Why Your High Cholesterol ISN'T the Problem (Board-Certified Cardiologist Explains)

Heart disease is the number one killer of midlife women. And my gosh, there's 60 million, at least women living with some form of heart disease. And heart disease takes over more lives than all cancers combined. It is a serious topic, but it's a very confusing topic because no matter who you talk to, you get different information regarding fats, cholesterol, the right blood markers, what we need to be doing to support and avoid getting heart disease. This is a very personal topic for me. My own father died at age 49 of heart disease and I've had those genetic markers in my blood my whole life that I've been very concerned about. This is the second interview I've done around cardiovascular health and what to look for. We're going to have a very different opinion today than the last interview I did. I've got Dr. Jack Wolfson on. He is a cardiologist, he's a leading cardiologist and he's got some very strong opinions and a lot of information to back it. And I wanted to have this conversation because I feel that women, we need to be our own health detectives. We, we need to look at all information and make the best choices for us. Thank you so much for being here, Natalie.

It's an absolute pleasure to be on. Excited to share this and you know, I get interviewed by a lot of people and I think the fact that it's kind of hit home with you and especially as we, you know, think about our parents and what we could have done to help them and of course we don't want to wind up like our parents in a lot of cases as well. So I'm glad to get the truth out there.

So I have a lot of questions, but I'm going to start with some really, really straightforward ones that we hear all the time because I want to kind of set the tone with where you stand on a lot of this. I want to start with the idea of our diet and heart health because you'll hear these different extremes that may be vegan and plant based is best. We'll hear about Mediterranean, we'll hear about carnivore. We hear all these different extremes. Where do you stand on diet when it comes to heart disease?

Well, my Amazon best selling book is called the the Natural Way to Heart Health and it's about Paleo nutrition and the Paleo lifestyle. Paleo means old stone Age before the agricultural as they would say, revolution. I would call it the dis. Evolution of nutrition. Our ancestors were hunter gatherers. Why are we still debating this? Does a Lion need to be told what to eat? Does a gazelle or a giraffe or a goat or an ant need to know what to eat? Why are we so confused? Our ancestors, according to every anthropology textbook, have been meat seafood eaters, hunter gatherers since the beginning of human existence. The Bible mentions eating meat 300 times. So why do we have to debate about vegan on one extreme and carnivore on the other? Nobody was ever vegan. Nobody was ever carnivore. We were always paleo hunter gatherers. So if we start from that mindset and then we can get into debates about, well, this study showed this. This study. I don't need a study to show that the sky is blue, right? And that we should be breathing air and that we need sleep. Right? These are just common things that we should all understand.

So where did we go sideways with this idea that meat, specifically animal protein meat, and then also saturated fat, were a problem for heart disease?

Well, you know that there's a lot of different stories around that. But let's just kind of take one commonplace that people discuss, which is in the 1950s, when the medical community is looking at coronary artery polymer plaque, they're looking at people with disease, and under the microscope, they see a lot of cholesterol. And then cholesterol is demonized. And then it becomes, well, how do we lower cholesterol down? What foods can lower cholesterol down? And then, of course, who can we hire to study and to prove this hypothesis? And then we can go a little conspiratorial and say, well, the man who was hired for this job was Ancel Keys. And Ancel Keys is working up in Minnesota, and he publishes data that we can look at and say, okay, there's problems with the data. Maybe the data was funded by Big Ag, Big Box Foods, because you can imagine that if you're trying to sell oatmeal, then we can push the story of why oatmeal is heart healthy. Cheerios are heart healthy, Quaker Oats, Nabisco, Kellogg's, et cetera. But as the government would kind of get in bed with this movement because, again, it's extremely lucrative to sell cheap cereals that last a long time, and of course, they're carbolicious. So it really triggers a lot of the dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin in our brains, all these feel good hormones. There were many people at the time that were against that. There were many PhDs and professors and medical doctors that didn't believe in the Low fat hypothesis. So anyways, that's where a lot of that really started. And here we are now 60, 70, 80 years later having these same debates. And ultimately that would also lead into the drug movement and the pharmaceutical movement about how to lower that cholesterol number down. And that's just not my approach, my approach to cholesterol, to fat consumption, cholesterol consumption. And then body cholesterol levels are. Let's find the perfect levels for each one of us. That is our paleocholesterol, that is our God given level, whatever it may be. That's the perfect level for us to get the job done.

Because cholesterol has benefits. Our body makes it for a reason. What is that? That are. Why do we need cholesterol? Let's start with that.

Yeah, cholesterol. You know, if you think about this, Natalie, that if I say cholesterol to you or anybody really, if I'm, if I'm lecturing somewhere, that if we say cholesterol, everybody gets scared. You say cholesterol. It just brings to mind, conjures up the images of heart attack, stroke blockages, fat floating around our blood. Where does this marketing message, where does this message come into all of us? Again, it's all, it was all marketing cholesterol. Every animal species with a spine, including fish, including chicken and including again frogs, have cholesterol. So if it's so bad, why does every animal species with a spine have it? Why does a chicken egg contain cholesterol? Why does mother's breast milk contain cholesterol? So cholesterol is very important. Now cholesterol makes up something everybody knows is important. Vitamin D. Right. So the sunshine hits cholesterol coursing through the arteries of the skin, the capillaries of the skin. The sunshine turn cholesterol into vitamin D. Vitamin D levels go up, cholesterol levels go down. Cholesterol is part of every single cell. All of our cell membranes, which is the cell fence, keeps things inside that belong outside that don't. Again, made up of cholesterol. Cholesterol is part of our digestion. Liver makes it, puts it into our bile, into our gallbladder. We squeeze it on top of food so we can help to absorb fats from our diet. Then also cholesterol is very important for something that's really interesting for people and really important for people. It makes up our hormones like testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and cortisol and aldosterone. So doesn't that sound like it's pretty important? You got women. Everybody's Trying to fix their hormones. And the men are trying to fix their hormones. And this cholesterol molecule is to be celebrated. And then let me say a high proportion of our brain, which is a pretty important organ, is made up of cholesterol. Let's celebrate it, not vilify it.

So with cholesterol, do you ever think it's not a good thing? Is there ever a case where someone's producing the wrong kind or because you can get into like there's all different types of cholesterol, like an HCl, LDL, literally lipoprotein A, there's all these like different segments within cholesterol. Is it ever in your eyes, problematic?

Yeah, that's a great point. But let me first say like let's talk about LDLs and HDLs and also LP, parentheses little A. So LDL is a molecule that is made in the liver that transports things around the body, including cholesterol. Also fat soluble, vitamins A, D, e, K, also CoQ10, also triglycerides. These are all for cell, you know, for energy production. Right. We eat food, we turn them into triglycerides and the LDLs carry it around to areas of the body where it is needed. All vertebrate species have ldl. Why? How did it get vilified as the bad cholesterol? The only reason is to sell pharmaceuticals. So we need to embrace LDL as something that we cannot live without. LDL can become damaged or what's called oxidized. That's bad. We can measure that. HDL is commonly called the good cholesterol. But HDL can be oxidized and damaged and that's bad. So there's a lot more to the conversation than the reductionist. LDL bad, HDL good. The LP is a type of LDL particle that is found elevated in about 10 to 15% of the American population. I believe that there was a benefit to that. It helped prevent people from bleeding to death in a less traumatic non warrior society. It doesn't appear to have that much of a benefit to it and only can lead to hypercoagulability and maybe and this increased risk. Now I think if you have lp, there's a lot of factors we can do to modify the risk and to normalize your risk of having a cardiac event. But the whole idea of LDL bad, HDL good. And then ultimately, to answer your question, we need to find the perfect levels for each one of us. And when we give the body what it needs and we take away what it doesn't, that's the strategy. But this whole pharmaceutical driven mantra of lower for longer is never going to be the answer because lower for longer from a cardiac standpoint may lead to lower risk. Like if we hammer down our numbers with multiple different pharmaceutical classes, that versus placebo in the average person can be shown to be beneficial. But it's not about how do we lower our heart attack risk on an annual basis from 3% to 2.5%. It's about how do we lower our risk to 0%. We know they don't do that, but I believe that our ancestral bodies when again we give it what it needs, take away what it doesn't, that's the zero percent heart attack risk plan.

Okay, I've got a lot more questions here, so bear with me. And I also for those of you that are not watching on video, I do have this on YouTube and I don't know you can't really like see see you see us as talking head videos on, on YouTube. But when I met Dr. Jack Wolfson in, in person, he is extremely fit. So I want to put that out there too because I also I, I am of the mindset that kind of consider the source. So when you look at doctors giving advice, I just want you all to know because that he literally represents this. And we're going to go deeper into the thinking here. But if you saw him, he's lean, he's fit, he's looks younger than his age. Like there's that does weigh on with me. So I just wanted to share that. It's kind of like when you, you know, I just right away I know what you know you're talking about. When I see what you look like, I wanted to say that too.

Well, well, let me say this and I appreciate the kind words. I mean listen, for the first 34 years of my life I was not that like I was the Chicago deep dish pizza, too much alcohol. You know, I smoked cigarettes through my 20s. It was like, you know, I smoked socially in my tw and my social life as a single guy in Chicago was pretty good.

Medical school smoking. That's so funny. I love it.

And so many of us did and so many of us did and you know, so it can be said again, I appreciate what you said. My father died of a Parkinson's like illness at the age of 63. So when I met the woman who opened up my eyes to health and wellness when I was 33 years old, about to turn 34 and I was a cardiologist, a hospital based cardiologist in the biggest group in the state of Arizona. And I meet this young woman right at the time that my father is at the Mayo Clinic. They have no idea why he's sick and dying of this Parkinson's like illness. And then I meet this 29 year old chiropractor and she tells me all the reasons why my father is sick and dying. And she said, if you don't want that to become you, you're gonna wake up, you're gonna change. And I didn't want that to become me, so. And what she said made perfect sense. Now we would get married and four children later, here we are, you know, and, and about to celebrate our 20 year anniversary. But, you know, it's, it's. I do this because I want to help the world. And the number one killer worldwide, as you mentioned. I want to be able to help people like you and anyone else who's listening. But there is this concept of when the oxygen mask drops on the plane, right? They tell you to put it on yourself first. We got to save ourselves first and then we can help others. I'm trying to save myself, so I appreciate that I look younger than age, I don't know, 55. You and I look the same. You know, you and I are the same age and you look like you could be my daughter. But I mean, ultimately we're all. The best time to get healthy was before conception and in utero and as a child. But the next best time is right now.

Makes sense. Okay, let me keep going with some of these questions because I want to make sure we, we kind of lay the groundwork here before I get in, sort of what to do about it. And some really interesting things that I've been following with you that you talk about that are very critical. But I want to first go back a little bit to the cholesterol conversation and like define what some of these actually mean too. So triglycerides, for example, you said that's part of ldl. And why, what, where does that number, like if I think of my dad's triglycerides before he died, they were over 800. Mine are in the 50s. So what's the difference there on triglycerides specifically, what does that mean?

Triglycerides, the lower the better is what that is. So I mean, it's very linear. So again, if we go from high and then we take it down to low, that risk goes up and up and up. If levels are high, triglycerides in and of themselves are probably not toxic per se, but Again, it's really just a marker to say something metabolically is off triglycerides themselves. Triglycerides are the way that we transport fat around the body to make food. Right? The triglycerides enter into the cells, enter into all of our metabolism, ultimately to make cellular energy, cellular water, all those cool things. But triglycerides are very important. But as a risk factor, your number of 50 is much better than your father at 800. So therefore your risk of cardiac events is lower than that person with 800.

Even if you have high cholesterol. So triglycerides are saying, so even with high cholesterol, triglyceride marker is to show you something different. What about you mentioned that cholesterol can get problematic if it's oxid, if it's oxidizing. How do you know if it's oxidizing? What markers actually show that?

So it's very simple, actually. We can measure oxidized LDLs. That is a blood marker. We can also measure urine, lipid peroxides. We do that every day. And our people at natural heart. Dr. But that's really a better marker of what's happening. So when you think about LDLs, and remember LDLs, inside there is cholesterol. So if we think about LDLs, there's these large, buoyant, fluffy LDLs. Those are the ones that are made by the liver, so it goes VLDL and then they're turned into LDLs as they circulate around LDLs. When they're large, buoyant and fluffy, in the beginning, they're awesome. But when they circulate around and they never get taken up by the liver, taken up well by the peripheral tissues for a whole variety of reasons, they become small, dense, oxidized ldl. Those things can be measured. So now we can look at what are the good LDLs, what are the bad ones, and then if we have a lot of the bad ones, we better figure out why.

Okay, so why you have them? So we're going to come back to that in a minute. I know you. Before I even get into the cholesterol and what to do about it and why, I want to touch on blood pressure for a minute because that's a whole different thing that plays a role in heart disease. Can you speak into blood pressure and where that is important or not?

Okay, let me take a quick segment here just to say that I want to talk about a tree. And the top of the tree has our signs and symptoms. So the top of the tree, including the branches and the leaves, those are things like high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, abnormal, you know, cholesterol, that's stroke, that's cardiomyopathy, palpitations, atrial fibrillation. It could be weight gain, weight loss, bad skin, bad gut, bad hair, right? Insomnia, infertility, anxiety, stress, worry. So that's the branches and the leaves of the tree. Now, below the surface, we have got the roots, and the roots are the root cause. What leads to anxiety, fear, worry, stress, heart attack, strokes, skin disorders, infertility, weight gain, all these kind of things. That's roots. That's what really matters. But in the middle, let's call that the tree trunk. The tree trunk are the metrics that we use to determine our status. Just like you've got a financial statement, you've got business statements, you've got the check oil light on your car. These are all ways that we monitor our success. So as we look at blood pressure. Well, checking a blood pressure is a metric that tells us our success. If blood pressure is high, that's a way to tell us we've got some root cause things we need to work on. But root cause is not blood pressure drug deficiency. That's why blood pressure drugs don't work. They can lower the numbers down, but they don't meaningfully lower your risk of heart attack, stroke, dying. Now, why do we learn otherwise? We learn otherwise because the medical doctors, like the previous cardiologist you interviewed, like myself, from day one in medical school, we are indoctrinated, we are brainwashed into the pharmaceutical industry that everything, you know, we are the hammer, and we use everything again. This, you know, is. Is it. The hammer hits the nail. And this is where everything is related to a drug or a surgical procedure. It's never about root cause. And those more of us are awakening to that. But this goes back, Natalie, to early, early 1900s, where the pharmaceutical industry took over mainstream medicine. And that's a whole nother story. You know, the Rockefellers and the Rockefeller foundation and the Flexner brothers and the Flexner Report. These demonic activities have been going on for well over 100 years.

Okay, when you look at. I saw a meme on Instagram not too long ago that had a. It was. I don't. Maybe it was on your Instagram. It was on somebody's Instagram that I follow. And it had a picture of a car console, like a console on your car. And it showed a check engine light, and it showed that you could turn off the check engine light. And now. But you still have the point was you could turn it off and not see it, but it doesn't mean you fix the problem of the car. So when you just said that about pharmaceutical, that's sort of what came to mind, that the pharmaceutical could turn something off, but it doesn't necessarily mean you fix the problem. Is that kind of what you were saying there? Like?

That's exactly what I'm saying. Exactly what I'm saying. It's about a band aid approach. It's about a cover up approach. Blood pressure is high, their tank is on empty. It's. And it's not. You put a band aid over it with a pharmaceutical and now everything's great. That philosophy has led to millions of people dying. And, you know, I mean, let me, let me say one more kind of, you know, metaphor for that. You know, Another example. If I take a hammer and I'm smashing you on the toe, you don't say, give me morphine, you don't say give me fentanyl, you don't say give me ibuprofen and you don't say give me curcumin. Right. Or give me some arnica gel for that. You say, stop hammering my foot with the hammer. That's it.

Why don't we understand that sometimes. I know we might have a different opinion here, but, and I'm certainly not a doctor, but sometimes I think in the some situations a pharmaceutical is necessary maybe for a small amount of time. I'll give you an exact example. With me, I tore my bicep and I had horrendous pain. If I didn't have Tori doll for a few days, I don't, I would have, I don't know what I would have made it. So I feel. And then I'll give you another example. I recently went through a massive histamine flare. Now obviously I had to get to the root. I had to figure out what's causing it. I don't have hives anymore, but hydroxyzine literally helped me shut that down for a week. So. So sometimes I feel that some things in temporary amounts. Do you feel that way or you were like, it's a never never?

No, no, no, no, no. I certainly think pharma last as opposed to pharma first. So in that particular scenario, I'm not cruel. Like, if someone's in pain, we need to take care of pain immediately. But I'm talking about chronic disease. When we're talking about the treatment of diabetes or heart disease or blood pressure, cholesterol, dementia, et cetera, you know, you're talking about emergency medicine, and emergency medicine is very important. You know, if you're in a gunshot, again, I'm not saying, hey, listen, you know, meditate over this or, you know, use, you know, arnica gel, but, I mean, your point is certainly well taken. So, yeah, I'm all about that. But, you know, the goal is to get off of these as quickly as possible. Now, as it relates to cholesterol, like, I don't prescribe cholesterol drugs, as you know already. I don't prescribe, you know, PCSK9. I don't prescribe statins because those are not emergency medicine drugs. Yet, if someone had a heart attack and a stent yesterday, last week, last month, they will be on antiplatelet therapy to protect that stent. But my goal will be to get them off of that as soon as possible.

Okay, so we're gonna. I'm gonna spend a very short amount of time on pharmaceuticals. But I want to ask you about this part first before we get into the other thing. And I know you do not prescribe them. This is not your belief set, but this is a very real conversation a lot of my listeners are having. So you have a high cholesterol number. The person listening has a high cholesterol number. Now, the breakdown might vary, but the commonality is they have a high total cholesterol. They maybe have hydra triglycerides. They have the wrong ratios, according to traditional Western medicine, they've got this higher. And they're told, first go on a statin. And they get scared. They read about statins. They think that's messed up in my liver. So then they hear about something called. I think I'm pronouncing it right. Zeti or a Zedima bite, which has a different pathway. And they get confused. Do I need that? Do I need a statin? Do I need both? Do I need none? And then there's a third option that's maybe a newer option where they say, well, if you have this PC SK9 gene, instead of affecting anything happening in your liver, we can give you a shot of our patha, which is different. It's a signal. It's kind of like a peptide, and it stops that from happening. Help us understand these three things. Are they really all that different? And what is the risk we're taking on if we choose one of these? I know it's a big question, but I want to go there first.

No, no, I mean, that's all. That's all very good. The risk is, is that we are using the band aid approach, the risk is we're putting the sticker over the check engine light. That's the issue. It's the band aid approach. It's I'm hitting you with the hammer and you're taking a pharmaceutical. So that's ultimately in all three of.

Those cases, is there any worse or better with those three?

Well, let's, I mean, well, let's say this. The reason why the doctors do it is because that's the way the doctors are trained. Not only are they trained that way, but they're kept in line that way by the American College of Cardiology, by the American Heart association, by the state boards, by their governing bodies, by their peers, because that is the way that pharma wants it. Statin drugs are the number one selling drug class of all time. And I say they've been responsible for killing more people than any other drug. Now, why would I say that? I say that because people are walking around thinking they can take a statin drug and they're protected. The problem is they're going to die. They don't work, they have side effects, they lead to a false sense of security and they keep you plugged into the medical matrix. Give me a second here. Statin drugs, according to the literature, lower numbers down dramatically, but they do very little to lower the risk of heart attack, stroke and dying. And that's what matters. There's been meta analyses that show that statin drugs for primary prevention, just like you, you've never had a heart attack, stroke and etc. That statin drugs will buy you an extra three days.

Wow.

In your life. Statin drug. Some studies show, actually statin, the Sparkle trial. More people died in the statin group. All Hat LLC. People above 65. More people died in the statin group. In fact, the original statin trial was called afcaps Tex caps and more people died in the statin drug group. So I don't like statin drugs. Of course they've got side effects. They interfere with cholesterol production, which is what we talked about is so great. They interfere with Coq 10, they interfere with dolichol which is a protein in the brain that I think when we interfered with that, it killed my father. One of the things that killed my father. Also there's something called heme A, which is a protein that is found in the electron transport chain in the mitochondria for cellular energy. Statin drugs interfere with the production of that. So this is very bad.

They also raise your liver numbers, don't they? I mean many times.

Well, they can certainly lead to liver inflammation because that's where they're working. Oh, by the way, the biggest selling statin drugs also contain the fluorine atom. And if you're anti fluoride, I would probably say you probably don't want to take those statin drugs either. Those are rosuvastatin and atorvastatin. Okay, so if we don't take statin drugs, which I don't recommend, what about Ezetimibe? Well, Ezetimibe blocks the absorption of cholesterol in the gut, side effects related to that. But the only data on Ezetimibe is when it was used in combination with a statin drug. In that case it was simvastatin. So when we look at outcomes, you have to take. If you're saying this is evidence based, it's evidence based to lower numbers down. But for outcomes, you got to look at its combination use with the statin drug. So again, my intent, there's other ways to block the absorption. There's, you know, fiber and stuff like that organic psyllium husk. There's different binders that one could use to lower the number down. The third thing is the PCSK9s. And the PCSK9s came out in 2017, 2018, and the four EA trial FA O U R I e r and the subsequent analysis called Fourier ole o l e showed that the numbers dropped precipitously, but it was only studied with a statin drug. So they looked at statin plus repatha or statin drug alone, and they found that the repatha group had lower risk of heart attack and stroke. But in the Fourier trial, more people died when they took repatha.

Wow.

So how does that make someone feel? Now? The Fourier Olay trial found that there was some overall mortality benefit. Real, real, real tiny. The problem is, again, it's a false sense of security. I don't want this level risk of dying. I don't want this level risk of dying. I want close to zero risk. And we know they don't offer that. Finally, to wrap it up, we do not have any outcomes data on Repatha alone without the statins. So if you're like, oh, well, I don't like statins, but I'm taking repatha. Don't think it's evidence based regarding heart endpoints, heart attack, stroke and dying. It's not.

Because my concern with Repatha would be that fine, it stays out of your liver. It has a different mechanism but it's shutting something off. And if we're shutting something off, your body is trying to do what is the consequence of that? So that's where my brain went with that is that was. That feels concerning to me. So if you've got this gene that's designed to create cholesterol, but you shut it off, fine, you're staying away from your liver. But what other problems do we create? So I worry about brain health or what other problem we might have from that long term.

Well, you know, I mean, and that's a great question, and I mean, we could go conspiratorial and say this is big money, this is big industry, and is it possible that some of the data is tweaked or changed? Is it possible there are some evil people out there that just want to make us customers? Yeah, there is. I mean, there are vaccines that are coming out, MRNA vaccines that are coming out to target PCSK 9 to target the production of cholesterol. These are not people, the people who are really in control. This is not altruistic nature, this is business. Now there may be people who are doing the research who think, okay, I'm doing this because my father had this, my mother had this, my sister, my brother, myself, but those people controlling it, these are multi. Multi in the case of Eli Lilly, a trillion dollar corporation.

Wow. So when I also have heard the thought, and I'm guilty of this too, I've said this many times to people through my programs that if you do a coronary artery scan and you don't show plaque, then you're kind of not in this urgent thing to have to correct it pharmaceutically. How do you feel about using coronary artery scans? Is there a huge risk with that? Are you a fan of them? Talk to us about that. And also the clearly, which is a newer one.

Okay, so I don't like radiation based scans. I feel that we can get the information we need to determine someone's risk. Right, we talked about that tree trunk. What are the metrics of risk? That we can do it non invasively with blood, urine and stool testing. We could do it with ultrasound like cimt. I don't like any testing that could be dangerous. And that's radiation. So the coronary artery calcium scan, the CLEARLY scan, and even where people are doing these de novo total body MRI with gadolinium contrast, I don't like any of those. I don't feel that they're helpful. Now if someone has coronary artery calcification, that means they're at Higher risk. But it's hard to follow that over time. It doesn't change. Well, over time, could you say, well, if my score is a zero, then I'm at lower risk. That's true, but you're not at no risk because that could be the soft plaque. So I guess to cut to the chase on this without make, because you and I could spend an entire podcast talking about these, those particular tests. But in general, I don't like anything that's radiation based, so I don't order it. I think we can do the most advanced blood, urine and stool testing. I'm a big fan of home testing. Testing your home from mold and or water damage, bacteria. We can get hundreds of different metrics and the beauty of those is that they change very quickly. So if your numbers are bad, we can institute a plan and recheck those numbers in a month or two and see that we're on track. That is our success tracker. We don't track with radiation based tests.

Now, you mentioned mold and water damage, which I want to ask you a lot more about. But I have a question before we even ask about that. If you have genetic markers with these high numbers, like I happen to, as you know, I have these, this high familia, cholesterol, how. What would mold or water damage have to do with that? So, like if my dad had those numbers and my mom has those numbers and I have those numbers, isn't that just a genetic link? So how do you know when it's just literally this is your genetics and we have to do something or this is an external factor?

Well, I believe that our genetics are perfect. Okay? We are built in the image of God, by God or evolution, whatever people choose to believe. Either way, we're perfect. We can run and jump and see and feel and we can make babies. We're pretty spectacular. And so are all animals. So is everything on earth. Where does the genetic bad come in? That's just pharmaceutical company speak, brainwashing the doctors. Because if I tell you, Natalie, Jill, and I say it's just your genetics, there's nothing you can do about it. Well, if there's nothing I could do about it, well, what can I do about it? Well, you can take this pill. That's salesmanship, that sales. I mean, it's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. You could. You can't walk anywhere. You have to drive a car. You can't, you're not. You can't walk or drive a car. You got to take an Uber. You got to take this. You Know, the waymo, you know, driverless, you know, transportation like this is, this is the way that it is. So the reality is our genetics are perfect. And what happens in the case of all these environmental toxins, including mold, bacteria, plastics, phthalates, parabens, pesticides, VOCs, EMF, these things, one mechanism is that they damage the gut microbiome. When you damage the delicate microbiome, that leads to leaky gut. Leaky gut or intestinal hyperpermeability, means things get into the body that don't belong. Now, your immune system activates inflammation, oxidative stress. Now you develop endothelial dysfunction, the lining of the blood vessels. Things get into the inner parts of the blood vessels, plaque formation, heart attack, stroke, dead. So that's the sequence. Now, let me say this about mold, because mold, mycotoxins, like I said, they damage the gut microbiome. But the toxins, including metals, they get into the body and they're circulating around. So they interfere, for example, with the ldl, apob receptor and particle interface. So if you're trying to park your car in a spot, but there's something in the spot, you can't park there. And that is the analogy of what I would use. So what do you do is you clear out the interference. Could be a metal, could be a mold, mycotoxin could be plastic. And that way the LDL particle is recognized by the parking space. The LDL receptor, they bond and it pulls the LDL out of circulation. What does that have to do with statin drugs, statins, in the case of PCSK9, you have more parking spots available. But it still doesn't solve the problem that the LDL has to get where it needs to go in order to get the job done. So mold is a problem there. Now, mold, mycotoxins cause brain inflammation, interfere with your hormones, interfere with testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, the mold, mycotoxins damage the gut, microbiome, they lead to autonomic disorders, etc, by. I guess, let me say this right now because I haven't said it yet. All disease is from two things. All disease is from two things. And if everybody understands this, they're really going to be ahead of the game here. All disease is from too much bad stuff and not enough good stuff. So what do we do? We get more good stuff and less bad stuff. And that's the survival strategy. Genetics are not part of the equation. Pharmaceuticals, if they're anything, they're part of the bad stuff category. More good, less bad. That's the only way we're going to make it.

You brought up mold and mycotoxins and metals. Is there actually a way to fully test for this? Are we just all exposed to it?

Yes. Now we can test our urine for mold, mycotoxins. We can test our home for water damage, mold and bacteria. Highly recommend those. It is a problem because everybody's, you know, I just spoke at, you know, you and I were talking before we got on. I spoke at the American Academy of Anti aging. There were 750 healthcare professionals, MDs, DOs, et cetera in the audience. And I said to everyone, I said, you're all living in mold. Your house is built out of popsicle sticks and you're living in mold. Now what you want to do about it or not do about it, that's up to the individual person. Because it's very easy to tell someone, swallow a lipid or inject this into your body. It's very easy to say, take fish oil, right? It's very easy to say, get more sun, better sleep, get more movement, build more muscle, go to the chiropractor, see a holistic dentist. Like that stuff is easy. Getting on a mold, as you and I have talked about before previously, it's difficult, but it is an answer and it is a major root cause answer. The Hebrew Bible talks about this in the book of Leviticus where Moses tells us, if you're living in mold and fix it or burn the whole thing down and the medical doctors don't have a clue 4,000 years later.

You know, this is maybe a really basic question here, but we lived in a house in San Diego that we had black mold for sure. We moved out of it. We got out of our. We were leasing it. So we did not own it. We were leasing it. We got out of that lease. We left. But I remember when we were doing the testing and they come out and they swab your walls in your house and they do all the things and they would compare to the outside. And what they stuck with me is that the outside had so much more mold than inside. So y' all hear that from people like, well, we're just around it. We have it everywhere. It's in nature. Like, what, what's your answer to that? And how do we.

Yeah, I'm not worried about outdoor molds. I'm worried about indoor molds growing on man made surfaces. So when you build your house out of popsicle sticks and drywall, leaky toilet, shower sinks, you know, it starts to not only release the mold, mycotoxins, but the mold also starts to digest the home and therefore it starts to off gas. And that can off gas, different metals, all these different other, you know, VOCs, etc. So the concept of, you know, outdoor versus indoor, I'm not worried about outdoor. Although people who are sensitive already because they're damaged for a whole variety of reasons, they could have trouble in heavier mold outdoor climates. But mold is everywhere. And ultimately the testing also matters. So the testing that we do at Natural Heart doctor is we do what's called the Swiffer test, where you collect dust samples inside of the home and it is therefore measured against other homes. And therefore you get to see your status of water damage, mold and bacteria. The whole idea of like air counts and spore traps, that's where you start getting indoor outdoor discrepancy. But if we're talking about the best test for indoor it is the mold, it is the Swiffer test. And then you can compare that to your urinary exposure. But I'm not worried about, for example, how mold, because mold is not evil. Mold is there to digest dead organic material. So when a tree dies in the woods, right, you get mushrooms forming on it, you get fungi on it, and it's there to digest it. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That's not evil. But we're part of the collateral damage if we're living in it.

So there's people listening right now. They're going to hear what you said about not doing statins, not doing the zeti, not doing repatha, not doing, you know, western medicine, not even maybe having a coronary artery scan. And they're going to say, oh, you know, he's saying, don't do this stuff. That's bad. So I'm just going to go natural. But I feel like we're missing a huge piece there that could be dangerous for people. When you say be natural, like what kinds of things are you talking about? Making sure that they're adding? Like, where are some? Even though we have to go basic here, like what is critical? Like let's, I want to talk about like even body weight, just health practices. Like what are some things that you're. Like, these are non negotiable. Otherwise we're going to solve a problem. Because if we just cut off western medicine. Right. But we don't do these other things, we still going have a bigger problem.

Well, again, God bless the men and women who work in emergency rooms and trauma centers. Okay. You know, I mean, they serve a purpose. But the general internist is an Outpatient who is just, you know, it's a quick visit. Here's your pharmaceuticals. Get a test, here's your flu shot. Like that is debt on arrival. That's just not gonna. Not gonna work. Our methodology at Natural Heart doctor is really based simply on this eat well, live well concept. Eat these foods, avoid these foods. Lifestyle choices like appropriate sleep. Our ancestors went to sleep shortly after the sundown. Now the average person stays up until after midnight. We get appropriate sunshine. You and I both live in Arizona. Beautiful sunshine here. The purpose of our skin. Our skin is a solar panel built to collect light. So when you sit inside all day under the artificial lights in a moldy home, you're dead. You know, you're in Buffalo, New York, my hometown of Chicago, Milwaukee. I'm not picking on the people in those places. They're beautiful people. They're just gonna die. They're just gonna die sick and die young. So we get this sleep, we get the sunshine, we move, we're very active. Like our ancestors were not necessarily at the gym, you know, running for 45 minutes on the treadmill, no building muscle. Outdoor activity. That's the strategy. And then we got this massive category of toxin avoidance. And we do that. We see the chiropractor, we see the holistic dentist. But that third thing of the eat well, the live well. And then we got the think well component, the mindset component. Find you're happy if you are unhappy, if you are living in fear, worry, stress, depressed, socially isolated, bad relationships. The statistics tell us and common sense tells us you're going to die quicker than the other person. So you have to find your happy. This eat well, live well, think well, and they're all equally as important. We all spend all day long. Oh, Wolfson and the vegan we're debating, and the carnivore guy we're debating. Let's take the food story out of it for a second and say, what about the lifestyle? What about the mindset? And pretty much the medical doctors in the holistic space are in agreement with the lifestyle and the mindset issue. It's a food issue we tend to, you know, to debate very often.

But, but even the lifestyle thing, I think there's a huge debate. Like, to me, there's absolutely no argument that getting out in nature and being in real sun, I feel like a different person. Like, if I'm inside all day, like, let's say if I'm in a meeting all day, I feel it, and if I go outside, it's like an instant it changes how I feel. And if you look at animals, like, my dog, my dog, every time I open the door, will go lay out in the sun naturally. Like, just so you say that, but I think there's still this huge, you know, story around that.

Maybe you're right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe you're right again. Like some people, it's, oh, we'll be careful about how much sun your dog. All animals are outside 24 7. All plants are outside. It is only the human. And maybe human brings in plants and humans bring in animals. And of course, that plants get sick and die. The pets get sick. You know, coyotes in the wild are, you know, javelina in the wild. They're not getting cancer unless, of course, they're eating, you know, some kind of poison or some kind of toxic chemical that they're exposed to. So it's really, you know, there's nothing novel about what I'm saying. It's just common sense approaches. Our ancestors ate, lived, and thought a certain way. The only way that they would get sick and die is that, you know, I say this all the time. Like, if I'm talking to a guy, like, we're in high school together in caveman days. We like the same girl. Only one of us is gonna make it. Only one of us lives. The other one gets killed in their sleep. They get a spear in the back. We're out hunting. We get, you know, attacked by a saber toothed tiger. We don't die of cancer, heart attack, strokes, autoimmune disease. Well, you know, you name it.

How do you know you did an experiment? Maybe it wasn't meant to be an experiment, but I know when I met you, you were literally living outside, intense with your family, with your four kids, your. I think your daughter said you're like 13 animals, something, some. And. But you had, you literally said to get away from mold. You guys were literally living. And I know you're not right now, but how did your family actually feel, respond? Like, did you notice a big difference being not inside all day long? Like, what. What did you actually see?

Yeah, we know, we noticed. I mean, just, you know, so much. And we recently, I told you, you know, we had to move into a building. Now the building is built out of concrete, steel, and glass. It's brand new. And we are the first occupants of the unit. So that's one thing that'll keep us hopefully okay until we move to Costa Rica, where we will be living indoor outdoor lifestyle out of concrete, glass, and steel. And we live in Arizona right now, so as you know, we spend a lot of time outdoors. Difficult when you live in northern climates. We spent the year in tents, as you know, and it's not necessarily easy, but I like to say if the Jewish kid from the Chicago suburbs can do it, anybody can do it. Anybody. Anybody can do this. And it's just. It's a mindset shift. And for people, especially as they're sick, to do it. Now, we only came inside because we kind of just ran out of real estate of which to be on. It's not easy to do this. Yeah. You know, so we were. We were, you know, most recently, we were tent camping on someone's property. And again, we were, you know, like, the. The county came after us to say, you got it. You can't. You can't tent camp. Like, God forbid you actually are healthy.

And it was someone's property that you knew, and they still told you this?

Oh, no. I mean, they were in full support. We had been there for a month, and then the neighbors again all got together and said, we don't like the way that this looks. So anyways, we had to move it inside. But, you know, we all felt great. My wife, you know, she was using glasses for, you know, for reading and stuff like that. Her vision became perfect.

Wow.

Everybody. Skin was great, gut was great. Everybody felt amazing. So.

So that's it. It was an extreme example, but it's. It's interesting. I. You know, you hear these stories of these people that are diagnosed with terminal illnesses, and. But they're like, they don't want to deal with it, and they just move to some island somewhere, and next thing you know, they're. They're fine because they're outside all day doing what they love, gardening or walking or. You hear these stories. So there's something to be said.

Well, you know, Natalie, when I spoke at an event called the Truth about cancer back in 2016, it was one of the biggest events done live that I've ever seen. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people online. And one of the people. And one of the things that I said there I thought was very poignant. You cannot get healthy in the same environment where you got sick. So if you're sitting and you're listening to us right now, when you're in Seattle or you're in Minneapolis or wherever you're at, and you could be in Arizona, you could be anywhere. You have to. If you're sick, you need to change it up. Now, does that mean you need to move from Buffalo to Miami or from. You know to move to Costa Rica. It doesn't mean you have to. I suggest that you do. But it means you gotta change up your food environment, your lifestyle environment, your mindset environment. You need to become a different person than the one who was sick. Yeah, that's really the key. So if I was able to reach your father when he was 45, before a cardiac event, I would say, okay, these are the things that we see going on right now. So we got to change it up. Yeah, we got to change the eat the way, the way that we think, the way that our mindset is.

When I think of my dad and I think of my genetics or, you know, me and versus him, you know, and I don't, I obviously don't know what my full future is, but I will say he had that visceral fat, he had that big stomach. I do not like he had, literally, you could see it, the visceral fat. He also had skyrocket, high blood pressure, he had very high triglycerides. He was definitely not eating the way that you're outlining here. He was definitely not getting outside or getting sun. He was stressed, working all the time indoors. So I think, like I hear what you're saying. He may not have smoke or drank, but he was all those other things you're saying. And he happened to be on high blood pressure medicine and he still died of a heart attack.

So whenever someone says that so and so is healthy, I will only believe they're healthy when I talk to them. And I do the in depth testing that'll determine what health is. And again, health, the spectrum of health, you know, to sickness is obviously very wide. There's different levels, I guess, of health. But whenever it says oh, so and so was totally healthy and then they had a heart attack, well, obviously they weren't healthy because they had a heart attack. Healthy people don't get cancer. You're not healthy and then get cancer, you are sick and then you get cancer, you are sick and then you have a heart attack. So you can determine your level of sickness by blood testing, by urine testing, stool testing, all those kind of things that determines your level of sickness. But healthy people don't have heart attacks.

So many people listening are gonna say, well, but this, but that. And I'll tell you, like anytime I ever have any blood work done, hormones, everything can be perfect. But that cholesterol number, somebody always says something to me, what do you want people to know? What do you want them to respond? But when that comes up, well, you.

Know, it's just cholesterol because as we mentioned earlier, it's been so, you know, demonized and it's been, you know, vilified, but I wouldn't worry about it. So if we're looking at one particular metric, you know, the APO B APO A ratio is the best lipid marker that we have. And I'll tell you, I mean again, to me it's much more important about oxidative stress and, and glycohemoglobin and all the, I mean, homocysteine, lp, so many other factors. But let's just say all these factors help to build what the puzzle is. And if everything looks great on your lab panel and your total cholesterol is 240, I mean I could care less. Especially because that 240 is going to be made up of these large, buoyant, fluffy LDL particles and high quality HDL. And that triglyceride, as you mentioned earlier, triglyceride of 50.

My, my total is higher than 250. Mine's a lot higher than 250. But, but those other things are low. Yeah.

Okay, so familial hyperlipidemia affects 1 out of 250 people. And those are the people with total cholesterol above 400.

Mine's not that, those 350, but still.

Okay, so, so those people again, you know, the higher the number, we could say the higher the risk. But it's not the only arbiter. There are plen, total cholesterol 350, 400. And they do have a coronary scan and they've got zero evidence of plaque. So there's so many other factors that are involved.

Yeah, and you mentioned that other one that was non radiation that I think it's the one that does the artery in your neck, the cimt, Is that the one?

Yeah. So CIMT is a good test. It's ultrasound. And that would be another metric of what we could use. I don't use it that often, but it is something that can be used. It can be a surrogate marker to say, okay, well your carotid intimate media thickness is a little bit thicker, which is not good. And if we do some strategies to reduce the thickness, that would be a metric that you're on the right track. That is how you measure, you know, whether or not the, you know, gas tank is full or empty. That's a good strategy. But even then I love the blood testing, I love the urine testing, I love stool testing. So many different. And we're very Blessed because back in the day the only thing that would tell you an arbiter of health, I mean obviously the way that you look, the way that you felt, that would be a sign. But blood pressure was a sign. Blood glucose, pulse rate, the original EKG, these are old time metrics. But now in the 21st century, coming into 2026, we can look at so many different things that tell us our status and fix them.

What, when you say supple, there's things that you can do besides the natural things, but there's supplements you can take, things like that. We hear about some of the standard things. We'll hear about psyllium husk or fish oil or CoQ10 or like what are some, are those the types of things you're talking about or do you have a different suggestion around those?

Well, my, our, our supplements that we recommend these days are really kind of a food first mantra. So we sell unvaccinated field harvested prairie grass fed bison and elk organs at natural heart doctor and that's pure foundational food. We also sell wild salmon roe freeze dried in a capsule. We like the Australian emu oil as a minimally processed oil that contains the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, K, K2. That keeps calcium in your bones, preventing osteoporosis and therefore preventing calcification of your arteries. So a good probiotic, I mean those are all kind of basic foundational things.

But the organs, most people don't talk about. So that's, it's interesting you just brought those up. So I want to. Is that so you, because you've brought that up to me a few times that it's important to do like bison or like most people don't think like that and, or they'll put that in a carnivore box. Why is that helpful? Why do we need those?

So our ancestors prized the organs. If you're a lion and you kill a gazelle, it doesn't look for the filet and it doesn't look to make ground beef. Right. It goes right for the organs, the liver, the heart, the spleen, the kidneys. The lion knows those are the most nutrient dense parts. When you look at some of the footage, you can see videos actually on our website we have a video of a bear in Alaska. It's getting salmon and it, and it squishes the salmon and it squeezes the eggs out and then the bear sucks up all of the salmon roe. Did anyone have to tell the bear? So the nutrient density of these organs, and especially when you're getting the quality of stuff that we're securing at Natural Heart doctor I mean this is just next level. And you can't, you can't tell me about a synthetic vitamin. Comparing that, I mean that that's, you know, lab made synthetic vitamin. That's just laughable. We, in most cases we don't need those things. There are, you know, like things like, you know, herbal remedies, berberine quercetin, curcumin. We can add those things in or.

Like psyllium husk, I'm assuming.

Yeah, psyllium husk. You know, I mean sometimes those can be beneficial, but we really can do it, I think in the construct of the eat well, live well, think well, the food based supplements, we can do really well there. For blood pressure, I like nitric oxide boosters. We sell a product called vessel support L arginine, citrulline, taurine and grapeseed extract. That goes well with our heartbeat product, which is organic beetroot powder and a couple other organic vegetables in the powder form. So I mean, because a lot of times we have been damaged from living this way for so many years that we need some additional support. And then yeah, there's biohacks, right? We could talk about sauna and red light therapy and ozone and EBOO and exosomes and tissue plasma exchange where we cleanse out people's blood. But that's really the kind of the movement of the order. The eat well, the live well, the think well, the tests. Don't guess evidence based supplements and BioHackers.

You mentioned Eboo. I actually did a whole series of Eboos after we left the mold house, which was great. But what I noticed from it is my, it dropped my cholesterol significantly, but then it brought it back up. Is that, what is that, is that supposed to happen like that with an eboo? Like a lot of people say they like eboos for cholesterol reduction, but it looks, it seems like it's only a temporary thing when you do that.

Yeah, it's definitely only temporary, you know, because we're not addressing root cause. So I think that EBOO has a role, but you know, there's still a lot to, you know, that remains. And it's also very expensive. You know, some of these biohacks are very expensive. So for most people the foundation really works. I personally have never had eboo, but I think if people are symptomatic and especially maybe they're living in mold and they're like, okay, well I have to go for. I can't get out of my house for a variety of reasons, you know, whatever. And typically it's the woman, she feels like crap. The husband feels fine. You know, he's on high blood pressure pills, cholesterol pills. He's about to have a heart attack, stroke or cancer. He's got lousy libido, he's trying to get jacked up on testosterone. He's got some erectile, you know, dysfunction. But otherwise he's fine. He's not spending 100,000 to remediate the home or moving. You know, for those women that are stuck in that scenario, there are biohacks and stuff like that, but. But it's just very sad because the women are the canary in the coal mine. The women are the ones that have the skin issues, the gut issues, the hormonal issues, the hair loss issues. Menopause, like menopause, when did it become a disease? It shouldn't be that way. Our ancestral women didn't have severe menopause. I think it's all just chemical toxin, lifestyle induced. The woman should go through menopause. And now they're the grandmothers or the great grandmothers that are taking care of, you know, the young ones. They're the. They're the wise women, they're the elders.

Yeah.

They're the celebrated figures in society. I don't know this. I guess maybe it sounds a little bit utopian, Natalie, but I'm gonna ask.

You about three things right now, which I'm almost scared to ask you because I have a feeling I know what you're gonna say and I'm not gonna like the answer, but I'm gonna ask anyway. So. So I want to ask about hrt. I'm. I am somebody in menopause. Most of my listeners are menopause, or at least late stages perimenopause, or they're postmenopause. And we've done a lot of conversations around hrt bioidentical and how that protects your heart, how it protects your brain. I'm scared you're going to say you're against it. So what. Tell us, talk to us about hrt.

So what I would say is this, is that, that it's a. My method is a pharma last approach and we'll throw hrt, bioidentical, hrt, we'll throw that into a pharma last approach. So I'm not anti that. I would just like to try a lot of these root cause things first. Now I've been involved in A lot of different hormone conversations. I'm not naive to this and I know that the guttural response is that, that you know, women really love the HRT and so do men, you know, for that matter. But I want to, I'm not telling anyone to stop the hrt. I'm going to say that there was a root cause and it's not. Yeah, the root cause is I went through menopause and I don't have hormones. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The root cause are violations of eat well, live well and think well. So please continue to. If you stay in the hormones, that's fine. But continue to work on the eat well, the live well, the think well. And that is really foundational work as people are work with someone who recognize who is used to working with hormones. In the case of men and testosterone, it leads to high hemoglobin. Same thing with men. Then you gotta do therapeutic phlebotomy, otherwise you're pumping around sludge. The goal hemoglobin for women is between 13 and 14. For men it's between 14 and 15. You got to keep it in the, that range right there. But I don't know, you know, it's. My mother doesn't take hormones. My wife is 50. She still is menstruating. I don't see any scenario where she wants to take hormones again. I just think that if you're not there yet, let's continue to work on why. And if you're already there and you're happy, continue to stay happy but work on root cause. Or if you're on HRT and you're not quite there, you don't, you know, stop trying to dial in the dosages and get back to root cause. And don't shoot the messenger.

Yeah, no, I think that it didn't go far from what like I will say with me and hrt. It was pretty much after menopause that I started and I, I am of a fan of very low doses like just enough to get to kind of bump things up versus there's been conversations where I have people on talking about high doses and cycling. That's not my personal preference preference. My preference, my preference is enough just to get you kind of to not have the hot flashes or whatever it is. So I'm, I'm. You'll have to pry the, the HRT out of my, you know, 95 year old hands eventually. Like that's, that's something I want. But there's a very hot topic right now around GLPs. And so everybody's heard about GLPs and there are people using it not just for fat loss and obesity epidemic, which obviously if you lose weight it's going to help with heart disease. But now a lot of people talking about it for inflammation, microdosing them all different types and stories around that and how it could actually even lower your cholesterol, how it can help repair. I'm assuming you're going to say the same thing there, but any place that you would see those have a place.

Yeah, I'm the extreme. I just, I don't trust it. I don't trust. I've been around a while, right? So I've seen the fen phen's, I've seen some of the fad diet extremes. I've seen many pharmaceuticals that were approved by the FDA that wind up getting pulled anytime you interfere with gastrointestinal motility, which is the main action of a lot of these drugs. I think it leads to cancer.

Okay.

I think it leads to cancer risk. And just like everything else I've said, we are not deficient in GLPs, we are not deficient in ozempic. And I think that we're gonna continue. Obviously we've seen things whether it's increased, you know, certain cancers or optic neuritis, you know, visual loss and stuff like that, there's a lot of different triggers that are out there and then okay, well if we microdose it, you know, I'm just, I'm not into pharmaceuticals for the treatment of chronic disease. Berberine, for example, does affect the glp, you know, system. Berberine is a natural plant based remedies. There's ways that we can do, do this naturally. Again it's just not root cause, it's just not something that I recommend. But I guess, listen, different stroke. I believe in freedom I guess, you know, and if people are free to do what they want, if they want to inject themselves with vaccines, if they want to inject themselves with some of these products, hey, you know, have at it. It's just not something that I do.

You saw a post of mine before we got on this interview regarding it being 2 years post my explant and you had sent me a text and you said let's, you said ask me about explants and breast implants and where that ties into heart disease. What do you want to share there?

Well, really what I would say is, and listen, I'm not judging anybody for anything because I did some stuff again that I did at you know, 18 and 19, that I wouldn't do now. I did things at 30 that I wouldn't do now. And I'm never, you know, about, you know, berating or belittling people about the past. It's all, it's like, once you learn the truth as you did, you know, the. Then it's, how do we move forward in the best way possible. And, you know, it's very easy to change up a diet as opposed to, well, explanting your breasts. I mean, there's a lot of identity with that. But that being said, I mean, I just believe that there's a lot of toxicity related to that. There's a lot of fibrosis, a lot of scarring, certainly leaking of some of the chemicals that are used in that particular arena. This goes back to back, you know, 2007, 2008, to see a woman. She comes to see me because she's got palpitations. We take a good thorough history and it turns out the palpitations started right after she had her breast implants. She go, I tell her that. And a week later, she's at the Mayo Clinic by Dr. Helen Fang to have those removed. And since then, obviously, as you know, there's a lot of support groups on Facebook, you know, healing breast implant illness, a lot of people around that. So, you know, again, this is just kind of root cause type of stuff. And you're sick and you got these things in your body that you can, you know, have removed. I think that there is no shame in having them removed. Again. It's a very big issue.

What's interesting about you is you're an actual cardiologist. Like, this is what you do. This is your. And a lot of times you'll, I'll interview people that are speaking into a lot of things that you're saying, but they are not actually coming from traditional medicine. So what I, I appreciate about this conversation is you literally are coming from that western medicine side and you have that background. You're, you're not just, you're not even just a general doctor, you're a cardiologist. Like, you've literally worked on people with heart disease. So it's really, to me, it's somewhat refreshing hearing this whole side of things. Why do you think more cardiologists are not speaking about this?

Well, there, first of all, there's more of us coming online. That's number one. But again, we're just. We are kept in our lane because of money. We are kept in our lane because of. We are insecure. That we're going to be kicked out of the medical community or, you know, kicked out of our groups or whatever. Or even just the foundation of. How do you accept everything you've been taught is a lie? Yeah, I mean that's, that's, you know, like your whole identity, of course, as a doctor, this God complex. So therein really lies the problem. But you know, like I said, it's, it's. The crime is when you know the truth and then you don't follow it. That's really the crime. But to your point, me as a cardiologist, there's a lot of people in the health space who know a lot, but I really feel that I've been inside of the arteries, I've touched hearts, I've done the pacemakers, I've done the angiograms, I've seen it in real time. And I think that gives a little bit of a different, you know, and more unique perspective than someone who hasn't done that.

Yeah, I would imagine you must have gone through this battle in your own mind as you were sort of learning this and seeing it and understanding undoing what you know, because you were trained this way and then you're, you're sort of. So I would imagine you had your own struggle with that.

Well, you know, to your point, I mean, I talk about this a lot, you know, from the stage. Like I meet this 29 year old chiropractor who tells me all the reasons why my father is sick and dying and I listen because number one, she's smoking hot. And number two, it made sense. Yeah, like, it made, you know, like, you know, again, this epiphany moment, serendipitous or God ordained or whatever, just to put this in front of me and, and to accept it. And I accepted it very rapidly. I'm like, that makes perfect sense. My profession is a fraud, My profession is a sham and I didn't want what happened to my father. But my father's loss created who I am right now. It created me personally, it created me professionally and it allows me to reach the millions of people who I've reached with this type of message. So I believe it is doing God's work. Other people would come at me and say, you're killing people, you should be censored. And there's been a lot of that in the past. You know, calls, you know, from, you know, to the medical board against me, insurance companies against me, social media censorship, death threats. There's been a lot of it. But like I said, I'm on a mission. I believe I'm doing what's right. I believe it's common sense and it's going to win.

Wow. Well, I appreciate everything you shared as always. You know, this is not meant to be. Any of this is not meant to be medical advice advice for anyone. But it is important for me to feature all different opinions and shares so we listeners, we in midlife can do be our own health detective. I think that's one of the things really missing from healthcare is the ownership of being your own health detective and doing research yourself and asking questions and being curious and not just taking a five minute doctor appointment as the thing that you need to do. And unfortunately too many times, especially with the cholesterol and heart conversation that is what's happening. It's a five minute minute conversation. You need a statin. There's no discussion about all of this. And I think it's really, really critical that we start asking more questions and then make the best decisions for us. If someone wants to learn more, they want to work with you, they want to get your book, they want to. Can they actually work with you? Where do they go?

Yeah, so you can go to naturalheartdoctor.com I've got a team of cardiologists, naturopathic medical doctors, coaches and stuff like that. And of course I'm all over social media so people can find me over there. And the beautiful thing is though that you mentioned that we don't have to take our doctor's word as gospel anymore. Those days are over. That's the 1970s, 1980s. We got this thing called the Internet now we've got AI, we got the ability to go onto our phones and say, I was offered chemotherapy for this. Well, what's the evidence? Chemotherapy works. What are the risks? What are the benefits? What are the alternatives? We can do that with any. And we need to. You know, again, I'm not, I'm not sitting here saying I hate pharma just to hate pharma. I hate pharma because it doesn't work and it leads to side effects and it leads to a false sense of security. Real quick, I also want to say two things. There are two conditions that are specific really to women. One is called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, which is broken heart syndrome. That's the woman who gets into a fight with her boss, a fight with her spouse, some kind of traumatic experience. She has a massive heart attack. We go in there with a catheter. There's no blockage, It's a coronary spasm. That happens. And sometimes women die from that. Sometimes it leads to significant damage. Broken heart syndrome, or what's called takotsubo cardiomyopathy. The other is spontaneous coronary artery dissection, much more common in women. These are women that under stress very often, sometimes with pregnancy, it can happen. But their artery, they have a massive heart attack because their artery splits or dissect. Spontaneous coronary artery dissection, otherwise known as scad? S C A D. These are entities women need to know about it. There is no pharmaceutical prevented. The only prevention is to make sure that you're optimized your health and to make sure you're working on that mindset. That's the survival strategy.

Thank you so much. And I'll link everything up in the show notes and I'll be checking out all those supplements. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you.