet. Natto kinase.

Uh-huh. I take that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he told me that he takes it with serrapeptase, which is the enzyme the silkworm uses to dissolve. Yeah, that's the stuff.

Yeah, apparently. Like, I— because I looked into the things that could potentially regress plaque.

That's it.

Or decrease plaque progression. Um, natto kinase was in there. Vitamin K is another one. Serrapeptase is another. I, I have a lot of sources of those in my diet. Like, you know, not to sound like the fox guarding the henhouse, but like Kion and one of the supplement companies I own, we have a joint product that has a ton of serrapeptase and tumorosaccharides in it. And I take that more for recovery, but I know it has an impact on the heart. And then this company Novos, they have these gummies that they say target the 7 key pathways of aging. So they got like lutein and zeaxanthin. I think ginseng is in there, but those have nattokinase in there. And then, um, Dr. Darshan Shah, who's a super cool physician down in LA, he and I partnered up with a company he has called Vitaboom. And I basically took everything I could find for plaque regression and had him put it all in one packet. It's called the Ben Greenfield Heart Health Pack or something like that, but it's got nattokinase in it as well. Um, I haven't done a lot of CIMTs to actually test in real time, how I'm doing. It'll be interesting to test me later on and see where we're at. But yeah, like, I'm super cognizant of this stuff due to high genetic risk for cardiovascular disease. And I already have like, I got like 8% plaque in my LVA when I tested 3 years ago via CT angiography.

So endurance athletes do pound their arteries pretty good.

Yeah, like 20 years of Ironman triathlon and Spartan, and I'm sure that's, that's what a lot of that's from.

Yeah, I've scanned the Denver Broncos and they, they, they— I don't know if it's the blood pressure spikes or the I don't know, but, uh, it's, it's tough on the arteries, those guys that do more than 100 miles a week.

Yeah, yeah. What's gold standard for tracking? Like, like if somebody were to— I don't want to ask you this too, like, like how somebody can actually get this, but if someone were to get this, is every month, is every 6 months?

It doesn't move very quickly. 6 months is aggressive. A year is about right. 5 years if you're pretty clean and you just want to do tracking, tracking.

That's pretty similar to an angiography then, because they say like once every 2 to 5 years. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I think when you and I talked last, you said you have a directory of practitioners who could do this.

Yeah.

Is that the VASOLabs?

The VASOLabs website will tell you all the locations where we have contractors and you can get it done. But, if you're an office or clinic, we'll fly a tech out to you or we'll find a local tech so you can do it monthly or quarterly. That's the bulk of my business is the conferences we go to, the The people we help, the people we educate, that's, that's all fun and bonus.

Okay, all right, cool. What else? What were you talking about with, um, Japan besides natto?

The Blue Zones, man. You remember where everybody is tracking down the Blue Zones, people that live over 100 years old, and what do they have in common? And there's a couple pockets in the world. And so I got into that natto because some doctors were emailing me price and potency of the supplies they get, and I'm like, all right, natto. I pull the research studies, and on 1,000 patients over a year, it opened the arteries 30%.

That's impressive.

That's incredible, because what the traditional science is, you'll calcify the plaque and then just go into the night with a bunch more calcium in your body. But in these Blue Zones, they had these, uh, these diets, uh, the antipasti, the vinegary foods. Yep. Uh, the fungus is in their diet. They're eating close to the earth. They give service and receive service from others. They live in a community. Like, I'm trying to pattern my life a little tighter to that, because if you don't have any of those things, you're, you're, you're, you're not going to make it.

Isn't actual natto like the fermented slimy soybeans?

It tastes so horrible.

Yeah, I wasn't getting— I used to race triathlons in Japan. I'd had that for breakfast, like mustard and a seaweed wrap. I didn't mind it that much. This was years ago. My wife and I even figured out how to make it, and it was too laborious, and barely anybody we knew even liked it came over. But I'm pretty sure that that's like the natural source of nattokinase, is actual fermented— I think it's a soybean.

Yeah, fermented soybeans. They taste horrible. It's like if you've been on a farm, a bucket of wheat that's been left out too long. Yeah, that, that's the smell. I was getting better potency from the live stuff than the pilled stuff. Yeah, I have two little plaques that I'm tracking myself, and so I was taking the natto pills after meeting those muscleheads. God bless them, they're great guys. And, uh, I, I was tracking the plaque. It wasn't shrinking until I went about 6 months on the natto the earthy stuff. And, that was a lot more effective.

Yeah. I wonder if there's a place because not that I want to encourage people to not have an intimate connection to their food, but a place you could buy it that's a decent source, natto, so you wouldn't have to make it yourself.

Japanese food stores, not Korean, not Asian, not Chinese. The Japanese eat it for breakfast. They're hardcore about it. It comes in these little Styrofoam packets. They're like a buck each. They're crazy cheap. And, uh, try a bunch of different ones.

Can't be that great for the microplastic forever chemicals piece, but there's got to be— there's got to be a decent healthy source of it too, because I'm sure other people have looked into this. I'll, I'll, I'll do some digging myself and put it in the show notes for people who are watching. Um, what about like modern, um, tactics from the pharmaceutical industry? And the reason I asked this is that the first people ever did my scan were the folks from Fountain Life. I was down in Florida and they did an angiography on me and they told me they literally had hundreds of patients that they'd seen some successful plaque regression in via the use of a PCSK9 inhibitor, like, like the twice a month— or the twice a month injection that supposedly upregulates LDL receptors. So LDL has more to bind to and you get less plaque accumulation.

Yeah, that's only for the hyper-rich as of right now. But the people I've scanned, their IMT, the wall thickness dropped in half. They showed me reports of what it was before. I didn't believe them because I've never seen a drop that much. It was impressive.

From what? From that PCSK9? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, like Rapatha?

Rapatha, exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. It is—

It scares me it's so effective.

It's expensive. I started taking it and took it for a year and a half after they told me that. And my insurance covered it. I think my copay was like $250 a month. So, I mean, it's still not cheap, but considering the effects it's supposed to have— the problem I noticed was my LDL started to get very low. Like, I dropped in like the 60s on that, from, from the 200s down into the 60s. And of course, considering cholesterol is a precursor for, you know, hormones, cell membranes, etc., I started to get concerned that it was too effective.

How do you reconcile that research study where everybody over 100 has cholesterol over 200, 250?

Yeah, I, I suspect that centenarians probably have robust endogenous antioxidant mechanisms and low amounts of inflammation that would cause that cholesterol to not become atherosclerotic. Because you look at cholesterol, what's going to cause it to become atherosclerotic? Racing Ironman triathlons, uh, you know, stress, smoking, poor sleep, high blood glucose, uh, high seed oil intake for high amount of reactive oxygen species, high amounts of sugar. So I, I think if you look at a centenarian, in many cases their lifestyle, right, high amounts of physical activity, sunshine, grounding, earthing, low inflammation, happiness, being with other people, you know, high amount of endogenous antioxidant production even from, you know, mild amounts of hormetic stressors like low-dose alcohol, you know, you get all these factors present that I think would render the cholesterol that they do have to have far less potential for being atherosclerotic. Yeah, that's what I suspect at least.

Yeah, I think you're spot on there.

Yeah, yeah. Um, let's do a little show and tell. Let's, let's show people how this actually, uh, play with the toys works. Yeah, and again, if you're watching, if you're listening, this might be kind of boring, check out the video, bengreenfieldlife.com/cimt.

All right, this is my favorite model of the artery. There's one on these on each side of the, of the neck. We're gonna measure the thickness of the walls. That's the metric. Depending how thick or thin, the artery flexes more or less based on that number. And then if there's plaques, and on most Americans, 80% of them, I'll find a plaque that I can show you.

This is the same hot ultrasound used in the hospital, I think 7 to 11 megahertz. Okay, and we'll just put it right on his neck.

Yeah, make sure you get some of the screen on the camera too. Now, should I not talk?

You can talk.

Okay, I'll tell you if you need to Shut up.

Show my upper.

Yeah, let me put in my protocols.

And so everything I'm going to take is already annotated.

Now, just for reference, here's your trachea, voice box. If you swallow, you'll see that move.

Yeah.

Your thyroid gland kind of wraps around your trachea and off to the side there, we're looking down the tube of that artery.

Okay.

As I move up towards your brain, it's going to get a little bit bigger and split into two right there. Big one feeds the brain, little one feeds your nose and cheeks with blood. So I gotta lay it out here, and that lining is the intima and media.

Oh, it's exactly what you show on that model.

Uh-huh. It's alive, it breathes, it exchanges nitric oxide with the blood, has tons of functions we're still learning about.

What's that mean where it goes red and orange?

Uh, red is going up to the brain.

Okay.

And blue is going backwards, and I'll show you where there's some retrograde flow. Where it goes backwards in a couple spots, and everybody's got it. Here I measure the speed of the blood going through, make sure we're in the right range. We are.

And here we can see both channels.

This one feeds the brain. If I move it, that one feeds the nose and face. So I'm following the walls, making sure they look even and thin and limber. And up here you got a little bit of a— doesn't look calcified yet.

A little bit of a what?

Uh, build up, a little bit of plaque kind of sticking on the wall.

And you can just tell that from like looking at it, it's not calcified by how dense it is, or—

yeah, so the blood is, is dark and liquid, and so if I look in the center of that, there's a little bit of a pool. It's a little dark pocket, but it's got a nice cap on it. Yeah, holding it in. So I wouldn't worry about that guy.

But you can see here, let me show you from some other angles. So right there, a little bit of thickening there. Let me see if I can get him straight to the top. Here we can do it. So there's a side view of that.

Yeah, wall.

Point it out. Little calcified nugget on top.

Those little kind of like nodule looking things.

Yes, sir.

I got to get a color picture showing the blood going through. So this is my favorite.

That's the blood coming back, the blue blood coming back.

Uh, hold on, I think it switched. Yeah, so blue is going up right now.

Okay.

And you'll see little pockets of red. Yeah, where the, uh, that you get this retrograde, and everybody has it.

So if your cholesterol is not perfect, well, how does this plaque deposit?

You've got this irritation, and if your blood's too sugary or too insulinally if that's a word, causes irritation, and it eventually it'll wear away and cause that lining to become more easily penetrable.

Like when you're swimming in a river and you get towards the edges and there's a few places where the water is like reverse direction.

Exactly, the eddies in the stream.

Yeah, interesting.

All right, so now we're going up to the ICA. A little bit thick there. I'll show you a top-down of that and then show you the blood flow going through it. I think there's all kinds of turbulence, right?

Yeah.

Wow. You would think you would sense that or feel it, but yeah. No, without these tools, you'd never know.

And so the intima media part of carotid intima media, that's just basically that inner lining of the vasculature? Correct.

So in research, they would just measure how thick that is. But what I'm trying to prove to everybody, just showing everybody, let's take a tour, let's map it out. And now this is your tracking tool. So yeah, kind of like the Clearleaf for arteries, right? All right, I'm getting 5 more pictures of this lining just so I can get a really good average of what we're measuring. Okay.

And I'll switch to your left side.

Okay.

You tend to often see differences in one side versus the other?

Yeah, I've seen as much as 70% blocked on one side and 30 on another, but most people are smaller versions of that, like 25, 10.

Did you say 70?

Yeah.

So when you see something like that, like you were showing me those little nodules I had, would that mean like that would take up 70% of that space that we're seeing?

Correct.

Like 70%.

And you find a lot of them.

Mine wasn't anywhere near that.

No, no, 5%.

Okay.

I was gonna say it. Yeah, it seemed like the blood could get through pretty well. You ever test somebody super young and they have deposits?

I've never tested these.

I mean, like teenagers or—

Yeah, their dad died at 30 and they had me scan them.

It was genetic.

Yeah.

Wow, these Latino girls, super cute. They're like teenagers.

Oh, they're females?

Yeah.

Wow, because that's less common for females to have the— way less high risk of cardiovascular disease from plaque, right?

Yeah, there's a curse with testosterone.

Yeah, really direct correlation with testosterone, huh? Uh, interesting.

Well, yeah, the card— or the cardioprotective of estrogen.

Yeah, whatever you want to call it.

Nature makes you strong and virile and really good at making babies and takes you out by attacking your ticker.

Yeah, yeah, Lion Dies Young bastards. Great blood flow. But these bigger machines have better blood flow, like that's for sure. I won't deny that. The, the color is more detailed. Yeah, like this side I'm not finding nearly as The left side has less than the right, huh?

Yeah, interesting.

It's common enough, but I don't have a reason for it.

Yeah, huh.

The best hypothesis is like, what side do you sleep on?

Yeah, yeah. By the way, when you were talking about testosterone, do you ever see any data that shows like the actual levels of total or free T and correlation with—

not at that granular level.

I would like to see that though. That would be a good study.

Yeah, I don't know if it exists. I mean, it might.

It probably does.

I'd have to dig into it.

There are so many research studies that I have not yet gotten into. Yeah, that's super mild. Just that little bump, it may just be a keloid.

Found any with as many tests as you've done, like any difference between like Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic?

Yeah, African-American, Indians.

Yeah, they're genetically got a tough road to hoe.

Uh, Indians or Native Americans?

India, India, Indians.

Mexicans If they're on a high-glucose diet, they get screwed up real fast.

Yeah.

I read a whole book about that called "The Jungle Effect." Oh. How like Hispanics who eat a traditional low glycemic index corn, maize, bean, legume type of diet as they might in Mexico, they don't really manifest a lot of the insulin, glucose, and diabetic issues. And then, as soon as they get into more of a Tex-Mex high-glucose westernized diet, automatically it manifests.

Yeah, yeah, blankets and fry bread were not the best things to give someone.

Like Cameroon, Africa, high genetic risk of colon cancer, it doesn't manifest because of the high fiber diet. And then an African-American in like, I don't know, like the Southeast, you know, eating fried foods, automatically you see the increase in colon cancer.

So the IMT measurement, 0.7, 0.746.

So now we're looking at the actual data for those of you watching the video, and I'll generate a complete report that's colorful, that has all the images. So walk me through this.

So just the right common— right side artery walls were 0.7. The left were 0.741, 0.746. Okay. So those are going to be reasonable. I'll graph it out to exactly what it means. Okay. But they're not bad.

Okay.

They're done. Now we'll scan you on the new machine.

Oh, it's a different one.

Yeah, this one is—

Oh, I see. You were using this and this is the nice one you just talked about.

Yeah.

You just want to like show people the difference between the two, huh?

I do, I do, because the best part about this test is not the tracking tool, it's not that you have plaque, it's that when you show someone the plaque, the light bulb goes off and they say, yeah, what do I do now? Yeah, like it's the way to immediately emotionally invest them. Yeah, with a, with a path, right? So here, I'm going to let you hold it.

Okay, I'm gonna just go see, I'm gonna start on your right side. Okay. And we'll fully take a video. When I say hit the red 30, please hit the red 30.

Okay.

But I'll go up and down. There it is. Trach, thyroid, carotid. Cool. Going up.

Do you like this one better?

I did travel so much easier.

Yeah.

All right, hit that button. So I'm just going to go up the artery slow and even.

So when I hit that button, it just records it?

Yep. And then right there at the 3 o'clock, you'll see that little plaque and a little bit of thickening.

Does the same one we saw on the other one?

Uh-huh.

And then I come back down, and then I got people that'll snip out the images and mark the locations.

Boop.

And here I lay it on its side. You can see that lining all the way through.

Mm-hmm. That looks pretty good.

Yeah, it does.

It's even. Natto kinase is working.

I think it is. Come back here. I had the best shot of that plaque right there on the left.

That's the trick, just gotta, just gotta get your ass to the sticks of North Idaho.

I'm digging it out here. Yeah, it's cool coming back down. Cool part of the world. All right, red 30.

Okay.

I mean, seeing the anatomy in real time was just always so cool to me.

Interesting.

Yeah, I don't know why this isn't in every high school, letting kids play with it.

Oh yeah.

How long do you think it'll be before you could just like get one of these for your house and AI will interpret it for you and you can just scan yourself?

I'm working on that, but I think in 5 years this should be in your cell phone. And you rub it on your skin and then you get a CGI-rendered artery or something.

Yeah, I know.

I did a home EKG the other day. It was stupid easy. Yeah. It'd be a cardio with a K. It took me 2 minutes and I got almost a clinical-grade EKG right there in my own home.

Yeah, we're drowning in data though.

Yeah.

What does it mean?

Yeah. Well, the software on the app does the analysis and everything for you.

It's incredible.

It's super cool.

People are still having insurance pay $1,500 for that.

I know.

I won't have a job soon because you don't know— you don't know how many calls I have a week of people just asking me to go through their labs with them. They'll be like, yeah, just upload them into your phone.

All right, that's that.

But let Grok in sexy mode fill you in.

Save, study, and then I'll text you these images, the videos.

Like, I can text you right away.

Patients love that. Yeah, and if you email them to me too, um, all my information is out there public anyways. I'll put them in the show notes. People want to see some of the images. Have you noticed anything that flies under the radar or isn't part of the public discourse currently, like certain diets or patterns? We talked about testosterone as potentially being correlative, but have you come across anything else that surprised you in terms of the people who you've tested who you found to have or not have Plaque.

Um, yeah, yeah, people, hard living adds up on them. They've had a divorce. Really? Yeah, I've scanned doctors and stuff, and you know, you do this enough, you kind of get a sense. And I saw this plaque, but it was an older plaque. It wasn't still developing. Her body's addressing it.

It was count—

I said, oh, I imagine with this kind of damage, she had a divorce like 10 years ago. 5 years ago. She got all panicky and froze. But stress is huge.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you, you've even heard, um, probably the idea that you can actually die of broken heart syndrome. You come across that before? Like, people who, who suffer severe loss, particularly with a relationship or a family member or a loved one, they actually experience an inflammatory reaction in cardiovascular tissue.

I bet there's a whole cascade. Yeah, yeah. No, I've, I've seen it, but nobody ever thinks of it like that. Like, you know those guys that retire and they die a week later? Like, that was the important part of their life, right? And that's super common. So when we talk about the Blue Zones, to be of purpose and to be of— receive service from others is super important.

Yeah.

Because if your main thing dies, you know, you got enough extra in your life that you're not just going to fall apart.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a big one. Yeah, um, niacin. All right, so I started like 20 years ago. Niacin had a whole sales force, Coast Pharmaceuticals. They had an extended release version, great, best education I've ever seen. It was like, right, pharma reps done right, right? That ended 20— 2010, 2013, they went off patent. No more pharma reps pushing the message. Within 3 years, all the other pharma companies vilified niacin. Took it out of the equation, said it's so— it's too hard on the blood sugars.

Wait, was this— was this post it not being patentable?

Correct. That's interesting seeing how the industry works.

It was kind of like, all right, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but that's interesting.

It's just the natural way the business works. So doctors who get their pharma rep in twice a week get the latest info they think. But niacin is so powerful, it's such a— something that's been around so long, it has such a good track record, but that flush is uncomfortable. The red. And you can get rid of that flush with pectin, eating applesauce, and a baby aspirin. You can get that through. But niacin is known to increase your good cholesterol, uh, what, 7 points a year, no upper limit, if you're consistent with it. Niacin is known to take care of the Lp. That's the one that I— when I'm scanning patients and I see plaque on both sides, bilateral, I tell the doc, okay, a little is difficult to lower.

A path that we were talking about earlier, that, that can have an impact. Um, niacin, you're right, that's another one that I've come across. Um, I think fish oil could factor in a little bit, or like an omega-3 fatty acid. Yeah, but yeah, there's not a whole lot out there that puts a big dent in LP.

No, there's some stuff coming allegedly, but, um, that's, that's a big lifestyle one as well. Yeah, stress may actually elevate it. Genetics, you know, being screwed that way.

But you see any differences between endurance athletes and weightlifters? No.

Hmm.

Anything else leap out as far as things you've seen?

Um, smoking's bad.

Yeah, yeah, no shit.

That's the obvious one. Yeah. And wait, like, smoking—

but what about, uh, you know, nicotine is very popular now, and some people even say it might have a protective effect.

The science on that's so interesting. It's getting pitched to me with, uh, if it cures COVID spike protein, whatever.

It's, uh Yeah, it was that, that data about, um, people who, uh, had, uh, who were cigarette smokers seemed to suffer less of the impact from COVID than non-cigarette smokers. Not to make a case for cigarette smoking, but the theory was that the nicotine seems to have some type of a protective effect.

Yep, yep. Um, bergamot is another one that nobody talks about, that fruit.

Citrus bergamot.

Yeah, interesting. Super good with the cholesterol. It's as natural as you—

I've been trying bergamot tea in there.

Right. But, uh, you can get it candied at the Asian food stores and try to change your diet a little bit. But most people don't try to eat like their grandfathers or their grandparents ate.

Yeah.

Uh, everything's so preserved and trisodium phosphate and all the chemicals in it. But yeah, as close to the earth as you can get is probably the way to go.

Yeah. I don't know, my grandpa smoked cigars and ate bagels and cream cheese, so it might depend on your grandparents. But, uh, but, but yeah, absolutely. That, yeah, the, the Blue Zone style transparent.

Yeah, yeah, Italian antipasti, vinegary foods, fungussy foods. Yeah, yeah, apple cider vinegar.

That's interesting that you keep bringing up like the, like the vinegar, the, um, the fungus. Some people might be confused when they hear you saying fungus because obviously, you know, people get concerned about Candida, yeast infection, fungal overgrowth, all gets a bad rap. When you say fungus, what do you mean?

I'm talking mushrooms in your diet. Okay, uh, the cool mushrooms like Lion's Maine, trying to work those things into your diet, not just in pills, but as close to the earth as you can get, is what I'm saying.

Fungus. Yeah. Okay.

There's a lot of different magical mushrooms out there.

Yeah, yeah, there are. I actually have, uh, I've been messing around a little bit with, uh, with Amanita for, uh, for sleep. It's like a GABAergic— it's actually the Mario mushroom. Yeah. Which in high doses is highly psychedelic, but in low doses it has some interesting effects.

That's the red cap, um, Christmas one, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just brought on an industrial mushroom lab to my office.

Spores out in my mini fridge in the garage right now, just, just kind of experimenting with it.

You're gonna knock on it.

I'm not one of those guys who trips out on anything, you know. I'm, I like to keep myself pretty sober and aware. But yeah, microdosing, it seems, has some, some cool effects.

Yeah, a lot of guys out there mixing their own mushrooms. They're growing them and then putting them in pills for their study aids. Yeah, I tried some and they were dynamite. Like, I was zoned in like on Ritalin.

Yeah, it was excellent. Yeah, I've microdosed with psilocybin for years, and, uh, I think that that's a very, very good, responsible, uh, non-dangerous use. Sensory perception, creativity, spirituality.

Yeah. Do you feel closer when you're microdosing?

Um, I think I would say, um, you know what, Honestly, it's difficult to say. The reason I say that is that I usually get up, I pray, I meditate, I read the Bible. And, if I'm going to take a microdose, it's usually an hour after that. It's been such a long time since I've actually gone to a spiritual place after microdosing. I can tell you that when I used to trip out on drugs and stuff, which was a kind of former chapter of my life, absolutely you feel deeply connected to the spiritual universe. But, I don't know about microdosing. Yeah, right. I'm not sure. I would hazard a guess that with what macrodoses do, microdosing would probably do something like that.

Yeah, I'm glad you gave us the drink you did. Like, people who are drinking Monsters all the time, like, how do you stay in tune with your body when you're blasting it?

Yeah, good minerals, good for the heart. Not sponsored by Element, but they're on the show now. What else you got in your little book there?

Uh, it would be useful— niacin, bergamot, um, FDA, CBD, telemed. Um, there are tons of passionate doctors out there that have prevention programs designed for you. Like, if you go to the cardiologist, you're gonna— and then let's say there's a dozen guys in that office, they're going to see you and test you and make sure you're taking the medicine and whatever, but there's no preventative strategies. They're not going to give you exercises to do, foods to stay— if you're lucky, there's a nurse practitioner that'll run that program, if there is a program. So most people don't get any prevention in their insurance. They don't get any prevention. The only things that prevention pays for are mammography, colonoscopy, AAAs, and, uh, cholesterol tests. Okay. The insurance system does not pay for prevention, so it's up to you. You're gonna have to pay cash. There are doctors out there that are passionate. They have heart attack and stroke prevention programs that are dedicated for people like you. I recommend you use these guys for 6 months to 9 months, figure out what their their, uh, their playbook is, what drugs they use, if they use drugs. You can do a lot of this naturally with natto and other things like that, cutting out sugar, seed oils. We don't have to talk about sugar and seed oils in this one.

Yeah, we've kicked that horse to death. News flash. I mean, well, sugar, I mean like added sugars. Yeah, and we're not talking like sweet potatoes, yams, and maybe healthy whole grains, that type of approach.

Yeah, if you can get it naturally, then all for you. Yeah, but Froot Loops are not this world.

Yeah, yeah, it's not a food group, um, at least barely a food group. So with the telemed thing, you mean that you endorse working with a practitioner who's using telemedicine? Is there a group that you—

I like Jake Coach out of Springfield.

Cure Coach.

Cure Coach. Okay, it's an online group. These guys, they've got a great intake. They ask you so many questions that it kind of percolates into your head, like, ah, okay, oral health has an effect. Gut biome has an effect. And so after doing their intake, you're aware of more things.

Yeah.

And then going through your life the next few months, you're going to notice, oh, sugar's in that, seed oils in that, cutting this out, cutting that out. Yeah, Matt. I mean, once you're aware, you start— it takes a while to figure out how to cut it all out.

I'm glad you brought up not only the gut microbiome, uh, the gut-heart axis isn't talked about as much as the gut-brain axis, uh, but it is important and there is a link. The other piece, uh, and this actually surprised me. I did an oral microbiome test with my doctor, uh, with my dentist, Dr. Loud, down in Phoenix, and I was lit up like a Christmas tree the first time that I did it. And she was showing me the data between your oral bacteria and risk of dementia, Alzheimer's, risk of cardiovascular disease. And you know what I did? Um, I started doing the oil pulling In the morning, I use this stuff called Simply O3. It's like an ozone oil, oil pulling oil. I did that for 6 months, came back in, did a repeat. And, I was also paying better attention to flossing and oral care in general. I started tongue scraping, doing some of the Ayurvedic stuff, and my biome improved dramatically. It went from being all reds to mostly greens and some yellows as far as the risk potential. Being favorable. So yeah, it's interesting, the link between oral biome and heart health.

Yeah, a couple things about that that interest me is husbands, wives have very similar gut oral biome profiles.

Yeah.

And we know those help in digestion. There's some other studies that—

do you think that's because like salivary exchange from kissing?

And correct. Yeah, um, gut biome as well. The kissing, it goes all the way through. And I do know that in a lot of studies, your gut biome tunes up to the foods that you eat most. So if you're always eating Chinese food, you're going to get more nutrition out of that science— Chinese food. But having a diet that's so varied, your body's always kind of guessing and it can't tune up to what you're looking for.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of great research on people getting rid of their chronic issues by changing their gut biome. You've talked about that. Uh, it's just fascinating and nobody pays attention to it, knowing that the food that's in a lot of the processed foods, the trisodium phosphate, the so many of them, they will interrupt and you won't get the digestion. You'll get skips and lags and leaky gut syndrome, and all those things seem to happen. So paying attention to your food, your food supply, but also cultivating your whole biome— like, this is yours. All of you together are you.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up that part too about the biome being reflective of the foods that you eat, because, um, I think a lot of these microbiome tests that people are getting that are like a shotgun analysis of the genes in your gut they'll give you like this list of foods that you should or should not eat. And in many cases, you tend to be predisposed to do better with the foods that are a staple in your diet anyways because your gut has been trained to properly digest those, and those are the bacteria that you've built up. And some people will show that they're not supposed to— let's say like, you know, vegan— they'll get a biome analysis that says they're not supposed to eat red meat. And yet part of that might be simply because they haven't been eating red meat. So it's a little paradoxical. I'm a little suspect. Yeah, I'm a little suspect of some of these Gut microbiome tests that tell you what you should and should not eat. I'd much rather see like a, like a true IgA, IgE, IgG food allergy test to tell you something like that, just because, you know, again, I think the gut can be trained to a certain extent via biodiversity to deal with a pretty wide variety of foods.

Yeah, yeah, those tests seem to be more of a snap, snapshot of where you're at, right? And not your potential, and not what you can do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there might be big data that comes out eventually, or that is currently being released that proves me wrong. But that's just— I don't, I don't typically get a lot out of those tests, especially when I'm talking with somebody on the phone looking over their test and correlating that to what they eat. And I'm like, oh, you seem predisposed to do well with all the foods you're already eating. That's kind of interesting.

Yeah, yeah, funny. Yeah, funny. If you're selling tests, you wouldn't, you wouldn't pitch that necessarily. You'd pitch Yeah, yeah, marketing has a big effect in healthcare, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah. So what's the future of all this? I mean, in terms of, uh, you know, how somebody listening in right now can, can test or expect to see this kind of stuff becoming a little bit more mainstream? You mentioned earlier that there might be some AI application in the future or ability to do it on your iPhone. You mentioned VasoLabs. What's the best thing for somebody to do right now if they're concerned about plaque and they want to get it looked at?

Right now, if you want to get it looked at, go to our website. We got dozens of locations. We also have cities that we travel to— Chicago, Boston— vasolabs.com, like V-A-S-O, V-A-S-O-L-A-B-S, uh, events.

Okay.

And, uh, we travel a lot, we do events a lot, and, uh, yeah, we love working with people and coaching them up on Whatever we can help. Everybody's got a different story, different pieces missing or different pieces added.

Cool, cool. And I will, uh, I'll put links for everybody in the show notes too. If you go to bengreenfieldlife.com/cimt, um, all of this book also— it's been an interesting one for you to look into, Joe. Um, yeah, prevention myths. Yeah, I need to do a podcast with these guys too. There's a good book too.

You can see all the— yeah, I found Ford Brewer. I found his plaque.

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, you did?

I was the guy. Yeah, he showed it. Yeah, yeah, no, he'll tell people.

He's a good dude. Cool. Yeah, I think he's got like a YouTube channel as well. All right, cool. Thanks for tuning in, folks, and, uh, that's everything you need to know about CIMT. Again, the show notes are at bengreenfieldlife.com/cimt. Thanks so much for doing this, Joe.

Thank you, Ben.

Excellent. To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become The most complete boundless version of you. Visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you. And sometimes, I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion LLC, the makers of Kion-branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support, and with full authenticity and transparency recommend in good conscience. I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body, and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So, there's your fancy legal disclaimer.