Palpitations, High Cholesterol & the #1 Killer: How to Reclaim Your Heart Health

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Hello, welcome to the Thyroid Pharmacists Healing Conversations podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Isabella Wentz, PharmD. Today, I have a integrative cardiologist with us, Doctor Jack Wolfson. Welcome, doctor Jack. It's so great to have you here with. Thank you, Isabelle. Absolute pleasure to see you and you. And I've communicated and done some interviews together over the years. Again, just really appreciate your work and how you're helping so many people. So thanks. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing.

I was just sharing how I always wanted to learn more about cardiology and how you've been able to break this down and really give people the tools that they need to stay heart healthy. Some of the information that's out in the world isn't exactly the best kind of information and cardiac disease still remains the number one killer. I'm going to give you guys a little bit of a background about Dr. Jack. Dr Jack Wolfson is a game changer in the world of cardiology, a heart doctor who traded the conventional for the extraordinary.

After spending a decade in Arizona's largest cardiologist group, performing angiograms, placing pacemakers, and practicing the standard model of care. Dr. Wolfson, the divine, would bring a woman into his life. Doctor Heather, a chiropractic physician, introduced him to a new way of thinking, one that didn't just treat disease but sought to uncover its root cause. In 2012, He founded Natural Health Doctor, a revolutionary practice focused on holistic cardiovascular care, bringing cutting-edge natural solutions to patients worldwide.

A best-selling author and sought-after international speaker, Dr. Wolfson has been featured on Fox News, CNN, NBC, The Washington Examiner, USA Today, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He's been recognized among the top 50 functional medicine doctors awarded Phoenix Top Doc and named a top holistic MD five times. Beyond his professional accolades, Dr. Wolfson is living proof of his philosophy. Since marrying Dr Heather in 2007, they've raised four children in a way that aligns with their deep commitment to natural health.

So thank you so much for being here with us. I know when I was early on in my healing journey I remember going to fitness classes and then ending up with like horrific palpitations to the point where I had to stop exercising and for a while I just can't do cardio and when i was struggling with a lot of my symptoms before I diagnosed with Hashimoto's I have these palpatations all the time I ended up having a diagnosis of a mitral valve prolapse. And I remember this was a big thing. I ended up going to a cardiologist in Phoenix who essentially told me to look at my thyroid.

This was something that he thought was like, this is the thing that you really need to focus on. A lot of people with thyroid issues, they struggle with palpitations. Can you tell us why a lot people, with and maybe without thyroid issue, why they might have palpitation? Yeah, most certainly. It's so common that people and more common in women are diagnosed with palpitations. And it's unfortunate that very often the medical doctors, the cardiologists, they kind of actually just say, hey, listen, it is not a big deal.

Don't worry about it. Maybe they run some different tests. came up with in the 1980s, this mitral valve, you know, syndrome, prolapse syndrome. But the doctors will say, hey, listen, don't worry about it, but it's affecting a lot of people and it bothers them. That's why they're complaining about us. So we do need to get to, root cause, which I love, of course, your first book talking about root causes, and that's what it is always about. What we do is that we see these women who have maybe PACs, PVCs, these premature complexes or extra beats, and then we want to figure out why.

And we don't want it suppress it with a beta blocker or calcium channel block or any pharmaceuticals. It's going after root cause. So, yes, the thyroid for sure can be involved and whether it's hyperthyroid, more commonly hypo, as you mentioned, in Hashimoto's, that could lead to the irritability of the heart for a whole variety of reasons that the thyroid is so critically involved in. But ultimately, it's also a matter of what's leading to that thyroid abnormality also affects the hearts. It's been really interesting.

I've seen some women when they get their thyroid antibodies down or they got their Thyroid function normalized, they will say that their palpitations improve. There was one person who was going in for cardiac procedure and it ended up being that she was low in iron and correcting that nutritional deficiency helped to correct the cardiac issue. Has this been your experience as well when you find that there are causes that could be corrected? Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are so many people who have gone for either, you know, pharmaceutical therapy, which again didn't address the root cause, may help the symptoms, it may actually make them worse.

You know so for example, if you're on a beta blocker, beta blocks slow down the heart rate. So you can slow it down, the heartbeat that allows those extra beats to jump in there. It's kind of like I think about the carousel or the merry-go-round at the playground. When the merry-go-round slows down, you can jump on.

Palpitations, Thyroid Health, and Root Causes 6:00

When it goes faster, You can't get on when the heart's going faster. The extra beats can get in. That's why a lot of people feel better with physical activity and the symptoms are worse when they're laying in bed. It's all quiet. So again, when The heart slows Down and The beta blocker calcium channel blockers slows it down more. Those extra Beats can Jump in Or maybe the women and men go for a definitive procedure, some kind of ablation or something where they would burn the area where this is coming from, and the doctors never, in some cases, never even check thyroid function, certainly didn't think about iron or zinc or copper.

or different vitamins that could be playing a role. You mentioned magnesium. What about, you know, magnesium? What About potassium? what about all of these other electrolytes that again that they're not looking at omega three fatty acids? not only thyroid function, but cardiac function as well. So that's the beauty of what we're talking about right now. It's always telling people, hey, just go that one extra step, keep digging deeper and deeper. There's a time and a place for pharmaceuticals and surgeries, But it's at the end of the game, not at The beginning of The game.

See, you got to work with a practitioner who is skilled at finding the root cause. Hmm, yeah, that's such a great point because sometimes I feel like I love conventional medicine for so many reasons, but it's also very frustrating because you'll have like the left-hand doctor only looking at your left hand and your right- hand doctor, only at the right hand. I used to work with psychiatrists and I would say, hey, are you seeing this patient effects are increasing your patient's blood pressure? And they would, say well, I don't check my patient blood-pressure.

And it kind of like, okay, well Sometimes the person would get started on one medication for their quote unquote depression, and then they'd have to get on a medication, for high blood pressure thereafter. And it was like this prescribing cascade that I would see as a pharmacist where perhaps maybe if you looked at, I don't know, nutrient deficiency or thyroid function, you might actually be able to resolve the depression in the first place. So that's been my frustration with conventional medicine.

It's basically this prescribing cascade and we're never looking at the whole person from a conventional medical standpoint, but I really love integrative and functional medicine because You're a cardiologist, but you're not just looking at the heart, right? You are really looking the full body function to see what's contributing to people's cardiac issues. Yeah, I mean, you have to look at whole person and all different organs. And the specialist like myself in the hospitals, when I used to work in hospitals were famous for that.

You go in there and your laser focused on the hearts and then the lung doctor comes in and she's focused in lungs and the kidney doctor come in. He's focus on kidneys and it really is all about Yeah, like you said, just focusing on all these things. And I do want to, you know, sometimes I tend to bash the medical community pretty good. My fellow MDs and DOs who were in that system and God bless the men and women who work in emergency rooms and trauma centers. But when it comes to the prevention, treatment, reversal of chronic disease, they have nothing.

They have nothing in their toolbox all of the statin drugs all the aspirin all The you know various blood thinners and diabetes drugs and like you mentioned psychiatric medications and It's just the way that we're trained, right? I mean the whether you were trained and you Know in pharmacy school and the ways that I was trained in osteopathic school And you and I were in the same location in Downers Grove, Illinois I Was there years before you? were but you it's um, uh, it just it it unfortunate that the they get trained is, has been a problem for many years still is and it's not about again, as we kind of allude continuously to that root cause, it is always about digging deeper, you know, why these people are having these things and again the medical community just has nothing in that arena.

If somebody were coming to you with palpitations, would you give them a checklist of things that they should look into? Yeah, most certainly, you know, the philosophy that we use at Natural Heart Doctor is what we call the 100-year heart method. So, just as you do and just kind of a lot of us functional medicine practitioners are the eat well, to live well to think well. And then you'd do the most advanced testing in the world, including obviously advanced thyroid assessment and stuff like that.

In that testing, we're also looking at toxins, all of the different pesticides and phthalates and plastics and PVCs and that's, you know, those are just the P words, let alone all the other mold mycotoxins, bacterial toxins. So many different things in the toxin category. And then you get the evidence-based supplements and the biohacking strategies, but that is like the foundational stuff. If all of that does not fix the problem, which pretty much it always does, but if it doesn't, then you can reach into, you know, the pharmaceutical toolbox if you need to, or, again, in my realm, a lot of people have what's called atrial fibrillation.

They've got, they're scheduled for an ablation, and I'm okay with ablations, But it's got to be, at the end of the game, with the right person, not in the beginning. Thank you for sharing that. Can we talk a little bit about cholesterol? This is such a hot topic and I know I have a lot of people who, one, we know that hypothyroidism can cause elevations in cholesterol and sometimes correcting thyroid function can normalize cholesterol, but there's more to the cholesterol story than just statins.

I was hoping that you could break that down for us. Should people be worried about high cholesterol? What are optimal values of cholesterol if somebody does have high-cholesterol? what do they need to look into? Should everybody be getting a statin in their water? Like should we just put it in the water supply? Well, certainly a lot of cardiologists believe that the statin should be in the water supply. They'll also say, well, you should take it because I take, and my father takes it, or my mother takes.

I'm not a staten guy. The hospital-based cardiologist and the biggest group in Arizona dispensing statens like candy. In fact, Lipitor is the number one selling drug of all time. And it's a sham. It's so unfortunate. It is really one of the biggest, I guess, you know, fallacies and mistakes, if you will, misdirections over the last, 40, 50 years. I think there was another one that was more recent than that. That was the big mis-direction of all time. But statins are right there with it. So what I would say again is that people are not deficient in statin drugs.

And as it relates to statin drugs, there's three problems with it. One, they don't really work like they say they do. Number two, they have tremendous side effects, including thyroid dysfunction in a lot of people. And then number three, the statin drugs provide that false sense of security. Hey, it's in the drinking water. You're fine. Eat, live, and think however you want. That's just a monumental mistake that people make relying on the Statin drugs. The most recent meta-analysis regarding statins shows that for primary prevention, meaning someone who's never had a heart attack or stroke, statin drugs lower the risk of heart attack by about 0.14% on an annual basis.

0,14%, which means that if you take a staten drug, you can enjoy lowering your heart-attack risk from 2% to 1.86%. And if are listening to this and you think that that's good and want that, then go get that. But if your part of Dr. Isabella Wentz's tribe, Jack Wolfson's cardiology tribe, you don't want a 1.84%. You want to 0% chance or close to it, risk of having a heart attack and that's where the statin fallacy begins. So as it relates to cholesterol, it's real simple. Cholesterol is a life-giving substance.

It's involved in every single cell, every cell function as you know. All the cells of the thyroid in the cell membrane are loaded with cholesterol, we need that. So we should embrace cholesterol for all that it does in cell membranes, all of our hormones come from cholesterol. Vitamin D of course, the hormone which is vitamin D, everybody knows vitamin is very important. How do we make vitamin d? The sun hits cholesterol coursing through the skin, it turns the cholesterol into vitamin, vitamin goes up, cholesterol goes down, our digestion, bile, from the liver it's all loaded with cholesterol so cholesterol is such a very important molecule it has been vilified only to sell pharmaceuticals.

Yeah, it's interesting because I know that cholesterol is required to make hormones, right? And sometimes that increase in cholesterol, is a sign from our body that, hey, we need more hormones. And whether that's like, Hey, We need a more thyroid hormone on board. Sometimes I see people with adrenal issues or in their like stress response, where they'll have elevations. What do you tell people who are concerned? Maybe they have elevated cholesterol and their conventional docs said, okay, you need a statin because your cholesterol is at 250. Yeah, that's a great, great point.

When we see abnormalities of cholesterol, and of course the definitions for what's abnormal are all set by the pharmaceutical companies.

Cholesterol, Statins, and Heart Risk 16:00

We know from the Mr. Fitt trial that the sweet spot for total cholesterol is 160 to 260. So when we do see, I guess, abnormalities or whenever we think about what our total cholesterol should be, more importantly, lipoprotein ratios like apolipoprotin B, A ratio, the lower the better there. But we should always think about if it's abnormal. It's not a statin drug deficiency. There's a reason why it is abnormal and to your point, if the body is struggling to make hormones, one of the natural responses of To that in an effort to say hey, we're not making enough therefore Let's make more cholesterol because we want to make More testosterone or estrogen and progesterone or aldosterone Or cortisol in the case of stress.

So we produce more of it now cholesterol is a very important part of our immune system so if we are immunocompromised if We are uh, uh under attack by these environmental toxins pollutants again That's a reason why cholesterol could go up and then in addition When cholesterol is made it has to be cleared and this cholesterol's made is put into ldl particles The lds travel around the body getting the job done, but we need to clear out those old ldle particles But when the liver is congested, it's toxic uh In addition, all those things that would lead to reduced thyroid hormone and reduce thyroid function.

All these things are all interplayed together, as you know, so delicately. So now the body does not clear the old small dense LDL particles. They circulate around and they can wreak havoc and cause heart disease as well. But the primary problem why heart attacks happen has nothing to do with cholesterol. has nothing to do with LDL particles which all animal species have because there's a purpose for those and we need to focus on that purpose. I know some people will say, hey, I have high cholesterol so I'm going to go on a vegan diet and I am going stop eating eggs.

What's your take on Yeah, I think that's a huge mistake, as I know you agree with. Yeah. I'm not into the vegan diet. It's deprivation, it's starvation. Obviously, other people have different opinions. The head of the American College of Cardiology, his name is Kim Williams, and he is a big proponent of vegan diets. Our ancestors ate a certain way. They were hunter-gatherers. The eating meat is mentioned around 300 times in the Bible. So our ancestors clearly ate that food. I think seafood is the healthiest food on the planet.

are right after that including the organs including eating thyroid actually my wife and I recently I did a social media post about us frying up the thyroid bison thyroid in grass-fed butter and eating that and our kids eating as well just like as our ancestors did or like an animal in the wild would do so Old school glandulars. Uh, the old school original glandular. And I think when you do some of that behavior, you know, it's, uh, It really negates the need sometimes even for, You know supplementation or the pharmaceutical approach.

I mean, is this one strategy for people to try or maybe one could lower the dose or Maybe one would feel better because they're getting in that. Yeah. True. In that old-school glandula approach, not something we do on a daily basis. and obviously, as you, know and you're right about it, a lot more complex than that, but, um, Yeah, you know, the idea of the vegan, it's just such deprivation. We know the people, for example, who have the highest levels of omega-3 fatty acids have a lowest risk of everything, heart attacks, dementia, atrial fibrillation, infections.

So we want to get those omega threes and we get them from eating seafood. People try to get them from flaxseed and walnuts, chia seeds. It's just the body is very poor in conversion. There's an enzyme called delta-6-saturase, which helps to make that conversion, again, it does so inefficiently. And of course, in the hypothyroid person, that's definitely not going to happen. The thyroid, as you know, of coarse, and talk about it, is the spark plug of the bottom. If you're missing the thyroid function, you are not gonna be able to any of these processes happen, So, yeah, vegan and as far as, you know, I mean, eggs and eggs are a cocoon for a baby chicken.

All the vitamins, minerals, proteins and fats that a chicken needs to come to life. We're a huge fan of wild salmon roe. Same thing. I just everything inside of that salmon egg just does such miracles to, to the brain, the body. So yeah. Big fan. Interestingly, when I started working with clients, I had a lot of people who switched from the vegan diet into eating meat, and they would eat grass-fed meat. One of the big life-changing things was that they started eating beef and red meat And at first I was like, oh, they were iron deficient.

Maybe that's what they needed. And then I learned about carnitine and carnatine, one of the richest sources is in red meat. and this is something very, very helpful for thyroid function and fatigue and brain fog. It's also helpful. For the heart as well. Right. Yeah. Carnitinine. You know, carna carne, you know. Carna is meat, comes from the Greek root for meat and it's It is very exciting because listen, these people and maybe in particular women, they're struggling to find answers and one direction will lead them into the vegan.

Somebody will talk about how they did so much better on vegan and in fact they maybe did because if you're coming from McDonald's, Cookies and Cupcakes and you switch over to veganism, you may do better but then eventually those people they burn out, right? So, you know, by getting some of these amino acids of which carnitine is very similar, it is a protein and that protein is going to be the best source, is gonna be animal products. Where you get that, your not gonna get in the vegan or plant world.

L-carnitine, for example, as a supplement is proven to help support people. It's really going to be a mitochondrial fuel, and it's proven for people with congestive heart failure, to improve with carnitene supplementation. Yeah, you can just do it, right from the food and just get tremendous benefits. But as much as I'm not the vegan cardiologist, I am also not a carnivore cardiologists. A lot of people do find improvement on carnavore, but I don't think it's a good long-term strategy. Pure carnvore certainly would likely lead you to ketosis and I do not think ketoses is good as a long-term strategy for the majority of people either, you know, so we were hunter-gatherers and that's how we should approach it.

You know one of my favorite examples of this is the movie Cast Away with the actor Tom Hanks and it's like, Uh, you know you you uh, You know tom hanks. He's in an airplane crash. She winds up on the remote island. So on The island he Goes to sleep with the sun down.He awakes with a sunrise. he spends the day in the Sun He is wearing a loincloth. so he's getting that sleep.he's Getting that sun and then he is eating fish avocados,you know and coconuts onthe island and there's You know, you would say there's basically no pollution on that island.

So if we all lived like Tom Hanks did on the island, now he suffers from being lonely. And as you know as far as mental health is concerned, that's so catastrophic to be alone and socially isolated. That's really problematic. But my point is that if you eat well, live well and you think well that is the strategy. One thing that I like to make very clear is everyone's genetics are perfect. Your genetics are perfect, my genetics or perfect. Everyone who's listening, their genes are. Perfect. However, we get, you know, got here in the image of God or in evolutionary model, whatever it is, We got her perfectly.

We can run and jump and see and feel, uh, You know and make babies. we can do some pretty impressive stuff. Why would we be genetically programmed of heart disease or thyroid disease, or cancer? It doesn't make any common sense, but unfortunately the medical community, they're not taught that. Or if they are taught that, they don't want to teach that because then it implies that there's something you could do about it if you say, well, it's not your genes. If you blame it on the genes, then you'd say well you know what, you've got genetics, the family history of heart disease, nothing you can do.

It's in your gene, in the history, what are you going to do? You've gotta take a statin drug. A hundred million Americans have high blood pressure. So they all have bad genetics, like one out of three people, heart attacks are the number one killer. There's no heart attack gene. there's not heart-attack gene, there is no high-blood-pressure gene there are genes that could predispose people if you turn the genes on by not eating well, living well and thinking well. Yeah, it's interesting that so many diseases they say were genetically programmed, but yet it is not like we've evolved so much in the last 50 years or 100 years.

I grew up in Eastern Europe. Chernobyl happened right when I was a young child and the children closest to Chernobil ended up with thyroid disorders and genetically similar children you know on the other side of Ukraine right you think they'd have similar genes they had far lower rates of autoimmune thyroid disease thyroid cancer so on and so forth And I feel like conventional medicine just sort of overlooks that and they're like, we're just going to make you the best drug in the world to take care of your faulty genes, right?

But what actually leads to high blood pressure and what are some of the natural treatments? Yeah, so high blood pressure, you know, it's really just, kind of like abnormal cholesterol, if you will. It's just a sign something is going wrong. I mean, clearly a sin. And the idea is to find out why the blood pressures going high, what's faulty in the body, where are you getting the wrong foods? Where are these environmental toxins coming from? where these stressors coming? From where is this lack of sleep coming, from lack sunshine, coming all these different things.

And obviously this all plays into, uh, you know, your specialty, thyroid, adrenals, hormones, it all place into it because you would say, well, yeah, if the thyroid's off, does that lead to high blood pressure? Yes. If the adenals off on and on, and, but it's still going to be, how do we address really that root cause of why the thyroids, the hormones are leading to, are lead into high pressure. I'll be very clear about this. if you are on a high-blood pressure drug, You are on the path to dying, to heart attack, or stroke.

It doesn't work. it may lower your numbers down, just like cholesterol drugs lower the numbers, down. But you don't get any awards for having lower numbers. You get awards, for what you really want is to live long, live well, not have a stroke, Not have heart attacks, and not cancer. And the pharmaceutical approach is just, It's just wrong. It just doesn't work. Obviously, it's got tremendous side effects. Uh, obviously it leads, as we said, to the false sense of security. And there's. So much data, but unfortunately the medical doctors, they'll come in and they're just, its not their fault.

I mean, there not bad people as you know, their just not trained that way. They're not training root cause there.

Diet, Seafood, and Nutrient-Dense Eating 28:00

Its not that they are not intelligent people. There are intelligent. But it is like if you and I went to Poland and we are walking around, you now Warsaw or Krakow. And, um, someone speaks to me in Polish and I'm like, what? I don't, you know, I know a couple of words, in, and Polish from, uh, from practicing in Chicago and some of the Polish, people there who tried to teach me to speak a little bit, a few words. Uh, i'm not an idiot. I just, was never trained to, speak Polish. So these medical doctors, they're just not trained in root cause, as you know, from day one, you because we had joint pharmacology classes at the same time.

And it's all and really one of my favorite moments was writing that first prescription, how amazing that was. But again, if you look back, it just the total indoctrination of the doctors. It's it it all true. it is all a conspiracy and it one those conspiracy theories. That's totally, totally true. So if you're on a high blood pressure drug, you must be on program to get off of that drug as soon as possible. It will lead to failure. Well, I feel like in conventional medicine, we do things that look good on paper, so we know that high cholesterol and high blood pressure, these might be risk factors.

So they're like, well, how do we modify the risk factor? And instead of being like hey, when somebody is stressed out, this leads them to have a lot of cortisol, which then can lead to high pressure. They're like, we're not going to deal with the stress. We're going not even think about the cortisol. But what we can do is give you a pill to lower your blood pressure. And it's like they try to correct everything on paper. The human body doesn't work that way, right? I know I see a lot of ladies with adrenal dysfunction.

It's a common thing with Hashimoto's. supplements, medications, all of that to lower their cortisol or increase their cortisol. That's one way of doing it. But I found the best way I'm doing is like teaching lifestyle how to how do de-stress, right? And so we're focusing on like circadian rhythm balance and we are focusing make sure you get good sleep and do your breathing exercises, do some yoga, some trauma work and doing all these things and all the sudden it's like, okay, then the cortisol normalizes and the blood pressure normalize.

And I find that is a much more effective approach than just doing things on a piece of paper, right? But it just makes common sense, right? I mean, just after all of the, you know, pharmacology training that you had and after everything that I went through, and then you wake up into this reality of just common-sense. Like, why wouldn't any and every medical doctor say that as a first approach? You have to get good quality sleep. And yes, of course, people with thyroid dysfunction, adrenal dysfunction.

Yes, they have trouble sleep. But again, like that's still the focus as to, you know, OK, well, let's get that quality sleep, how do we spend more time outdoors like Tom Hanks in the movie, getting that sunshine onto the skin? The skin is a solar panel built to collect light. Yet most people sit inside all day long. They're from Poland, they're from Chicago. They're, from these colder places where people just don't get outside. Now our ancestors in Poland and Russia and all over, They were outside all the time, but not anymore.

So now you don t get that sun. The sun helps to create nitric oxide. You mentioned natural strategies to lower blood pressure down. Well, not only does the sun create vitamin D when It is summertime, you know, for example, You know you do need optimal seasons to get the vitamin D and you can also get vitamin d from animal foods. So vitamin, D lowers blood pressure vitamin. D receptors are located all over the heart on every single cell in the blood vasculature as well. so you need good vitamin that'll lower blood.

Pressure the sun also through UVA ultraviolet. Wavelength A helps to make nitric oxide. So you have stored nitrates in your skin, the sun hits it, releases it as nitrate oxide opens up blood vessels. The other thing sun does also is that it helps prime the production of melatonin, which helps you sleep. It all just works perfectly together. Its also common sense and it's just unfortunate that so many people just do not get that message. Do you recommend a beach vacation as a part of a health wellness routine for people?

I know people in Phoenix and Texas, California, like we step outside and we can get some sunshine, but what about our friends in Chicago? Yeah, you know, I love that question too, because you and I both spoke all over at different events and you talk to these people and they're like, what do I do? I live in Chicago, Boston, New York, Alaska, Canada, Russia, Norway, and we're all like move. I mean, it's real simple, just move to Costa Rica, move the southern Caribbean, moved to Greece or Italy, to some equatorial area.

And then they'll come back and they will say, no, I can't do that, right? My family, we got the grandkids, got my job, or I just love Chicago and I totally get that. But if you want the best advice, that's the better advice. If you're looking for health. I said this when I spoke of the truth about cancer years ago. You cannot heal in the same environment where you got sick. Now it doesn't mean you necessarily have to leave your home. Uh, but it means you need to change up various things. Uh. And of course, you know, as we talked about, before we started recording how mold and bacteria in a home from water damage can lead to all these different health problems.

So it may be that you do need. To remediate your home, test your, home remediate your. Home or move from your house. But to answer your question, yeah, You do. Need these vacations. For every five to seven weeks that. You live in Chicago to pick on Chicago again, or maybe to. Pick on Warsaw. or crack out or something like that, then you got to go to more sunny climates for five to seven days. And if you can't do that you're going to suffer the consequences. These are rules that are written by God, these are the rules written according to nature and when you violate the rule you are going suffer consequences Yeah, it's so interesting.

I used to have seasonal affective disorder in Chicago and then when I moved to California it just went away, right? It just when away and at first I was like, oh, I just, you know, i'm older now or whatever. And then I move back to Chicago, and within a few, within, moved back like January and by March I'm like oh there's that seasonal effect disorder again. And I think just trying to separate ourselves from nature, we have these amazing buildings and beautiful homes and we can live in very harsh environments by just being in an artificial environment, right?

You're inside with air conditioning or you're in side with heat and you are barely getting that message from nature, that it's daytime, nighttime, time to produce hormones, to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I feel like when people spend too much time indoors or in the wrong kind of climate, they end up sicker. Well, the other thing I would say about that, too, is that you want to stack up that summer sun. So if you do live in Chicago or Milwaukee, Minneapolis, all these different places we mentioned.

When the sun's out, I guess back in the day when you go to the gym, suns out guns out or go into the beach and stuff like that. I thought it was bums out. And bumbs out too, I like that too. So when you have that, you got to really stack up that summer sun. That'll help to create a lot of vitamin D that should carry you through a significant portion of the winter. But as we said, try and take those vacations. They really are, you know, back in the day, there were smoke breaks that people would take, they'd go out on their lunch hour, whatever it may be, go smoke.

But it's really just a sunbreak. So to get outside and to go embrace that. Ultimately, if you're sick enough, You got to change up your environment. And the more drastic you change the environment, I think the better off you'll do. We know statins, blood pressure meds, not the way. How do we actually prevent heart attacks and strokes? So, you know, we do it through the concept of eat well, live well think well. So just to kind of reiterate on that, We eat a lot of seafood, regeneratively raised meats, and we only eat organic plant material.

We are hunter gatherers. You know we drink clean water, organic mold, mycotoxin free coffee. I am a big coffee fan. We just really pay attention to try the sooner we get to sleep after sundown The longer and better we're gonna live The more we Get outside the longer. We're going to live the more We avoid the environmental toxins and pollutants the Longer we are going live and that goes again back to the plastic, you know so for example the recent study that came out that showed that people who underwent what's called carotid artery surgery, so carotic endarterectomy, where they removed the plaque that was inside of the arteries that supply the brain.

So they remove the plaques from the artery and then the doctors looked under a microscope and what they found is that two thirds of people had high amounts of microplastics. Surprisingly one third of them didn't see the micro plastic. The group that had the plastic in the arteries had triple the rate of heart attack, stroke, and dying over the next three years compared to the people who didn't have it. So that makes plastic a bigger risk factor than smoking, drinking, diabetes, obesity, blood pressure combined times two.

So I would be much more concerned about your plastic intake, for example, than, you know, again, then most other things. So again just looking at that whole chemical profile that, as you, know interrupts, thyroid function leads to so many problems there. Excuse me, adrenal function, etc. Also take a look at chiropractic care. Listen, I became a natural cardiologist. My wife's a chirapractor. Chiropractic Chiropractic, I like to think of how the chiropractic adjustment uses the bones of the spine, the vertebra of spine to make neurologic changes to the brain and then the brains sends those positive signals back to organs, for example, including the thyroid that is innervated by the neurology system.

Blood Pressure, Sunlight, and Lifestyle 39:00

So, uh, and then, you know to wrap that up, a holistic dentistry big fan of holistic Dentistry, very very important as you, know also movement right the more we move the longer we live So all those things but then you get into the the think-well component and you mentioned like seasonal affective disorder Which really highlights how it all interplays in together how that live well Interacts with the thing. Well, it's all very I also want to address to the you. Mentioned the uh trauma so childhood trauma big big problem as it relates to cardiac disease and all disease um ptsd but what about pt sd of a medical diagnosis what if you're a woman who has a history of thyroid cancer or is labeled with hashimoto's or with graves like what role does does trauma play even in receiving that diagnosis and then how does someone deal with that trauma and if they don't How does that impact someone you know going forward?

Um, and I think ultimately like that's not my area of specialty i'm sure it's Not your area Of specialty as well and we refer people for that or we identify hey if you're struggling with a Medical trauma or any kind of trauma then yeah, you want to seek out some form of therapy for That sometimes it may be professional help sometimes if You eat more seafood Get more sunshine get better sleep. It helps you deal with that trauma that much better as well. But also I find that there's a lot of healing in prayer, in gratitude, and purpose in community, right?

Just having a like-minded community or even in your community that you've built where you got thousands and thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, millions of millions who have seen your information. and knowing that, hey, we're all in this together and there's other people like us out there. Yeah, I feel like definitely community can be quite healing. And when you see somebody taking charge of their health or healing something that maybe you're struggling with, this can quite powerful. I'm not a psychologist or anything like that but I don't play one on TV either.

But I love EMDR. eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. And it's when somebody works with a therapist and they can essentially process their past traumas and it really changes their brain wiring. I love neurofeedback that can be incredibly helpful and oh my goodness if you can get enough omega-3s and heal your brain then you're going to be so much less reactive. We know that inflamed brains Are going to be the most likely to struggle with PTSD, right? And to sort of hold on to some of these negative emotions and not be able to process them and get stuck.

And so I feel like we have a lot of different tools that I might not, be that therapist, but I'm always recommending that people work with a qualified therapist. Right. Yeah, I mean, because with any illness, we should always approach things through that, okay, well, it's the eat well. Eat these foods, avoid these food, right? So you avoid the MSG and all the artificial colors and sweeteners and flavors and that stuff. And you don't need a government intervention to get that out of our diet because the government didn't help me get it out my diet and you the same thing.

So it is like we need to read labels and if the box doesn't have a label, just don' eat stuff out a box. You know to the best of your ability, but if you eat those foods live that lifestyle It helps you with your thoughts as you mentioned And then you know the evidence-based supplements the the advanced testing that you that we could do to see where things are at to dial that in You, know dialing in thyroid dial in adrenal and then as You mentioned these different strategies that We could use in that biohacking space to help us deal with you.

Know with the traumas it's And we can, you know, kind of marry those all in at the same time, and that's where they'll get the best effect. And I think that very often, if you don't do everything, maybe not perfectly, but if don' really focus on everything you're not going to get results that you want. Yeah, I feel like you can get stuck for sure. I would love for us to talk a little bit about holistic dentistry. A lot of us in functional medicine, the mouth kind of lives by itself separately. This is not something on a lot people's radar.

But I do know, and I think I read an article somewhere, how your dental health might be more important to cardiac health than people realize. Oh, I mean, it's tremendously involved. And there's a lot to go in with that. I guess ultimately, kind of goes back to when we were kids and how your parents would tell you. Not necessarily my parents. My parents, they would take me to the dentist and I'd get my cleaning and all the fluoride and mercury and the amalgams and stuff. But really just very important about how you take care of your teeth when you're young, the foods you eat, and lifestyle that you lead.

It all plays into good oral health. But to your point, when you have periodontal disease, where you've a lot of inflammation in your mouth, it increases your risk of cardiac disease. A recent study that, on the shoulders of many other studies, about the benefits of flossing and lowering cardiac risk as well. But all that plays into the thyroid. We know that periodoneal diseases is highly inflammatory. It leads to thyroid dysfunction. And then, of course, circular way is that thyroid dysfunction leads to periodontal disease.

So you got to play that all in and together as you know. Seeing a holistic dentist to get your mouth taken care of is very important. I think that things like root planing and dental scaling procedures I think are important, but yeah, you got to just find that holistic dentist to get in there. Root canals are something I that should be avoided. Metal amalgams, in many cases, should come out. But it is, again, it's complicated work and find a dentist that you're comfortable with, But clearly it as a major thing.

And even just eating fermented foods, good oral microbiome, not using things like Listerine and Scope and Even alcohol can be detrimental to your oral microbiome. So really nourishing that oral micro biome very important. You can also look at ozone. There's like oral ozone products as well that can used injected ozone, a lot of cool stuff. Do you ever recommend oral probiotics for people? Yeah, most certainly. I mean, and I think they're very effective. We can often get it from food. And don't forget, kind of going back to the seafood, how the omega-3 fatty acids in seafood helps to nourish the gut microbiome, make things like, you know, butyric acid, which is very good for brain, good cardiac, anti-cancer stuff.

You know and eating fermented foods. So it could be kimchi, sauerkraut, it can be drinking kombucha. it could be fermented dairy products like kefir, yogurt are very good as well. You know, raw butter, or raw cheese, big fan. Interestingly, I used to be super dairy sensitive and a lot of people with Hashimoto's are, but then when I had my son I was breastfeeding and working with a lactation consultant and I ended up taking alfalfa and carnitine and my dairy sensitivity completely went away. It was just the most interesting thing and sometimes now I can eat all kinds of fermented dairy and this is something that I love to utilize and I think it can be very healthy.

Of course some people that are sensitive, I always encourage them to look deeper. We had mentioned carnivore, right? Carnivore is like a very trendy diet right now, but I oftentimes think about the people who do well on a vegan diet, or do while on carnivores diet is, like, what are you missing? Are you are missing a digestive enzyme? Because really, we should be able to eat a more more of a varied diet. Right? Or are You missing some kind of nutrient? or what's the reason behind this? Do you have something that's out of balance in your microbiome?

and how do we get you back into balance so you could really thrive and that not a lot of foods bother you. Of course, we're not going to have you eating crappy junk food, but at the same time, We don't want you to be reactive to things like organic yogurt or kefir, which are very health promoting foods. Yeah, we definitely, you know, say, uh, try raw dairy, as well. Uh, in Texas, here where we're at, it's pretty easy to, to get raw diary. It's not available like in every corner, but it it available.

California it is available, farmers markets, always the best place to shop. You know, so I do think that, you know raw dairy is good, but you mentioned like the gut microbiome and the oral microbiomes. When I first met my wife in 2005, she said it's about the guts, about gut, and this is really on the heels of my father getting diagnosed with a Parkinson's like illness called progressive supranuclear palsy. Eventually we wind up at the Mayo Clinic and Mayo clinic has no reason why my Father is sick and dying.

They have no treatment for my And then simultaneously, serendipitously, I am introduced to this young female chiropractor, and she tells me all the reasons why my father is sick and dying. And it made perfect sense. Number one, it makes perfect since because she's smoking hot. I believed her. I saw all these, you know, things that we never discussed about, food, nutrition, lifestyle, et cetera, and so it made perfect sense. But she said it's about the gut, about gut. And the way that I think that it all goes down is that all of these...

all disease, I'll make it... and you understand this as well. All diseases from two things too much of the bad stuff, not enough of a good stuff. That's what it is in every single. Of course, there's trauma like if someone loses an arm in a, you know, in aboding accident. Nonetheless, too, much, of, the, bad, stuff not, enough, or the good, so the. plastics, phthalates, mold mycotoxins, other environmental toxins, bacterial toxins. They damage the gut microbiome leading to intestinal hyperpermeability often known as leaky gut.

Then we get inflammation, oxidative stress, immune system activation. We get leky blood vessels that leads to coronary artery disease. The thyroid, if you will, leaks, the liver leaks. The brain leaks the blood brain barrier leaks everything leaks Everything becomes dysfunctional and then disease runs rampant. So to your point, can we eliminate the toxins to the best of our ability? Can we use natural, you know, remedies to repair the gut microbiome? And then once we do that, we're off to their races.

We're looking good. Yeah, it's amazing. Sometimes really approaching the body indirectly results in healing. It's sort of interesting when I first started talking about thyroid health, people were like, why are you talking the gut? Isn't the got down here and the thyroid's up there, right? And I feel like that's the same for everything because our body isn't a whole bunch of different organs in a vacuum. They all talk to each other, they all communicate, there's pathways. But that's not what the medical doctors learn, right?

I mean, it's just not, what we learn. It's, you know, and you've got all these different specialties. And like I said earlier, they just don't pay attention to each other. But yeah, the gut bone is connected to the thyroid bone. Like it is all connected, is one.

Trauma, Community, and Holistic Healing 51:00

The more we understand that every single cell in our body is talking to every other cell. Just makes perfect sense. I remember I went to an endocrinology conference and I had just, I was on my healing journey and saw an article in a gastroenterology journal about how every case of autoimmune disease has intestinal permeability and that's a feature of it. And I remembered asking the gentleman at the endocronology conferences what they thought of that and they were like, oh, what? And they hadn't read those journals and was like yeah, do you find that that this could be relevant for people with thyroid disease, you know, your specialty, and they just hadn't read the gastroenterology journals.

They were reading the endocrinology. When I first met my wife and, I mean, again, she just trashed my profession right from the get-go. She's so hardcore. And it was, it like an awe moment. It was like, oh, feel bad for Jack, you know, moment because you spend your entire life. I was born into the cardiology world. My father was a cardiologist. Listening to cardiological conversations as I'm in my mother's womb. And that is a very difficult pill to swallow when you're told that your profession is asham or is wrong.

But it's like as you kind of learn all these different things, you learn about the root cause, You learn how everything is all interactive and then you understand these common sense type things. And as she talks about The Leaky Gut, And she mentions leaky gut. I'm like, leeky gut? Where did you get this bogus diagnosis from? I went through four years of medical school, three years, of internal medicine, and three of cardiology. And I am on the job for a couple of years in the biggest group in Arizona as a hospital-based cardiologist.

And she said, well, go read about it, smart guy. You know, and then I go to the medical literature and there's not much there. But over the last 15, 20 years, as you know the Medical literature has exploded on leaky gut, maybe more professionally known as as intestinal hyper permeability. The markers that we could use to test for that, whether it's, you Know, zonulin antibodies to actin, lipopolysaccharides, antibodies, to zionulin, lipo polysacharide, binding proteins. on and on that we can use to confirm that diagnosis and then ultimately, you know, come up with strategies to improve that.

And then if you improve those numbers much as you, improve Hashi's antibodies and stuff like that, the person is on the way to healing. You may not be able to get the patient off their thyroid pharmaceutical, and you may desire to do so, but even still, if your able quiet down that immune system, that antibody response, it's always got to be a benefit. And there's connection between that and heart disease as well. And in recent years, is that right? Oh, for sure. No, I mean, the literature. Again, when you have leaky gut, you I call it leakey heart syndrome.

So you can have antibodies that attack actin, For example, act in is in the the myocardium, right. It's in all muscle tissues. So you go back to the woman with palpitations or the man or woman, you know, with atrial fibrillation. So what is causing that? So if you have these antibodies that are attacking your heart muscle, it's going to lead to abnormal heart rhythms, PACs, PVCs, palpitations. It's gonna lead. To H refibrillation and of course, coronary artery disease, cardiomyopathy was actually a study from, uh, the journal of the American college of cardiology in 2007 that talked about altered intestinal permeability and congestive heart failure.

So it was in the medical literature, you know, circa 2007. And again, to your point, it is just the cardiologist, they It's not that they don't want to hear it. Maybe they. Don't have time to. Hear it, maybe they, don' believe it maybe, they Don' want. To believe that. They just, They don. Want to learn the language of, of health and wellness. And therefore it's like, Hey, what's, What's the next drug we can add to the heart failure regimen? And it it just. It just sad. Yeah, it's a bit of tunnel vision.

I mean, I went into pharmacy school wanting to find a cure for a disease, right? And then I realized like, It's not just like one drug, you have to really look at the body as a whole. That said, with Hashimoto's I have some key go-to things where I would recommend Somebody is hypothyroid, you know, definitely getting on some thyroid hormone is going to help you feel better. If somebody is super fatigued with low blood pressure, I might recommend something like thiamine to them feel. Do you have some evidence-based supplements that you like to utilize?

Well, you know, it's interesting because, um, You know obviously the, the medical community admonishes the use of supplements in so many situations. And it like, they'll even they can be critical of you and they say, Oh, Dr. Wentz, there's no evidence. Then all of a sudden you show up with your stack. of stuff, you know, and that's another thing too. Like, I love, uh, love the, the people. Oh, are you a mommy blogger? You know? Are you, did you get your degree from Google? And you're like, actually, yes, because I went on to Google and it led me to PubMed the medical, you know, database of all studies ever done.

And I read the original research and this is what it showed me and you, uh, doctor cardiologist, whatever, You never read that study, but I did. So I think it makes the mommy blogger and the doctor Google actually very powerful. Uh, and I like to say, I mean, there's probably a lot of, women who, men who are listening to this conversation and i would sooner send a family member of mine to them for medical advice, health advice than I would any other cardiologist I've ever worked with. Now what does that, what is that say, right?

I mean, I could, you know, it's, um, my 17 year, like my 12 year old son, seven year-old daughter, would send people to health advise with my seven-year- old daughter. My four- year Uh, you know, over any now again, if you're in the midst of a heart attack, I wouldn't say go see my son. Uh you, know there is emergencies and traumas and stuff like that, but for real health and wellness advice. Yeah, we can go get it. I mean, and to answer your question in a long winded way, uh, blood pressure, big fan of organic beetroot powder.

Amino acids like L arginine citrulline taurine grape seed extract that combination As long as we're all adults here the the heartbeat and the vessel support that Combination are two different ways to increase nitric oxide. So that we call that the boner juice because it increases circulation in general and Viagra, as you know from your, this is before you were in pharmaceutical, pharmacy school, Viagar came out in the late 1990s and viagar is a nitric oxide, you, know, producer and prevents actually the breakdown of nitrous oxide.

So the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, they study this particular drug for as an anti-anginal and as a blood pressure drug. The drug had this very interesting side effect. Added benefits. This added benefit. And that's how it was born. But it's all about making nitric oxide and we can do that through two different ways. We mentioned the food-based nitrates. We mentioned amino acids that plug into nitric oxide synthase. And then, of course, the sun, as we mentioned, increases nitrich oxide as well.

Back in the day, though, I will tell you this, and we talk about, you know this from your days in pharmacy as, well, how the pharmaceutical reps, they come in and the way that they used to wine and dine us and still do, but it was certainly I mean, when my father was starting out in the 70s and 80s, forget about it. I made like so many stories of what happened with him and all the payola and stuff. When Viagra came out, there were a bunch of us residents, men and women in, you know, in in a residence room.

And the rep from Pfizer comes in and he throws like a bag of Viagar all over the table. He's like, here, guys, go have fun with this. Try it out. You know. Prescribe it to your patients. It was just the the industry is so dirty. So. Just so nasty of what that is. But again, there's evidence-based supplements for example, you know for lipids if you want to optimize your lipid There's things like berberine as you berberean can be very effective Curcumin ginger all these things are evidence based and they have good information.

They're going at a good quality probiotic can Be helpful You know you mentioned L carnitine for for cardiac function. You can also get into things. Like you D ribos uh alpha lipoic acid there's so many different things that we can use and try after we again we go for root cause um and I just I wanted

Dental Health, Gut Health, and Inflammation 1:00:00

to you know again agree with what you said before you Know regarding that sometimes people are pretty darn sick and they need to get on that thyroid You know immediately or again, they may need these medical approaches Uh, that can be permanent but could also be a temporary bridge as we're working on you know, on root cause, even men with like low testosterone. So a man may have low T and we want to figure out why, but while we're figuring out, why we may to get them on something in order to kind of ease that process.

And again, once you start allowing the body to function better, then yeah, that can help to eliminate root costs. Yeah, I love that you have such a wide toolbox, anything from lifestyle changes to nutrition to supplements to medications. And rather than I know there are some people that are that will say, never do this or always do This and it's not that straightforward. A lot of times we really need to look at the person as an individual and look At the big picture. Yes, sometimes you might need To bridge them through with some hormone therapy or get them something while they're working on the lifestyle changes.

Because the Lifestyle Changes, I feel like for us, they are almost second nature, common sense. My son will be like, why do people eat gluten, Mom, when they know that it hurts their tummy? Like, don't they? Know that? And my, my I mean, mice, have a seven year old son and he is so wise in health that he's just wonders why some of these adults don' know things, right? But like I said, like, you know, we would sooner send people for health information to your son, pay your sun for a consultation.

You know someone comes in, they're like a 63 year old, obese male with on five different blood pressure drugs or whatever. And who would they go to? Well, here, do a 30-minute consultation with my son and ask my sons questions about what you should eat and how you sleep and be active and avoid chemicals and stuff like that. But maybe I'll throw it back to you because when I started early on, I thought gluten was a major villain. And we and we can also preface this and say like we don't need gluten.

There's no health benefits to eating gluten, but I think that I have evolved a lot. I still don' t eat gluten maybe if I come across a, you know, fermented sourdough, You know then I would do that. But I I that gluten in a healthy person is probably less villainous compared to these other toxins now when you and I are both so much more educated now about the water damage in a home in the mold and the bacteria or, you know, EMF or the plastics, would you agree with that? Yeah my approach has evolved a lot.

I know when I first was on my healing journey I was at a point where I got off of gluten and dairy and I felt like oh I feel so much better so therefore I must eliminate more foods and i sort of got stuck there and came back into more balance and learning about gut health and stress response and so many of these other things. where I felt my best and I was gluten free and dairy free for a long time. I'm still mostly gluten-free. Um, I can't eat sourdough, but I do feel like if you're healthy, you should be able to tolerate a whole bunch of foods.

It's not like I would eat really processed baguettes all day every day. But really, my approach has evolved to dialing a lot of these things in that I wasn't really aware of back when I first started. That's the joy of being in this for 10 plus years. I didn't realize how toxic some of the personal care products I was using were. Right. You know, I didn't know you could test for carnitine. I don't Know that you can do organic acids testing to figure out if you have various, you know mold mycotoxins in your system or if You have mitochondrial dysfunction.

So I've definitely evolved in my approach as well. And now when I see these different diets trending like carnivore, and like absolutely brilliant, i'm so glad this is working for you. But let's think about what else is going on in Your gut. Are you exposed? I think a lot of people who are mold exposed, for example, they might do really well on an oxalate free diet. That's because we know that aspergillus mold can create oxylates internally, and it doesn't mean that beets are evil. It just means that your body is overwhelmed with oxolates.

And when you're eating beats, which are high oxalyte food, that's going to contribute to that overwhelm. But if we treat the aspargillas and support your detox pathways, the beats are going be your friends again, right? Yeah, I mean, you've seen some of these women, especially maybe, because I think the women a lot of times are the canary in the coal mine because in that scenario, the woman who doesn't feel well, it's a signal to change the environment because nature would not want to bring another life into a dangerous environment.

So I think that's why the women do have those symptoms, like women who may be have, whether it's multiple chemicals, sensitivities. Again, you would have more sensitivity than maybe I would because your body is telling you, don't think about having a baby in the detergent aisle in a grocery store. That's not a good place or in moldy home or whatever it may be. So that is the best way to do it. You know, for those people, you know who, uh, who wind up and they're on your schedule for a consultation or whatever, maybe you get an email and like, I can, i'm down to like one or two foods.

Um, and that's, You may have to subsist on those one, or 2 foods in the time being, but even again, as you extend that out to carnivore, which is a, Which is, a restricted diet. And it's not an ancestral diet. There were no, you know, lions are not carnivores. Cats, your household cat, if your dog will go outside and eat shrubs or berries, they will eat those foods. So there was, there's no. animal in the world that is a total carnivore and humans shouldn't be either and you can feel better for a long period of time but it doesn't make it the right approach.

You always need to figure out why as you mentioned and if you are High in aspergillus. If you are high in penicillium, if you're exposed to these other mold mycotoxins, stachybotrys, black mold, you know, catomium. I mean, all these different things. And that's just, again, the mold not even talking about the bacteria that if your in that environment and it's leading to that the problem is the environment. The problem was not the beets or the spinach or higher oxalate foods or histamine producing foods.

You got to go after the root cause. Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that I think it takes a lot of experience and unlearning things to get to that point. People for years have been taking baby aspirin for cardiac prevention. What's your take on that? Yeah, I think, you know, i definitely am anti-pharma, and people don't have heart attacks and strokes because they're aspirin deficient. It was all propaganda by the Bayer Corporation to sell a lot of aspirine and they certainly did.

As you, know it led to a, lot, of gastric ulcers and a. Lot of people bleeding to death and. A lot. Of people having hemorrhagic strokes. I wrote about this in my book from 2015 that aspirin was dead on arrival, total failure. And it was like 2018, there was a large study that was released that looked at aspirine for primary prevention in people 70 and older. and it turned out that more people died in the aspirin group. So it pretty much got rid of aspirine for people 60 and older. Doctors will still recommend aspirins for 60 people and younger if they have multiple risk factors.

You know, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, so on and so forth. But I think it's horrific advice. I never recommend an aspirino. If you do get a stent and you're after a heart attack, you got a Stent, You'll need aspirin and blood thinners for a short period of time other anti platelets But you know the goal is to try and get off of those with a holistic physician as soon as possible But yeah aspirine no bueno. Why do you think cardiovascular disease is still the number one killer of people?

Supplements, Prevention, and Rapid Fire 1:09:00

You know, listen, the medical doctors just don't go after the root cause of why people have heart attacks. And, you know it's really, it sad because the life expectancy of an American male is in the mid-70s, life expectancy of American female is the late 70s. It's just so unfortunate that that's the way that it is. We're built to live until well over 100 and to life well. And when you follow the medical model, you listen to the advice of the Medical Doctors, You're not going to make it. You are just not Going to Make It.

So Cardiovascular disease, despite all the procedures, all The things that we do, All the pharmaceuticals, the stents, The bypass surgeries, Really in general, according to The data from the CDC, Our life expectancy is three years Longer now than it was in 1980. So 45 years later, we've gained three years with all of the drugs, all the trillions, right? All of this stents, the surgeries, bypasses, ablations, cancer drugs. Everything we've got an extra three years. What does that tell the listener?

It tells them to work with a holistic integrative, you know, physician. Your books are amazing. You're supplements, the stuff that you're doing, and the videos that we're dealing. It's about waking up people to get them out of the medical matrix and into the health and wellness space. And that's where we are going to make just a huge difference. Thank you for sharing that. I know people listening will probably want to know where they can find you and connect with you, perhaps get some of your work.

No, for sure. Thank You. You can go to my website, naturalheartdoctor.com, get information over there. My book is available at freeheartbook. com. We're all over social media and you know, listen, I think that You know, my father died at the age of 63, but his death will not be in vain and put me on the path that I'm on right now to wake up people to natural heart health. And we'll keep shouting the truth from the rooftops. I think the other side, they try and stop us. They try to shut us down. But, you know I am on a mission here.

God has me in this path. to help a lot of people. So again, I appreciate you interviewing me to to get this information out there. Thank you to you. So now it's time that I put you on the spot and ask you some fun rapid fire questions. What's a wellness hack that you refuse to participate in? That is easy. Cold plunge. I've got no interest in cold plunging, cold thermogenesis. And frankly, there's really not much data to support it at all. You have a lot of people talking about the benefits and maybe At the end of the day, it will show benefit, but the whole idea of The Polar Bear Club and jumping in Lake Michigan and stuff like that on December 25th on Christmas, no, I think that's a heart attack waiting to happen, such a shock to the system.

No, definitely not cold plunge for me. I'm with you on that. Like I will do a cold plunge if it's a bathtub that's hot with like Epsom salts. That's my modification for it, but it just doesn't sound fun at all. A lot of people, a lot my thyroid colleagues agree. Well, especially too, if you're someone who is hypothyroid, like so already, already like your metabolism is down and you probably suffer from, you know, cold intolerance already. And then you ask people to get into a tub. I think it's cruel.

Not something I'm totally with you on that. How about the most outlandish things you've ever tried for your health? Well, colonic therapy would be up there, that's for sure. Personally, I think enemas are okay. Colonics, not something I'd recommend after doing it several times several years ago. That I guess I would consider outlandish. Uh, we do eat a lot of raw organs and I guess other people would consider it, uh, outlandish, but if you watch some of my social media videos and especially with our girls, you know, a friend of mine, it was an orthopedic surgeon in Las Vegas.

He went on a hunt, killed an elk and he sent me the heart. And so I made a video eating that, you know, of me frying up the heart. But before that I cut it up and I was eating it raw. And then my girls were in the room and i'm like, who wants some, some raw elk heart? And they're like fighting over it. It was so unscripted. They're, like me, me me. You know? So we do eat the raw organs. That's kind of outlandish. Uh, what else, I try and run around naked out in sun too. I guess some people would consider that out landish You get lots of vitamin D that way.

Where can we find you on social media? Yeah, so I mean, on Instagram, TikTok, Natural Heart Doctor is there. We have a Facebook group as well that people could go to, all under NaturalHeartDoctor. Perfect. Well, we'll make sure to drop that in the show notes. And do you have any guilty pleasures that maybe aren't doctor approved? Like somebody might be like, is that Dr. Jack Wolfson? What is he doing? Uh, that's a great question. Um, and listen, life is to be enjoyed and food is one of those enjoyable things.

So if you're going to eat ice cream, which most people are going, to just get organic icecream, right? Get Strauss's free range grass-fed ice-cream. Make your own ice scream with raw dairy. What is that? Raw egg, raw cream. Uh raw milk. Raw vanilla and raw honey, you know, for example and put that into your ice cream maker I rattled off the recipe pretty easy because I've done it many times So and that's okay. And in that sense, there's so many health benefits, You know to that Uh, you know chocolate, I think chocolate is a medicinal food coffee I, think is, a, medicinal, food when done the right way so i'm not saying go out to starbucks and drink a crap of frappuccino but if you like coffee the medical literature supports the use of of coffee and that is on the fast food variety of coffee.

Imagine how well people would do on the high quality, you know, organic glyphosate free mold, mycotoxin free coffee, and I think the medical doctors, they tell their patients not to drink coffee yet they turn around and they drink Coffee at the nurses station. You know what we used to do out of a Styrofoam cup, but I don't want to say that it's a guilty people maybe feel it. It's guilty pleasure, But actually coffee is medicine. I love that. And you actually have a coffee brand. I'm going to link to that in the show notes.

Can you tell us more about that? Oh, you're so awesome for that shameless promo. No. So what happened was, was that my father was a cofee drinker back then. It was Hills Brothers in tin cans. And then I started drinking coffee at a young age. And I'm not promoting people drink coffee to, you know, I am not, promoting coffee, to children. I m not. Promoting people, drink, coffee if they don't like coffee. But if, they like, Coffee drink the good stuff. So what happens is, is that I meet my wife and I start drinking organic coffee but she would come across like you and she'd say, You know coffee is not good for your gut.

Coffee is. Not good. For your adrenals. coffee's not Good for. Your hormones coffee s an addiction. And all that stuff could potentially be true, but even still, it was like I would be on call. I wouldn't sleep all night long. And I needed coffee the next morning. It felt like i needed it and I choose to do it. But it became always organic. Then I started speaking for another coffee company talking about the heart health benefits and then I said, you know what, I'm going to my own thing. So I went to a company they get the this single source from a Honduran farm.

We tested it to make sure that it is organic. It's glyphosate free. we tested from old mycotoxins. it's mold free because I want to drink it myself. I Want my wife to Drink it when she's interested and I wanted other people to do it. So that's how that was and it comes from A single-source Hondurian farm was started as a women's co-op. so it owned by women and they started on like three acres of land in order to, again, help to support those women and get them out of poverty. And now they've got like a 75 acre farm.

That's where we get our beans from. Uh, and then we also donate back to a group called Friends of Honduran Children. We give back 5% of all proceeds, not profit. But all sales revenue goes to this organization. And of course, I vetted the organization to make sure they're doing healthy things with the money and they are. So, yeah, it's pretty cool. and actually, again, like, you know, when it comes to, if you don't feel well with caffeine, then don t use it. But if You like it, there are definitely heart health benefits, lower stroke, a fib, or blood pressure, cardiac longevity.

Recent studies showed that people who drink between three and four cups of coffee before noon have a lower risk of dying. So there you go. Interesting. Thank you so much for sharing that. I can't wait to try it and share it with my family. Everybody, thank you for joining Thyroid Pharmacists Healing Conversations.