Dr. Greg Eckel breaks down the three leading causes of early death: cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurodegeneration. He argues standard cholesterol tests miss risk, pushes VO2 max and carotid imaging instead, and flags environmental toxins like heavy metals and glyphosate as threats. Start comprehensive screening by age 35, not waiting for symptoms.
Questions this video answers
700,000 deaths/year (cardiovascular disease).
160,000 deaths/year (stroke), combined cited total 860,000.
2,000 strokes per day.
115/80 mmHg (speaker’s stated ideal).
71% increased risk of stroke (for systolic 120–140, per speaker).
Chapters
Foreign first principle in longevity, don't die. So the top three killers in life, cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegeneration. You have to get your house in order, you've got to get screened. We've got to assess you in these areas because those are the things that take you out early. Number one killer, cardiovascular disease. 700,000 deaths a year of cardiovascular disease. And then you add stroke on top of that, that's another 160,000 people a year dying. So that's 860,000 people. This is the number one killer in North America. Cholesterol is antiquated. You know, we have over half the population on statin medications to decrease their cholesterol level, but it hasn't made one iota of change on the death rate of cardiovascular disease. Well, why is that? Because cholesterol is just a piece of the puzzle. The best test is VO2 max, which is going to test the microvasculature of your body. It will pick up any cardiovascular disease 10 years prior to it to becoming an event for you. So that number one, there's also another great imaging. It's called cimt, Carotid Intima Media Thickness testing. It's an ultraso where we take a picture of your heart. These are the better cutting edge routes of measuring your cardiovascular disease profile. Hypertension, this is often misunderstood. You know, 120 over 80 is an average blood pressure that is now considered pre hypertension, meaning you will develop hypertension as you age. So on hypertension a lot of folks don't understand what their blood pressure means. The first number is systolic, that 120 over 80 or ideally we have you at 115 over 80. So 115, that's the amount of pressure pushing out against your system. And then the Diastolic is the 80 and that is the pressure at rest of your heart filling. And that hemodynamic pressure is very important for our longevity. Strokes cause disability. There's 2,000 strokes a day in North America. So, so these numbers really matter. So between 120 and 140 you have an increased risk of stroke by 71%. That is staggering. So on the good side here, if you have less than 120% on that first number, the systolic, you have a 27% reduction of all cause mortality. This day and age, most of us know someone that has had cancer. The top one, breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, these all are ubiquitous in our society. The big C word used to be a death Sentence. And we are now treating it as a metabolic condition just like diabetes. There are some really innovative immunotherapies on the market now that have really helped bring down the death rate. Prostate cancer basically is a 98% survival rate. What is cancer? Cancer is just uncontrolled growth of cells. And what causes that? There are a variety of reasons as to what the actual cause of the cancer is, depending on the type. So it is important. Early detection really is crucial here. And there's some really amazing tests on the market that aren't available at your general practitioner's office as of yet. There's great research behind it and for me and my family, we are doing those test because early detection matters here. You look at the levels of environmental toxicity that are playing a role here. You know, we have the estrogenation of men with all of the plastics in our world that are reducing our testosterone and also creating more estrogenetic like cancers in all of us. We have heavy metals and we have pesticides. We've got glyphosate out there that is basically a crime against humanity. Actually the whole roundup product is 99 times more cancer causing than just glyphosate alone. So the inert ingredients in that one product which is, you know, sold in grocery stores still today, these things play a role in our health. We cannot escape our environment. And cancer is just one sign that we are living out of balance on the planet. There's, on the testing front, there's a really innovative test that we've come across called Prodrome Sciences. And they have GTAs, gastrointestinal tract acids. And these can be linked or correlated to cancer. So if you have low GTA levels in your blood, you have a higher risk of cancer. So that's one of the screenings that we do. We also have the Grail test which tests for 65 different cancers. And then there's a new test coming out of India that actually can predict cancer six months before the cells actually take off and grow in your body. Now some people say they don't want to know, right? Like, well, I don't want to know if I have cancer. Well, I would offer what you don't know could be killing you. And if you know early enough, you can make changes now that really could ultimately save your life. Neurodegeneration is the third leading caus. Now this category is actually on the rise. And we spoke about environmental toxicity. We see a clear link to environmental toxins and neurodegeneration. Well, why is that? We Store toxins in our fat, we carry. We could affectionately call each other fatheads, right? Our brains and the myelin sheaths that our nerves are surrounded by, those toxins get stored there. And it does impact our, our brain health. You know, actuarial data in Blue Cross Blue Shield in 2017 showed the average age of dementia onset. 47 years old. 47 years old. This is the alarm should be sounded right now because our brains are at risk. So neurodegeneration is a killer in that it's an insidious onset. It's like the tip of the iceberg. When you start exhibiting signs of dementia or degradation, whether it be multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, mild cognitive impairment, that is the tip of the iceberg. It could have been 20 to 30 to 40 years prior that that process began in your body. And these are things that are very preventable if you catch them early enough. You know, we have a lot of information around genetics and, you know, everybody bandies about genetics. So I want to put a big asterisk next to that right now because just because you have the gen doesn't mean you're going to express that illness. Only about 20% of the time if you have the gene, are you going to get the condition. So it's not your destiny. Other more appropriate functional tests, we look at hemoglobin A1C, which is your three month window of your sugars to see, well, how are you? Are you getting too much sugar? Like I call sugar the white death in the body, in that it spikes glucose, insulin follows. And that is an insult to our every cell of our bodies. Like a bunch of free radicals throwing bricks through windows on the streets. That's happening in our bodies when you eat too much sugar. There's a triad that I test everyone with neurodegeneration in my practice. And we look at heavy metals, we look at the microbiome and we look at hormones. But heavy metals in particular, I have discovered mercury, cadmium, arsenic and lead are the top four that are showstoppers. It doesn't matter what good supplements or lifestyle things that you do, if you have those in your system, those are causing oxidative stress and damage to your brain and to your body. So we've got to measure it, you've got to check it. If you're not looking at what's happening with it, it just might kill you. So microbiome testing is that second leg of the stool, and we think of the gut as the second brain, right? We've all heard that concept at this point. If we removed all of the aerobic and anaerobic bacteria out of our guts, we'd have about four to seven pounds of material. A little bit gross if you think of it that way. But it is so essential. That ecosystem is so important that all of our neurotransmitters are manufactured in the gut. So we do a stool analysis and test the microbiome. The third leg of the stool is hormones, in particular cortisol, stress hormones. You know, we've heard of stress and the effects on the body, and we're going to talk more about that in this series. But it's called inflammaging inflammation and aging. And when you add stress in there, it's adding fuel into the fire. And so you can actually measure your stress hormones. You have a cortisol diurnal variation throughout the day, should spike in the morning and then decrease throughout the day so that it allows you to go to sleep at night. So if you have any sleep issues and you're taking sleep medications and you still can't sleep, perhaps it's your hormones. Have they been checked? Do you have anxiety? That's also another big frontrunner for looking at your cortisol levels, but also for all neurodegeneration. This is something on an annual panel that I feel strongly that everybody should get checked. Not just through menopause or andropause for men, but, but really starting 35 and above. This is when these things really start to set up shape. So really, you know the premise here. Don't die, right? You want. We want you on the planet for as long as possible. The longer that you're here, there's more and more innovation. I mean, we're getting so close to that hockey stick kind of exponential changes for longevity research. So then you also want to cover your bases. You've got to check the boxes on the top three killers. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurodegeneration. You want to get adequate. Actually, you want to get optimal screenings on these conditions because what is happening in your general practitioner's office is not adequate. Your annual exam isn't checking the boxes enough because it hasn't stemmed the tide at all. So number one, don't die. Watch out for the top three killers. You. And you've got to get an optimal assessment. We actually are getting rather sophisticated on different clocks, aging clocks. But you have to understand what the clock is measuring because you can really, you can game the system here. We want to measure it. We want to show that you've got traction, and then ultimately, you are feeling different in your body.
