Boost Mitochondrial Energy & Resilience With a Healthy Heart

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

It is so good to see you, Laura. What a great educational summit you are putting on.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, this is going to be a fun one today. We are going to do an amazing talk. You know, people always want to know what supplements should I take, what is good for my body, especially my heart, which is something that you are specializing in. And so we are going to break that down for our audience today. And I know they are going to love this. So make sure you have your pen and paper ready to go. So we are going to talk about a lot of incredible supportive content for you today. Now, for those of our viewers who do not know you, Dr. Kahn, you are a cardiologist. You are Triple Board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine, and interventional cardiology. You are a clinical professor of medicine, and you are known as America’s Healthy Heart Doc. So listen up, because whatever you have to say is important.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Thank you very much. And as I say, like you my passion is to study and learn and then share incredible science background information. That is what we are going to do today.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. And you know, on that note, when I was growing up in the Western medicine world, we discredited supplements all the time. You know, our common statement was, you are just going to have expensive urine if you take supplements. And the truth of the matter is there are supplements that are very supportive. So we will get into that and break that down today. I want to dispel that myth because I definitely perpetuated that myth for a long time. It is my give back to the world to come here and produce some it is like this that dispels those myths that we hear.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Perfect.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. So let us connect the dots then between heart health and mitochondrial health. Why would I have a cardiologist come to speak to us on a mitochondria summit? This is really important.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Well, you know, we do not very much pause to consider what goes on in our bodies. Second is the second minute-to-minute, unfortunately, because it is such a miracle and it is such a biochemical, incredible feat to be alive for one hour, let alone for 50, 80, and 95 years but, with the heart being arguably the most important organ in the body. Of course, neurologists and others might pick their organ but arguably you can not live without your heart. And just think about it for a minute, you know, it is five or six gallons of blood a minute being pumped. Think about, I hate to say use a milk jug gallon because I’m not a big fan of milk but think about five or six milk jug gallons every minute being pumped and the little heart the size of your fist. I mean, I have a model of it here, and for a person your size that is probably pretty accurate. I am a little bigger than you so I will use my fist. It is got to pump out five, six gallons a minute. It is a lot of energy. We are not talking about Fred Flintstone in a little car with your feet. We are talking about serious energy production, energy consumption, and energy renewal. I mean, this is a real, real, real feat and it is all about making enough ATP. You go to your doctor 100 times, you never hear the word ATP.

You might be tired, you might be short of breath, you might be having cardiovascular disease but you do not hear about it but that is, that miracle molecule that the mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cells that are so abundant in heart cells have to be, have to be superabundant in a muscle and have to be particularly superabundant in a heart muscle. And these little mitochondria have a whole chain reaction to produce the fuel that causes the miracle of pumping 100,000 times a day. So really, the heart is one giant mitochondrial organ. And if your mitochondria are fed healthy food, healthy sleep, healthy hormones, healthy stress management. If you avoid the toxins, obviously smoking, air pollution, food pollution, and water pollution your mitochondria will allow you to have a long, energetic life, free of shortness of breath, free of congestive heart failure with clean arteries. But as soon as the mitochondria get gummed up by genetics or lifestyle changes or environmental toxins, there are so many environmental toxins of which I mentioned, again, air pollution has really come on the medical scene. The research world scene as a real factor in mitochondrial poisoning. So I will just summarize that if you are talking heart disease, you are talking mitochondrial health or mitochondrial illness and we need help from all aspects clean water, clean air, good sleep, stress management, avoidance of plastics, and air pollution. But we also need intelligent supplementation too so heart disease is really all about mitochondria.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Amazing. So a couple of comments. Number one, on toxins so important. We have lots of lectures on this summit all about the toxins, exposures, how to get rid of them, what to look for, how to test for it, how to treat it. So definitely tune in to all the toxin lectures here. And then just a comment on your heart being the most important organ, arguably as much as you are stating that, I was thinking of my years of working in the hospital and thinking about people who are actually brain-dead and were still alive in a bed because their heart was still beating. So every expert I talked to it is true. The fertility specialist will say the ovaries are the most important organ. The neurologist says the brain is the most important organ. The pulmonologist says the lungs are the most important organ but if you think about it, truly heart is the thing that can even keep a brain-dead person going. So, yes, I would agree with you. 

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

And I would say we do not talk about it, but a good brain can not keep a dead person going if the heart is dead, you know, life is over. So it is an interesting analogy made. And that is why heart disease is the number one killer of men and women around the world, because it is indeed so critical to keep your super mitochondria powered heart super healthy, which is my passion, of course.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, on that note, the thing that boggles my mind. So I saw this crazy graph that showed the causes of death in the United States, and it showed the thing that people Google the most because we go on Dr. Google to try to get help to solve our health problems. So knowing that over 30% of Americans are going to die of a heart-related event, would you not think that people would be Googling support for heart health? But they are not. Almost nobody, about 2% of people Google anything about heart health and everyone is Googling cancer 37% and that is the second cause of death. Now, this statistic was way back in 2016, this graph I saw. I’m sure if it was redone today, COVID would probably be the number one thing. But if we think about COVID, actually during the peak of COVID, there were still more deaths from heart disease, but the whole world was paralyzed by dying from COVID, where heart disease was still the number one thing. 

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Yeah. And you know, it is such an important message and they are all important. And for people who have had loved ones that suffered from COVID or suffered from cancer or suffer from suicide and opioid addiction, they are all real deals. But every year since 1918, when statistics started to be kept in the United States and I know you have an international audience, but most countries follow the same statistical pattern. Ever since 1918, 105 years, when the numbers are run, no matter what is going on from the Spanish flu to COVID at its peak, heart disease is the number one killer of men and women in the United States. It is on the order of about 700,000 deaths a year. And that is about 100,000 more than all cancer combined. And it was twice as much as COVID deaths at its peak. COVID has gravely fallen down the list. Now in 2023, and we hope it never comes back to the way that it did hit us and all that. But we are talking about somebody dying about every 30 seconds of a heart-related disorder in the United States, every 30 seconds, a heart attack every 40 seconds, and a heart death of all kinds, heart disease, every 30 seconds. During this interview, maybe we will talk for half an hour. We are talking about dozens of people succumbing to heart disease. Some of them, and I just want to make this point sick older people, maybe even in hospice, with family around said goodbye, a general end to life, maybe at a young age, maybe at an advanced age, but the goodbye was said. What I do not think is spoken about, and that is why we have never had an Operation Warp Speed for heart disease is that thousand people a day in the United States. Multiply that around the world that die of what is called sudden cardiac death. 

It is cataclysmic, found dead on the floor in the bathroom, found in bed, found at a football stadium, and in a parking lot, in their car never said goodbye to the family, never anticipated the death. There is always severe underlying heart disease sometimes known, sometimes not known. That is the real tragedy when you find out you have advanced heart disease on the day you die. That is a thousand deaths a day in the United States. And I just keep imagining no chance to say goodbye to your loved one. That is what we have to attack with a massive screening program and a massive education program and a massive lifestyle program. And it is all about mitochondrial health. If you drop dead suddenly, you had very sick mitochondria that stop making the ATP energy source that you need. And there is always going to be a deep dive and maybe an autopsy to try and figure out why a thousand people a day. So I can not rest till we announce that to as many people as possible. And institute plans, and institute lifestyle, and institute intelligent supplements that support, you know, health, not illness and tragedy.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Absolutely. And I want to talk a little bit about females versus males. And I’m recalling I mean, it is been a long time since I went to college, and I’m thinking back and, you know, as I am, you know, doing this summit and talking to you, this is a couple of times we have talked now. I remembered I actually did my thesis on the self-care of people with heart failure and how poor their self-care is and even though somebody has these debilitating symptoms. Obviously, heart failure is different than the sudden death that you just explain. it is just another type of heart problem. Even though that is a very uncomfortable, symptomatic, awful thing to go through people still are terrible at solving it and taking care of themselves, even though they are in the minutia of feeling awful every single day. So, I mean, things have not changed much over, over the decades.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

You make me smile because my wife is RN BSN. My wife of many, many decades. Yeah, I used to read her papers on self-care when she was in nursing school at the University of Michigan. So probably the same basic and very important knowledge that was self-care nutrition, self-care sleep, self-care fitness, self-care environmental toxin exposure reduction, and self-care mitochondrial and blood vessel support with again intelligent high-quality supplementation. So all that nursing school training you did and has exposed to we are still talking about. And we are still bringing up the topic you brought up women. Women will develop serious heart disease early in life if they are smokers, if there is perhaps type one diabetes, breast cancer therapy, chemotherapy, and radiation can induce kinds of heart disease. And there are young women, premenopausal women. For most women, there really is an acceleration of risk around the time of menopause and moving forward. Women gain a few pounds, women’s cholesterol goes up, women have interrupted sleep and the hormone support in general, natural, well-balanced hormones are good for the lining of your blood vessels called your endothelium, are good for your mitochondria and your heart. So women start to develop heart disease by the end of the day, as many women die tragically of heart disease as men. So it is an equal opportunity that crosses every racial divide, every sexual orientation, every gender assignment heart disease is number one and so we have to really attack it and educate the public. Again, thousand a day dropping dead suddenly got to do better.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. And there are some things we can do to talk about self-care and talking about lifestyle. You know, there are some trends in heart health and things you can do to improve your heart health, like getting, you know, your numbers tested, knowing what your cholesterol is and your blood pressure and your calcium score, lifestyle, exercise, and good supplementation. So what would you add to that in terms of before we talk about supplements and the ingredients that should be in a supplement that will really help you? What would you say about the trends in heart health? Where are we going now?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

And the reason we have not dented and heart disease is we are missing four or five routine steps that anybody can do and they are pretty cost-effective actually, and not out-overpriced. So go see your doctor assuming you have health insurance, and get your annual physical and know your weight and your blood sugar and your blood pressure, and then do typical routine labs your doctor does. I would urge everybody. Step one, get a home, blood pressure cuff might cost of 50 to $90 on one of the big box stores but use a home blood pressure cuff the root cause of mitochondrial damage and the root cause of blood vessel damage is often a silent, elevated blood pressure that unless you are in the habit of checking it, you are going to miss the boat. So my patients know that I almost require them to have a home blood pressure cuff of one kind or another and leave it out on an end table and use it, for God’s sake. Number two, you brought up the biggest single deficit in American medicine for heart screening called a heart calcium C.T. Scan.

You go for a mammogram or thermogram, you go for a colonoscopy or cologuard. You have a rectal exam. You have a cervical exam for a woman. You screen for four or five cancers ten times more people than have heart disease. And just think for a minute when was the last time you saw your doctor at age 45, 50, 55 and they said, “We have a new program to screen you for your heart. You are going to spend 75 to $99 for a heart calcium CT scan at the local hospital. Nobody makes money. It is just a screen for the heart, just like your mammogram.” And you call and ask about it. If it comes back to zero, you are a low-risk person. Just keep it up and use that lifestyle. But we are going to put you over here in the lower-risk group. But if your arteries are aging, there is this long period of years where arteries get attacked by a variety of causes, lifestyle, and genetics, and it shows up as calcification. Everybody knows the term hardening of the arteries. And it is a real term because arteries get brick-like hard from calcium. They do not have calcium when you are 12 years old, but they have calcium when you are 48 and 67. And you can detect that with this quick little CT scan candidate, your kidneys can get an allergy to it. You do pay for it, except in the state of Texas. Thank you, Texans, for putting it into your insurance law that you get one free through the insurance program but you want to do that. You may have to really pin down your primary care doctor. I did not know that this was available. I do not want to be one of those thousand people a day. I will take the risk. Am I zero on my heart calcium score, which is a little party. Have a nice big arugula salad and celebrate or am I a calcium score of 972 and I got a problem? So simple. And do it again five to seven years later. Less radiation than a mammogram, no claustrophobia, no needle, and then you need about three or four blood tests that your primary care doctor is not in the habit of drawing. Inflammation, what is my high-sensitivity C-reactive protein? A genetic cholesterol called lightbulb protein little every lab does inexpensively. I like to throw in a blood test called homocysteine deals with a metabolic problem you know about called methylation. So you do those few things and maybe your insurance paid part, maybe you paid $300 for the lab tests and the CT scan. You have just opened your eyes to the reality that you do or do not have heart disease. If we applied that to everybody, we would start to make a dent. Obviously, the people with heart disease are going to need to learn about nutrition and go to the gym and learn how to sleep, and get help losing weight and avoiding toxicity and then adding in heart-friendly supplement support based on science, based on high-quality.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

My mind is blown right now and this is why. 25 years ago, I started my first job as a nurse practitioner and there were people coming to me. I worked in a preventive medicine clinic where we screened for cancer and heart disease, and we used the framing of the Framingham Study of heart disease to base our cholesterol recommendations and hypertension recommendations. I mean, we gave everybody a heart score and people would come into the clinic and say, I want to do a calcium test of my arteries. And I can remember at the time the chief of staff said it is bogus, it is a waste of time and money. We do not validate this. We are not looking at it. And people will come in and say, I would like a homocysteine level. We would say, no, you can not have that. That was 25 years ago when people were, you know, this was already on the scene. And now here we fast forward to today. And it is still not a routine part of prevention. 

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Right? It is very distressing. And there is a wonderful documentary, after you watch every segment of this summit, you might watch a documentary on YouTube called The Widowmaker movie. How did this hard CT scan get developed? What is the struggle been to introduce it into routine medical practice? What is the economic situation when nobody makes money? So nobody really is pushing it for a capitalistic reason which sometimes brings good care to people when there is a little capitalistic system in it. The hospital that owns the CT scanner just breaks even. The cardiologist and the family doctor do not see any revenue, so it is underutilized. Oh, my God. And there is nothing better and there will not be anything better for a long time because it is in its prime and it is backed by thousands of studies and even the American Heart Association others will say there are real flaws to the Framingham Study. A Framingham calculator that if your doctor tells you, you are a low-risk, or high-risk based on a couple of numbers in a scoring system, and then you go get this CT scan. Two-thirds of people bounce up and down because now we really have solid data so do not wait. You do not want calcified arteries. You want to do something to slow manage and delay and maybe even prevent the hardening of the arteries in the 1600s. A famous English physician, Thomas Seidman, said, “You are as old as your arteries.” And most pathologists would agree at autopsy. You know, people that biologically are old and of course are dead at autopsy, very often their arteries are just full of calcium. It is never a healthy process. You want to delay it, you want to be aware of it, you want to measure it, you want to retest it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So like I said, this is my pub, this is my public service announcement for all the years of me shaming people for wanting to come to me and saying, I want this seat, and me saying, sorry, we do not do that. And you are crazy because we do not accept that in Western medicine. So thank goodness we have people like you sharing and teaching the importance of this. Okay, so should we get into talking about a supplement that can really support it? So I want to shift gears here and talk about supplements again because I didn’t believe in supplements for the first part of my career. And now I see the great benefit from them. And we are going to talk about Xtend-Life CX8, which is a heart supplement and we are going to break it down, talk about the ingredients and what you should look for in terms of buying supplements for your heart. Sounds good?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Sounds great.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, so let us talk about the ingredients. So the first ingredient that I want you to shed light on is vitamin E, tocotrienols and there is this particular one, Delta Gold. Not all vitamin E is created equally. So can you talk to us about the difference and why we would want Delta Gold over tocopherols?  So the difference between tocotrienols and tocopherols? Am I really even saying it right?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

You are saying it perfectly. Okay. As a little personal introduction, I have been a university student of supplements for more than a decade. It is unusual to find a high-quality supplement that has one ingredient backed by science, backed by research, backed by clinical use. It is certainly even more unusual to find one that combines multiple, high, high, high-quality components. And when I found this company there in New Zealand, Christchurch, New Zealand, I reached out to them because I was so impressed at what they were doing and I still am impressed they are creating great stuff. So Vitamin E is a very powerful antioxidant. It has carried, everybody’s heard of LDL cholesterol, that is your cholesterol being carried through your blood by a special dump truck. Turns out Vitamin E is carried on the same particles and it is an antioxidant. It actually keeps LDL cholesterol less injurious, less damaging, and less inflammatory. So if you have a good dose of vitamin E, you are going to have less dangerous cholesterol at whatever level your blood cholesterol level is. You do not want what is called oxidized damaged LDL. You want its natural form of LDL. And tocotrienols are a family of four vitamin E components. There are four or others tocopherol or tocopherols people say both ways. So Delta Gold happens to be a version of vitamin D from a plant in the Amazon called the Annatto Plant. It is a super powerful antioxidant, right from nature. It is a beautiful plant, with bright red berries, looks a little maybe like a pomegranate. And this is the highest quality version of vitamin E and it is not the one you find in most multivitamins, certainly online or at a big box store. This is the supercharged one you want for your mitochondria and your heart.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. I always say to people, do not buy your supplements at Costco because you are not going to get the high quality. Is there? Is there a danger to taking low-quality vitamin E? Will it cause problems?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Yeah, there are several pieces of data that vitamin E in the typical form that is in a box store multivitamin and alpha-tocopherol may actually have a danger to it. And that is why you hear vitamins are not helpful. Vitamins are expensive urine because big studies with poor quality vitamin E showed no benefit, even showed harm. Could not be more the opposite for Delta gold tocotrienols and Xtend-Life CX8. A great, great choice on their part.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, good. I know people are taking notes rapidly as we talk, so make sure that you, you know, go back and listen to this again because we are going to rapid-fire through a few more of these ingredients here. The next one is Rutin from Japanese Sapporo, bud and this is an antioxidant and a bioflavonoid it is really good at helping maintain blood vessel health and function. So why is this important in a supplement? Why do we love it?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Their Rutin is like a hidden gem that anybody can go read about and you read all kinds of great stuff about and supporting healthy blood vessels, particularly supporting healthy veins, people have, you know, varicose veins and other inflammatory vein disorders. Rutin is related to one that people perhaps have heard of called Quercetin. But Rutin has this insane antioxidant score powerful, powerful. And when we talk about managing your mitochondria, avoiding damage to your mitochondria. Your mitochondria and your heart are dealing with oxygen all the time and they can always be damaged by oxygen. It is a good thing, but it has a downside. And Rutin is one of those powerful natural toxins that may be the most powerful ever measured that comes from this lovely little plant. Again. And it is just good to support healthy arteries, and healthy mitochondria, working in that oxygenated environment and again, healthy veins. A great one to add in.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, this is so good. I love how you break this down. So simply for people to understand it is a no-brainer when you talk about it. So the next thing is NattoZyme Proteas, which is an alternative to Nattokinase. Now I know that you have used Nattokinase in your practice. What makes this enzyme so good?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Yeah, I get questions in my practice occasionally. I can not take aspirin. I’m allergic to aspirin and I need a blood thinner. I like natural blood thinners and a compound called Nattokinase comes up, which is an enzyme that breaks down clots. It has quite a bit of both animal and human research. It is derived from soy and soybeans. And occasionally people ask me, I’m allergic to so and other questions like that. NattoZyme are related, but they are not from soy, they are from other plants. So they are not derived from soybean. They are a family of enzymes that have a role in the balance between good, thin blood and thick clotted blood. You know, heart attacks, strokes, leg clots, all are a berry-like accumulation of a flexible little clock that can suddenly shut an artery, shut a vein, and causes a problem. NattoZyme supports healthy, thinner blood, not to the point of serious clinical bleeding, not like some of the pharmacology drugs that have to be monitored so carefully. Anybody could consider adding NattoZyme. Really a unique, high-quality product.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, excellent. It sounds like our viewers should definitely be adding this if they are trying to prevent major heart events, which we just established as the number one cause of death. So no brainer here. Tell me about why we want to have vitamin D in a supplement. So in my background, I worked in a metabolic bone disease clinic for, you know, a decade and a half. At one point in my career, I know how important vitamin D is to bone health. I know how important it is to immune function. But apparently, it is also a stimulator of nitric oxide, which is a signaling molecule in the regulation of blood flow and really important. So why is vitamin D is in here and why is it important?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Yeah, you know, number one, as you know, if you check blood work, it is extremely common to be deficient in vitamin D. I mean, more than 50% of people, it is the sunshine vitamin. You can get it from eating mushrooms. But when you get right down to it, most of us are not doing landscaping with our shirt off enough months, a year to actually, you know, get sufficient vitamin D to get in a good range. During the whole pandemic, we had many studies about your immune system being more functional and protective with adequate vitamin D blood levels. And that is true, like you said of the heart. Certainly a relationship between a good amount of vitamin D and a more normal blood pressure, which is crucial. And there are linings on all the arteries called endothelial cells, and they also respond with better function, making more of this miracle molecule that won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1998. Nitric oxide, many brands of vitamin D come from sheep’s wool, actually, and some people have allergies that some people have ethical problems with that this vitamin D is sourced from like in a plant and it doesn’t have those drawbacks. So it is a real high-quality vitamin D, it is a good amount, well chosen.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I started to laugh when you said Landscape it. Not all of us can be a landscaper. My husband is a landscape contractor and I have tested his vitamin D levels. He is very good because he is out in the sun all the time. Our daughter, on the other hand, we just tested her. We live in Southern California. Her vitamin D level was 20. She is not out there in the sun enough. He hovers in the fifties to sixties, naturally. And I have tested thousands of people for vitamin D and 50% of Southern Californians are also deficient. It is not just areas of the country where there is less sun right here where we have 300 days of sun per year. This is very important for our audience to make sure they are taking vitamin D.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Right? Yeah.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. A couple more ingredients in this summer in the supplement. Now, you and I feel this supplement is so important that we actually even have a link for it. On this page where you are watching this video, there is a clickable link where our viewers can go and check this out and see what it is because it is that important to help support heart health. Now, there is an ingredient in this called cardio omega or maybe it is cardio omega. Does it matter how it is pronounced?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

We will go with it either way. It is okay. So unique to well.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And I’m so stunned like we all think about omega threes being important for heart health, but this is an Omega seven, so why is that relevant?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Well, there is a unique plant called the Sea Buckthorn. And even with all my studies of supplements over the years, that has been a relatively, you know, hidden gem to me. It is a beautiful yellow-gold berry. This happens to be a virgin that grows in the area of Tibet, a very pure, a very pristine, uncontaminated area. And there are different components. In fact, in six-eight, two of the eight additions are from sea buckthorn. One is we will go with cardio omega seven, but actual clinical studies, human studies. I love when there is that show that blood sugar control, cholesterol control, inflammation, and all these measures will impact the healthier mitochondria, the health of the lining of your arteries, having a better resistance to that hardening of the arteries and calcification can come out of Omega 7. And then there is actually I will just jump into the other one also from Sea Buckthorn, but totally different. It is called Science Fox. It is a trademark version of Sea Buckthorn Extract. And there is again actually human data that it is anthrax. And in a powerful degree, again, people are hearing the same theme over and over that oxygen is good for you, but oxygen can damage your cholesterol and your blood vessels, and your mitochondria. We need antioxidants from our diet, but here we are getting them from plants through a supplement, CSA and ACIM, and Fox and other Sea buckthorn extract. This really great supplement has data for stimulating stem cells that help repair your blood vessels. The endothelium and boy people go to Panama and people go to Guadalajara to get stem cell therapy. Turns out there are plants, as are well-known plants that stimulate stem cells. And this science from Sea Buckthorn is one of them with a really, really solid human study very, very exciting.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Sounds like it would be good for even other areas of the body, not just I mean, this stuff isn’t just going to the heart. If it is stimulating stem cells, that is a benefit to your whole body.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Absolutely. The study was looking at blood vessel lining cells, endothelium, which is a home run for a cardiology practice and for everybody else that has a heart. Whether you are thinking about it or not. But you are probably right on that. You are getting other benefits, too. Yeah.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. One more important ingredient that I would love for you to highlight is this black currant extract. So can you tell us about polyphenols and why this is important from a heart health perspective and why a cardiologist would find this relevant to be in a supplement?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Yeah, and people know what a currant is. We usually think of red currant. I know some of my patients tell me they are taking blackcurrant for eye health because they need strong antioxidant support. But this is a well-studied registered trademark brand of blackcurrant extract that is rich in those polyphenols. You think about cocoa powder and green tea, and sometimes we think about red wine, but we are looking at, again, an antioxidant function, maintaining mitochondria, a health function, preventing damage, and letting all that ATP develop in your mitochondria. So it is anti-inflammatory and it is so easy to measure. I mentioned, you know, half an hour ago about a blood test called high sensitivity C-reactive protein. You can measure your blood pressure. Blood vessels are inflamed and this extract from blackcurrant in six-eight can lower inflammation, and help prevent the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. And the nicest thing is it comes right from New Zealand, pure, pristine, lovely green mountains and valleys. So a little better part of the world than some of the places supplements are made, you know, in the areas that are polluted and also very, very cool, one that is particularly extracted to be without the high sugar content. You do not have to worry about my sugar going up by an extract with black currant. It is not the case with this one. It is the case with some others.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, so New Zealand is on my bucket list of places to visit. Just by the way, my sister went there and she said the wild horses were what she was just stunned by was the wild horses roaming around. Amazing. So I want to go.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

In there, rather, and it certainly would be a beautiful place to visit. I absolutely want to go. But the sheep I do not want to shave them. I just want to know what about them.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You want to plant a version of de vitamin D, God.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Forbid, do sheep yoga or something?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or goat yoga. Goat yoga. Sheep yoga. Exactly. Okay. So we have covered the most important ingredients in this supplement, the ones that are so meaningful to heart health. This company, Xtend-Life, has several other supplements. And what we did not cover here because it is not in this particular supplement. But just if you could say some words about it, CoQ10 is something that is also important to heart health. They do have another product for CoQ10. If you could just say a few words about that because I know everybody’s probably wondering how come they did not talk about CoQ10 We know how important this is to heart.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Probably in the world of cardiology, CoQ10 has more research and clinical support for helping your mitochondria maintain a healthy heart, healthy arteries, healthy blood pressure, and maybe actually preserving your optimal lifespan. A very nice study in Sweden suggests that is the case. In a recent enormous study of 800,000 people in supplements, there was about a 35% drop in heart death in people taking CoQ10 compared to people not taking CoQ10 made headlines all over the place. So I’m very bullish. And what Xtend-Life has uniquely they have an omega three combined with CoQ10 for people that do fish-based omega three, it is a super high-quality new product and really great mitochondrial support. And they just came out unique in the world, a combination of Coenzyme Q10 called Ubiquinol with a separate agent from the Amazon called GG PURE but the two together are called extend qunol. And I just say, if you are taking a cholesterol medicine called a statin like Lipitor or Crestor, you want to read about extend qunol from this wonderful company, extend the life, and see how it is supporting and protects and defends your body from the potential disadvantages for being on a statin. Get the benefits, and avoid the disadvantages. Then you got a home run. And that is what we have been looking for for the 30-plus years that statin cholesterol medication has been on the table.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So what I’m hearing is that you can use these supplements to Xtend-Life in addition to your prescriptions that you are taking to lower your cholesterol, support blood pressure, you know, reduce your risk for heart attack and sudden cardiac death. You can take these alongside safe to take even for people who are on blood thinners. I mean, that is always the big question I get is I’m on blood thinners. Is it safe for me to take this?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Yes. Safe, safe, safe. I would rate CoQ10, GG pure, omega three as science-backed and extremely safe.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Excellent. Thank you so much.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

The vision itself and a green drink called superfood greens. They make those mitochondria with a little spirulina and other green powders. Kiwi from New Zealand I love. Yeah.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Thank you so much for explaining this. This has been so eye-opening and reassuring, I think for our audience who really wants to make sure that they are taking supplements that will give them the most support. Excuse me. So click the links on this page where you can find the products you can find Xtend-Life and you can find sorry, you XtendCX8 and Extend Qunol from the company Xtend-Life. And can you also tell us, Dr. Kahn, where our audience can find you?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Okay. I am a practicing preventive cardiologist in suburban Detroit, Michigan, and the easiest website would be Dr. Joel Kahn drjoelkahn.com Links to the clinic links to podcasts, links to books, links to articles. I’m a pretty active cardiologist.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, you are. And very active on this summit too. So thank you so much for being here a couple of times to share your wisdom with our audience. And until next time, everyone takes good care. Bye, now.