The Hunter-Gatherer Diet for Modern Heart Protection

Founder of Natural Heart Doctor
- Discover why removing chemical exposure from food by choosing organic options may support gut health and overall cardiovascular wellness.
- Understand why dietary fat has been misunderstood and how nutrient-dense foods like seafood, eggs, and ethically sourced animal products provide essential nutrients for cellular and heart function.
- Learn how vegetables rich in sulfur compounds, antioxidants, and phytonutrients support liver health, reduce oxidative stress, and contribute to long-term heart protection.
Full Transcript
Introduction and Heart Health Philosophy 0:00
The other thing I would tell you is eat fat. They told us that fat was bad. They said go low fat. Big, big, big mistake. Fat is the most nourishing thing that we can eat. And so I would tell you to do is eat the foods that are on the screen. I've got a picture there of the wild salmon roe. That is the egg of the salmon that contains all the vitamins, minerals, proteins and fats that a salmon needs to come to life. Welcome to the Natural Heart Doctor show. I'm cardiologist Dr. Jack Wolfson. Heart problems don't come from a drug deficiency.
They come from root causes where cardiologists never look. On this show, I sit down with experts who challenge the mainstream rhetoric and talk about what actually builds a heart built to last. Get ready for a dose of cardiac longevity. Hey, it's Dr. Jack Wolfson here, cardiologist and founder of Natural Heart Doctor. I wanna talk to you in this under 10 minute video, three foods to prevent a heart attack. This is part of the Heart Attack and Stroke Prevention Summit. So let's jump right into the conversation about three foods to prevent a heart attack.
Now, one of these foods is not oatmeal from Quaker Oats. I think there's a lot of industry propaganda that has led to this being part of the recommendations. I do not believe in eating oats or oatmeal on a daily basis. It is not our ancestral food.
Rejecting Processed Grains and Low-Fat Advice 1:29
Most people that who were hunter gatherers never ate this kind of food. I think it is okay sporadically when done organically and when done as gluten-free as well. So make sure you source wisely. I know a lot of people, they love their oatmeal. They hold it near and dear. Maybe they believe that their ancestors over the last few hundred years have been consumers of that. But I think it's cheap food in order to allow people to survive, but it's not thrival longevity Again, I understand this is very controversial and people hold it near and dear.
I'm not saying never eat it. I'm saying choose organic, typically steel cut, high quality and make sure that it is gluten free as well. Another thing I'm not a proponent of are these boxes of Cheerios. People say it lowers cholesterol. Well, eating the box could actually lower your cholesterol even more than actually eating the food. caveat I don't recommend eating the box and I don't recommend eating this as a food either. I think it is all propaganda from the General Mills Corporation. Another thing we've been led wrong about is going low in saturated fat.
This is a total mistake. Coconut oil has been vilified as a source of saturated fat, yet people in the islands and the Pacific, they eat coconuts and coconut oil as a large part of their diet and they do not suffer from early onset coronary disease despite the fact that a large part of them smoke. So we are loaded with saturated fat inside of our cells and tissues as humans. So we're best off consuming high quality saturated fat. More on that in a minute. And there's a lot of literature that actually would be contradictory to what the typical guidelines say to get rid of saturated fats.
I think a lot of this stems from the coconut oil vilification to get coconut oil out of candy and to use partially hydrogenated trans fat oils. That was bad.
Organic Foods and Avoiding Chemicals 3:34
The Got Milk campaign. I'm not a believer in raw and dairy. You know, we can drink our mother's milk, cows can drink their mother's milk, I do think that there is medicinal benefit to raw dairy and I'll tell you about that in a second. Now ultimately we get to the food pyramid and this clearly is something that was designed by the big ag industry where you have large components of grains and dairy for that matter as part of the diet. What planet of delusion would people be from where they think that the grain category should be bigger than the vegetable category?
That makes no sense whatsoever and bigger than the fruit category. There's no mention of seafood on here. Eggs are super nutritious. We'll talk about in a second. So again, I think that this led to the damage and destruction of so many different people as it relates to real health and wellness. Listen, I didn't write the story God did. And in this story, we were hunter gatherers and the hunter gatherers just did that. They hunted and they gathered or foraged. and this did not of course include processed foods and GMO foods and chemically-laden artificial ingredient foods.
This was hunter-gatherer foods and the more the hunter-gatherer foods that we consume, the better off we're gonna be. So let's dive into three foods to prevent a heart attack. Number one, eat organic food. No matter what diet you follow, vegan, vegetarian, Paleo, keto, Mediterranean, carnivore, get the chemicals out of your food. That should be something that just about all of us agree upon. Surprisingly, people don't see the link between glyphosate, organophosphates, organochlorides, atrazine, two disease in humans, but that would be at your own peril to believe in that.
Now what happens is these pesticides they damage our gut microbiome those delicate bacteria and fungi and other things in our intestines that help to nourish our bodies. They are symbiotic with us. They help to digest our food. They create all of these vitamins, minerals and other nutrients to help us lead the healthiest life that we can. So no matter what your food is, make it organic. And I'll even throw this out there. If you like chocolate, eat organic chocolate. If you eat ice cream, eat organic ice cream.
What if your heart could actually get better, not just managed? What if your recovery didn't depend on adding more prescription drugs, but on finally understanding why your heart is struggling in the first place?
Eat Fat and Prioritize Seafood and Animal Foods 6:34
I'm Dr. Jack Wolfson, cardiologist at Natural Heart Doctor, and we believe heart disease isn't random, it's a message. It's a message that inflammation, toxins, nutrient deficiencies, or lifestyle stressors are driving your symptoms beneath the surface. That's why our approach goes far beyond the band-aid typical cardiology approaches. What we do is if we want to prevent treat and reverse cardiovascular disease, we help you develop a natural evidence-based plan to help your heart recover. So if you're ready to move past fear, past confusion, and past just take this and wait, you deserve real answers.
Visit naturalheartdoctor.com forward slash discovery and get the answers you've been searching for, the answers that can help you achieve your best heart health. Your next chapter with a simple free discovery call should start now. If you like French toast with jelly on top or syrup, again, just make things organic. Get the chemicals out of your food. That's very easy to do. There shouldn't be too many people around who are like, oh, well, I got to eat these artificially colored, artificially flavored fruity pebbles like I grew up on you know this is not to pass judgment on people it's about hey how do we move forward and go with organic food always choose organic talk to your local farmer talk to your local vendor grow some of your own food Ask the questions.
That's the best thing to do. The other thing I would tell you is eat fat. They told us that fat was bad. They said go low fat. Big, big, big mistake. Fat is the most nourishing thing that we can eat. And so I would tell you to do is eat the foods that are on the screen. I've got a picture there of the wild salmon roe. That is the egg of the salmon that contains all the vitamins, minerals, proteins and fats that a salmon needs to come to life. It contains essential nutrients like choline and inositol that are critical for cellular function, cellular signaling.
neurotransmitters, brain health, heart health, heart attack prevention right there. So seafood is always at the top of my list so even if you don't eat number two which is land animal meats like bison or lamb or beef, chicken or turkey, Please eat the seafood and find ethically sourced. Now, ethically sourced also pertains, of course, to animal products. There is no scenario where Dr. Jack Wolfson or his family would eat unethically raised meats. The animals, as we've been doing for many years as hunter gatherers, they are sacrificed for our benefit.
We bless them. We thank them. And that is our best health and wellness longevity plan, especially eating the organs, the liver, the heart, the kidney. Those are just super dense, nutritious foods that our ancestors for years have been consuming. Eggs have been vilified as a source of high cholesterol. Eggs are again a cocoon for a baby chicken with everything that the baby chicken needs to come to life. loaded with those fat soluble vitamins, ADEK, another great source of choline to help our cell membranes.
This is all anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidants, lower risk of heart attack, stroke, and dying. Now some of these plant-based fats are also critical. The avocado, often I call it the avocado. coconut, coconut oil, olives, everybody knows that people do best when they eat olive and consume olive oil, the nuts, the seeds.
Vegetables, Starches, and Heart Attack Risk Testing 10:20
And then if you do dairy, raw butter, raw cheese, raw yogurt, kefir, ghee, which is clarified butter, raw milk. I don't think that this is a staple of our diets, but if you consume it, a lot of people do well on raw dairy, not homogenized, not pasteurized from ethically raised animals. Number three, eat veggies. I'm not the carnivore cardiologist. I'm certainly not the vegan cardiologist. I am a hunter gatherer cardiologist. And to this end, onions and garlic is a wonderful source of sulfur and many other nutrients.
Green leafy vegetables, of course. Brassica vegetables, the broccoli, the cauliflower, the Brussels sprouts, capers as you see pictured on the screen is a wonderful source of quercetin. Quercetin is a tremendously anti-inflammatory nutrient contained in many supplements. Another one of my favorites is artichoke, great for liver health as well. Along with that maybe throw in dandelion greens as a great source of liver health and if you have a healthy liver. lower inflammation, lower oxidative stress, improved lipid profile, less LDL, small dense particles, lower risk of heart attack, stroke, and dying.
Treat food, I'll throw in potatoes, sweet potatoes, russets, yams. Those are also okay when cooked appropriately, paired appropriately. I think that those have medicinal value as well, very good source of vitamin C. So those are some of my top three foods. And listen, if you're concerned about having a heart attack, one thing you can do no matter what diet you follow is check out the heart attack risk test. This is a simple test done at your home. No blood draws necessary. No doctor's orders are necessary.
And what you do is that you change up your plan based on the results, especially if you have oxidative stress and then you repeat the test down the road. So when you order the test from us, you want to make sure it's not your turn to have a heart attack, which is so common these days. Number one killer people worldwide. Go to heartattackrisk.com. You'll get more information about our at home test for heart attack risk, along with our 100 question questionnaire, which takes about 10 to 15 minutes.
And then you get a review call with one of the professionals at Natural Heart Doctor. So I hope you like that information. I'll come back in tomorrow's episode and I'll give you more advice about how not to have a heart attack. Thanks for listening to the Natural Heart Doctors show. If this episode challenged what you thought you knew about heart health, make sure you follow the show so you don't miss what's next. And if you're ready for a deeper personalized approach, you can schedule a complimentary discovery call at naturalheartdoctor.com forward slash discovery.
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