Discover Ways to Power Your Mitochondria

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Hi. How are you, Laura?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So good. Here we are, coast to coast again. Spreading the good word about how to keep your mitochondria strong.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it’s not like a trivial topic. You want energy, you want to feel good every day. You want to wake up in the morning and say, whoa, the body feels good. We don’t think about it. But, you know, all those trillions of little powerhouses in our body, mitochondria, our mighty, mighty mitochondria are the key. And we’re going to talk about some ways to power your mitochondria. Anybody listening that feels a little tired, a little energy deficit needs a little boost during the day. I’m recording this relatively late at night, but I’ve got enough energy to go for another 24 hours. Part of that is I know how to live my lifestyle and I know how to supplement. So I’ll let you tee it up and then I’ll take over.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. Okay, good. And I think most of our audience would love to have the kind of energy you have. So for our audience, who doesn’t know you, and I don’t know how people don’t know you already, but Dr. Joel Kahn, you are America’s cardiologist. You are triple board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine, interventional cardiology. You’re also a clinical professor of medicine. And you’re like I said, America’s Healthy Heart, Doc. And our viewers can find you at the Kahn Center for Cardiac Longevity in Michigan. And you are the man to be talking about how to support the body through supplementation because your history is so fascinating to me. You worked in the Western allopathic space doing interventional radio, interventional cardiology, doing procedures on people. And at some point in your career, you shifted and said wait, wait, wait, I got to do something that’s going to make a bigger difference for people.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Yeah, I did a big pivot and you know, it’s scary and challenging, but moving from the, I’ll treat you and you’re almost dead to I want to see you when you’re very alive and keep you away from my former role was a major transformation, but a very gratifying one. And you’re in California. I’m licensed in California and in many states in the United States and it’s basically, it’s actually a little sad that people have to come find me in Michigan and I have to teach them basic medical preventive testing and strategies and outcome. But the good news is it works, it works all over the United States. And we’re going to talk tonight and on a focused topic of mitochondrial health, cardiac health, a shortcut to get there. But you can’t shortcut everything. You got to eat, you got to sleep, you got to fitness, you got to manage your way. You got to manage your stress. You got to get the proper testing. You got to go back is the interview you did with me for the summit. But there’s a little bonus for people that are looking for a bonus. So whenever you’re ready, we’ll move it forward. And just to provide a little extra, you know, a little extra dressing on the salad or a little extra maraschino on the sundae but don’t do that.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Unless you’re.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Ready.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Good quality olive oil. Yes, go right ahead.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Quality olive oil. Oh, my God. You’re speaking my language.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So we’re just going to share your screen. We’ve got some slides to show. Perfect.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Okay. Okay. You can see that.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I can see it.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Okay. And hopefully, I can advance it. I don’t see that advanced button. So we’re going to talk a little bit about inflammation. Inflammation, I love explaining to patients, which is what I do 4 to 5 days a week. Now, it’s inflammation, the middle word is flame. Everybody gets flame, fire. Fire can be helpful, but generally, fire is a little dangerous and we need to be cautious about fire in the body. And we’re going to talk about how to manage inflammation. And we got to talk for a minute about heart disease. I never go to sleep without lacking energy. Give me one more audience to talk about heart disease. Number one, killer of men and women in America. Number one, killer disability. Number one, preventable cause, that’s the key message. If you’re listening right now to Laura’s amazing summit, the number one cause of preventable disability in death is heart disease. And you get your mammogram and you get your colonoscopy, and you get your gynecologic exam and you get your prosthetic exam. For God’s sake, where’s your heart exam? And that’s what we talked about a bit in the interview that was on your amazing summit. And I’m not going to repeat it because people can just go back and buy that package and review our interview. But let’s talk about heart disease for a minute. Let’s talk about mitochondria, the powerhouses in every cell in the body, but particularly powerhouses concentrated in heart cells. Amazing 100,000 heartbeats every, every, every minute and every day, every hour and you have to really appreciate it when you wake up in the morning, you are there because your mitochondria in your heart are functioning and maybe you can supplement, support, and augment that function. So we’re going to talk about something that provides support to the heart. It has eight clinically proven ingredients. 

Maybe I should give the back story. Maybe about a year and a half ago, I’m interested in nutritional support. I’m interested in nutraceutical support, vitamin support, supplement support but I’ll tell you, I’m very picky. I tell my patients all the time, there are a thousand supplements out there, there are a thousand vitamins out there. I don’t think all tof them you need to take. I don’t think all of them have science. I don’t think all of them have quality. I think some of them have some toxic additives you should be concerned about. And in my review of updated supplements around the world, I found a company in New Zealand that was on the Internet, in the web that seemed to have superior quality and I never heard of. And they’re called Xtend-Life and they had a broad variety of products and had data that they were around for 22 years and then hundreds of thousands of customers. So I actually reached out. I reached out, tell me what you do. Tell me if you make your supplements, tell me if you outsource them to companies that you don’t really control the quality. Tell me, you know, about what’s the formulation? And we just went on and on after I reached out and I will learn to understand that this was a unique, interesting company that really featured quality, quality, quality. So I want to talk about that a little bit and go a little deeper on that. 

But just for a diversion, I do have an interesting background and I don’t really doubt it in front of people, but I trained at allopathic centers like the University of Michigan Medical School. I did graduate first in my class out of several hundreds of great colleagues, took a lot of work and a lot of dedication, but I knew long before starting medical school that I wanted to be a heart doctor. I wanted to be a cardiologist there’s no negotiating. If you look at that, that was 40 years ago, 1983 that I graduated medical school. Seems like yesterday, I can remember the ceremony, my parents there, and a beautiful event but it was 40 years ago. And from there I went through my training and I wanted to be a guy that made a difference. And the way you made a difference in the 1980s and 1990,  is you learned about angioplasty and you learned about stents. And I became really proficient at treating people’s heart disease severe advanced heart disease with stents and balloons. In fact, that gentleman all the way to the right with a mustache and the gentleman with his mask on his forehead are two of the world’s experts in angioplasty and stenting. And I had the pleasure of learning from the best, and I did that for a long time. But I knew there was another world. There was a world called prevention where people actually felt good in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. People could walk and exercise and perform all their lives activities and they didn’t need bypass surgery and they didn’t need stents. And that really intrigued me and ended up developing a program called “Prevent Not Stent.” What if we find you five or ten years before your heart attack, five or ten years before your bypass surgery, five or ten years before your stent? So about eight years ago, I left traditional medicine to open my clinic in suburban Detroit, but it services over half of the United States due to licensures I have. We’re very busy and we’re very successful in turning the ship around. The inevitable ship that more than half of the people listening to this podcast are going to have heart disease. And more than a quarter of them are going to die of heart disease. We can turn that ship around.

And it takes a toolbox, a toolbox called fitness, a toolbox called nutrition, a toolbox called stress management, a toolbox called sleep therapy, a toolbox called advanced testing. But some of it is excellent supplementation. So the kind of average patient I see is trying to avoid an emergency, an emergency that might result in stents, bypass, heart attack, or even death. And I see people all the time, they come to me, “Doc, they told me I need a bypass. They told me I need a stent in two arteries.” We go deep on these specifics. We go deep on the lab testing. We go deep on functional medicine history. And we create a program where we often can avoid bypass, avoid stents, and ultimately avoid heart attacks. So it’s called the Whole Heart Solution program. We do that every day, but part of that is intelligent and science-based supplementation. So nobody shut down the interview right now you’re saying, “Oh, my God, another nutrient, another supplement, another vitamin.” I want you to see the science because that’s what excited me. But this company in Christchurch, New Zealand, that I found about two years ago called Xtend-Life that I had not heard of. I heard of many, many other companies. They have developed a line of nutrients that I think is really amazing. But they have this bundle, I did not develop it. 

They called the Heart Health Bundle, a supplement called CX8, eight ways to help your heart. C for cardiac X8 for times eight and they combine it with a very unique, I think it’s unique. I use a lot of magnesium in my very practice, and Laura you do too. Magnesium for sleep, magnesium for stress management, magnesium for blood pressure, magnesium for PMS, magnesium for headaches, magnesium for bowel function. But their magnesium is from the sea. It’s marine magnesium right from the ocean, and it’s combined with potassium. And if anybody’s listening right now to this wonderful additional interview that we’re doing for the mitochondrial summit, magnesium plus potassium can really, really support healthy blood pressure. And I don’t know if people know this blood pressure is the number one cause of death in the world. We say heart disease is the number one cause, but the reality is it’s actually blood pressure, 18 million people a year in the world die of blood pressure problems. Some of them die of heart disease. Some of them die of kidney disease. Some of them die of aneurysms, some of them die of stroke, and amputation. So magnesium plus potassium that’s in the free bottle that they’re offering is in itself worth any consideration right now. These are all vegetarian capsules, which for people that may follow me online, know that is one of my platforms, is a plant-based platform. So they work out well for my audience. CX8 goes beyond regular vitamins with superior science-backed. I stressed science-backed supplementation, natural ingredients, heart health, manages artery calcification. Your arteries are getting calcified, you’re getting old. If you can manage calcification, you have a chance of staying young at heart. I love that term young at heart. I didn’t make up that term. But if you have a young heart, you have a young body. And it also helps support healthy cholesterol levels.

So let’s just talk about that for a minute. CX8 means there are eight things in CX8. One of them alone would be worth considering adding to your program. Tocotrienols and I wonder if anybody listening right now knows what that is. That’s a form of vitamin E, but it’s not the average form. You go to your vitamin shop and say, I want a multivitamin. You’re going to see something called Alpha Tocopherol. And that’s a form of vitamin E that’s controversial and may not be helpful. But if you really want to get into the main, main source of health, Vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant. Keeps your vitamin C optimized, keeps your vessels optimized. You want to get Tocotrienols, and the best form of Tocotrienols is called Delta Gold. So when Xtend-Life, wanted to put vitamin E in their CX8 supplement, they went to the best source. Annatto is a plant. If you look at the slide right now, Annatto is a plant from the Amazon and a wonderful Ph.D. scientist, Dr. Barrie Tan. Go google him. Go look him up. Go Wikipedia him. He is the world’s leading expert on antioxidants. He found this plant in the Amazon called the Annatto plant a gorgeous plant. Looks like a pomegranate plant. Red, red, red berries. And they found that this was the most active source of vitamin E on the planet that we know of. And he created a supplement and Xtend-Life said if we’re going to put vitamin E for antioxidant cardiovascular support, we’re putting the best source and I won’t go into all the details, but if you’ve got liver issues, heart issues, metabolic issues, blood pressure issues, bone issues, you might want to get the best source of vitamin E called the Tocotrienols and that’s already in CX8. 

I’ll go to this next one and we’re going to talk about two versions. Most people have never heard of Sea Buckthorn, but Sea Buckthorn is a plant and it tends to grow in the oceans right around New Zealand. I mean, New Zealand is imperfect but New Zealand is a pretty pristine area compared to a lot of commercial and industrial areas in terms of pollution and destruction in the environment. And New Zealand is famous for this plant called Sea Buckthorn and Sea Buckthorn is a powerful antioxidant. But they didn’t just go to any old sea buckthorn, they went to the best source from New Zealand. That’s in CX8 called CyanthOx. And maybe you’ve read about antioxidants, a way to power your health but when compared to other antioxidants like pycnogenol, I love pycnogenol. That’s a natural antioxidant, like other antioxidants that are out there, like grape seed extract, and sea buckthorn called CyanthOx30 kicks their, excuse my expression, butt, antioxidant power so that’s in CX8. Why don’t you want a little extra metabolic health and anti-inflammatory health with CX8?  The science is there. I didn’t make the science up. I showed you the science is powerful science. Then there’s another extract from Sea Buckthorn, Wild Sea Buckthorn.  This time they don’t go to New Zealand, they go to Tibet, a very pristine, pure area, and they find wild sea buckthorn. That gives us a version of Omega fatty acids but it’s not omega-three fatty acids. It’s not omega-six fatty acids. It’s called omega seven. And omega seven is the most powerful form of antioxidant, even compared to other sources like fish oil, fish oil from herring, oils from macadamia nuts, like oils from ordinary sea buckthorn.  

Omega seven is an anti-inflammatory antioxidant powerhouse. You don’t hear about it much. This is like really, this is fine olive oil, fine wine, great perfume, designer clothes. This is really elegant stuff. And you can upgrade your health by adding Omega seven in your program and omega seven lowers LDL cholesterol. You’ve heard that, omega seven raises HDL cholesterol. That’s a good thing. Omega seven lowers blood sugar, lowers insulin resistance, and reduces body weight and inflammation in studies that have been done. So really exciting. But that’s only three if I count, right? Vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 to help support healthy arteries. If you have calcified arteries, you’re getting old. If you have uncalcified arteries, you’re younger. And one of the keys to younger arteries, not the only key. Well, one of the important keys is vitamin K2. And when they Xtend-life, wanted to add a vitamin K to their CX8, they could have ordered any and added any vitamin K2. They went to a version that’s registered trademark and patent and called many Q7 the most potent and pure vitamin K2. If you’re going to drown your arteries in vitamin K2 to prevent aging, to prevent hardening of the arteries, and manage that calcification, you want M.K.7 Vitamin K2. And that’s exactly what they did in studies that are done from called the Rotterdam Study. This is science. This is 16,000 people that were analyzed for how much vitamin K2 in their diet. The more you have, the younger your arteries are. So you do want to get that. And one convenient way to get it is CX8, It’s got eight components. One of them is vitamin K2 and three more are here actually four more to be accurate. Everybody’s heard of vitamin D. 

Most people in my clinic in Detroit, Michigan, are low in Vitamin D, maybe they’re taking in an adequate amount. Maybe they’re taking none. Maybe they don’t eat foods rich in vitamin D, maybe they never get sunshine. We’ve had a very grey summer in Detroit so far. We’re not getting a lot of vitamin D through our sunshine. So vitamin D is important. Rutin, rutin. RUTIN is a, it’s a fancy word is a polyphenol from plants incredibly powerful for blood vessel health actually for vein health when I have patients have varicose veins veins, swelling spider veins, I make sure they get roots and in their diet are root and in their supplements very powerful. Some people who are sophisticated in the health world have heard of a soybean extract called a narrow kinase. That thins the blood a bit. But when they Xtend-life, when to add more to the CSA, they didn’t just go to ordinary, narrow kinase. They went to now designs. These are enzymes protease says that help support healthy blood flow healthy blood vessels how they carry that is gout really the best and the last one is an incredibly super-powered antioxidant from black currants. If you think about those blackberries you see once in a while. And trees and bushes right from the beautiful area of New Zealand, still pristine, still less involved with pollution and environmental destruction than many areas of the Western world, including the United States, New Zealand, and blackcurrant extract, the powerful antioxidant. So the bottom line is when I found two years ago, this is not the supplement I found, I found their magnesium, which I thought was amazing. Magnesium with potassium. If you’re listening to this and you’re one of the tens of millions of people in the United States and more than that, worldwide that have trouble with their blood pressure, this marine MRI, any Marine from the sea magnesium with potassium is worth the ticket price alone. But the CX8, with the eight components I went over, which are combined in this bundle and you can see there’s a you are out there, not an easy URL. 

And I’ll leave it to Laura and her excellent educational team to share that around but it’s xtend-life.com/collections/mitochondrial-heart-health that’s it takes a day to put it in your browser but you do want to do it well bundle these together and you take CX8, every day. Take the magnesium every day. You’re supporting your mitochondria, it is supporting your health. How do you purchase you go over to that your URL that I mentioned and I’m sure Laura’s team will share if you’re a little hesitant, which is great. No problem. Your water one bottle. If you want to go for it, you can order three bottles of got order a six month supply. You can get six bottles with the Marine magnesium. It’s a discounted price. The magnesium is being thrown in for free. It’s a really, really good magnesium. If you do go over to that URL, you got to put in obviously your name, your address, your contact, your doctor tax discount because there is a doctor’s tax code that will show up and you will save dollars and you will gain health support, which is important. And even though you might say, I know a vitamin company in Florida or California, this company, I can tell you because I order from them, I order from that as a customer, I don’t know how they use DHL and within like three days from ordering from New Zealand, I my porch is what I ordered and I can tell you if there’s a customer service problem, they will honor it. And if you have any trouble, find me on the web and reach out and I’ll make sure they honor any issue you have, although I don’t expect it. So I just wanted to share. This is a mitochondria summit. 

We’re talking about real talk, real doctors, real experts. At the DrTalks.com Summit. Laura did an amazing job. I was proud to be part of it. I thought it was powerful and impactful, and I’m sure anybody listening will love that. But you still might be looking for a palpable thing to do, starting next week, starting when you see this and all you got to do is fire up this xtendlife.com/collections/mitochondrial-heart-health. But you got to put in all the dashes, so you got to pay attention to the URL and get eight components, but it’s actually more than 80. I call it 610. But if you take the magnesium with the potassium, it’s actually ten things is more blood vessel than all. So that’s really it for the evening. We have finished the presentation. I thank you. I’m, as Laura said humbly and appreciatively, I’m a professor of cardiology in Detroit. I am actively treating and evaluating and consulting with patients all over the world, all over the United States. And, you know, when I need a superpower, I reach for six, eight. It is my superpower because I’ve got like a Swiss Army knife with eight different blades in one bottle, which is powerful. So, Laura, thank you for giving me time to present, and appreciate you sharing with your amazing audience.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That’s so great. And if you would, Dr. Kahn, if you can stop sharing your screen, perfect. Thank you so much. I just you know, some people watching may have heard this little story, but I’m going to tell it again because it’s one of my favorite stories. But you are one of the most influential reasons of why I shifted from allopathic medicine to functional medicine. And it was several years ago when I heard you on a podcast and my dad had already gone through open heart surgery. Stenting after that, his bypasses failed. He ended up with stents. It was just a whole thing. And we didn’t know about this alternative way to prevent it. I mean, we lost a piece of my dad during all of that. His brain was never the same. After going through all of that, things shifted in his body and his way of being. And so when I heard your talk on the evolution of medicine all those years ago, it really got me thinking. There’s something that I could be missing in the way that we practice medicine. So you really got me looking into another alternative. And if you would have told me then way back, all those years ago, hey, someday you’re going to produce a mitochondria summit and you’re going to become friends with Joel Kahn, and you guys are going to collaborate and you’re going to, you know, have each other on speed dial on your cell phones. I would have laughed and said, okay, that’s funny, but it’s been a pleasure, so thank you for being a part of my journey, and thanks for being there.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

It’s really powerful. And I remember that evening and that was a great presentation and I’m glad it ended up online and I wish your father well. But you know, I’m passionate about the fact I was at a charity event last night that was a health oriented charity, and I had a stand-up and I had to say more than a thousand people every day drop dead suddenly in the United States, way more than a thousand around the world. It’s called sudden cardiac death. They don’t get to kiss their family goodbye. They don’t get to have a meaningful conversations with their spouse and their kids and their grandkids. And it’s preventable and it’s identifiable and it’s correctable. And of course, it’s not just a pill a day. We know that pill a day supports pill a day, you know, is very important. But, you know, it’s understanding how fragile life is, how important diet is, how important fitness is, how important sleep is, avoiding stress management, how important thorough medical evaluations by functional sandboxes are. So, you know, again, it’s a little late night in Detroit, but I never would say no to an opportunity to speak to people about, you know, wake up, you know, appreciate your health and optimize your health. And that’s what your summer was all about. So that’s why I’m here.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Thank you so much. And yes, it is almost bedtime for you. It’s time for me to cook dinner. We’re 3 hours apart. I got to finish that up, but you have a beautiful night, and thank you for being such a huge support in this summit in the integrative and functional medicine world as well.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

All right. God bless. I’ll pass this on.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Bye now.