← Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Reversing Heart Disease & Cholesterol Lies | Dr. Stephen Hussey, MS, DC
01:00:48
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- [00:00]
A
At age 34, I had a widowmaker heart attack. Only 12% of people survive if they have them outside of a hospital setting. I developed plaque in my leg, but I completely reversed it.
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B
What sort of diet were the cardiologists in the hospital advising you to start after a heart attack?
- [00:15]
A
Low salt, low fat, animal crackers, big nutrients, things full of vegetable oils. I said no offense because you know, this is the diet that causes inflammation that contributes to heart disease, or one thing that contributes to heart disease.
- [00:51]
B
It is Valentine's Day, so let's focus on matters of the heart. Meet Dr. Stephen Hussey, a chiropractor who had a heart attack a few years years ago after being diagnosed as a child with type 1 diabetes. He has now completely reversed his own heart disease and is teaching others what he learned after a disastrous experience in the traditional hospital setting after his heart attack. His book, Understanding the Surprising Insights into the Evolutionary Origins of Heart Disease and why It Matters, shares the decisions Dr. Hussey made to get him through the highest stakes moment of his life and what he learned about heart disease as both patient and doctor. We also go quite a bit into cholesterol, which I haven't really touched on yet. Watch this episode on Spotify or Real Alex Clark on YouTube and subscribe. I post a lot of additional vlogs, mini documentaries and more there. Shop merch for the show@tpusamerch.com with code. Alex Clark please welcome Dr. Stephen Hussey to Culture Apothecary. What are the three imbalances that cause a heart attack?
- [01:52]
A
Imbalance to the stress response of your autonomic nervous system, inflammation or what people call oxidative stress, and then poor metabolic health, meaning you're not able to readily go back and forth from burning glucose and fatty acids. Those things can predispose the heart to becoming more reliant on glucose than it wants to, and that can cause it to shift its metabolism over to type of metabolism that causes tissue death.
- [02:17]
B
You're a doctor who reversed your heart disease and plaque in your leg. Tell us what happened.
- [02:24]
A
In my backstory, I have a lot of chronic disease in my childhood, a lot of inflammatory conditions ultimately ended up with autoimmune type 1 diabetes at age 9. And so my whole life I've been like somewhat health conscious, paying attention to diet and exercise and those types of things. But despite that, it wasn't enough. And at age 34 I had a widowmaker heart attack. The type of heart attack that the statistic is only 12% of people survive if they have them outside of a hospital setting. So fortunately, I'm still here. I survived. But then because of what they had to do to save my life that day, because of the heart cath procedure that they did, I developed plaque in my leg as well. So about two months after the heart attack, I started realizing that I was getting pain in my leg when I would walk just fast through the airport. Definitely couldn't run, couldn't play soccer, couldn't snowboard, things I like to do. And eventually found my way to get an ultrasound. And they said I had this plaque development in my leg. Um, and I completely reversed that as well, which they say was impossible, especially for a type 1 diabetic. Like, if you look at the research, peripheral artery disease, which is what that is in type 1 diabetics, usually they fare worse than even type 2 diabetics with that. But I completely reversed it. And I did it without medications and I did it without following the recommended diet that they recommended to me because it was wrong and doesn't reflect the research. And the worst part about all that is that they weren't even curious when I told them that I did it.
- [03:55]
B
So you tell the doctors, hey, I reversed my heart attack symptoms and I reversed the plaque in my leg. And they just were like, okay, cool, have a great day. They didn't care.
- [04:06]
A
Yeah, yeah. So they told me, like after the heart attack, you know, they. They placed the stent and saved my life. And they told me that I'd be on five medications the rest of my life and then if I didn't, that I would develop heart failure and then I would have another heart attack. And these types of things, you know, these kind of this fear based thinking. I would say I took a blood thinner for six months because there was a stent in my body that's a foreign body. I didn't know how my body was going to react to that. But after that, I've been on no medications. And that's not necessarily what I'm saying will work for everybody, but it's what I decided to do. And here I am three months later, after the heart attack, I got the ultrasound from the echocardiogram in my heart and it was completely back to normal. The doctor said, well, you must have decided to take your medications. And I was like, actually, I didn't. I did a lot of other things that weren't recommended to me. My own kind of healing protocol. After I got the initial diagnosis of plaque in the leg, a year later, I came back and it was only 50% blocked at that time. And they actually did the test twice because they were like, we don't really believe that it's less, right? And so they did it again. It showed the same thing. And he said, well, we can't say it's better because we don't see these things get better. And I was like, well, you just saw it. You just saw it, right? And then a year later, it was completely normal. And then a year after that, did another follow up test, and it's still normal. And I can run now. I can do what I want besides, you know, you know, being a professional athlete, because I'm not that.
- [05:26]
B
Let's talk about the hours and days after the heart attack. You're in the hospital. What sorts of care were you getting from the cardiologists?
- [05:35]
A
Well, I like to describe it as kind of a broken record because at that point I was like, all right, guys. Like, I. I knew a lot of stuff prior to this, you know, that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, and statin drugs aren't really worth it or don't really work based on the literature. But at that point I was just like, all right, what happened, guys? Like, tell me what happened? What do I do? You know? I want to know your opinion, because obviously I got it wrong, right? And it was just a broken record. Cholesterol. Oh, cholesterol does this. Your cholesterol is high. Cholesterol causes heart attacks. It's the same thing whether it was an intern, a resident, a physician, attending physician. They all said the same thing. And I was just like, well, that's just really disappointing and myopic. First of all, to think that this one biomolecule or this one quote unquote imbalance in the body can drive a whole disease process or cause a heart attack. And so I started asking questions, just, you know, not in a aggressive way or anything, but just like, well, because they wanted me on a blood thinner. And I was like, well, what about magnesium as a blood thinner? And they would say, well, my nasium's not a blood thinner. And I was like, well, I know that's false based on the literature. Now, I don't expect them to have, like, some procedure they use in the hospital to replace the blood thinning medication, because they don't have that. But I have found literature that shows that after a stent placement, intravenous magnesium can be just as effective as a blood thinner, but it's also not the standard of care. So if he can't recommend that because if he. He's. He's been programmed to think that he's liable if something happens to me, he hasn't done the standard of care, which is, you know, predetermined by whoever, the hospital systems and all that kind of stuff, then he's liable, so to speak. So that doesn't mean the hospital has that protocol in place, but it just goes to show that they'd rather use the thing that's profitable to them, which is the blood thinning medication, rather than intravenous magnesium, which is not as beneficial or not as profitable to them.
- [07:23]
B
What other directives or initiatives were the cardiologists giving you in the hospital that made absolutely no sense to you?
- [07:29]
A
They prescribed, I think, eight to 11 different medications while I was in there. Everything from, you know, an anti anxiety medication to two blood pressure medications, to a statin drug to blood thinners, aspirin, all this type of stuff. Yeah. So it was just medication. I would just sit there. I was laying there in the hospital bed and watching, like, espn because there's nothing else to do. It's during COVID No visitors were allowed. I was just on my own. And someone would pop up on the TV screen and say, you've been prescribed another medication. And then someone would walk in the door and be like, hey, we're going to give you this medication. I was like, whoa. Like, no one's talked to me about this or said why it's just like this cookie cutter approach. Yeah. The thing was, is that my blood pressure has always been relatively normal or even on the lower end, like 112 over 70. And they wanted me on two blood pressure medications. That was their standard of care. And I took one for one day. And that night I woke up, because they wake you up three times a night, which is not great for healing. And they checked my blood pressure and it was 90 over 50, which is extremely low. And I was. I looked up and I was like, whoa, that's pretty low. And then they left the room, and I realized it was burning up in the room. So I was going to get up and turn on, turn down the thermostat. And I almost passed out walking to the thermostat because my blood pressure was so low. It was very clear that, like, someone's had a heart attack. This is what you do. You don't assess the person at all.
- [08:50]
B
They weren't looking at the individual, seeing how things could be tailored for you. It's the same cookie cutter set of medications for every person, no matter what.
- [08:59]
A
Yeah. And they Wanted me on two, and I took one for one day. And then I was like, no more of that. But what about what would happen if I had taken two?
- [09:06]
B
What sort of diet were the cardiologists in the hospital advising you to start after a heart attack?
- [09:12]
A
This cardiac nurse came in and tried to educate me on diet, which I have a master's in human nutrition and functional medicine. So I was, you know, she's just doing her job, but, you know, she started telling me low salt, low fat things that I was. Was okay to eat. Things on the list of okay to eat was animal crackers, fig Newtons, things full of vegetable oils. And I was like. I said, no offense, but, you know, this is the diet that causes inflammation that contributes to heart disease, or one thing that contributes to heart disease. And she was like, well, this is what the powers that be tell us to tell us to recommend. So this is what we're. We're told to tell you. And I was just like, well, I'm probably not gonna eat that. But in the hospital, I really had no choice. They were feeding me, you know, crap pretty much. I pretty much fasted for three days in the hospital because I didn't want to eat the food they were bringing me.
- [10:04]
B
My dad had two different things going on. Last year. He had the brain tumor glioblastoma, but he also had heart failure. That ended up being the thing that killed him in December. But he had had two heart attacks. He was also type 2 diabetic, so he was just a mess. When we were in the hospital this past year with the heart ST plus having the brain tumor, I told him, dad, you need to tell them that you need to be on a keto diet. Like, ask them about keto diet. And he did. He said, so my daughter, she's, like, really into health, and she's telling me I should do keto. And they said to him, oh, no, sir, that's terrible for your heart problems. You can't. You can't eat. You cannot eat keto. Also bringing him soda and all this kind of stuff while he was in the hospital room. I mean, it was just infuriating to me. So what are your thoughts on a keto diet for heart issues?
- [10:49]
A
The first thing I'll say is that there's studies that show that the heart actually prefers ketones and fatty acids for fuel. It's like, it's one of the few tissues that does prefer that. Cause usually if there's glucose present, a tissue will burn that first. It's like this oxidative priority. That happens. But even in the presence of glucose, the heart tissue will choose to burn fatty acids and ketones because they're more efficient. And the heart is always contracting, so it needs to be as efficient as possible. You asked me about that first question we're talking about what can predispose us to certain types of heart attacks. One of them is when that metabolism shifts to burning more glucose because it's forced to, which involves different mechanisms of doing that. But so how could this diet that induces us or creates a response of making ketones in our body and providing the heart with ketones be bad for it when the heart prefers ketones? That doesn't make sense, and it's just kind of flawed thinking.
- [11:43]
B
He said, well, I asked the nutritionist, and it's the hospital nutritionist, Alex, who said that that's a bad idea. So who am I supposed to believe? The person who is a nutritionist working at a hospital or. My daughter just two years ago became interested in this. And I understand that that's fair, that's valid. That's valid. And your parent, as a parent, you're probably always going to be doubting your kid, who you look at as your baby, you know, telling you this kind of stuff above the experts. But what I said was, dad, just do me a favor, because he was meeting with this person periodically. I said, ask that nutritionist where they went to school. I said, just ask them. And then let's look up who funds that school. Let's look up who's funding the studies, the curriculum that's telling them what to feed certain people. So my question to you is, is know that this entire list that the hospitals are giving out to heart patients is causing heart disease. Where in the world is this information coming from? What that's causing these people to say, like, well, the powers that be are saying this is what's healthy for hearts. Who is coming up with this information and why?
- [12:42]
A
Don't know the backstory? Yes, yes. Back in the late 40s, early 50s, heart disease was becoming a very prominent thing.
- [12:49]
B
And before that, it was like, unheard of. Right.
- [12:51]
A
Early 1900s, it was like, especially coronary artery disease, which is plaque forming in the arteries of the heart, was almost unheard of. Right. So it's rising at this time, which I think for many reasons. Smoking, stress from two Boer wars, lots of different things like that. But President Eisenhower famously had a heart attack while he was serving as president. And so the world was looking for an answer, United States was looking for an answer. And this guy named Ancel Keys gave them an answer. And Ancel Keys was an epidemiologist at University of Minnesota, and he came up with what he called his six countries study, where he looked at the data of six different countries about how much saturated fat and cholesterol they had in their diets and how much heart disease the country had. And so he concluded that there was an association between the two. First of all, it's a type of study that is the lowest form of research there is called epidemiology. It can only show that there's a relationship between two things. It can't show that one's causing the other. So the example I give is like, if I'm standing on the sidewalk and I see a traffic jam, and I also see that it's cloudy, I can't say the traffic jam caused the clouds or the clouds caused the traffic jam, just that they're happening at the same time. However, the more nefarious thing that he did was that there was data from 22 countries available at the time. And he cherry picked the six countries. And then he repeated it and did a seven country study later that showed him the relationship that he wanted. And there are many theories as to why he did this. People say that he had lots of backing from the food industry and from the pharmaceutical industry that wanted this theory to take hold. Because if you convince the population that cholesterol and saturated fat cause heart disease, then you can sell them a lot of processed junk food that doesn't have saturated fat and cholesterol in it, processed grains, sugars and vegetable oils. Also, if you convince the population and the medical establishment that cholesterol in the blood, lipids, lipoproteins in the blood cause heart disease, and you have a drug that can lower that, then you can sell a lot of that drug. And that's exactly what we see happened when this theory took off. Which, interestingly, it's probably one of the most tested nutritional theories out there, because they've done a lot of studies in the 60s and 70s after this idea came out where they replaced saturated fat in people's diets with unsaturated fat, and the people with unsaturated fat got more heart disease. And they hushed up the studies and they kind of published them in small journals and didn't publish them till years later, and they just kind of covered.
- [15:09]
B
All this up because people wanted to make money off pills, right?
- [15:12]
A
Because there was too much money behind the theory. So by the time there's that famous, you know, episode or an episode, but issue of Time magazine where there's, like, a frowny face with a bacon and two eggs, you know, yeah, that's 1960 something. And so by the time they did these studies, the theory had taken off, and it was. And so in 1984, they got together and this committee got together and decided, incorrectly, in my opinion, that cholesterol was bad. And then we need just to lower it. There was good cholesterol, and there was bad cholesterol, which no such thing, in my opinion. There's just cholesterol. There's just lipoproteins in the blood, and what they reflect is what you're metabolizing at the time. But this committee got together and incorrectly decided that it was wrong. And at the time, they decided that your ldl, which is something you see on a lipid panel, should be 250 or lower. And then over the years, the pharmaceutical companies pushed to lower that to 200 and then to 150 and then to 100. Because the lower that recommendation, the more people need.
- [16:12]
B
More people would need the drugs.
- [16:13]
A
Right?
- [16:14]
B
Oh, my God.
- [16:14]
A
And this is very well documented that this happened. So there was really no evidence for this theory in the first place. So I find it really, really frustrating and interesting that people who are against this theory and pushing back against it are having to provide so much evidence that it's not. When there was never any good evidence in the first place. I mean, if you look at the original studies that Keyes did, like, the. After his theory came out, and then he did these, like, clinical trials where he replaced saturated fat with unsaturated fat in the diet, well, they. They emitted data in the first publications of those things that made them look better than they actually are. And so later, this guy, Christopher Ramsen, he looked it up and he republished it with all the data, and he found that those studies actually showed that for every 22 points your cholesterol lowered, you had an increased risk of heart disease.
- [17:02]
B
Oh, my gosh.
- [17:03]
A
Yeah. Lots of fraudulent things happening here, but lots of money made.
- [17:11]
B
Valentine's Day. The one time a year we celebrate love when we pretend our marriages are perfect. And not just two people trying to get through life without committing homicide. You know, the usual. But hey, if you're spending the weekend in bed, wink, wink, you might as well make it comfortable, right? Because nothing ruins the mood faster than waking up in a puddle of sweat feeling like you're in a sauna of regret. And that's not the kind of heated moment that you wanted that's why I've gotten all my married BFF switched to Cozy Earth's bamboo sheets. These sheets are made from 100% premium viscose from bamboo, so breathable you're going to feel like you're sleeping in an air conditioned room, not an inferno. They're so soft you're going to think that you're sleeping on a cloud. And they only get softer with every wash. They'll keep you cool even when all your kids sabotage your romantic night and pile into bed with you. If you really want to go the extra mile. Because let's be honest, your spouse deserves a luxury after years of dealing with you, check out Cozy Earth's Women's stretch knit bamboo pajama set. The pajamas keep you cool so you're not sweating through another night of trying to act interested in a 45 minute conversation about your husband's Roth IRA. Cozy Earth gives you a 100 night sleep trial and a 10 year warranty. That's right. They're so confident in their sheets they're going to give you 10 years to figure out if you can stick with something for the long haul like a marriage or in your case, a D set. So if you want to get your life together and buy life, I mean your sleeping situation, go to cozyearth.com Alex and use code Alex for up to 40% off. That's cozyearth.com Alex with code Alex for 40% off. A better year starts with Better Sleep I've always been curious about light's impact on our health and when I first learned about red light therapy, I was amazed by how powerful something as simple as light can be for our bodies. Red and near infrared light work wonders on our cells. They can improve skin health, reduce inflammation, help you with hair loss, enhance muscle recovery, and even help with better sleep. I personally use JOOVV every morning and night as part of my routine and let me tell you, I have seen the benefits firsthand. My skin looks brighter. It's more, even less textured. My energy is better. My workouts feel stronger. Now, there are plenty of devices out there, but JOOVV is the one that I trust. So the question is why? Because joovv uses clinically proven wavelengths that emit the right dose of light and their products are true medical grade devices. FDA approved joovv is fully compliant with the strictest safety and preferred performance standards. So I know I'm getting a device that is both effective and safe to use at home. So whether that's the Joovv Solo 3.0 for full body treatment or the Go 2.0 for on the go. Their range is designed for everyone. And with Joovv, I'm not just getting a quick fix. I'm investing in a treatment that actually works for long term wellness. 10 minutes every morning, 10 minutes at night. Now I've seen other brands out there making some pretty misleading claims like saying their devices are the most powerful or they offer multiple wavelengths. But here's the truth. More power in red light doesn't always mean better results. And extra wavelengths don't add any therapeutic benefit. Okay. It's a gimmick. Juve focuses on what really works. Clinically proven red and near infrared wavelengths at safe effective levels so you can be sure that you're getting the best. If you want to experience the power of red light therapy yourself, head over to Joovv.com Alex. You will get an exclusive discount on your first order. That's Joovv J O O V V.com/Alex, for my automatic discount to be applied to your cart, some exclusions apply. And so where does the American Heart association and Dietary Guidelines come in with all this?
- [20:42]
A
So the pharmaceutical companies are, are funding those associations. So they're going to do whatever the pharmaceutical companies tell them, whatever's going to protect the pharmaceutical.
- [20:50]
B
So the pharmaceutical companies, and maybe even different food and food industries or whatever, because Canola is one of the biggest funders of the American Heart association. And so they're coming up maybe with these things, knowing it's actually going to create more heart disease and keep people sick. And then that's good for the organization because they're going to keep getting donations and making money off, you know, people being sick.
- [21:12]
A
Exactly. Yeah.
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B
That's insidious.
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A
So and so the thing is, since 1984 we have seen a decrease in heart disease deaths. Right. And people will say, well, it's because statin drugs and it's because of, you know, medicine in general. And part of it is because of medicine because people like me are still alive. That's what it means. Like, it means we have better interventions where people are having heart attacks. We keep them from dying. Right. But it's still like if you look at it, it's not, it's nothing like it was at the beginning of the.
- [21:39]
B
Century maybe for some of these people. I think about my dad as an example. Yes, his life was spared for another 10, 15 or so years, but was he really kept alive or was he just dying slower?
- [21:51]
A
Exactly.
- [21:52]
B
I think a lot of these people that are having heart attacks dealing With. With heart disease and on all these statins and all these different things, I think they're still dying. It's just that we're prolonging death instead of actually giving people the tools to truly live.
- [22:05]
A
Right. If I had taken their advice when I had a heart attack, I would probably be right back in there, or my health would decline. I did not take their advice, and that was my personal decision. And I went home and I did my own thing.
- [22:17]
B
And what was your own thing? How did you completely reverse your heart disease after a heart attack?
- [22:22]
A
Here's the thing. Just people should know this, especially all the doctors who are skeptical out there. My lipids in my blood before the heart attack, after the heart attack, and while I reversed plaque in my body were astronomically higher than what they should be, so to speak. And that's because I eat a low carb diet. Because it's very easy as a type 1 diabetic to eat that diet and control blood sugars. But when you eat a low carb diet, your body has to deliver more fatty acids and fuel to your tissue. And it does that via lipoproteins, which are these cholesterol molecules, what we call cholesterol molecules in the blood. So that's why mine is higher. But during this whole process, you know where. Because, you know, six months prior to my heart attack, I had a scan done of my heart showing no plaque, no hardened plaque, calcified plaque in my arteries. Zero was my perfect score. And then six months later, I had a heart attack. So even that testing is not great. But during this time, my LDL levels were really, really high. So people will say, well, that's why I had a heart attack. I was like, well, then why? How could I reverse it if it's so causative? How did I completely reverse a 70 to 5 to 99% blockage of plaque in my artery with levels that high? Probably because it's not relevant, right? It's not the cause of heart disease. It may get involved down the line once the process starts, but it doesn't cause heart disease.
- [23:36]
B
So then what do you think caused your heart attack? You're this healthy guy, chiropractor. What happened?
- [23:42]
A
Like I said before, I was always focused on diet and exercise. Those are things I can control, especially when the poor college kid, like, I could always do diet and exercise. I could eat whole foods and exercise. But heart disease, to me, in my opinion, is not prevented nor caused solely by diet. And that's what cholesterol has, made it this huge Distraction, Right. So what happened to me is a spontaneous clot formed that blocked the left anterior descending artery, which is the most common place for heart attacks to happen. And the clot formed because of. To me, I think, well, based on the literature, it's lack of blood flow or poor blood flow. So way back in 1856, this guy named Rudolph Virchow found out that what causes clotting in arteries is when we get poor, stagnant blood flow damage to the lining of an artery. And when elements of blood become too sticky, they're sticking together too much. Those are the things that create clotting. And when you look at what atherosclerosis is, some people have this buildup of plaque in their arteries. It's clotting tissue. You analyze that stuff, and it's. It's like 87 plus or minus 8% clotting tissue. According to one study. There's no, like, large amounts of cholesterol there. There's just this fibrotic clotting tissue, which is the same tissue that forms if I cut my leg and a scab forms. Right. So my body's trying to repair something, heal something. And so for me, when they did the heart cath, they went in and they looked at my arteries, and there was no plaque whatsoever. There was just a giant clot in that one spot. And so that's what caused my instantaneous heart attack. And I don't think anybody will ever be able to tell me exactly what caused it, but based on my own searching of the literature, because this is personal to me, I think dehydration was a big issue at the time. And if you don't have enough water in the system, it's definitely going to be more stagnant and not moving like it's supposed to. I was dealing with constipation at the time, and I was just. I convinced myself that I only need to drink water when I was thirsty. And so I was having probably a cup of bone broth a day, and I should have had way more water, way more hydration. And I was also going through a lot of stress at the time Covid was happening. And there was things in Covid that I didn't agree with, and it was frustrating to me. But then I heard some very unfortunate news about a close family member a day and a half before this happened.
- [25:53]
B
Oh, wow.
- [25:54]
A
And it wasn't just the news. It was the inability of me or my family to get to this person and help them. They were in a different country. And it was during COVID we couldn't really go that easily. So all day, the next day I spent trying to figure out how I could get to this person. And then I slept very poorly two nights in a row, woke up on Tuesday morning, and unwisely did try to do a intense workout like I would usually do. And then 30 minutes later, 20, 30 minutes later, boom. Heart attack.
- [26:22]
B
So stress, it sounds like, does play a huge role in heart attacks.
- [26:26]
A
Yeah. And if you look at what happens during acute stress, clotting factors go up significantly, which makes sense, like evolutionarily, because, like, if I think that I'm going to die because I'm running from something that's trying to eat me, then I may get injured. And my body's increasing clotting mechanisms so that if I do get injured, I don't bleed out or it's less likely that I'll bleed out. So it makes sense that that would happen. But yes, they go up significantly. So I was already in this pro clotting state. And then exercise in itself is kind of an inflammatory thing. It's good for us long term, but in that state that I was in, probably wasn't a good idea. And it was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. In that state of dehydration and stress, it was probably an issue. So just because I know you had Sally Norton on. Yeah, I also was, I think, going through oxalate dumping at the time, because I had been on a animal based diet for about two to three years and the only time I've ever had oxalates in my urine was during the time I had the heart attack. So I was dumping oxalates at the time, which is when she says, you know, is when you. The most common time you dump oxalate. So that could have played a role too, but I think it's multifactorial.
- [27:26]
B
What advice do you have for type 1 diabetics when it comes to heart disease?
- [27:31]
A
So I recently came across some literature that showed that, you know, because type 1 diabetes, like my body, quote, unquote, attacked the cells that make insulin. So I don't make insulin anymore. No matter how well I control my diet, I have to administer insulin unless there's some stem cell cure that comes along someday. Whereas type two, very different. They've pathologically gone into insulin resistance and their body's not responding to insulin even though they're still making it. So for me, when I'm trying to be a pancreas and administer insulin to myself, it's much easier If I eat foods that don't spike insulin a lot, like glucose, like carbohydrates, they do. So eating lower carbohydrate is very easy to manage blood sugars. And so I wish that was the first thing I was told as a kid at 9 years old when I was diagnosed with type 1. But it wasn't until 11 years later that I even came across a low carb diet. That's really, really important. However, I came across some literature recently that, that seems to show that it's not the fluctuation of blood sugars, because no matter how hard I try, my blood sugars are still going to fluctuate more than the person who's not type 1 diabetic, because it's just hard to try and be a pancreas myself. That study seems to suggest that it's not the fluctuating blood sugars that make it more likely that a type 1 diabetic gets more artery disease or gets pathology in their arteries. Because, you know, being diabetic, there's more chance that your eyes will go bad, the smaller arteries get damaged, you get neuropathy in your feet, the small arteries down there, or the kidney damage, that kind of stuff. But this study suggests that it's not the fluctuating blood sugars that does that. So my advice to type 1 diabetics would be, as someone who's reverse plaque in an artery would be get as much infrared light as you can, stop exposing yourself to toxins, so heavy metals and plastics and all this kind of stuff, because that stuff damages the artery and then set your circadian rhythm. That is probably the number one thing I would suggest, because if you're not setting your circadian rhythm, your melatonin is low and you're not healing at night. And if you're not healing at night, damage is just accumulating over time.
- [29:34]
B
Do you know who Dr. Charlie Fagenholz is?
- [29:37]
A
Yes.
- [29:37]
B
Okay. He was just on his episode, just came out a couple weeks ago, and he said that infrared light was the future of medicine.
- [29:47]
A
And you think about it. So all life on Earth is trying to get energy from its environment and all that energy forever. All life on Earth comes from the sun. So we are either absorbing sunlight directly and changing it to energy and storing that in structured water in our bodies, or we are in direct contact with the earth, absorbing electrons straight from the earth through grounding, or we're harvesting the chemical bonds in food, changing it to electrons, and all of this is gaining energy from sunlight. If you look at how the Body stores energy. It stores it in what's called structured water, which also forms on the lining of the artery. And it's a large part of how I reverse plaque in my body. Infrared light is the number one thing that builds structured water in the body. That's according to Dr. Gerald Pollock at University of Washington, who's like the foremost authority on structured water. And the sun, regardless of what time of day it's up, is about 40 to 50% infrared light. So I think what we really have in society is, is a lack of sunlight exposure.
- [30:42]
B
Well, 100%, yes. I mean, that's the number one thing is sunrise, sundown, being outside during those times, for sure. It's just, unfortunately we're just not doing that as a society. When was the last time you actually brought something nice when visiting someone's house for the first time? Like back in the day, it was an unspoken rule. You brought a little something, a bottle of wine, some flowers, maybe a hand painted mug. But now you show up empty handed, you don't even think about it. You are a horrible person. It's sad we've lost our charm. That's why I'm bringing it back with natural sloth beeswax candles. Listen, you don't have to show up with a dozen roses to impress. You just need one of these candles. Handcrafted in Texas, these beeswax beauties burn clean, they smell amazing, and they don't have any of those toxic chemicals that we've all been inhaling for years. You know the ones that make you feel like you've accidentally, accidentally licked a plastic bag? Well, these natural sloth candles are made with pure essential oils, so no weird fake fragrances that make your lungs recoil. Plus they've got these cozy wooden wicks that crackle like a tiny fireplace without the risk of burning down the house. It's like setting the mood, but safe, you know, plus they're made safe, certified, so you can feel good about it knowing that they've been tested to make sure there's no nastiness in them. So next time you're going to a friend's house, be the person who brings something that actually matters. A hostess gift of a natural sloth beeswax candle. Head over to natural naturalslop.com use code ALEX for 15 off. Trust me, it'll be the most thoughtful thing that you've done all year. You care about their health and their new house. That's natural sloth.com code Alex for 15 off. I keep several on hand because you never know you're gonna need a gift. Go ahead. Make it memorable. You ever been so sick that you thought you were on your deathbed? I'm talking flu season level, end of the line. Like the world spinning. You've got chills, fever, the whole shebang. You're lying there with a box of tissues and a cup of ginger tea, and suddenly you're like, well, if this is it, at least I'm dying with dignity, right? And you start mentally planning your obituary. Alex Clark. She once made a great spaghetti, Loved worms for some reason, but she couldn't quite handle cold and flu season. Rest in peace, Alex. Look, if you're sitting there getting ready to join the great beyond because you didn't take care of your immune system, then that's on you. But if you're tired of the sniffles and actually want to build up your immune defense for once, try Mushmore Co Organic mushroom gummies. These gummies are made with 1 mig of medicinal mushrooms. That is unbelievable. You will not find that anywhere else. Reishi. Lion's Maid Chaga. That's a preventative dose of mushroom magic so you don't end up on your deathbed like a sad, sick potato. I mean, we want to be gorgeous, healthy potatoes. Mushmore Co Organic mushroom gummies are made with organic fruit. No chemicals, no weird dyes, just real powerful mushrooms. I wish I'd had these back in my deathbed days. If you're ready to stop wishing for your last breath and actually take control of your health, head to eat mushies.com use code Alex for 20% off. That's Alex for 20% off. At eat mushies.com your immune system is going to be so thankful. And maybe your obituary will be a little less dramatic. So have you actually reversed your heart disease completely?
- [34:00]
A
In my leg, Yes, I have. I have, you know, testing proof that I've done that. And it's by Doppler ultrasound. They go in and visualize the flow through that area. And at first it was estimated 75 to 99 blocked, and then it was down to 50 a year after that. And now it's at completely normal. And the only things I changed because my diet stayed the same, my cholesterol levels stayed the same, higher than what they should be, so to speak. My stress stayed the same, unfortunately, might have got a little worse at times than it was. But the only things that changed was I increased my infrared light exposure and sunlight exposure. I did a lot of grounding, and I set my circadian rhythm. So I allowed my body to heal at night when I slept by increasing melatonin levels. That's what I changed. So if we're doing it in one experiment, those were the big heavy hitters.
- [34:48]
B
Are you anti cardiologist?
- [34:50]
A
I have a lot of very good cardiology friends. They're the cool cardiologists.
- [34:54]
B
Who are they? Tell us.
- [34:55]
A
So Philip of Adia is one. He's the nicest guy.
- [34:59]
B
And where's he at?
- [35:00]
A
I think he lives in Florida, but he's all over the place.
- [35:02]
B
Okay.
- [35:02]
A
He, he travels a lot and I think he does online consulting. Good friend of mine, Thomas Cabell is in Nashville and I just finally met him in person recently. And he, he's very awesome. He's very knowledgeable. Great guy. But there's other, like, lots of cardiologists who are big fans of low carb, like Brett Scher and Nadir Ali and things like that. So there's lots of cardiologists that are kind of more in the know. It's few and far between that I find one that's aware of, of all these things. Lots of them, like low carb diets, but they're not aware of infrared light or they're not as, as well versed in it. So I try to put the whole thing together. I have no filter. Like, I, I look for everything. I'm not like, you know, thing, oh, it's just diet or it's just light or whatever. It's. It's a combination of everything. And that's just kind of the benefit I had. Not coming from the field of cardiology.
- [35:54]
B
You say that the heart is actually not the biggest blood mover in the body. So what is?
- [35:58]
A
It's the infrared light. So here's a little lesson on structured water. So structured water is this state of water that's like a fourth phase. We all know that water can be ice water or steam, but there's actually this fourth phase it can be. And it's kind of like a gel. So it's kind of like the consistency of raw egg white or like jello, you bring it. So it's kind of like. So like if I touch my skin, you know, it feels like a gel. Right. So most of the water in my body is actually a gel in my cells, but this does happen in the lining of the artery as well. And they've proven this in Gerald Pollock's lab at the University of Washington. They've done this in chick embryos. They found that there's this layer between the lining of the artery wall and the red blood cells, this gel layer that excludes everything, that's not it. And so the way the structured water forms it becomes a very electronegatively charged entity or space, and then next to it becomes very positively charged because it cleaves off like water is an oxygen and two hydrogens and it cleaves off a hydrogen. And that makes the hydrogen very positive space here, negative space here, and a positive next to a negative is a battery. And so that's why we have a positive and negative end in a battery. And so this I mentioned earlier, that's how our body holds its charge is structured water form structured water and forms this charge. And they've shown that this charge separation, you can plug an electrode into the negative and positive end and power a light bulb so it's holds energy. And in a tube, when it gets next to the lining of the artery, it actually creates blood flow. And they've done this over and over again. They put this hydrophilic tube, a tube made of a water loving solution into water and they shine infrared light on it and the water starts to move through the tube with no pump acting on it whatsoever. So this is what creates blood flow. And so when you think about what a plaque in an artery is, which is clotting tissue, which one of the ways that we form clotting is poor blood flow. And you think about how deprived we are of infrared light these days because we're living indoors, it starts to make a lot of sense. And there's a lot of research out there that's showing that hemodynamics, how blood is moving, dictates whether or not we get plaque in our arteries. Wow.
- [38:04]
B
Okay. Another huge plug for the, for the red light devices, I'm telling you. Should salt actually be avoided for heart patients?
- [38:11]
A
I don't think so, no. There's really not much literature on that. There's actually literature that shows that if you have low salt, you're going to increase your chance of insulin resistance, which is the number one cause or a number one risk factor for heart disease. And there's actually a study that I found where they were using a diuretic on its own. And then they had other patients where they're using a diuretic and salt and a salt solution. And the people who use the salt solution actually lost more fluid. So when you, when you have low salt, your body's going to try and hold on to those minerals. It's going to hold on to it because it needs them if you provide your body with enough salt. So when you hold on to those minerals, you're also going to hold on to fluid. If you have enough salt, your body can let some of that salt go because you're giving it more, and so it can let go of fluid. And that's what that study show so nicely shows. Now, if someone's been, you know, going off salt for a while because they've been recommended that, and then all of a sudden they add a bunch back in, they may see some effects of that at first because the body's not used to having that much salt.
- [39:17]
B
But also, isn't there something to be said about real salt, good salt, versus just the bleach, table salt stuff?
- [39:22]
A
Yeah, for sure. I mean, the. The bleach, table salt or the preservative salts you find in a lot of processed foods, those are not ideal. We want, like, balanced minerals. With all the 60 minerals, it's mostly going to be sodium, potassium, those types of things, but you still have all the other minerals in it. So.
- [39:37]
B
You know what I have from Redmond's, I have. It's literally just like a chunk of salt rock that they give you to just lick sometimes.
- [39:46]
A
Oh, like, Like a salt lick? Yeah. That's what animals do. They go out in the wood they.
- [39:50]
B
Find salt with, and they gave that. They said it's like one lick, like, provides all these electrolytes and all this kind of stuff. So I just have that. It's like, if you ever start feeling. They said it's great for fasting, like when you're fasting, to do that. But I'm not fasting. But anyway, I just thought that we're.
- [40:03]
A
Basically big bags of sal. What we are. Yeah, we need minerals to do physiology. So depriving your body of that can lead to some issues for sure.
- [40:11]
B
Now, the American Heart association says that butter is bad for health and that vegetable oils are good for heart health. What is wrong with this advice?
- [40:20]
A
Well, the first thing that's wrong with it is that butter's been around forever and vegetable oils are new and, you know, it's just an association. But the consumption of vegetable oils was started in the early 1900s. Correlates directly with heart disease. It's just one thing. And I think it's one small thing, one small part of the entire picture of heart disease. But, you know, I. I could pick apart research all day long, and I think that at the end of the day, lots of research is a flawed construct and that we'll never really get the answer from research, from human design research. But people like to argue about, you know, saturated fat versus unsaturated fat and vegetable oils versus, you know, tallow and butter and things like that. And I think they're getting lost in the weeds. I mean, you have to think about it from we didn't have heart disease before, you know, and we do now. What has changed? That's the most important thing. And there's probably multiple things that have changed. One of those, a form of fat is so different than what we've ever had before. And that doesn't make sense to me that that's okay and that the thing we used to have is not okay.
- [41:22]
B
Right.
- [41:22]
A
That's dumb. But it's also when you take into the financial part of into it, you're like, there's money to be made on vegetable oils, not as much to be made on animal foods. Because I have friends who are in like the animal farming business. And it's like, you can make a living, but you can't gonna make a lot of profit. So the profit is in the processed foods.
- [41:40]
B
You talked about magnesium. Were there other supplements in place of medications that you liked for reversing heart disease?
- [41:46]
A
I used some other ones, but I don't think that they were the driver in the reversal. I did use taurine, which you find in high amounts in animal foods anyways, so I was getting a lot of that through diet. But taurine has been shown to help promote health and aligning of the artery. I also used an enzyme called serrapeptase. And there are other ones too, like nattokinase or lumbrokinase that are good for breaking up fibrotic clotting tissue. They've been shown the research to be good at that. So if I wanted to get rid of plaque, that could be useful. So I took that again. I have no idea if these things were helpful or not, but this is what I did when I reversed it. I also did infrared light and infrared sauna and, and sunlight and that kind of stuff. So those. I don't know what was the major player. I don't know. Maybe it was a combination of them all. Oh, I also took a supplement called wabine or strophanthus, which is something our body makes endogenously from the adrenal glands. And what it does is it stimulates a non stress signal to the heart. So for me, you know, they had put this fear in me that I was going to develop heart failure. And so I was doing anything I could to not develop. That's originally why I started using the sauna. It Wasn't because of the plaque. It was because they were like, you've had a heart attack. Your chances of developing heart failure are really high. And I was like, oh, no.
- [42:57]
B
My dad needed a heart transplant badly, and he would have been on the list the next day. Except for having brain cancer, you're not eligible for, you know, organ transplants when you've got cancer. So it's just, it was just a horrible lose, lose situation.
- [43:08]
A
And like, just so people know, like, if you look at the literature on heart failure and infrared sauna, it's phenomenal. Like, their ejection fraction goes up, the heart size goes back down, swelling goes down. Now, there's a point if you get so far along that it's really hard to come back from. But for the most part, the studies are really, really promising. Also for infrared sauna and peripheral artery disease, which I didn't know was at the time when I started doing the sauna. But there are studies out of Japan that show that it's really effective for peripheral artery disease, which is what I had. So, again, this infrared lights piece is really, really important.
- [43:41]
B
How many minutes a day are you doing red light therapy?
- [43:44]
A
So I do infrared sauna. I also have a red and infrared light panel, and then I do sunlight.
- [43:47]
B
What panel do you use?
- [43:49]
A
EMR tech. Okay, that's the one I have. I like it because there's no flicker, you know?
- [43:54]
B
Yep. I use joovv. And they did it. They have a no flicker test.
- [43:56]
A
And then I use mansfred sauna. So I use my sauna probably four to six times a week for about 20 minutes. And I, I stay in there until I start sweating. And I wait five minutes and I get out. But I'm also getting sunlight a lot during the day, so. Or as much as I can. So Even if it's 20 degrees outside, I'm usually sitting in the sun and it actually feels nice. Like with the sun on you, you get pretty warm. Like, I start to sweat a little bit sometimes in 20 degrees. It's crazy how, how much energy you're getting from the sun.
- [44:22]
B
I heard this the other day. Don't know if it's true that the best areas, if you want to really be absorbing vitamin D, is to have your stomach exposed in your legs.
- [44:29]
A
I would say at least 50 of your body.
- [44:31]
B
Okay.
- [44:31]
A
I don't know about specific areas, but stomach is very important because when we talk about circadian rhythm and the, the signals that the sun is supposed to give us from, like, time, it rises in the different wavelengths and Colors of light that it changes throughout the day that gives your body information. And there's actually some literature that suggests that your microbiome responds to sunlight.
- [44:51]
B
I knew it was gonna be the gut microbiome.
- [44:52]
A
Yeah, cool. Okay, so.
- [44:54]
B
So there's probably truth to that one at least. Let me set the scene. You're going about your day, everything's fine, when suddenly you get a hangnail. But this isn't just any hangnail. It curses at you.
- [45:07]
A
You call that a manicure?
- [45:10]
B
I've seen bitter cuts on a butcher's apron. Who says that to a person? You're just trying to. This hangnail is over here. Body shaming your fingers. It's a nightmare. You know what would make everything better? SA chips. These chips are made with just three clean ingredients. Organic corn, grass fed beef, tallow, and sea salt. No seed oils, no chemicals. Just the most delicious, crunchy, non toxic snack that you can get your hands on. They're tougher than that evil hangnail too. So no more worrying about your snack breaking when you dip it in guacamole. Treat yourself to some masa chips and use code real Alex Clark to get 20 off your first order at masachips.com that's real Alex Clark@masachips.com for 20 off your first order. Don't let life's little curses get you down. When you're telling somebody your story, and they are somebody who is dealing with heart problems and they're on tons of medication and they start feeling defensive, you saying, you know, there's a way that you might be able to get off these medications and stuff. Stuff. How do you approach that subject? Because I'm sure that there are people in my audience who have parents or grandparents or loved ones who were kind of in that rat race and they want to help them get out.
- [46:20]
A
Well, the big one is statins, right? That's the one that has pushed the most the either number one or number two prescribed drug every year. That and opioids, which wrote a book on opioids too. But like, those two are huge. And so statin drugs are pushed because they're just, they just think that cholesterol causes heart disease and if you don't take that, you're gonna die pretty much. And so I'm, I'm driven by information. So if I'm talking to someone and first of all, I tell them that I'm just gonna give you information. What you decide to do is totally up to you, right? It's not up to your doctor. It's not up to me, it's up to you. You can do what you want. You know that sovereignty over your medical care. If you choose to take these medications and do what I'm recommending, that's fine. If you choose not to, that's fine too, you know, but it's your decision. I'm not telling you what to do, but I will tell you that when you look at the studies on statins, it's bad, right? So there's these, there's these major clinical trials that the industry and cardiologists use to tout statins and they are just, you know, full of statistical manipulation. And so if you look at, so there's like the 4s trial, the Jupiter trial, the Ascot trial, the west of Scotland trial. There's so many trials that they use. And like take the Ascot trial, for example. They, they had a treatment group and a control group, right? The treatment group took the statins, control group didn't. And in the treatment group, 98.1% of them did not have a heart attack or stroke or event of some sort. And 97% of the control group did not. So that's a 1.1% difference between the treatment group, which is not statistically significant. It doesn't really matter. That's the, that's the absolute risk is 1%, which doesn't matter. If you do relative risk though, and you take that 1.1% and you compare it to the 3% that did have a heart attack or stroke or whatever, in the non treatment group, you get a 36% reduction. So they're manipulating statistics to make it look better than it actually is. Right. Which they shouldn't be allowed to do that. They shouldn't be allowed to use relative risk because it's a misrepresentation of the data. And they do that in all the studies. Another, another one is if you look at the literature, there's literature that shows. They looked at all those studies, those big clinical trials they use using number needed to treat, which means that number needed to treat is just something to look at. Like this many people would have to take the drug for this long to prevent one heart attack or one stroke or whatever. And they looked at all those studies and they found that like, like the numbers were like 83 people would have to take the drug for five years to prevent one heart attack, which means 82 people. Sorry, yeah. You know, and then like that, that was deaths, actually to prevent deaths. And then 39 people would have to take the drug for one year or for five years to prevent one heart attack, and 125 people would have to take the drug for five years to prevent one stroke, which are just not good numbers. Like, there's so many people that are still left vulnerable, and they're. But the thing is, people are told, just take these.
- [49:22]
B
Yep.
- [49:23]
A
And you'll find, like, you prevent heart disease. And they're not giving any advice about infrared light or food or anything else, you know.
- [49:29]
B
So what happens if people like the information that you're sharing right now, somebody listening who's got all these issues, if they go to their cardiologist and they say, like, well, what about this, this and this on statins and the cardiologist? I mean, what. What is like a typical cardiologist gonna say?
- [49:43]
A
Lots of times they get frustrated with you if you don't. If you're questioning them.
- [49:47]
B
So what do you do?
- [49:48]
A
Because they don't. Don't know the answer. So you have to understand that they want to measure things that they know how to treat, so to speak, with the pills. Right. So that's why they measure cholesterol. That's why the whole field of cardiology is obsessed with measuring that number. I mean, they. They do take other things like inflammation markers and things like that, but they rarely take, like, a fasting insulin or a fasting leptin level, because if they get that back and it's abnormal, they don't know what to tell the person. They don't know how to fix that. They don't know how to counsel them on diet and circadian rhythm them. So they take what they can treat, so to speak. But are they really having an effect? I don't know. And so you have to understand that. And so, like, what would I tell someone? You have to. I don't know. You have to be a smart consumer, and you have to. It's very hard today because. And I recognize that people weren't in the position that I was in with the knowledge that I had and the knowledge that I've gained since then to make those decisions myself. And so it's a scary situation. But that's why I'm trying to promote this stuff and educate people, you know, and get it out there so that people can make more informed decisions. Otherwise, you're just stuck in fear. And what does fear do? Shut down decision making.
- [50:54]
B
Exactly. And you're. And you do a wonderful job in your book. I mean, every nook and cranny of heart disease in the process, and diet and cholesterol and statins. I mean, you Break down everything. And it's very in depth chapter chapters there for people. They can get into more if they're interested, beyond this, you know, hour or so interview, which is great. What alternative methods do you recommend to assess cholesterol's impact on health beyond standard lipid panels?
- [51:19]
A
This one's tough for me because if you look at blood testing in general, it's one snapshot in time of one tissue in the body. So how is it really supposed to tell us risk of anything? I would argue. Right. So even if I said, okay, markers of inflammation are way more important, they're way more telling. That's. I think they are. You know, you could get a high sensitivity C reactive protein. You could get myeloperoxidase, you could get LP, PLA2. These are all markers of inflammation in the body and of the artery specifically. But that's what it was. Then five minutes later, it could be different. If you go out into the sunlight, it could be totally different.
- [51:56]
B
Right, right.
- [51:57]
A
So when people get tests done, they say, my cholesterol is this. It was that. But Dave Feldman, you know, who's an engineer who's kind of researched this stuff, has showed us that it changes hour to hour, you know, so unless you have a CGM for lipids, it's not really going to tell you too much. So you could also measure markers of clotting risk. You could look fibrinogen and prothrombin and esr, things like that in blood. But again, that's what it was, one snapshot in time. So I like to tell people that the testing doesn't determine risk. Your environment does, your behavior does. Right. So you can get that number and be like, oh, man, I need to do something about that. But that doesn't necessarily determine that you're at risk chronically, I guess.
- [52:38]
B
Okay, so when somebody gets their cholesterol checked, what should they be looking for? Like, what actually matters in terms of cholesterol?
- [52:44]
A
One useful thing you could do is look at a trig to HDL ratio, triglycerides divided by HDL. That number should be 1.5 or lower. And so that's an indication that you may have some poor metabolic health, which is a big risk factor for developing plaque or for plaque sticking around once it's developed. Perfect. So that's something you could look at. Okay, you can look at a fasting insulin level or fasting leptin level. Those are also signs of poor metabolic health. And those are kind of going to stay that way regardless of how your environment changes. Minute to minute. If you're poor, if you have poor metabolic health. So if you change those, then you're decreasing your risk. Yes.
- [53:21]
B
So there's no such thing as bad or good cholesterol.
- [53:24]
A
I would argue not. Cholesterol is just something that's reflecting your metabolism. So if you ate a low carb diet and the only fuel source you were giving your body was fatty acids and ketones, those fatty acids have to be delivered to the tissues. And so more fatty acids are delivered via more LDL molecules. So your LDL goes up, and then if you ate more glucose and carbohydrates, you wouldn't need to deliver as many fatty acids. So they come down. And that happens in generally everybody. And some people who go on low carb diets, they go really high, like me, the lipids go really high. A group of researchers has labeled those people lean mass hyper responders. But there was actually a really interesting one person experiment done by a guy at Harvard named Nick Norwitz, where he is a lean mass hyper responder. He eats a low carb diet and his LDL goes way up. And so what he did was he then ate 12 Oreo cookies for six days, I think it was. And his LDL plummeted. Right, because he's eating glucose. Right. So he didn't have to deliver fats anymore. And then he went off the Oreos, went back on his low carb diet, and his LDL went back up. And then he went on a statin drug for six days and it lowered his ldl. But the Oreos worked way better than the statin. So I hope the cardiologists don't hear that and think, oh, we're going to prescribe Oreos now.
- [54:38]
B
Now they will. You know it. How do you approach cholesterol, though, in the context of aging or hormonal changes?
- [54:45]
A
Those are usually liver issues, I think. So the liver is processing and, and metabolizing everything, but it's responsible for taking up cholesterol and metabolizing it. And so if your liver is stressed, like when a change in hormones happens, or during just stress or toxin exposures, things like that, it can affect the liver's ability to deal with cholesterol like it was before, and you get this change in cholesterol. But again, do we really know it was a change? Because we're just looking at one snapshot in time. So unless we had a continuous cholesterol monitor measuring what it is all the time, do we know it's changing? But. But there's plenty of Studies that show that just your natural circadian rhythm, your lipids change naturally through that all day long. So there's lots of things that affect it. So when we measure it and we treat that number, we're just treating a number, we're not treating a person. And that's profitable way of looking at things as from the medical perspective, but it's not really helping the person because lots of the studies that tout statins, they look at low their ability to lower cholesterol and heart disease rates, but they kind of ignore all cause mortality. So these people are dying with lower cholesterol, Right? Great. They have low cholesterol, but they're dying of something else because it's not really affecting the person's health.
- [56:01]
B
What simple steps can somebody struggling with heart disease take today to start getting back on track and healing?
- [56:08]
A
I think the number one thing people should do is get more infrared light. If you look at what's happened since the invention of fluorescent light in the 1950s, which is when heart disease started to skyrocket, we all moved indoors under more artificial light for most of the day. Right before that, we had incandescent bulbs, were very high in infrared light. We had fire and we had sunlight. So making it a point to get more infrared light in your life would be huge. Eat a whole foods diet. You know, there's lots of dogma about diet. Carnivore, keto, you know, vegan and whatever. I don't recommend vegan diets, but I think, I think that at the very least, eat whole foods, you know, and know where your food comes from and eat seasonally.
- [56:49]
B
If you can give us like 1 minute on why eating seasonally is important.
- [56:53]
A
Well, first of all, it's a. It's a huge argument for like a keto diet, because in the winter, if I lived in the woods and I farming hadn't been invented yet, what would I eat? Animals. And I would be on a keto diet. Right. But second, I think that our body gets signals from the light environment that our food was grown in or raised in. And if we're eating food that's been shipped all from all over the world in different light environments, our body is getting different information. And I think that confuses the body. And there's, you know, when you break down the chemical bonds in that food, those electrons carry different light information. And so if I'm eating a food from Mexico in February in Virginia where I live, like, that's totally different light information. And light is information. And we know that because an electromagnetic Signal from a cell phone to a cell phone is light and it's carrying information from it. So light is giving your body information. So really be conscious of your, the what light environment your body is getting and the information that's getting.
- [57:50]
B
So the easiest way to do that then would be not even probably buying produce at the grocery store because that is going to be shipped from who knows where. But you'd have to shop with your local vegetable farmer and be like, okay, what do you have this month? What are you growing this month basically would be how you'd do that.
- [58:03]
A
Exactly. Farmers markets for me right now I'm, I'm fairly carnivore because that's what's available from the local farm down the road for me is we, I have their grass fed meats because we're filming in winter. Yeah, right.
- [58:13]
B
Yeah, it's winter right now.
- [58:14]
A
And then in this, in the spring and summer when I, when the farmers markets come around and they have vegetables available, I'll eat some low carb vegetables and things.
- [58:20]
B
If you could offer one remedy to heal a s culture, this is physically, emotionally, spiritually, maybe it has nothing to do with the hard stuff, just something else. What would it be?
- [58:29]
A
We would stop, stop attaching labels to things or to people. Right. You know, because I mean it's fine if you feel like you identify with a certain label or something like that. But what I mean is like in the sense that like, oh, like my example, oh, he's a chiropractor. What does he know about cardiology? Right. Well, like what does it take to know something about heart disease? Experience, research. Does that require a degree? No. Or that person's liberal, that person's Catholic, that whatever, you know, Then all of a sudden your preconceived notions about that label, you judge that person. Right. Rather than get to know the person. So I don't like to label myself anything. I'm Stephen. If you want to know things about me, then get to know me.
- [59:16]
B
If somebody wants to work with you directly and just talk to you about their heart issues, can they?
- [59:20]
A
Yeah. So my website is resourceyourhealth.com and on that website I have courses I've developed that teach a lot of this stuff. Stuff. My books are on there. I also have a health community people can join and have access to me and there's lots of resources in there as well. And that's all on my website, resourceyourhealth.com.
- [59:36]
B
And what is the name of your book?
- [59:37]
A
Understanding the Heart.
- [59:38]
B
Are you on social media? Can people follow you there.
- [59:40]
A
Yes. My handle is Dr. Steven Hussey. D R Steven Hussey. I'm on Instagram mostly, but also X.
- [59:46]
B
Great. Thank you Dr. Hussey for coming on Culture Apothecary.
- [59:49]
A
Thanks for having me.
- [59:53]
B
So crazy that he knew to say to the doctor, how about magnesium? And the doctor was like, oh, I don't know about any of that. Just crazy town usa. If you or someone you know has ever had something where they've had to be in a hospital like that for something serious, you know, the frustration of what that can be like, knowing what we know as people who consume content like this and listen to people like Dr. Hussy, please leave a five star review. Tell others why they should listen to Culture Apothecary. If you're a fan of the show, if you're new here, we'd love to have you. You can follow the show on Instagram at Culture Apothecary the Carry or me at Real Alex Clark. We're on a mission to heal a sick culture. I have guests come on twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific, bringing their own unique remedy to do just that. You can subscribe to Real Alex Clark on YouTube. I will see you next time. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.