Stories of Hope & Healing: Dr. Stephen Hussey

Welcome to Integrative Medicine with Dr. Leland Stillman, the podcast where we explore the best of East and West, old and new, conventional and unconventional, in search of answers to medicine's toughest cases and most difficult problems. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Diagnostics and therapeutics discussed on this podcast may or may not be right for you, so talk to a qualified practitioner before taking action based on what you learn here. If you'd like to become a patient at at my practice, go to stillmanmd.com to schedule a complimentary discovery call. Thank you for listening and welcome to today's episode. Hello everyone. Dr. Stillman here. I am delighted to welcome Dr. Stephen Hussey to the podcast. Stephen, thank you for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

And you've got an incredible story of hope and healing for your heart, which I'm excited to talk to you about today.

For sure. Yeah, it's quite the story.

It is quite the story. I've, I've, I've read enough about it to know it was definitely a podcast we had to do. But I really haven't heard it in the detail I would like. So that's why I decided to invite you on the podcast. I like to start by asking everyone who they are and where they're from.

Yeah. So yeah, I'm a chiropractor. And I also have a degree in functional medicine. So I guess formally, my training That's what I am. So day to day, I, you know, work in a chiropractic clinic doing very neuromusculoskeletal type medicine. And then I'm from Western North Carolina, kind of near Asheville, but now I live in Roanoke, Virginia, and I've been here since 2017. Kind of been all over the place between North Carolina and Virginia. But yeah, that's kind of who I am. But I also have this very deep interest in heart disease, and I've had that for a long time because of my history of type 1 diabetes. And then as we get into my story, obviously I got deeper and deeper into heart disease because of my own personal journey. So that's kind of who I am and what I'm doing.

I'm curious to know when you decided to go into medicine and why you decided to become a chiropractor.

Yeah, well, I'd always So like I was diagnosed with type 1 at age 9, and before that I had a lot of inflammatory conditions. I had irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, allergies. I used to break out in hives all over my body. And the doctor—

what do you think the root cause of that was in childhood?

Um, I mean, I think vaccines probably played a role. Um, looking—

touching the third rail.

Yeah. But I also think— I also know we ate, you know, pretty processed food diet, uh, pretty toxin-heavy diet. And just in general. I was also a pretty anxious kid, you know, of my mother's 3 kids. She always said that I either felt things the most but was also very, like, anxious. And I guess I like to be home. I like to be around my parents. I didn't want to, like, venture out, you know, that kind of thing. I like to feel safe, that kind of stuff. So maybe some of those things. So it was a combination of stuff, I think. But ultimately, I think you know, the vaccine schedule probably was an issue, although back in 1986 it wasn't near what it is now.

Um, but, but yeah, '86 is when you were born?

Yes.

I'm an '88 baby.

Yeah.

So we were right on the cusp of mercury being removed and aluminum being replacing it.

Yeah. So those kind of challenges as a kid definitely, you know, made me pay attention to health as I grew up. Um, and I think that in college is when I really figured out that it was interesting that I got rid of all those inflammatory conditions aside from type 1 diabetes, kind of collateral damage from the inflammation, but I got rid of the rest of them just by changing my lifestyle. And that no doctor had ever told me that because I had a very good relationship with my pediatric endocrinologist. He was a great guy. He was very good at helping me understand things, just a good person. But I saw the flaws in the medical way of thinking that he had. And so how did you—

how did you stumble across that information?

You mean, well, just basically the fact that, you know, it was never offered to me that, hey, a lower carbohydrate diet could really help you manage your diabetes, you know, better.

Right.

Well, it was basically like, you know, here's this booklet of every fast food item known to man and the amount of carbohydrates that are in it, because that's all you need to care about is the carbohydrates, because that's how much insulin you have to give yourself. Right. There was no talk about changing lifestyle, which you know, get a kid to change their lifestyle is one thing, but it's just like, man, if I had been told that earlier instead of having to stumble across it myself, then it just made me think, well, do they know everything? You know, or did like, why didn't I ever hear that from them? And so that, you know, cause I thought like I wanted to be a medical doctor because that's my pediatric endocrinologist had a good relationship with me and it was great. And I wanted to like help kids. I thought I was going to be a pediatric endocrinologist. And then I kind of thought, well, maybe I don't want to do that. And then there was some influence from a girlfriend at the time. She was going to naturopathic school. And so we kind of, you know, discovered our passion for health together at that time. So I was like, well, you know, I've always been to college. This was college. This was senior year in college. I was kind of deciding what to do with my life. And so—

and is that— hang on one second. Is that when you got into diet, lifestyle, nutrition to fix these various problems?

That was probably like sophomore, junior years when I started doing that. Because I majored in health and wellness promotion in college. And so I was learning all this health and wellness type stuff, and that's when I started changing things and being like, man, my blood sugars are easy to control, these inflammatory conditions are pretty much gone. Why did no doctor ever tell me this?

Where did you go to college?

University of North Carolina Asheville.

Got it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So yeah, that's kind of what pushed me in that direction. But then I thought, well, maybe I don't want to be a medical doctor if they don't learn the things that I just learned, uh, even in just a, you know, undergraduate degree. Uh, and I thought, well, my parents had always taken me to chiropractors, you know, I'll, I'll go to chiropractic school. That seems like a good move. Um, and that's what I did, having no idea about the philosophy of chiropractic or anything about anything. I was like, let's just do that. Hmm.

Did you ever go back and see your pediatric endocrinologist and tell him this departure from the original course?

Um, Not necessarily. I didn't necessarily tell him that, but I did have contact with him because my brother was actually diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 22. And so when he calls me telling me his symptoms, I'm like, dude, I know what you have. Um, and he was actually in Charlotte at the time, which is where I used to go see, uh, the pediatric endocrinologist. So I went down to be with my brother while he was being hospitalized for diagnosis of type 1. And while I was there, I went back to the pediatric endocrinologist, just into his office, and I was like, hey, uh, my brother's diagnosed with this too. And at that time I didn't know, you know, as much as I know now, but I knew that lifestyle had an impact and I didn't really confront him about it. And then, you know, I've maybe had contact with him a few other times, but never really in-depth discussion about anything though.

Sure. It can be a little, you can wind up at loggerheads.

Yeah. As far as I know, he's retired now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. So you went to college, went to chiropractic. Where'd you do your chiropractic training?

University of Western States in Portland, Oregon.

Oh, you went all the way out to the West Coast.

Yep. I like to see new things.

So absolutely. Yeah. And then what happened?

So then, you know, I thought it was funny that I thought I was going to learn what it takes to be healthy in, in medical training. Um, even chiropractic, which is different, you know, you, we've learned a lot more holistic type things or natural type things in, in chiropractic school. And so it was interesting in Oregon, they have 4, um, they have representing 4 different medical disciplines, like, so they have the medical school, Oregon Health Sciences University. They have the chiropractic school, University of Western States. They have the National Institute of National Medicine, the naturopathic school. And then they have the College of Oriental Medicine, all right there. And so we had this kind of, we had these meetups of all the medical students or the ones that chose to come. We'd all meet up and just talk and stuff. And it was very interesting that all of our educations were exactly the same the first 2 years, all the basic science, all the physiology, all the, all that stuff, the anatomy.

Sure.

And then after that, it got very different, you know, in the medical school, they learned lots of pharmacology And we're being encouraged to go toward different specialties and stuff. In chiropractic school, we're learning, you know, way more about, um, uh, x-ray and, and, um, kind of neuromusculoskeletal type diagnosis and then adjusting, uh, that type of stuff. And then the naturopathic school, they're learning a lot about herbal medicines and all these different things, you know? So it was, it was very interesting to see that we all got the same basic training and then just branched off into different stuff. Um, so that was an interesting experience to be able to talk to the, the medical students and, and everything. But yeah, so that was, that was kind of my experience from chiropractic school, but I thought I was going to learn what creates health. And I felt like at the end of the schooling, I was disappointed. I was like, well, I don't know that I learned. I learned a lot of like our current understanding of what physiology is. But I don't think that I, I know there's got to be more. So that's why I went to get my master's in human nutrition and functional medicine. I thought that'll give me the answers, you know, uh, that'll tell me what's going on. And so then after that, I kind of felt like, well, I still don't know if I know the answers. And so I've always just been very curious and almost unsatisfied with the answers I was given, which has led me to investigate further and further and further. And that's kind of how I've been, I think, um, for, for most of my adult life.

I like to tell patients that subspecialization is for doctors who are not ambitious enough to try to know everything, and that's not my problem. Yeah, so I have a— I feel the same way. What do you think they left out of chiropractic training that, you know, in, in a few sentences really makes the difference to being healthy?

Well, I mean, for one particular example, I was very disappointed in nutrition courses we got. Um, they didn't really teach you about food. They taught us about supplements. Like, nutrition to them meant supplements. And I got this idea that, that nutrition in, in among chiropractors meant supplementation, um, which I thought was interesting. I mean, I had to have so many nutrition credits or nutrition counseling credits before I graduated, and that was basically telling someone to take a supplement, you know, a patient and a student in student patient center, take a supplement, which I was disappointed on. But there was very there was maybe no talk about, you know, biophysics, which I feel like Western medicine doesn't understand chiropractic because they don't understand biophysics. And you can't understand chiropractic without biophysics. But in my school, we didn't get much philosophy or biophysics about chiropractic because it was on the very far spectrum. They say that, you know, we're the most evidence-based, we just go by the literature. So it was very neuromusculoskeletal-based. And then there's other schools in chiropractic that are on the other spectrum where they're very philosophy-based. But I still don't know that they get much biophysics, like what biophysics changes are happening when you adjust somebody and how that actually has the effect, which I've given lectures on that at chiropractic conferences now. So yeah, that was— it was just, it was just a kind of an understanding for me of just being unsatisfied. Like, I didn't have the answers. I didn't know how to live my life. I was like, the answer can't just be getting adjusted. That seems short-sighted.

You know, plus if, you know, we've undoubtedly had the same experience of if it's as simple as this, then if I do this for everyone, they should all get better, and then they don't, right?

Yeah.

And then you think, what does this patient have to teach me?

Yeah, exactly. And I'm my first patient all the time. So, and based on my health journey, I have taught myself a lot of things, unfortunately.

You know what's funny about that? Do you know who Osler was? William Osler?

Yes.

So Osler said, the patient who treats himself has a fool for a patient. Hippocrates said, if you're not your own doctor, you're a fool. And I love the fact that these two greats were at loggerheads about, about that. And I can't believe I just used loggerheads twice in the same podcast, but very funny to me, the tension of being your own, your own doctor, your own N-of-1 experiment. I'm the same way. I have to try everything before I recommend it to patients. Uh, and a lot of that is because a lot of what we're doing is out there on the cutting edge. And we look at— I mean, I don't know about you, but I look at a lot of the therapies and people are asking me for more data and I say, well, I don't have it, but I have incredible testimonials. I have incredible experts going to bat for this therapy, or I have something like say DMSO or OSR, ameramide, a story where the way the regulatory system is set up, it's being pushed out of the world of therapeutics because it's so effective. And no, I don't have level— I don't even know how my colleagues grade evidence, like level A1, whatever. Because I don't really care to. But, uh, yeah, totally understand.

Yeah.

So, okay, you did your, your chiropractic training, and then what?

Uh, so then my first job was actually in Europe, in Ireland, uh, my first chiropractic job. So I went out there for a while.

Are you Irish?

Uh, way back, yes. Maybe 3, 4 generations, yes. Um, okay. You know, Grandpa, great-great-great-grandpa Hussey, I think, came from Ireland. Um, But yeah, and so I just kind of was, you know, was always very health conscious, obviously. And so, but I mainly did things, controlled diet through diet and exercise. That was what I thought would do it, you know. And for the most part, you know, changing my diet really helped with managing type 1 and allowed me to keep blood sugar levels under control. And exercise has kept me like, you know, looking fit and healthy, so to speak. But I kind of just kept it there, um, and, you know, maybe use some supplements here and there, but was never really that big on continuously. I kind of see them the same way I see pharmaceuticals, like they can have their place and they should have a desired effect for a certain amount of time, but if you need them forever, that suggests there's something wrong, um, and we shouldn't need a ton forever, you know.

So anyways, are you Are you familiar with Hippocrates? Uh, Hippocrates's quote about, uh, the greatest medicine of all, which is nature? No, Hippocrates said the greatest medicine of all is teaching people how not to need it.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

That should be chiseled in stone.

Yeah, lots of things he said should be chiseled somewhere. Um, yeah, but, uh, so yeah, you know, I, I thought I was doing good, and for the most part I was. I mean, you look at my you looked at my general health, you look at my blood sugar control, it'd be like, yeah, medicine says I'm doing great. And then at 34 years old, you know, no signs or symptoms whatsoever of heart disease. I, you know, I found myself having a widowmaker heart attack one Tuesday morning.

Tell us, tell us more about what that means.

Yeah. So, well, first I'll tell people that 6 months prior to this, I had a CAC score done, which is a measure of how much calcified plaque there is in the arteries of your heart, and mine was zero, which is a perfect score.

Why did you have a coronary artery calcium scan done before this?

Because— so I've always had to, you know, go to some sort of endocrinologist or nurse practitioner in order to get insulin prescriptions, and so I had to go to one, and she was very concerned about my high animal foods diet. What she considered a high animal foods diet. And she was insistent that I get this CAC score done to see what it is. And I was like, "Okay, sure." So I went and it was perfect score, zero. And then 6 months later, here I am having a widowmaker heart attack. So what does that mean? So the widowmaker is the left anterior descending artery of the coronary arteries. And it's the most common place for a heart attack to happen. It's close to, I think, in the 90s, 80% of where heart attacks happen are in the LAD. And so, so that, you know, restricts blood to a certain area of the heart. And so there are theories about heart attacks, and I could go on and on about theorizing about heart attacks and what actually caused them, and if it's actually blockages and different things.

I'm sure you talk about that in your book.

Yeah.

Which people can read.

Yeah. The title is Understanding the Heart.

Understanding the Heart. Okay. And so you like Tom Cowan's book on the heart as well?

Yeah. I mean, this is a shameless plug. People have told me that mine's a little more in-depth, a little more comprehensive than his, although I think that his work and the stuff he's done is pretty amazing. And he's led me in a lot of different directions as far as ways to investigate things and how to— what to investigate and people's work to investigate. So, but yeah, and I could make my book probably 25% longer now. I have so much more information and that's just the way that it goes. I've heard Tom Cowan say that you write a book and then you learn so much more about the topic as soon as you write it because people start sending you stuff and it's just, you just keep going and keep going. So, so yeah. So people often say, well, they ask me all the time, like, well, what do you think caused it? And I, I really don't know that anyone, including myself, will ever be able to tell me exactly what causes, caused this heart attack. Because I don't think that we really know exactly. All we see is the representation of the symptoms once it starts happening. And, but I do think that it was a combination of things that probably contributed. One being that COVID was happening and there's a lot of things happening during COVID that I didn't agree with. And I was stressed about that. It was like the first time ever in my life, I felt like I got caught up in politics and stuff because it had to do with health. And I was like concerned about that. So, and I was, You know, it was frustrating. So there was that. And then I was pretty dehydrated at the time. I convinced myself that you only need to drink water when you were thirsty. So I was probably having a cup of bone broth a day and that was it. And so if you—

Oh my gosh. How did you get by on that?

I don't know. Well, obviously I didn't.

So don't you— Okay, so hang on. Let's dive into this.

Yeah.

The human body is so amazing. It's amazingly resilient. It's incredible in terms of what it can sense and pick up on. And yet I have this, I have this ongoing experience with people whose osmostat— for people who don't know, we call the center in the brain that regulates your body's salt, electrolyte, water balance the osmostat. It's part of the hypothalamus, if I recall correctly, but My neuroanatomy is a bit, a bit rusty. Anyway, there's this— these complex mechanisms that control thirst, and I have been dumbfounded at the number of patients where their osmostat seems to be broken, and so many of their health problems are linked to a chronic lack of water. Which is why one of our questions we ask all of our patients is, how much do you drink in a day? Followed shortly thereafter by, do you drink 16 ounces or more of any of the following: tea, coffee, soda, juice, energy drinks? And if anyone's under 1 ounce per inch of height for total, total liquid intake, it's a giant red flag. And we trend that until we get them into 1 ounce per inch of height, up to 3 ounces per inch of height. And obviously we have to, we have to be a little careful there. That's a big delta. But I, you know, I sometimes joke that on the short list of questions I'd like to ask my creator is, you know, why on earth this seems like a design flaw. How did, how did this happen? You know what I mean?

Yeah. And I think that a lot of dehydration is, is like at a cellular level is very driven by poor metabolic health. Because if your mitochondria aren't producing metabolic water, then that's a big issue. And then I think, you know, like vascularly, um, and even lymphatically— well, not as much lymphatically, but definitely vascularly— I think that the amount of water we consume is very relevant there. And the amount of caffeine and diuretics we consume is very relevant there. So you can dehydrate your vascular system by not drinking enough water or by doing things that make you push out more water. Um, so yeah.

So where, where do you come down when you're interviewing a patient on hydration?

Um, what do you mean? Like, what do I tell them?

How do you, how do you get to, how do you suss out this person's dehydrated, this person's overhydrated? Cause we do see both.

Yeah. So I mean, most of the time it's dehydration. It's, it's much rarer to see too much hydration. Um, and lots of times for me as a chiropractor, I can feel it. I can feel how dehydrated they are just by their, either their muscle tone or their skin. Um, so that's just a skill that I've, you know, acquired over 12 years of having my hands physically examining people. So that's one thing. But you can just— I mean, you can just see like the health of their skin and how dehydrated they are. So yeah, and so then lots of times I'll say, "Okay, I want you to drink, you know, at least 64 ounces a day and it needs to have minerals with that water." Like not just, you know, not just the water. Go on. But get rid of toxins and keep the minerals in there and then they're just like, "Oh man, I feel 50% better just from that." I'm like, "Okay." Now we're actually going to get somewhere if we start treating you, you know.

So, so tell me, tell me about the minerals you recommend in your water.

I mean, there's different types that people can use, but I want a full array of minerals. I don't want just, you know, a select few. I mean, obviously we, we need larger amounts of potassium, sodium, chloride, things like that. But I use Redmond Relight. That's the one I, I put in my water. But there's, there's Quinton, there's Beam Minerals, there's lots of different ones. And the B minerals have like the fulvic and humics in there. So, but yeah, those are the ones I use.

What are your thoughts on spring water?

I mean, it depends on where the spring water comes from because you got to worry about deuterium levels.

But do you think you have to worry about like how— have you done a lot of deuterium level testing?

Not testing necessarily, but I think that deuterium, the only reason it's a thing is because we're eating so many foods and water not from our local environment. That's the reason it's a thing. So like, we're eating fruit year-round if we live in Maine and we're eating blueberries that were shipped from wherever, or whatever fruit there was, then we're getting a lot of deuterium without necessary sun exposure that we need to help us deplete it. So otherwise, I don't think it would be an issue, wouldn't be something we have to talk about, um, but that's the reason. So like, and then water from, you know, higher up in the mountains or glacial melt is less has less deuterium. And so that would make sense because when you're in higher elevations, you're probably in colder environments, you're getting less sunlight, that kind of stuff, depending on where you are. Whereas coastally, you get water from a spring in the coast, it has more deuterium, but you're also in warmer weather, more sun. So it just makes sense that we should pay attention to our natural environment, like our local natural environment. Sure.

Yes, agreed.

Yeah.

Uh, we focus on silica in the water. I've really enjoyed Chris Exley's work on that and David Krause's work on that. I got David Krause's work on my desk right now. And we focus on then calcium, magnesium, and the other minerals, but we generally go with spring water because of the importance of those minerals. The trade-off there is sometimes the spring water is in plastic, which is not my favorite, but you know, it's hard to get perfect water. You have to have a deep well with a good source. And so it's, uh, and honestly, one thing that I tell patients is we haven't seen it be a barrier to people getting better. I haven't spoken to a patient about deuterium, and I don't even know how long, and I don't think it's impacted our results. And we've just told people, get spring water from your local environment. At the very least, if not spring water, get reverse osmosis filtered water that you add minerals to. But I looked back at the at the literature on water and was very impressed by how the magnesium content of the water seems to correlate with total mortality. I was even more impressed by the fact there's something like 10 or 12 studies on this, and then the trail goes cold. It is pathetic how little investigation has been done of the quality of water and its effects on health in the grand scheme of things, right? I mean, we have all this abstract extruse esoteric knowledge about transporters that I've never even heard of, all because of the medical industrial complex wanting to monetize disease rather than treat the root cause and understand what you've spoken about already, or spoken to already, which is the difference between looking at what causes disease or how to treat and mitigate the symptoms of disease versus how to create health. And the technical term for that is salutogenesis, which I think is, you know, the most important thing for physicians to learn.

Yeah, for sure. So yeah, so there was the dehydration piece of it. Um, and the reason I know I was dehydrated is because I had just started suffering from constipation the first time in my life. And I was like, what's going on? And I just hadn't quite taken action on it yet, or, you know, changed my thoughts on what I was doing yet. And then I also think that— I don't know for sure, this is just speculation, but I think that there was some oxalate dumping going on. And this is something that I wasn't necessarily aware of when it was happening. But when I look back at— because I'm, you know, would go to endocrinologist for the insulin prescriptions. And so we do urinalysis and the 9 months prior to the heart attack, I had oxalates in my urine and I've never had that before. And, you know, urinalysis is something I've done my entire life as a type 1. And so that was interesting. And so I think that maybe, you know, because of diet changes, I had started dumping oxalates a little bit. That can be an inflammatory thing. So that might have contributed. Is it—

is it because you were eating too many plants, Dr. Hussey?

No, because if you eat the plants, you actually keep holding the oxalates in. If you eat the plants high in oxalate. And if you stop eating them, then your body can start to push them out. And that's what we see in people who stop eating as many plants. Maybe, you know, 2-3 year mark, we see this oxalate dumping, and people see it come out of different areas.

So yeah, you're saying you need to wait 2 to 3 years for some— a lower plant diet for some people.

Yeah.

Are you, are you testing oxalate levels in your practice routinely?

No.

Okay, so you'll just recommend a low oxalate diet for a period of time?

Um, yeah, I mean, generally, uh, that's— it's not good to have those things floating around in there in excessive amounts. Your body should be able to get rid of them, right? If we're eating too many of them, which, you know, the standard American processed food diet's got way too many of those. Um, so, and for some people they're really sensitive to them, but they're not necessarily a major concern for everyone, you know. I just think it like I don't think any one disease or incidents like my heart attack is caused by one specific thing. I think it's always a combination of things. And that could have been a factor, this fact that I was dumping, and that can be a hard process. And then I think the straw that broke the camel's back, well, before that, so a day and a half before I had the heart attack, I got very stressful news about a close family member of mine. And it wasn't, it wasn't just the news, it was the inability of me or my family to get to this person and help them. They were in another country. It was during COVID You couldn't travel easily. And so we were just sitting around waiting, hoping this person was going to be okay and it was going to play itself out. And so that, and then so like Sunday night I heard that news, didn't really sleep Sunday night that well. And then Monday, you know, was kind of a blur, like trying to figure out how I could get to this person and then didn't sleep well Monday night either and woke up Tuesday morning and trying to distract myself. I think the straw that broke the camel's back was I did a very intense workout in that state, in that dehydrated, very stressed state. I did this intense workout and that, um, changed the flow dynamics in the artery under the most pressure of any arteries in the entire body. A ginormous clot formed, uh, and it blocked the entire artery instantaneously. Cause when they went in to do the angio to place the stent, they found no atherosclerosis in my arteries. They just found this blockage in the LAD. Uh, so sure. Yeah.

So just for people's reference, a widowmaker is called a widowmaker because it's so frequently a fatal heart attack. The reason it's fatal is the left anterior descending artery feeds the left ventricle, which is responsible for what we call your cardiac output. And so while the other 3 chambers of the heart are essentially supporting actors to the left ventricle, You might— that might be— that's how I would put it, maybe. Anyway, if you lose that left ventricular function, you go into hemodynamic collapse, which means you die unless we get it back online through something like reperfusion with angiography. So angiography, we take a needle, we go in through the femoral or the radial artery, they snake this wire up into the heart, and they do all kinds of magic to open the vessels and pull things out and stent things. There's, you know, it's been— I can't believe it's been 7, almost 8 years since I graduated from residency. So it's been almost that long since I was in the cath lab, but it's, uh, very exciting stuff. What was your— what went through your head and how did, how did this come on? What was the exact sequence of events? You did the workout and then when did you realize you needed medical attention?

I did the workout and it was probably 20 to 30 minutes after the workout. I did the workout and then I cooled down for a few minutes and then I got in the shower and then I got out of the shower and I was making, you know, my first meal of the day. And as I was having that meal, it just started, I started having, at first it felt like, oh, my pec's tightening up from that workout. You know, I was like, oh, that's weird. And then it got more intense and it was just pinpoint pain right in the center of my left, the left side of my chest. Uh, there was no pain into my arm. There was no pain into my head. There never was the entire time. Um, it was just very concentrated in this one pinpoint spot. And so I was like, man, it's weird. Then I started to get really hot and flushed. I was like, okay, this is a systemic response. Um, and so I went outside, it was January, so it was colder. So I went outside cause I was getting really hot. And, uh, it just wasn't going away. So I was like, okay, this is not, this is not good. This is something else. So I, I called the ambulance, um, at that point. So probably within 5 to 10 minutes I called the ambulance cuz it was pretty unmistakable. You know, I've heard people walking around thinking like, oh, I feel kind of weird. And later they end up in the ER and they're like, oh yeah, you've got troponin and you had a heart attack at some point.

Right.

And that was not the case for me. It was very, very clear that this was escalating quickly and there was something wrong.

So, so they did an angiogram.

Yeah. So I got to the hospital. Um, time was kind of weird, but it was probably like about an hour or hour and a half since I started getting symptoms that I was in the cath lab and they were, they were saving me. Right. Um, so, so yeah, pretty quick, which I'm fortunate, you know, uh, cause you know, I think the official statistic is that 12% of people who have these type of heart attacks outside of a hospital setting survive. So I'm part of that 12, um, thankfully. But I was awake and conscious the entire time. Um, I was asking them questions. They were probably like, who is this guy? What's he asking these questions for? You know, like, um, interesting. But anyways, yeah, so yeah, after that, obviously very demoralized, um, full of self-doubt, uh, thinking you know, I'm a hypocrite, you know, talking about health and everything, and here I am having a heart attack. And but, you know, the, the care that I experienced in the 3 days that I was in the hospital completely reinvigorated me. Unfortunately, I'll say, because, you know, the recommendations I was getting were, in my opinion, not evidence-based. And illogical in some cases. And so I was very quickly like, man, you know, people who are in this, unfortunately in the same situation I'm in, are going to get this information and this is not going to help them. Like to me, some of the things they were telling me were things that were going to make me end up right back in there with another heart attack. So yeah, I kind of took it upon myself that we got to, I got to share information. I gotta share the story. I gotta share information that I know is contrary. And then, yeah, things have kind of gone from there.

What were the highlights of the bad recommendations you received?

Well, I mean, for the first, like, I guess, I mean, they wanted me on 5 medications the rest of my life. And I get it. You know, their, their protocol is this cookie cutter thing. Like someone's had a heart attack. Here you go, this is what you get.

I remember putting people on this exact protocol.

Yeah. And so, but I was prescribed probably, I think, 8 or 9 different medications while I was in the hospital. You know, the first night I was, and there's nobody, no visitors allowed. So, 'cause it was COVID. So I had no like emotional support besides a few nurses that were super nice to me. But yeah, so I was like kind of stressed out and I,, you know, called, I think it was a resident in, and she was just like, well, do you want a Xanax? And I was like, well, I don't know that that's gonna help. Um, but yeah, so I would just be sitting there watching ESPN or something on the TV and it would say, you've got a new medication. And someone would walk into the room 5 minutes later and be like, hey, I'm here to give you a new medication. And I was like, well, what med is this and why am I taking it? There was no informed consent whatsoever, which is—

did you have a stent?

Yes. Placed? Which, you know, I'm not going to sit here and say it needed to or not needed to be placed. That's up to the, the person who's doing the procedure and making the call. But technically, the literature shows that, you know, if, if it hasn't been that long and there's no damage to the integrity of the artery, that you could just bust it with enzymes and, and do an angioplasty, uh, or balloon angioplasty, and and leave it. But that's not my call. I'm grateful for what they did. They saved my life. You know, I'm not going to go, you know, saying I'm mad about a stent being in there, but I don't know. I also know that when I got the hospital bill, the stent, just the stent itself made the hospital $25,000. So that's a pretty expensive little tiny piece of metal.

You probably did— don't know this. I don't know how closely you follow my social media, but our son just got out of the hospital. 6-week NICU stay. For hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, which is lack of oxygen at birth. And I haven't even told my wife what the hospital bill is because it's so astronomical, but it is just— I mean, disgusting. Yeah, some of the prices they're charging, it's pretty crazy. And it's important for people to know that you can bargain those down. You know, I don't intend to pay more than 10% of the hospital bill. Yeah, and that would be very fair. As far as actually paying for the services and appropriately compensating the employees. Because a lot of it is, you know, I'm sure from going over your own hospital bill, is just absurd. Yeah, I mean, like, they tried to charge us $54 to check a point-of-care glucose. I think you can buy the machine that does it for $100. It'll work forever, you just change the batteries. And the lancets are, you know, less than a cent apiece.

Yeah.

And they're trying— and the nurses' fees are covered under the— anyway, we don't need to make this about hospital bills.

But it was— there is a huge— got to think that, like, that little bit of— I mean, I don't know how— what kind of cut the cardiologist gets from that, but if there's any, that just shouldn't be the way it is. Because when he's trying to make that decision, what's best? But I'll make some money. Yeah, I'll just put it in there.

There are huge perverse incentives in this industry, you know, and it makes people uncomfortable to talk about them, but we need to talk about them. Yeah, because, you know, I see it as corrupting all of conventional medicine away from the reality of the evidence base. And the other thing that bothers me about the way these studies are done is they'll say things like, well, this is how we do it, and it would be dangerous for us to even try not doing it this way. So we can't study it, which just— sorry, which just preserves their perverse incentive indefinitely. And there's countless examples of that in medicine, which is why when they say ridiculous things like the science is settled, it just is absurd. Yeah, if the science were settled, they would have done all of these additional studies and they would have allowed people to join the control group even if that incurred a risk. But that's where conventional medicine is so paternalistic. They treat patients like they're children. They don't actually honor their autonomy and sovereignty as human beings. But that's another story for another day. Let's get back to— so you, you had this heart attack, you were in the hospital, you got all these recommendations that you questioned. I'm sure you went on to question them based on the literature, to become very familiar with them. And that's, yeah, your, your story you're sticking to.

Well, and like, they they came in and counseled me on diet and it was basically a processed food diet. That's what they were saying was okay. You know, there was, you know, lots of foods full of vegetable oils. It was lean meats, you know, were only allowed. It was, I mean, literally there was like some healthy foods on there. You know, I'm not going to, you know, discredit them for that, but like there was healthy foods on there. But then there was also like animal crackers were okay for me to eat. That was acceptable. That was healthy. Fig Newtons were on there. That was good for me. Yeah, low salt, low fat. Yeah, vegetable oils were better than natural animal fats. Like that type of stuff is what I was getting. And so I was just like, you know, I just kind of politely, because it was some kind of cardiac nurse that was telling me this. And I was just like, well, you know, this is the diet that contributes to heart disease. I don't think heart disease is caused solely or even primarily by diet. But, but yeah, I was like, this is the diet that can create inflammation that causes or contributes to heart disease. And she was like, well, this is just what I'm supposed to tell you. And I was like, okay, you know, but I guess the worst part about the entire experience in the hospital is that I would ask questions, you know, and it wasn't— I wasn't angry about them, or it wasn't being, you know, abrasive with these questions. I was just curious. At this point, I was like, hey, I got it wrong. What do you guys got for me? You know, and, and there was just a broken record like, oh, cholesterol causes heart disease. No matter if it was, you know, an attending, a resident, uh, you know, a med student, no matter who it was, it was, it was cholesterol causes heart disease. And I was like, well, okay. So I'd ask other questions and they just, most of the time wouldn't want to have the conversation. They would give me some, you know, you know, kind of brush off answer and try and get out of the room. And the last attending that came in, who, that was the first time I met him, it was the morning I was discharged. Um, he, he was the first time I've, you know, encountered this guy and he was just like, well, I'm not gonna talk to you about the medications because I see in your chart that you're not gonna take them. And, um, and so I was, and like, so I'm just not even have that conversation. I was just like, well, you know, that's kind of a shutdown of conversation. Like if you have thoughts on it, you can tell me and I can give you my opinion. But it was just like, no. And I was branded as non-compliant in the notes. Obviously they, someone had made a note there. So everybody who comes to see me, is going to see that and be like, oh, this guy's a difficult one, you know? And it's just like, man, this is just— it was disappointing. So by the third day, I was like, I was itching to get out of there so I could start my own thing when I left. Um, and so just so people know, uh, 3 months afterwards, I got my follow-up echocardiogram, and I— my heart function had turned— returned to normal, and the tissue in the septum of my heart, that the— which is the tissue between the two ventricles— that was damaged, uh, had gone from severely hypokinetic, meaning not conducting the signal of heart contraction through it, to, um, mildly akinetic. Uh, and so it had— it recovered, you know, uh, to some extent. And I haven't gotten an echocardiogram since. So they— when I got that done, the cardiologist was like, well, you must have decided to take your medications. I was like, well, Actually, I'm only taking a blood thinner right now because of the stent. Um, and so I did that for 6 months, but I did not take both the blood pressure medications they wanted me on. I did not take the statin. I did not take the baby aspirin. Um, and those types of things. And I, and, you know, just based on, those are my personal decisions. Um, I decided not to do that because I didn't feel there was any evidence. So they were you know, driving home to me that you're going to develop heart failure. That's why we have you on these blood pressure medications to take pressure off your heart. So it was an ACE inhibitor and a beta blocker, I think. And yeah, it was beta blocker. And then, and so I was like, well, I know the literature about infrared sauna and infrared light. And, you know, how effective it is for a, helping the heart tissue heal after it's been damaged. Creating new blood vessels and for helping with heart failure. So I immediately started using a sauna. A friend of mine had one in his basement, so I would go there until I got my own. And yeah, and then 3 months, my heart had recovered. Now the story gets even more interesting. So about— it was about that 3-month mark, I started being more active again, started trying to exercise like I, like I had been before. And I noticed that if I would walk or definitely if I tried to run, but even if I would just walk fast, I was getting pain in my lower right leg. And I was like, what is going on? I was like, is this like a DBT? It's a compartment syndrome or what is going on? I couldn't figure it out. And eventually, probably this is like 6 months post-heart attack now. I eventually got into a, you know, an ultrasound of my, the arteries in my leg. And they found that there was a 75 to 99% blockage of plaque in my femoral artery. And so I was thinking, well, and on the same side they did the heart cath, the same femoral artery, the same groin. And I was like, hmm. So I started looking into that, looked into the literature, and I found some evidence that yes, the AngioSeal device they use to seal the artery after a heart cath can interfere with blood flow dynamics down the leg., and there are complications. Sometimes they're very acute, like someone develops an acute clot while they're in the hospital, and other times they just have— they're more likely to have complications down the road. And so that, that's what, like, that finding right there is what led me to understand that, well, at least part of what causes plaque to form is changes in blood flow dynamics. Because when it changed the flow dynamics in my groin, when the femoral artery went through there, down lower in the artery where it was pooling up a little bit or just disrupting the blood flow, I developed plaque. And so now that's one thing. So I went to a vascular surgeon and they were like, well, we're not going to do anything because when we start messing with these things, they just get worse. And so I said, okay. So I kept doing my healing routine. I kept doing my sauna, grounding, and setting my circadian rhythm. Those are the only things I changed. After the heart attack. Those 3 things.

Really? That's it? I was going to ask you what changed after the heart attack. You just started grounding, sauna, circadian rhythm optimization.

My diet stayed the same, which means my LDL levels stayed the same, um, and my stress stayed the same and may have even gotten a little worse. Um, and yeah, I was still avoiding toxins and things like that.

Uh, so you didn't take supplements?

I took, uh, taurine. Which has been shown to increase the health of— increase nitric oxide production from endothelial cells, which is a nutrient we find in animal foods. So I was getting plenty of that anyways, and I took serrapeptase, an enzyme, one enzyme that's known to break down fibrotic clotting tissue, which is what atherosclerosis is. The large majority of it is fibrotic clotting tissue. And knowing that there's better research on nattokinase, I probably would've done that instead, like in hindsight. But yeah. And so anyways, a year after that, you didn't—

hang on.

Yeah.

You didn't take magnesium, you didn't take potassium, you didn't take—

I took some magnesium for a while, but not very long. I only took the serrapeptase for a year. And I took the other— oh yeah, that was the other thing I took was wobeen or staphanthus. Because they were, you know, telling me you're going to develop heart failure. So I was like, all right, well, I'm going to increase parasympathetic non-stress signaling to the heart. So I did that, but never— I didn't do these long-term. I did all this for about a year after the heart attack. I did all the supplements for about a year, but I continued with the infrared light, grounding, and setting circadian rhythm past that time and still do that today. So yeah, a year after that first test of 75 to 99% blockage in that artery, um, I went back and got a follow-up Doppler ultrasound and it was only 50% blocked. And at that time, well, at first the, the, uh, technician left the room and then she came back. She was like, hey, we saw something that is weird. We're just going to do the test again. So they did it again, did the whole thing again, and it was still 50%. And so the vascular surgeon at that time said, well, we can't say it's better because we don't see these things get better. And I was like, well, like literally right there in front of you, you see it get better. Like, where's your curiosity?

You know, like, um, where is your curiosity? Well put.

Yeah. So anyways, then, so I kept doing my thing. I stopped taking the supplements at this time. And a year later it was completely normal. The artery had completely reversed. It was, there was no evidence of any plaque or anything in there. Um, and so then, um, a year following that, we did another follow-up test and it's still normal. So I don't, I don't go back.

Normal or better?

Um, it was still normal. Like, they were— the last two tests I've had were normal, uh, completely.

As in no plaque, no vascular damage?

Yeah.

Which would imply, if you can heal the femoral artery, why can't you heal others?

Would imply, yes.

And, and would you say that just the grounding or earthing, sauna, and circadian rhythm interventions are what are responsible for this? Do they get the credit in your mind?

Um, yeah, and I have theories as far as like mechanisms from why that happened. Um, I, I do think that the body has an incredibly, uh, efficient ability to heal. Um, it's just that we're putting it in environments where that's interfering with it. And the main things that are interfering with the body's ability to heal are an epidemic of insulin resistance in this country, because insulin is required especially for artery growth and repair, and also chronic deficiency in melatonin. And there's a ton of literature showing the anti-atherosclerotic properties of melatonin. That's just where the researchers put it in one article that I have. So if we're setting our circadian rhythm, optimizing melatonin production, then when we sleep, we're getting this artery repair. If we don't do that and we're insulin resistant, that plaque forms in response to damage or inflammation or stagnant blood flow or viscous blood or whatever it forms. And it doesn't— the body can't get rid of it and it just builds up over time. But the other thing to learn about from my story is, you know, peripheral artery disease. Which is what the plaque in the femoral artery was, you know, in type 1 diabetics, they often fare worse than type 2 diabetics when it comes to peripheral artery disease. They need, you know, intervention more frequently and they have amputations more frequently from those things. And I completely reversed it as a type 1 diabetic. So it's like, hmm, again, where's the doctor's curiosity when you see something like that? You know, So just a lot of interesting things. And so what I've done since then is I've just been researching and researching and trying to, you know, I've learned a lot about quantum health and everything and trying to, trying to investigate why this happened. How did I do this? Because I don't know exactly why, but I have my theories as to why it happened. And then can I help others? You know, can I share the information to help others? So yeah, got it.

Very interesting. What do you do now to monitor yourself for heart and vascular health, and what do you recommend to patients? Because at my practice, what we focus on, right, is never having this happen to them. So we tend to look at things like respiratory rate on fitness trackers, HRV on fitness trackers as a measure of parasympathetic sympathetic tone. I like to run a very comprehensive lab panel every year. The lab that I'm most concerned with is the cardiac CRP, but I, I cross-reference it with all the other values—fasting insulin, hemoglobin A1c, fasting glucose levels. Lipid panels less so. I also run serum mineral levels. We do hair tissue testing as well, which I really am a big fan of. I do all this in an effort to try and help patients understand what their risk is. Frequently we find that the cardiac CRP is elevated, and that's one of their signals to clean up their act and really get serious before, you know, their illness gets serious, which I find very gratifying. Having the opportunity to really intervene before there's something like a heart attack or stroke or cancer or some other chronic inflammatory condition, let alone something like neurodegeneration, which is much more long-term. What do you do to monitor yourself and what do you recommend to patients to monitor themselves?

Um, I don't do much to monitor myself. Um, you know, I've, I've gotten a lot of baseline numbers for things like heart rate variability. I know what my baseline is. And so yeah, every now and then I'll, I'll measure it for a week, uh, and just make sure I'm at baseline, you know, or if I feel off or something.

How do you measure it?

Uh, the Oura Ring. Okay. Yeah. Um, but you know, I, testing is interesting to me. Um, it, to me, it only has value for two reasons in two cases. One is that it's gonna dictate your care. Like what the test is, it's gonna clearly show this versus that, do this versus that. And second, it motivates the patient. So those are the two main reasons that I would do testing on somebody. Otherwise, you know, yes, all those things you mentioned, some way more than others, like a fasting insulin, way more than anything on a lipid panel is gonna measure risk, you know, for somebody, or, you know, your respiratory rate and things like that, or your HRV, or something that measures your ability to adapt to a stress, that's way more important than just a snapshot in time number on a blood work panel, right? Because that measures your ability to adapt, and that's what health is, is your ability to adapt to a stress healthily and return to normal. So, you know, it depends on the test as far as I see how valuable it is. But what I like to tell people is, is that Some tests show risk more than others, and if that motivates you to change, that's great. But what really determines risk way more than any test whatsoever is the environment you put your body in every single day and the lifestyle, or the, the lifestyle you live, behaviors, health behaviors that you choose. You know, regardless of what any test says, let's say your CA score is— CAC score is 5,000. That suggests you have terrible risk, right? According to the literature. But what you do from that point on and the lifestyle you live from then is what really determines your risk, or your risk. So that's, that's the way I kind of see it. So yeah.

So I found this to be invariably true. And that's why at The Practice, we have a number of different forms that we'll send to people that are basically the the 100 or so critical questions about their diet, their lifestyle, their environment, and also how they relate to themselves and other people. And whenever someone's not doing well, they're not getting the results that they're looking for, I will circle the wagons with my staff. And almost always my response is send them the forms, see where they're— see where they are, and find out what's wrong. What did we miss? What in the environment diet, whatever, is still off. And frequently we'll find that it's the failure to execute on a recommendation we've already made that we feel is holding them back. Often I find that that's because people look at what other people are doing and they say, well, they're getting away with it, why can't I? And that lack of appreciation for and respect for their biochemical individuality, much of which comes down to, you know, you may have two people who look to be the same, but because of occupational or recreational exposures to any number of different things, right? I mean, shooters are exposed to, um, you know, heavy metals from gunpowder. Um, you know, cleaning personnel or staff are exposed to all kinds of hazardous cleaning chemicals. Medical personnel are exposed to all kinds of different things that are used to sanitize patient rooms or chemicals in gloves, gowns, whatever. All of this comes together to create a different patient. And I often find this being the sticking point that really makes the difference between progress and stagnation. And it's one of the things that I find interesting, is that the labs are often not the answer, which is one reason why in the practice we give patients a members-only price for the labs to make them affordable. But we also give them a members-only cost for consultations because we know that fundamentally if we don't have time to consult with them about the labs, we're not going to be able to figure out even if there are abnormalities, well, why are there abnormalities, let alone motivate them and educate them on what they need to do in order to make the change. And then the membership fee allows us to do really cool things like this where we're creating podcasts and content to educate people and give them motivation and information. I find labs Fascinating as well. I have a similar mindset. If you, if you're not, if you're not going to change, if it's not going to change your management, what you recommend to the patient, why are you ordering, ordering the lab? I like your point about motivating people because that's just as important. Sometimes people just need to see the number. You can look at them and say, listen, you're overweight, you have high blood pressure, you're at high risk for a stroke or a heart attack. For whatever reason, when that lab that high sensitivity CRP, high fasting insulin, high glucose, when they see that number, it just changes something. It's remarkable. And it's, you know, is that a flaw in human nature? Is that just, you know, it's just how we are?

It seems to me. Yeah, it also gives them the opportunity to like improve that number. And so, and then if they see improvement in the number, it motivates them to keep going. So it's a, it's a kind of gamification.

Yes. Yeah. I also like to convey to patients how much the labs vary, even in people who have a very consistent diet and lifestyle. I do my labs in 2023 and 2024. I did 4 lab draws, and then in late 2024, early 2025, I'm doing another 4. And there's so much variability in these numbers that I see people hanging their hat on and changing their life over taking different types of or strengths of medications, and yet they don't realize there's all this variability. And that's in somebody like me who gets up at the same time, goes to bed at the same time, eats very consistently, eats very healthy food, uses targeted supplementation in order to fix deficiencies and optimize levels. I take more supplements and recommend more supplements, it sounds like, than you, but we do it in a way where You know, what I find a little bit weird about the supplement space is when you get into, well, you should all take this for the rest of your life. I find that very presumptuous. And we always talk to patients about, well, what's our goal? It tends to be that the people who have the highest expectations of themselves, they are the— they want to be super mom, super wife, and super, um, you know, employee or business owner. Just one example, right? They have the highest need for support, whether you're talking about hormones or supplements or dietary changes. And that's a matter of, well, if you're going to drop your supplementation or change your hormone regimen, are you going to take your foot off the gas and scale back your life? Because, you know, your desired level of function is that of a young person with young hormone levels. And you are no longer that age. That's what we find in my practice. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. So there's lots of different nuance to testing, I feel like, and it's, it's on an individual basis and it's also like on an individual test number, like, you know, like a fasting insulin or fasting leptin or CRP. Like if those things are elevated, it's like, that's, that's always indicative of a problem, right? Where the— and, and likely that person in those things are going to have symptoms or they're going to have health concerns that they just can't get rid of in that state. Right. Right. So, and the same thing with lots of different tests like that, you know, there's always going to be symptoms. So I always say like, like if someone, if you get a blood test back of a CBC and it shows they're anemic, it's very likely that person is going to have symptoms of anemia. So then I always say that because I wanna point out that then there are some tests like, like vitamin D or LDL that we test all the time and we say this is supposed to be an optimum number, right? And now we're treating a number on blood work and we're not treating a person because the person has no symptoms from that high LDL or that low vitamin D. Right? And so those are things that I think that we get caught in the weeds with and we're treating, we're over-treating in that situation. And you can go on and on about LDL and how that's just, you know, not the cause of heart disease and treating it's not resulting in lower rates of heart disease. It's just not working. And lots of practitioners disagree with me about the vitamin D thing, but I'm like, unless you have rickets or something, like I don't think that you have low vitamin D I think that it's likely just winter and we're not supposed to have high vitamin D because this, the, like, depending on where you live, you don't get the stimulus to make it. And melatonin, yeah, makes up for that, or it should if we didn't have disrupted circadian rhythm and artificial light. So that's probably the reason.

That's the thing I find is that, you know, we're— and that's one of the toughest things to quantify, right? Because, you know, one thing we didn't mention yet today is non-native EMF, radio, microwave radiation, electromagnetic fields. These destroy melatonin. And so one of the things I talk to about patients— because they often ask me, you know, why can't I get off my thyroid hormone? Why can't I get off this? Why can't I get off of that? And the other thing about vitamin D that I find fascinating— and this is a— we've got to wrap it up here— but I find fascinating the stories of people. Like, I talked to David Brownstein about this the other day. He said, look, Some people are out there saying, 'Melanie, all vitamin D is toxic and you should never take a supplement.' I've had a multiple sclerosis patient get up out of their wheelchair and walk because we used high-dose vitamin D. So there's this clinical equipoise of what are we using, how do we, how do we judge success. We will ask patients very clearly before we start to work with them, what does success look like, you know. If, and if they have unrealist, unrealistic expectations of our process, we will tell them because we would much prefer that they go find someone who— well, I don't know, because I don't— anyway, we want them to find someone who's in alignment with them, whether or not they're happy with their care or not. But we don't want them to, you know, engage with us under some kind of false supposition that we can achieve what's not possible. But the vitamin D piece is really fascinating. I, I just— I, I'll, I'll say to patients quite, quite frankly, you know, look, We— if you look at any, any civilization that lives in a cold, dark place where there's not enough sun to maintain a normal vitamin D level, they all eat an enormous amount of fish. Are you prepared to eat 2 pounds of fish a day, or, you know, an equivalent amount of very, very high-fat dairy, which really isn't that rich in vitamin D without fortification? And on top of that, they all live a perfect circadian lifestyle. With a seasonal diet. And I sometimes joke with, with people that we're the only animal on planet Earth that eats a non-local, non-seasonal diet and argues about what to eat.

Yeah, well, you know, and those, those populations, um, living in those climates where they're eating, you know, there's, there's very little, um, or there's less light, there's more darkness, which means more melatonin signaling. So melatonin and vitamin D kind of do the same things in the body. They're supposed to switch seasonally depending on where you live on the planet and what season it is and that kind of stuff. So those people also have that. And then yes, to your point, like with that, that you said MS, I think MS patient, um, you know, taking the vitamin D, like that's amazing. And that's the benefit of having the technology to, to have vitamin D in a pill and help this person. Now the goal should be, let's teach them how not to need that pill. What kind of lifestyle change are we going to make for them now that we've helped them and, and, you know, changed their life? Now how do we teach them how not to need it? That's That's the key. And that's what medicine, I feel like, is missing. And that's, I mean, medications have their place, like I said, let's use them to help somebody achieve something in, in like be, you know, I guess conscious about it and have, you know, very purposeful about those medications, but then teach them how not to need it. Don't say you're going to be on this rest of your life. That's not health, you know. So that's just the, that's the point there. Absolutely.

On that note, we'll wrap things up. Thanks for joining me. It's great to, uh, get to hear your story. We'll have to do this again.

Yeah, anytime.