Discover Advanced Nutrition Principles To Clear Arterial Plaque

Summit Welcome and Guest Introduction 0:00

All right, everyone, welcome back to another fantastic guest and interview inside of our summit called the Heart Attack and Stroke Prevention and Recovery Summit, where our goal here is to really empower people not only to prevent that first heart attack or stroke, but also if you've already suffered or someone who you love has suffered to recover from one of those events. And I'm telling you, it's not going to be from conventional medicine. Been there, done that for for many years. It's going to be in a holistic space.

And that's why I'm really proud to introduce my next guest to you. Many of you already know Doctor David Jaggers. You know his website, Doctor jokers.com. He's got well over a million people come to the website on a monthly basis. He produces so much fantastic information, interviews, summits. He recently hosted a fasting, summit as well with yours truly as one of the speakers, but also many other luminaries in the space, but none bigger than Doctor Joker's. His books are just phenomenal. The Quito metabolic breakthrough, the fasting transformation.

Just wonderful stuff. And they're also beautiful books. You know, Dave and I like to think of your books as almost kind of like coffee table books. They're so gorgeous and the colors and the pictures and so full of information. Doctor Jacobs has, you know, people from all over the world who seek out his consultation. And I am proud to say that I have personally met his wife and his four beautiful children and hosted them at our house, for a day on our little ranch over here to, wonderful boys and beautiful little girls.

So again, Doctor David Yonkers, welcome to our summit. Absolutely. Well, doctor Jack, it's an honor. And, yeah, we really had a great time hanging out with you and your family. You guys are the real deal. Great hosts. And, and, you know, just looking forward to, continue to spread this natural health message with you. And I think that's what's, even fantastic about a summit like this and information like this, it really brings together people who are like minded. And I just love the community aspect of what we all provide.

And even though a lot of people may not meet each other, like, you know, you and I did on several occasions, but, you know, may not meet each other in person, but just knowing that there's other like minded people out there, I think is really empowering. On on our health journey. Yeah. 100%. Absolutely. You know, we do better when we're in community. And so when it comes to values like prioritizing our health, unfortunately, our society, most people are just walking around living by default, not prioritizing their health.

And people who are prioritizing their health are the minority. And so it's good to be around a community that supports that. Yeah, and there's more and more people, I think that are coming on board. And we have a lot of people who are watching this summit who signed up for this summit and hopefully sharing this with the people who they love.

Speaking Truth and Building Community 2:57

You're one of those people who. Yeah. And we'll get into inflammation, your expertise and fasting in some of these areas. Again, are you really focused on books? I think also, you know, you've been one of these people who've been very outspoken. You and I first met at The Truth About Cancer, you know, years ago. So, you know, really shouting our truth from the rooftops and tell us about that, about what that means to really speak your truth. Any situations you think again that have been a little bit difficult to overcome from sharing, that truth, but provide some inspiration?

Really what it means to, to to talk, you know, to talk it out loud. Well, sure. Absolutely. I mean, you know, when I when you say your truth, I, I just think there is that truth. Right? And so obviously, we're all on a quest for it. And I think it is important to be sensitive to, you know, just, other people's thoughts and ideas. But at the same time, you know, we need to speak the truth and we need to speak it with authority, and we need to speak it, as often as we can. And unfortunately, in our society, people are dying for, you know, the Bible talks about how my people perish for a lack of knowledge and envision.

Right? And so people don't have the information and they don't have the you know, when I think about vision, I think about, some sort of compelling vision for their life. Right. And so most people, they don't have wisdom, they don't have knowledge when it comes to natural health, and they don't have a community and support to help, in a sense, help them put things into action. So even if they learn some things, they're not actually doing them because they don't have the people around them or the natural discipline.

And so being a part of a community of people that are going to help encourage you, I think is so important. And listening to influencers like doctor Jack, who speaks so, eloquently and powerfully on these topics, having an influencer like doctor Jack, an expert that, you know, you can really, follow, read his content and listen to his interviews in his summits. That's going to help give you the the support, right? The social support. And, you know, and help inspire you to be your best. You know, my co-host on the summit is Doctor Eric Zielinski.

As you know, and as you know, he's also one of your best friends and closest friends. And both of you are really just men of faith, you know, families of faith and spirituality. Can you maybe break down the importance of, of that, you know, faith and spirituality as it relates to heart attack prevention, and the recovery thereof? It's a major, major part, isn't it? Well, for sure, and I think, I think it really comes down to mindset to begin with. And I think in our society, most people are walking around with an entitlement mentality and a victim mindset.

So they're in a sense they're looking for reasons to be offended in life. And, they kind of in a sense, they have an entitlement that they, they're entitled to, you know, whatever level of success or peace or whatever it is. But, you know, in the Bible it actually talks about, you know, for our faith, we're going to be persecuted, right? It talks about, you know, in the Bible. You know, I know, like, for example, when I think about my life, I know I'm a sinner. I don't deserve anything that God has given me.

I'm blessed. Everything in my life is a blessing, right? And even the challenges that I encounter there are actually blessings. God wants to take me to a higher place and he wants to refine me. So when I work out in the gym, I'm in pain. You know, I'm lifting weights. It hurts, right? But actually my body's going to adapt and get stronger. And so same thing with my faith. When I encounter adversity, I don't think I'm a victim. I don't deserve this blah, blah. You know, I think, okay, for whatever reason, this is in my life for an important reason.

I'm going to grow through this.

Faith, Gratitude, and Stress Resilience 6:48

Right now is the time for me to practice patience. Right now is the time for me to, you know, cling harder to my faith. And ultimately, I think that God wants a surrendered heart more than anything, a surrendered heart. And so with my faith, it's really it's about having a surrendered heart that what Jesus did for me on the cross, Yeshua did for me on the cross. That was more than enough. He took all of all the penalty for all of my sins upon himself, and he set me free. So everything else in my life is a bonus.

It's a blessing that I have a great family. It's a blessing that I know how to be healthy and keep my family healthy. It's a blessing that you know, I'm able to inspire people around the world, and I'm able to have a great career that I enjoy. All of that is a blessing. But even if God took all of it away, he's already given me more than enough. And so when I when I walk through life with that mentality, then the stressors of life have less of a deflating effect and I'm more grateful. And I think in our society we have a gratitude deficiency.

You know, we could talk about nutrient deficiencies that are key. You want to make sure you're sufficient in gratitude. You can start every single day with a practice of gratitude and throughout the day practicing gratitude. And that is going to give you peace. You know, we talk about quote unquote reducing stress, right? But really, if you want to achieve anything in life, you're going to have to encounter and actually go at stress, right? And and you're going to encounter it on a regular basis.

But the more that you can promote peace, a peaceful physiology and practicing gratitude, breathing practices, your faith, your prayer, meditation, all of that is going to help build a physiology of peace, right? And that's really what, you know, when Jesus said that's what he came to give us, is a peace, not as the world gives it right, but a peace that surpasses all understanding. And so we can have that peace in spite of the challenges that we encounter. And, you know, when we look at how that impacts our body, that is going to allow us to be more balanced between our sympathetic fighter flight nervous system and our parasympathetic are rest, heal and digest physiology, which is going to keep our blood sugar more stable.

We're going to keep our blood pressure more stable. It's going to reduce oxidative stress and inflammation. It's going to reduce unnecessary worry and anxiety. It's going to help us sleep better, deeper, stronger, so we get more tissue regeneration. You know, when we have less stress hormone, that's going to open up opportunity for more growth hormone, human growth hormone, which is our quintessential anti-aging hormone. It's going to help us, produce more melatonin at night, which is one of the most powerful, anti or most powerful antioxidants to slip into the mitochondria and protect our mitochondrial health.

It's going to stimulate more some of the things we're going to talk about today. You know cardiac cell autophagy. We're regenerating the cardiac cells and keeping the blood vessels strong and healthy. I mean, there's a number of different benefits that we're going to get. We're going to have less nutrient deficiencies, more stress we're under. The more we're depleting key nutrients like magnesium, B vitamins, things like that. We're going to absorb nutrients better because we're gonna have better parasympathetic tone, right.

So when we eat food, we're actually going to absorb the nutrients better. We're gonna have less toxins that are released because our microbiome is going to be healthier. Everything in our body is going to respond to the level of what I, what I should say is perceive stress. So not just stress, perceived stress, because what may seem really stressful to you may may not seem that stressful to me, right? We all have a certain level of perception of stress, but the more we practice gratitude, prayer, and really engaging in our faith, the more that we are going to have lower perceived stress and better overall autonomic nervous system tone.

Well, that was a fantastic summary of what I would really say is the methodology we use over here at Natural Heart Doctor, the 100 year heart method, which is kind of this the rival nutrition rival lifestyle thrive on mindset and how you what you just really spelled out there. So eloquently is they're all interconnected and they're not siloed. It's not just about, hey, let's just talk about nutrition. Hey, let's just talk about sleep and sunshine and mindset, including spirituality and and gratitude and de-stressing and all these things.

It's just they're all highly intertwined. Give me some specifics, though, about a gratitude practice as it relates to someone in particular who's interested in preventing a heart attack or stroke, recovering for a heart attack or stroke. What would be a gratitude practice, maybe with those kind of concerns, in mind? Yeah, I think it's it's retraining your your neurology. Right. Retraining your thought process to every time something happens, just go right back to gratitude. So if you're struggling with your health, you think, hey, I'm so grateful I've got one more day to enjoy life, to be thankful for everything that that I encounter in life.

I'm thankful that I am gaining information, knowledge about how to take back control of my health. I'm thankful that I get to hug my spouse today. I'm thankful that I get to watch my kids laugh. You know, whatever. Whatever. Obviously your unique situation is, but just being grateful for each one of those types of circumstance is right. Being grateful for challenges, right? I mean, the Bible, it says in the book of James, he says, I consider it all joy. My brothers, when I encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of my faith produces patience and produces endurance.

And so he's saying, hey, I'm going to encounter all these challenges. But I actually consider it a joy. So we can we can we can have gratitude for the things we do enjoy. Right. And we should have gratitude for those things, for eating great food for, you know, spending time with people we care about and love, being out in the sun enjoying beautiful weather. We should have immense gratitude for that. But we can even have gratitude for the challenges that we encounter. And so most people in our society, their default mentality is to complain.

And so it's a switching of that. You got to switch it. You know, they say the illiterate of the 21st century are not those who can't read and write. Most people in our society can read and write, but it's those who can't learn something, realize it's not serving them, it's actually helping them in their life, and then choose to actually unlearn it and relearn new strategies. And so when it comes to your mindset, if you have found, just take awareness. If you found that most of your thoughts when things happen in your life are complaining, thoughts, right?

And it's always kind of these powerless types of victim thoughts like, oh, you know, the traffic, oh, politics, you know, all this kind of stuff. Go back to just what you can be grateful for, what you can control in the moment, which is really your mentality. You know, I always tell my boys are athletes and my bit I coach and so I coach them year round in different sports. And I love sports. And I always tell all my boys, I mentor these young boys and I'm always telling them, hey, there's two things you can control your effort and your attitude, how you show up and the energy and effort you give and your attitude.

That's the only thing you control. You can't control whether you win or lose. You can't control the outcome, but you can control your effort and your attitude. And if your effort and attitude are good, you give yourself the best chance to succeed and thrive in life. Those are wonderful, wonderful lessons, you know, to to your boys and to everyone. You know, you talk about the things you can, you know, cannot control. I mean, it takes me to a few years ago when I'm talking to a patient and we're talking about sleep and he's like, oh, I didn't sleep well last night.

And he said, oh. And I said, why didn't you sleep? And he said, you know, did you see the bombings that happened in Sri Lanka, you know, and the church bombings there? And all these people were killed. And like, I know this is absolutely I didn't even hear about it. But I said, this is absolutely horrific. But, you know, what are you able to do about that particular thing? You know, you could volunteer, you could send money, and those are all virtuous things. But the reality is by you kind of plugging in to all that misery and pain and suffering, it led to you not sleeping that night and that puts you at risk.

One other thing too, is that when I think about something for everyone here to be grateful, number one, be grateful that you have not had a heart attack or stroke. And if you have had a heart attack or stroke, be grateful about the fact that you survived it because one third of people don't survive the first heart attack, their first symptom is being dead. Many people die also suddenly from a stroke. So even that, hey, you know why, why did you survive? Why are you here? And then what could you do in a positive fashion going forward?

Really? Which kind of ties back in, right, doctor David, into your purpose, you know, what is your purpose in life going forward? Maybe explain a little bit about purpose and and what that means, for overall health and wellness. Yeah. For sure. Well, I go back to the Bible saying for a lack of knowledge and vision, my people perish. So knowledge is gaining information. But vision is really that is really your purpose, right? It's having some sort of compelling vision for what you want to do with the knowledge you're gaining.

And so, you know, ultimately having a really strong purpose. I always say you need a why that makes you cry, right? Like, what is your big why? And if it's just to get through the day, right. It's probably not enough to really inspire positive actions and changes in your life. Changing things. Rewiring. Our neurology is uncomfortable, right? It's it's challenging. And so in order to overcome that challenge, that resistance, that

Purpose, Motivation, and Future Goals 16:48

natural resistance, you need something that's going to compel you. And so having a why that makes you cry, I want to be, I want to I want to be able to play with my grandchildren. Right? I want to I want to watch, you know, my my granddaughter's next, you know, ballet recital, right? Whatever it is, like, you think about things in your life that just can draw emotion and that will help give you energy. It actually gives you this level of energy with your thinking. That will help push you beyond the resistance of making lifestyle change.

You know, there's a lot of people out there that are like, hey, I know I need to exercise, but I just sitting on the sofa just feels so much better. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow, right? And so we need that. Why that makes us cry to get us up, get us moving and, And get us taking the positive actions that are going to help us. Yeah. And, you know, listen, you and I have some pretty big goals for, for, as as doctors, right? We're here to change the world. We're here to make the world a healthier place.

We're. And just impact so many people. Millions of people. And a lot of people don't have that, as you said. I mean, like, you know, they're not they're not really destined to do that, although anybody can do anything. You and I both believe that. But that being said, if your purpose is to be that grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, brother, sister, friend, mentor or even just, you know, your purpose is to serve God. And and that is your purpose. But finding that purpose, I think, really moves you forward.

So that's beautiful stuff. Let me tell you one thing, too, that I, I've been working with, with a particular patient over the last couple of weeks, and I know that you and Angel and the family, you travel, you take these breaks, you really learn to enjoy life and what do you think about the concept of telling people, anyone who's listening have a vacation that's planned in the future? This kind of future casting. So you kind of have this little something to look forward to. Now, the vacation may not be next week, next month, or even, you know, any time of this year, but I like the idea of putting that out there as this this goal.

There's something to look forward to. And even kind of fulfilling. I'm going to my intention is to be healthy. My purpose is to be healthy enough. So maybe I could take a trip to Israel so I could take a trip to South America. What do you think about that concept? I think that's great. I think certain personality types that really helps them. I know for my wife, you know, when we think about like we're different personalities, for me, I'm super goal oriented and achievement really is a driving factor for me.

Here's my wife. It's very fun oriented. Right. And I've learned to just, you know, at first I, you know, we're all different personalities. At first I'm like, that's kind of shallow, right? Fun. But now I just really have embraced her personality as well. And, you know, and she's embraced mine. I think that's what's great about couples. And so it's totally fine. If you're a fun oriented person, you need to have kind of little carrots of fun along the way. That's going to help inspire you. You know, you want to know your personality and what helps, motivate and inspire you.

And so for her, it's it's the idea of planning a vacation or planning a trip. And you know what? If finances are an issue, like, we don't just travel all the time, sometimes we do staycations, right? So we've done staycations where it's like, hey, you know, we live, you know, roughly 45 minutes from Atlanta. There's lots of things to do in the city that we haven't done. So, hey, maybe we can go to this museum or we could do this. And so it could just be something like that. It could just be, you know, a day at the pool, right?

Or, you know, whatever it is. And so it doesn't have to be kind of a big, you know, expensive experience. It could be right if you're able to do that. But, you know, you just need to figure out, okay, what is fun, what's helping drive me and inspire me, and what can I have to look forward to? Right. That is going to it's going to bring more peace is going to bring more fun, more excitement, more energy to kind of go through, you know, to do the things I need to do, to be successful in life. All right.

Well, you know, all this stuff is, is wonderful to, to discuss. And really, this kind of falls under the tenet of that thrive mindset, which I'm just so happy that we embarked on that. And you're such a wealth of knowledge in that area. So thank you again. But let's kind of talk about how these these

Inflammation, Diet, and Lifestyle Drivers 21:30

deficiencies of nutrition, lifestyle, positive mindset, this ultimately all these things lead to this layer of inflammation and oxidative stress, which ultimately lead to disease. The medical doctors know that inflammation and oxidative stress is bad. They just don't look into what's causing it. They don't have that toolset to be able to do so, and therefore their only response is in the pharmaceutical or procedural space. But, let's just talk about inflammation and heart attack risk and stroke risk.

Yeah. For sure. And so to start with inflammation. Inflammation is a lifesaving mechanism by the body. It's really trying to save us. It's actually our body the way our body. And basically initiates a healing process. And also it prevents us from having some sort of systemic infection getting into our bloodstream, spreading throughout our body, getting into our lungs, causing pneumonia, into our nervous system, causing meningitis. You know, for for the throughout the history of mankind, more people have died from systemic infections than any other, you know, major cause.

And that's because when people, you know, we get injured, let's say they were hunting and they got injured, or if even if they were in war or battle, they might get a tissue injury, right? And they didn't die from the injury, but it was the infection that got into their bloodstream, spread throughout their body, got into their lungs, caused pneumonia into their brain, causing it, encephalitis or meningitis. And that's how they would die. So the way that our body is adapted is we create this really robust inflammation process to help break down damaged tissue, kill off pathogens, and make sure that we can survive the day.

Right. That's really the goal. Now the key is inflammation should be short term and it's all part of the healing process. But we should be able to get back into balance and homeostasis. And so in our society though we continue to do things that are telling the body we're at risk for infection. And so we are continually, continually eating foods and consuming toxins that damage the intestinal lining, causing, in a sense, or almost like a skin injury, like a rupture in there. And we call that intestinal permeability or leaky gut.

And now food particle, large food particles. We've got bacteria, bacterial toxins, different endotoxins that are being released into the bloodstream. And our nervous system says, oh my goodness, there's all these abnormal proteins. There's endotoxins in here. We need to drive up inflammation. This could kill us. We need to drive up inflammation. And so every time people are eating, they're spilling out proteins, abnormal undigested proteins. They're spilling out toxins, additives, preservatives, pesticides, all different types of chemicals.

We're we're breeding in mycotoxins that are now getting into the bloodstream. We are, you know, so we've got all of this pathogens, bacteria that are getting into the bloodstream. And the body continually says we're at risk for systemic infection. So it's driving up inflammation, inflammation, inflammation. So we got to get that under control. And so how do we do that. Well we talked about some things we could do. You know mindset wise that's all critical. But then outside of that we want to make sure that we are teaching our body with the way that we breathe, that we're in a, a calm state.

Right. We're not at risk, right? We're not running away from, you know, an animal or somebody running at us with a spear or whatever it is. And so we want to take nice, long, deep breaths, right, and have a good respiration patterns and nasal breathing is really key. So many people are mouth breathers in our society. Mouth breathing sends the signal that we're in sympathetic fight or flight mode. So we want to be practicing nasal breathing. And you can do this at night, too, by wearing mouth tape.

Just put a piece of tape over your mouth. I did that for about a month because I was a mouth breathers, you know, ten years ago or so. I was mouth breathing at night and I noticed pretty quickly, right the first day it felt awkward, but pretty quickly my sleep scores on my aura ring went up. My deep sleep, my REM sleep. I felt more mentally clear. I felt more rest. Just. Just restful. You know, when I woke up more, more, more. I had a better awakening response, right? And felt restful throughout the day.

And so there's simple things that you can do, like that start to retrain your nervous system. And then, of course, we want to make sure that we're getting rid of as much toxins when it comes to nutrition. We want to maximize nutrients, minimize toxins. So how do you do that. Well number one is you do you get rid of all the ultra processed foods okay. So there are some processed foods that can actually be beneficial like olive oil for example. You know, where you get the maximum amount of fat and polyphenols out of the olives.

Squeeze them. Make an olive oil right high polyphenol olive oil. So not all processed food is bad. But when we're talking about ultra processed foods, we're talking about all the chips, cookies, you know, things that you can't just grab out of nature, basically candy, all that kind of stuff. Get rid of all of that. Get rid of your seed oils, your corn, soy, safflower, cotton seed, peanut oil, canola oil all of that is just massively toxic, right? Causes major oxidative stress and inflammation in the body.

Get rid of all of that and then do your best to go as organic as possible. Okay. Now do you need to go 100% organic? In an ideal world you would. But I don't know that that's really logistic unless you're growing everything yourself. So if you can go, let's say two thirds organic, 50%, 65% organic, that's great. Try to go as organic as possible, especially with animal products. Because if animals are eating conventionally raised grains, if they're eating pesticide, herbicide, laden grains and bio accumulates in their meat and dairy products.

So I always recommend number one, organic, animal products. So, so grass fed beef, wild caught seafood, pasture raised eggs, you know, pasture raised animal products, trying to go as organic as possible, natural as possible there and then with your produce, they have the clean 15 and the dirty dozen. Right. So basically more or less with that, if it's something where you peel the outer layer like an avocado or a banana, not as important to go organic if it's something where you're going to eat the outer layer.

Strawberry, blueberry. Celery. Right. But really important to go organic because as organic as possible. So that's what you want to do when you go organic, you're getting way more nutrients, right? And significantly less toxins into your system. And that alone is going to make a big difference when it comes to the inflammatory load on your body. And then from there, when it comes to nutrition, I recommend prioritizing protein so I don't count calories. I don't recommend counting calories, but I do recommend counting protein, at least in the beginning, to make sure you're getting enough.

Most people are not consuming enough protein. Protein as a as a key macronutrient really provides satiety. And so that way it reduces blood sugar swings and allows you to basically feel satiated. So I recommend getting at least 30g of protein per meal. So 30 to 50 or 60g even more if you feel like you need it. And so but at least 30g of protein per meal. Then when it comes to fats, okay, fats can be a little bit more tricky. There's some people like for me, I can eat a very high fat meal using healthy fats from things like olive oil and avocados and, butter, grass fed butter, beef tallow, things like that.

I can eat a real high fat meal and feel great, whereas somebody else may eat a higher fat meal and feel awful because they have very sluggish bile flow out of their bile ducts. And and they may not even have a gallbladder. So I what I found is that even people that don't have a gallbladder can handle about 15 to maybe 20g of healthy fats in a meal. So start with that, see how you feel, and then you can gradually raise it because if you're able to consume more fats, you're going to actually have more satiety, when you consume your meals, but you don't want to overstress your gut.

So stick with that with the fat. And usually if you're getting 30 to 50g of protein, you're going to have typically the fat that's going to come with the protein, right? Unless you're eating like a chicken breast. Or sometimes fish can be a little bit lower in fat. And then you just add in a little high polyphenol, extra virgin olive oil, or maybe a little avocado or something like that. And so, so you're fat and then lots of colorful fruits and vegetables up to your tolerance point. Some people do really well on lots and lots of vegetables.

Right. Lots of plants. Other people do terrible on it. And so you kind of have to figure out, you know, how your body tolerates fiber and what we call FODMAPs, and FODMAPs are a group of, it's called fructose, oligo, di monosaccharide and polyols. And so we find these in a lot of healthy foods, plant based foods. And some people digest them really well and they feel great eating them, their bodies, but their their gut microbiome is able to produce a lot of post biotics. And they feel good in other people don't. Right?

They get really bloated. They have more inflammation. They feel worse. And so for you, you may do better on more of a carnivore diet. Right. And then your partner or your spouse may actually do better. More of like a plant based, like, high fiber diet. And so it can range. You kind of have to figure it out for yourself, right? Like where you are on the spectrum. I think about it like a bell curve on one side of the bell curve. There are people that really do well with almost no fiber, like very, very little bit of fiber.

And they're the ones that tend to thrive on a carnivore diet. And then the other side of the bell curve, there's people that do really well on high, high fiber diets, and they're the people that seem to do really well on kind of plant based, even vegan diets. Right? They tend to do well on it. Right? But most of us are somewhere in the middle on that spectrum. And so you got to kind of figure out, are you right in the middle? Are you, you know, a little bit more towards that kind of carnivore style, maybe a lower fiber diet, higher fiber diet, like where, where are you on that spectrum?

And that just comes with kind of some experimentation and personalization. So, you know, I definitely, and Paleolithic, you know, root that hunter gatherer diet. And I know you believe as well, that for the majority of people, like, that's going to be the place where they need to be. And ultimately, if they can't handle some of those foods, we always need to uncover why it shouldn't be like we throw our arms up in the air like, oh, I can't eat cucumbers, you know, or I can't digest fat. We got to, you know, go always dig deeper, into that.

But as we look at, you know, these, these food groups and nutrition and really everything that we do talk about some of the inflammation testing, that people should be looking for, it's one thing to know how you feel, and that's the most important thing. But sometimes, right, people feel, well, but their blood work and other testing shows otherwise. So what is the importance of of this kind of test? Don't guess, guess methodologies. Yeah, I think that's super helpful. Sometimes there's kind of some hidden issues that are going on that could be causing problems that you may not know about until down the road. Right.

And so some easy labs that you can get one is your fasting insulin. And most doctors are not running this. But it's a really easy add on. Insurance will cover it. If you don't have insurance, really not expensive to add it on to any tests that that you get. You know, if you're working with a natural practitioner, hopefully they are running it. If not, just ask for it. Hey, can you test my fasting insulin? And so that's basically it. You always want to get these kind of blood this this sort of blood work done fasted.

That means do it in the morning right. Eat dinner normal healthy dinner. Right. Don't eat until you know anything with calories, until after you've done the blood work. In the morning. And so 12 to 14 hours fasted roughly to get the most accurate numbers. But your fasting insulin is really key, right? You want that to be under six. Okay.

Key Lab Markers for Inflammation and Metabolic Health 33:30

And so good healthy range is somewhere 2 to 5 somewhere in that range. And I see so many people okay. And they think they're healthy and they're fasting. Insulin is 20. It's 15 right. It's ten. And they're like, can I I feel great. I just can't lose the last 10 pounds, right. Or whatever it is. And so that fasting insulin, as long as insulin is elevated in your bloodstream, you are not going to be able to burn fat effectively. But also on top of that, you're actually going to promote more inflammation in your system.

And you're not you're going to block something called autophagy or self-healing. And so insulin is kind of like it's like the brakes on your body's natural self-healing mechanisms. And so insulin is important. We actually need that. It drives cell reproduction. It drives it, it pulls sugar out of the bloodstream, puts it into the cells for energy. It can help with increasing hormone production. It's it's critical. We have to have it. We're going to have it when we eat food. But we want to make sure that when we are in a fasted state that insulin is coming down. Right.

And we're very insulin sensitive. So when we do eat, we get the smallest amount of insulin to get the maximal effect. And then it comes back down into the setting. So we can get more autophagy and self-healing. So fasting insulin is a really really good one to look at. Hemoglobin A1 C is another good one that's looking at what's happening with glycation. And glycation is this process where when we consume food right. Our blood glucose goes up, particularly if we're consuming, you know, anything with glucose and especially any sort of ultra processed food.

Right. It's going to drive up our blood glucose. And then the glucose molecule should be moved by insulin into the cell, where they where it can be used for energy. However, when somebody is insulin resistant at sugar, the sugar stays elevated in their bloodstream and the sugar will bind to proteins, including hemoglobin. It'll create a sticky protein in the bloodstream. And those sticky proteins are like shrapnel going through the bloodstream. They cause more inflammation in the endothelial lining.

You know, you think about somebody's uncontrolled diabetes, what ends up happening. You know, people with uncontrolled diabetes have very high blood glucose and very high insulin because the their their body is producing more and more insulin to try to get the glucose down, but their cells aren't responding to it. So this real high glucose level will end up, you know, these people, they don't they don't die from the high glucose. They die from all the side effects of it, which is cardiovascular disease.

Right. So they end up with atherosclerosis. They end up with with kidney failure. They end up with peripheral neuropathy, with optic neuritis because of the nerve damage that that occurs. And so these are the reasons why people die. So we want to look at that hemoglobin A1. See I like to see it for sure under five and a half. And ideally if we can get it under five that's awesome right. That tells me we're really keeping that blood sugar stable. And good. And then with that I look at a marker called LDH, lactose dehydrogenase.

I just want to make sure the person's not having a lot of bouts of hypoglycemia. LDH is elevated, when basically it's it's an enzyme in the cytoplasm of the cell. And its job is to take basically pyruvate, which, which can get converted in the Krebs cycle into energy, cellular energy. And it takes it and it converts it into lactate. We've all heard of lactic acid okay. And this is important. We need that for anaerobic energy production. So like when we're exercising this is why we produce that. So we need we need LDH is really important.

However when cells are becoming damaged LDH goes up. Right. And so if we see LDH up over 180 K it's a sign that there's cells that are being damaged and they're spilling out LDH. We have high oxidative stress and inflammation. But also if LDH is low under 140 it's telling me that person's not doing a good job of actually burning sugar for fuel. They actually are probably dealing with more hypoglycemic type issues. And I may see that in a questionnaire like their energy, their brain, they're dealing with brain fog, anxiety, irritability, all these kind of hypoglycemic like, responses.

And so LDH is a good one to, to look at. There as well. And then high sensitivity C-reactive protein. This is a, inflammatory marker that elevates for a lot of individuals okay. And I've seen it very much correlated with especially people are dealing with more oral type infections, right. Where they have perhaps, a root canal that's harboring, bad oral bacteria and endotoxins. Also people that have just gingivitis, people that have a bad oral microbiome. I see crp elevate a lot of times. And then also people that have, you know, infections in their gut.

Maybe it's H. Pylori, maybe it's a parasite. Could be klebsiella. You know, there's a whole bunch of different potential pathogens and their gut microbiome. I'll oftentimes see CRP elevated for those individuals. And so that's definitely something we want to look at. We always want that number under one okay. If we see it up over one it's a sign of inflammation in the system. High inflammation. We want it really as low as close to zero as possible. I've never seen it zero. So you're always gonna have some.

That's normal. But you want it under one for sure. That is an excellent, information. Great summary. And, you know, looking at the LDH, a lot of doctors, are not checking for LDH, that's for sure. A lot of doctors aren't checking for these markers. You know, really at all, at any appreciable level and certainly into the detail that you just provided. So thank you. Well, again, this has been a fantastic summary. We really didn't have time to dive into the, fasting aspect of health, but I'll just point people to, your website, Doctor jokers.com.

Also, your book on fasting, which is available on Amazon and, and at the website as well. And again, just sincerely appreciate all of the information, knowledge and experience. You know, for you, David, so many years in this industry, I'm so proud to call you my friend on this journey, to health and wellness. So thank you again for being on our summit. Thanks, Jack. It's an honor. And, you really appreciate everything you're doing and our friendship as well. You got in my friend, our doctor, Jack Wolfson, for another great, great interview on our summit, the Heart Attack and Stroke Recovery and Prevention Summit.

We'll see you next time.