Full Transcript Introduction and episode overview 0:00 I've had three cardiologists, not one of them recommended I eat fruit, vegetables, antioxidants, vitamin C, and none of the ordered the tests that would 0:12 have given them very valuable information. 0:15 Hi and welcome to The Balancing Point. 0:18 I'm Dr. 0:18 John Neters and I am here to make traditional Chinese medicine. 0:23 functional medicine and integrative health simple, practical and fun so you can restore balance, boost vitality and enjoy a healthier life every single day. 0:37 This is Dr. 0:38 John. 0:38 I want to thank you for joining me here at The Balancing Point. 0:42 Today, I think I've got something that's going to totally blow you away. 0:47 That's right. 0:49 You pay $3 for a blood test. 0:51 Of course, if your doctor orders it and you have insurance, there's no charge. 0:55 But this single test might be the most important test to save your life. 1:01 And I guarantee for most of you, your Dr has never ordered it. 1:05 It's stunning. 1:07 The title of our program today is, atherosclerosis is a non-healing wound. 1:14 That's kind of a controversial title. 1:16 This is from an article written by Thomas Levy and Ron Huntinghake. 1:21 I'm very familiar with Leavy. 1:22 He writes some great stuff. 1:24 Not so much with Dr. 1:25 Ron. 1:27 So, in this, by the end of the presentation, you'll be able to A, or one, describe the author's model of atherosclerosis. 1:36 Athero-scleroses. 1:38 Athoro means porridge-like or gruel. 1:42 Sclerose means hardened, thickened. 1:45 So this is the plaque, which looks like porridge, that has hardened on the inside of your artery. 1:54 And so atherosclerosis, we're going to explain the proposed role of chronic pathogen colonization, discuss the relationship between inflammation and vitamin C,
Conventional view of atherosclerosis 2:06 understand why the authors compare athrosclerosist to a non-healing wound. 2:11 It's not just these authors. 2:12 There are several other people that I really think highly that also see that point of view. 2:17 We're gonna review the therapeutic implications proposed by the author. 2:22 and the important takeaway so that you can be better prepared and know how to prevent cardiovascular disease to a much greater extent than you would have 2:34 before this presentation. 2:35 So conventional view of atherosclerosis. 2:39 Traditional risk factors include the ones you're all familiar with, hypertension or high blood pressure, which creates a constant pounding on the arteries 2:49 and eventually you get damage. 2:50 diabetes, the high blood sugars make it so your circulation isn't as effective. 2:56 You can't deliver oxygen and nutrients, and you can pull out waste factors. 3:00 Smoking, which totally damages your blood vessels. 3:03 I mean, 15 seconds of smoking causes significant problems with your cardiovascular system. 3:09 It's that fast. 3:10 Dyslipidemia. 3:12 Lipids, of course, are your flood fats. 3:14 Dis means they're out of whack, so dyslpidemia. 3:19 And that's the big one that doctors go after because there's a statin drug that they think will work, and it does work sometimes for some people. 3:28 Obesity and a sedentary lifestyle, we all know that we've all seen the research showing that if we just move we live longer. 3:37 We have much less likelihood of cardiovascular disease, less likely of hypertension, diabetes, et cetera. 3:44 So the current understanding is that chronic inflammation drives plaque formation and plaque rupture can lead to heart attack and stroke. 3:52 So the plaque breaks off in say a fairly large vessel and it moves through your cardiovascular system until it gets to a tributary that is too small to 4:06 let it pass. 4:07 Then it blocks the blood flow and you have a stroke So, the author's central thesis is that atherosclerosis is a non-healing wound. 4:18 So according to Levi and his buddy Ron, chronic pathogen colonization, CPC, pathogens meaning bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc. 4:32 That's what initiates the initial arterial injury. 4:36 Persistent inflammation prevents healing. 4:39 Vitamin C depletion impairs tissue repair. 4:43 Now we've known that since The English Navy started carrying limes on their ships to keep the sailors from getting scurvy. 4:53 That's one of the reasons, by the way, that the English ruled the seas. 4:57 Everybody else's crews would die after a few months from scurry, and the getting their vitamin C in the form of lemons, they didn't die as much. 5:09 So they were able to have a full crew to fight the skeleton crews from other countries. 5:14 Plaque formation represents a chronic wound healing response.
Atherosclerosis as a non-healing wound 5:20 Those are central to this theory. 5:23 Evidence for pathogen in plaques? 5:26 Lots of studies, but the author cited a particular study where they found bacterial DNA in atherosclerotic plaques. 5:35 Now, generally, that's not looked for, But they did it as a study and they pulled it out. 5:40 This is out of living people. 5:41 They had a way to get the plaque out and examine them. 5:45 They found multiple bacterial species, but oral pathogens were very, very commonly identified, almost every sample. 5:54 They also found fungal DNA in many of the specimens. 5:58 Any of those things can cause damage to the arterial walls. 6:03 Viruses also cause damaged to arteria walls, which are very delicate, by the way. 6:09 So, the arteries are very, very muscular and there's a one layer thick skin layer basically, endothelium, that can very easily be damaged and penetrated. 6:23 So the key point is that pathogens may contribute to chronic arterial inflammation. 6:29 Chronic Pathogen Colonization, CPC. 6:32 So you get chronic infection. 6:34 Again, it can be bacterial, fungal, viral, and a few other things. 6:38 Leads to oxidative stress. 6:39 It leads to vitamin C depletion. 6:42 And vitamin c depletion happens very, very easily. 6:46 Pretty much most of the U.S. 6:48 culture is vitamin-C deficient. 6:51 That leads inflammation. 6:53 that leads to an immune response, which leads the plaque formation. 6:58 So the features of chronic pathogen colonization, there's a continuous, not occasional, a continues release of toxins, persistent oxidative stress, 7:10 and ongoing arterial injury. 7:13 Vitamin C in arterio health, the authors say vitamin C is essential for one, antioxidant protection, to collagen synthesis and so scurvy is an inability 7:28 for proper collagen to form. 7:30 So one of the first signs of scurry is the teeth get loose and fall out because the connective tissue isn't holding them. 7:36 And then over time, the connected tissue and the blood vessels degrades and they will bleed out from scourvy. 7:44 Extracellular matrix integrity. 7:47 Okay, that's a lot of words which mean that you've got more integrity, less leakage in the vessels. 7:54 Tissue repair. 7:55 So they propose, Levy and Cunninghag, the inflammation reflects localized vitamin C deficiency. 8:03 Basically localized scurvy. 8:06 Local vitamin c depletion occurs at the infected arterial sites. 8:11 So the immune response and monocytes. 8:15 Monocites are a type of white blood cell. 8:19 They migrate to inflamed tissue. 8:21 So when you see a blood test, a complete blood count, or CBC, you'll see section that says WBC which are white-blood-cell count and you get a total count. 8:31 Then you will see differential and there they will break down the many, many different types of a white, blood cells and each of them has a different function. 8:41 Neutrophils are first responders. 8:43 They are really important, particularly for bacterial infection. 8:46 Lymphocytes do what they do. 8:51 Long-term viral problems. 8:53 So we can see these different cells. 8:55 And monocytes contain very high concentrations of vitamin C if if they're healthy. 9:03 So the monocytes then turn into macrophages. 9:07 And macrophage, macro means large, phage means eat or eater. 9:13 This is a big eater cell. 9:15 These are big cells and what they do is they move through the body wherever their location is and they engulf, they actually eat the offending bacteria 9:26 or fungi. 9:27 And after they get enough of them and the amount that they can ingest depends on the size of the pathogen they're digesting, 9:36 and then they die. 9:37 They go to the liver, they got broken down, then the whole thing starts over again. 9:41 Now, foam cells emerge during plaque formation.
Vitamin C, inflammation, and arterial repair 9:46 Macrophages that have developed from monocytes, when they're getting up into the placking stage, they, under a microscope, 9:54 look like foam. 9:56 So, the progression, inflammation, monocyte recruitment, foamy cells, fatty streaks or atheromas that can be seen on the arteries. 10:10 So extra cellular matrix breakdown. 10:14 When vitamin C is depleted, collagen synthesis decreases. 10:19 So if y'all are out there getting really expensive collagen products, if you don't have enough vitamin c, you may be wasting a lot of your money because 10:29 you need the vitamin see with the collagen. 10:31 when I have a patient who comes in, say with bruising on their arms, they bruise very easily. 10:36 The two things, or the three things that I'm going to be sure to give them are collagen, vitamin C, and copper. 10:44 Copper's involved in that process also. 10:46 And there are a few other things, but those are the big three that would give. 10:51 When it's depleted, vitamin C, the basement membrane integrity weakens. 10:55 And the base membrane is, you know, we could spend a week talking about it, but it is basically what holds everything together. 11:02 It's the external structure. 11:04 Then the endothelial gaps widen. 11:07 The endoethelium is the one cell thick lining of the arteries. 11:14 a very, very important one cell, let me tell you. 11:17 Then lipids, which are blood fats, and calcium can enter the vessel wall because there are gaps. 11:24 You see, there're gaps between the endothelial cells. 11:27 And so the blood, fats and the calcium, can just walk right in. 11:31 So then the foam cells accumulate. 11:34 One of the things that will happen is that then you get calcium to enclose the phone cells, because, you know, they're dangerous. 11:41 And so that's a wonderful mechanism. 11:43 The problem is, well, the good thing is if it happens occasionally, not too big a deal. 11:49 If it happened a lot, then you get calcified arteries, and that would show up, say, on a coronary calcium score. 11:56 to see how much calcium is in the inside, it will collect between the muscle wall and the endothelium. 12:04 And it'll make the arteries become more and more stiff. 12:08 When they're very stiff, they don't function well and you start to have a whole cascade of problems. 12:16 Result, development of early atherosclerotic lesions. 12:22 Sores, plaque formation as failed healing. 12:25 Now this is really kind of the core of Levy and Huntinghake's ideas. 12:31 Plaque growth is a compensatory repair mechanism. 12:35 That's actually been known for a while. 12:37 So that happens because strong collagen can't be rebuilt without adequate vitamin C. 12:43 Because it can't be rebuilt, the body tries to protect itself by thickening the vessel wall. 12:49 Not a good plan. 12:50 I mean, it's okay temporarily, but long term it will kill you. 12:54 Then the plaques reinforce the weakened tissue. 12:57 The key concept, this is a quote from them, The plaque grows where supportive connective tissue cannot grow. 13:07 why atherosclerosis is a non-healing wound. 13:11 And so these are some of the characteristics that athrosclerosus shares with chronic wounds. 13:17 You get persistent inflammation. 13:23 You get oxidative stress. 13:25 You got impaired collagen production. 13:27 you get vitamin C depletion because it can't keep up with all of this damage. 13:31 Vitamin C, by the way, is the primary water soluble antioxidant. 13:38 So it's critical. 13:40 And so, again, what's shared with chronic wounds is continuous repair attempts. 13:46 The body keeps trying. 13:49 the role of oral infections. 13:50 This is really critical What they found in a couple of studies are that most of the bacterial pathogens present in the atherosclerotic plaques were from 14:05 tooth infections, periodontal disease, dental abscesses, infected root canals, tonsillar infections and sometimes even sinus infections. 14:15 And period ontal diseases, if your gums are bleeding when you brush or floss, Well, the blood's coming out, but that means that the bacteria and fungi 14:27 can get in and it gets into your cardiovascular system. 14:30 The oral pathogens enter circulation and they colonize the arterial wall. 14:35 Sounds kind of gross, that's what happens. 14:37 You've been colonized. 14:40 So a proposed therapeutic approach. 14:43 One, identify and eliminate the chronic oral infections.
Oral infections and plaque formation 14:48 Now I use something called periopul, which is a derivative, a variation of oil pulling, Which has been done in Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years. 14:58 It's better than just the coconut oil. 15:00 it has several things that have been added that make it even more effective. 15:04 And so it's antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral. 15:09 That's one. 15:10 And that's the most important. 15:11 You've got to eliminate the chronic infections. 15:14 Then optimize the vitamin C status. 15:19 One of my heroes, Linus Pauling, who won two Nobel Prizes, he's a pretty sharp guy, or was a very sharp guys, and he started with three grams a day of 15:28 vitamin C and went up until he was taking 18 grams per day. 15:31 Now, He was ridiculed by other doctors, but he got even. 15:36 He outlived all of his detractors, lived through a ripe old age. 15:40 I don't recommend People go to 18 grams, certainly. 15:45 You'd get diarrhea, for sure. 15:47 But I would start with two to three grams. 15:49 And vitamin C, the half-life, is very short, so you need to put it in your body several times a day. 15:55 So you could split it into three doses. 15:57 What I prefer to that, actually, we now live in the age of the water bottle. 16:02 Just put three grand in you waterbottle and sip it throughout the day, you're going to get that constant reinforcement of it. 16:09 Then you have to improve antioxidant balance. 16:12 Now you can eat some great antioxidate rich fruits, vegetables, eat every color you could come up with. 16:19 The only problem with that is when UC Davis gets fruits and vegetables out of a lot of supermarkets, they test them. 16:29 So the tables for what was in or what should be in a particular fruit or vegetable in terms of vitamin mineral status were done in the 30s and 40s. 16:39 I'll guarantee that the stuff we have now has nowhere near those levels. 16:44 In fact, they found oranges that had zero vitamin C. 16:48 They found tomatoes, which are supposed to have a lot of vitamin c. 16:53 So you want to make sure you're eating organic from trusted growers and still probably adding a little extra antioxidant balance as a supplement. 17:03 Correct hormone deficiencies. 17:05 Now, we're not going to go into a lot of detail on that today, but it's a very important thing. 17:09 Without proper hormonal health, healing doesn't happen well. 17:13 We know estrogen causes tissue growth, and each of the hormones is involved in different ways. 17:20 Reduce oxidative stress. 17:23 Goal, restore normal healing within arterial tissue. 17:27 That is a laudable objective. 17:30 restore normal healing, actually you want to restore healing everywhere, but here we're talking about within the arterial tissue. 17:38 So, clinical implications and controversies, kind of a critique. 17:42 Potential strengths, it really highlights the importance of inflammation. 17:47 There really can be no doubt that inflammation is causative. 17:50 There's tons of research out there. 17:52 Now, watch my podcast, Predicting Female Heart Attacks, 30 years in advance, and I go into more detail. 17:59 They emphasize oral health. 18:01 Good all around. 18:03 It integrates wound healing biology. 18:09 Many of the claims remain controversial. 18:13 They're not controversial to me, by the way. 18:16 Not widely accepted in mainstream cardiology. 18:19 Well, I've had three cardiologists, not one of them recommended I eat fruit, vegetables, antioxidants, vitamin C, and none of them ordered the tests that
Therapeutic approach and nutritional support 18:32 would have given them very valuable information. 18:35 So the fact that they don't widely accept it really doesn't affect me at all. 18:40 Additional research is needed to establish causation. 18:43 That's accurate. 18:44 The studies that were cited by the two doctors were very small, you know, And so the larger, the more robust the study, The more we can trust it. 18:55 The problem is there's no money in this. 18:58 And large scale studies are very expensive and somebody has to fund them. 19:04 Certainly the pharmaceutical industry is not going to find this research because then you don't need the drugs. 19:11 So key takeaways. 19:14 Atherosclerosis involves chronic inflammation. 19:18 Levine-Hunninghake proposed chronic pathogen colonization as the primary cause. 19:24 Vitamin C depletion is viewed as a central mechanism of healing. 19:29 Plaque formation is interpreted as a wound healing response. 19:35 Addressing infection, oxidative distress, and nutritional status, it says may but it actually will improve vascular health. 19:45 Final thought, according to the authors, atherosclerosis is best understood not simply as lipid or fat accumulation, cholesterol accumulation but as chronic 19:56 wound that never fully heals. 19:59 Makes a lot more sense. 20:01 So some other reading you might want to check out. 20:05 The Clot Thickens. 20:06 I love that title by Dr. 20:08 Malcolm Kendrick. 20:09 And he proposes much the same thing, that it is a non-healing wound that causes the clots to build and thicken. 20:17 He's got some great studies in there. 20:19 Cosmic Heart by Tom Cowan. 20:21 Remember when I read that, it kind of blew my mind. 20:23 You know, I've been taught for as long as I have been studying biology through my master's degree program and my doctoral program. 20:31 that the heart was the pump that pumped your blood. 20:34 Okay, it's certainly important, that's for sure. 20:37 But Cowan said, go ask a hydraulics engineer if a pump the size of your fist could pump a semi-viscous fluid to 60 to 75,000 miles of blood vessels. 20:51 The engineer would just laugh at you. 20:53 Of course it couldn't do it. 20:54 So what Cowan points out is that the arteries are doing the heavy lifting. 21:00 Now the heart has to be running. 21:01 It's got to pumping things out there. 21:04 But he goes into great detail, Tom does, about how we can tell the importance of the artery for blood flow. 21:13 Next book is Vitamin C in the Common Cold. 21:15 That's been around forever, 50s I believe, by Linus Pauling where he goes into vitamin C and how it limits inflammation. 21:24 Aging and Blood Stasis by Jan Deschene, one of my personal heroes, where points out that it's blood stasis. 21:31 It's the inability of the blood to move properly that causes aging and death. 21:37 Then vitamin K2 and the calcium paradox completely changed my practice. 21:44 I thought I knew something about calcium, about vitamin k2. 21:48 And so when I read, I'll highlight with different colored sticky notes. 21:53 Yellow means it's something I may want to go look at again later. 21:56 Green, it is something that I want talk about on a talk like this.
Controversies, key takeaways, and further reading 22:00 Red means I better do it myself right away. 22:02 and I have probably 40 markers in that book. 22:07 It made me realize how little I knew about vitamin K2. 22:10 And then we have Drop Acid by David Perlmutter. 22:14 Now, this could be one of the most important books that anybody will ever read. 22:22 I'll go into why in a couple of minutes. 22:23 Then there's the podcast Predicting Female Heart Attacks 30 Years in Advance by John Needers. 22:31 These are lab tests that are very critical, but they're not often ordered. 22:36 They're very inexpensive. 22:37 It's shockingly inexpensive, so lipoprotein A is a subtype of low-density lipo protein. 22:46 So when you see your blood test, you'll see HDL, LDL which is low density, VLDL is very low intensity, and triglycerides. 22:55 But really you can open any of those, particularly HDl and LDl, And you'll find I had a report that I would get called a vertical autoprofile, 23:07 which instead of four elements had 20 elements. 23:10 So the subtype of low-density lipoprotein that is very sticky and is by far the most dangerous lipo protein is LipoProteine A. 23:20 But it's not often tested for because statins don't work on this lipobrotoin. 23:26 Well, who cares? 23:27 Why would we test for it when we don' know how to treat it? 23:31 I know how to treat it, okay? 23:33 There have been many articles showing how treat this with supplements and food, there is no drug though. 23:41 Cardiac C-reactive protein, so this is high sensitivity C reactive protein and it detects inflammation in the cardiovascular system, 23:50 mostly your arteries and your heart. 23:52 Now, there's another C-reactive protein, which is quantitative, and that measures inflammation through your entire system, 23:59 but you want cardiac so that you're measuring inflammation in the heart and the arteries. 24:05 Then, uric acid. 24:06 This is the $3 test I mentioned to you, doctors think about it for gout and kidney stones, But this is a major driver of cardiovascular disease, 24:17 diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's disease and many, many more pathologies. 24:23 And so it actually causes 16% of all cause mortality. 24:29 That means you could die of anything, but uric acid is the underlying cause for 16 percent of deaths in the United States. 24:39 It's responsible for 39% percent all cardiovascular disease, and doctors don't order it. 24:47 It's a $3 test. 24:49 And when you see that it runs 39% of cardiovascular disease and 16% all-cause mortality, it's no-brainer. 24:57 Anybody that comes to my office is going to be tested for these. 25:02 You know, there are lots of other tests to do too. 25:03 I mean, you want to get a complete blood count and a metabolic panel and if you have blood sugar problems, hemoglobin A1C and those all get tested for, 25:11 but these almost never get test for by major health organizations. 25:19 Anyway, here are the references. 25:20 So I wanna thank you, thank, you thank for tuning in for our talk today, which, the title's atherosclerosis, but to me, it's how to prevent dying with 25:32 a $3 test, okay? 25:34 Thank you. 25:35 Be happy, be healthy. 25:37 Thank for joining me on The Balancing Point. 25:39 If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow the show, share it with the friend and leave a review. 25:48 Feeling out of balance? 25:49 Most approaches just manage symptoms. 25:53 Here we get to the root. 25:55 So real healing, real clarity and balance can begin. 26:00 Visit alamedaacupuncture.com. 26:03 That's alamedaacupuncture dot com to learn more, explore our supplements or book a call. 26:10 We'd love to hear from you.
Comments