← The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #72 Featuring Dr. Stephen Hussey! Surviving a heart attack at age 34, Reversing heart disease, How plaque REALLY forms, Conventional vs. Unconventional treatments and more!!
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Today's episode is sponsored by my good friends at Timeline. Timeline is now offering the world's first ever longevity gummies, powered by Might Appear. You've heard me talk about the importance of cellular health and our mitochondria, which is why I have Timeline as my favorite and most trusted sponsor. These are the only clinically proven Urolithin a gummies for strength and healthy aging. We may be living longer lifespans, but are we truly living better lives? What if the key is not just adding years to your life, but life to your years? This all starts at the cellular level. As we age, our mitochondrial health starts to decline. And one of the keys to living longer and healthier is keeping our mitochondria healthy and strong and might appear targets. This first us take control of your health now and live the life that you not only desire, but you also deserve. As a gift to all my listeners, you can save 20% off today by going to timeline.comdylan to get started. That's timeline.comdylan. i assure you your cells will thank you. All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Jelli Podcast. So I have a very, very impactful guest today. It really hits home for me, and I think that it's going to provide so many of you insight and knowledge that you need to be aware of for all aspects of your health and lifestyle. So my guest today is a chiropractor and functional medicine practitioner. Now, he got his doctorate of chiropractic and master's in human nutrition and functional medicine from the University of Western States in Portland. He's a health coach, he's a speaker, he's the author of several successful books, and he is a heart attack survivor at the age of 34, which we're clearly going to get into a ton of today. So without further ado, I introduce Dr. Stephen Hussey.
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Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
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Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate the time. I had a very good conversation with you prior. Just kind of going over some of the things that you went through and given a comparison and contrast of some things that I've gone through. And as I said in the intro, this really hits home for me. I've discussed things that I found for myself with my heart. Kind of shockingly, I think it's a shock to a lot of us when we find something with our heart for many. And so I really am going to value spotlighting everything that you can provide today. And I'm going to grill you for every little bit of information that I can get today. So let's just start a little bit with your background though, because obviously you're a chiropractor, functional medicine. So let's kind of get into that. How you got into this, what kind of motivated you to take the career path that you did as a kid?
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A young kid, even at the age of two, my dad, you know, kind of diagnosed me with asthma because he had experienced asthma and he kind of. And I was two years like, man, I think this kid has asthma. So you know, and throughout my childhood I had a lot of inflammatory type conditions. You'd say, I guess I used to break out in hives all over my body. I used to have irritable bowel syndrome, the asthma, terrible allergies, all that kind of stuff. And then ultimately at age 9, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. And so, you know, my parents and I were kind of reliant on western medicine, you know, with all these health issues I was having. So we just go to the doctor, you know, and they'd never really an explanation of why they were there, just giving you medications to try and suppress the inflammation that I was having. So yeah, you know, so we just kind of around him. I saw doctors my entire childhood and I read had a relatively normal childhood. I don't think it was like terrible, but I did have to deal with all these conditions. Um, and I remember, you know, as a type one diabetic, you know, always going to the endocrinologist every three months and it was always just, you know, measure your carbohydrates, count your carbohydrates and give yourself insulin for it. There's no talk of dietary change and whatever. Uh, and so I remember getting a book that listed every fast food item possible for maybe fast food restaurant with just the amount of carbs on it. Cuz that's all I care. That's all right, you know, just take the car, count the carbs, take the insulin. So anyways, it wasn't until college that I started to realize that I could live my life in a different way and significantly impact these conditions. And I'm happy to say that I got rid of all those inflammatory conditions. I no longer have asthma or allergies or things like that. Aside from the type 1 diabetes, which is kind of collateral damage from the inflammation that I had, those cells don't make insulin anymore. And so I thought it was interesting that I never, you know, heard from a doctor that you could change your lifestyle and get rid of these things. And so that was interesting to me. And so I kind of thought I wanted to be a pediatric endocrinologist because I had a good relationship with my pediatric endocrinologist. But then I learned that, and I started learning that maybe his ways, as good of a person as he was, his ways were not what I wanted to know. Um, and so I started thinking about alternative routes and, you know, decided on chiropractic. Cause my. My parents had taken me to chiropractors as a kid, um, and I don't remember, but they always said that it helped me with my asthma. So I was like, okay, that sounds like a better approach. Not knowing anything, really about chiropractor, chiropractic philosophy at the time. Decided to do that. And then I was always searching. Like, I was always looking. I was like, where's the answers to why I was able to change my lifestyle and fix these things? And I thought it would come from formal education. So then after the chiropractic degree, I was like, well, you know, I don't feel like I knew or I learned where I wanted to learn. So I tried to do the functional medicine degree after that, and I was like, I still didn't really learn what I wanted to learn. And so I've just always been very curious and trying to figure things out. And that's what's led me to where I am today as far as, like, my perspective and views on health and specifically heart disease. And then obviously, as you mentioned, you know, the heart attack even propelled me further down the realm of heart disease. And what I found is completely blown my mind as far as, like, what I feel the causes are in the literature that's out there. So that's kind of my story. That's where I got. That's how I got here.
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Excellent, man. Well, I appreciate the backstory and the breakdown. And, you know, I've kind of come to learn how important chiropractic is, too, on so many aspects of health. I've got some close friends that do a lot of diet coaching and work that are experts, but their background is chiropractic. And I've learned from me being involved in chiropractic just how important it is to your overall life and being how bad being out of alignment can be for all aspects of health. Just before we get into the cardiovascular side. Can you kind of touch on that just a little bit? Because I think people need to know about how important chiropractic really, really is. I think people maybe get the wrong idea, maybe had a bad experience, or just think it's about getting thrown around and cracked and popped. But I think there's more to it.
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I've found that, you know, in my, in my investigation, in my curiousness, I've kind of found a different explanation of chiropractic that, that I feel that most chiropractors have. So, and I teach this to chiropractors, actually. I go to, you know, continuing education conferences and I. I'm actually going this weekend to one to educate chiropractors on this sort of philosophy of chiropractic. So the way I see chiropractic, I guess the traditional way of proceeding chiropractic is we're affecting the nervous system. I do think that we're doing that. We're adjusting the spine, which is where the nervous system or the central nervous system is, and we are improving that communication between brain and body affecting the autonomic nervous system, balancing the vagus nerve and those types of things. I do think that happens, but I also think, or also know through my lit. In my research and search of the literature, is that we're also creating what's called coherence, which studying the heart is what led me to coherence. That's what's really affecting heart rate variability. So when we adjust the spine, and this is true for many forms of body work, not just chiropractic, when we adjust the spine, we're actually, you know, we're actually creating light. There's a light emitted from that. There's a sound. We all know the sound. We hear the sound. There's an electromagnetic field. There's also a piezoelectric effect, which means we're creating electrons through the compression of stretching of fascia. And so all those, you could say, like biophysics or quantum effects of chiropractic are then communicated throughout the entire body instantaneously. And when that happens, we're getting a more coherent body, which more coherent just means that the body is intercommunicating better. So if you're incoherent, it's when aspects of a system aren't communicating and doing what's best for the system as a whole. Whereas coherence, we're all communicating. We're on the same page. We're all working for a common goal for what's best for the system as a whole. And that's what it's really creating is coherence. And coherence is measured. Or the best indication of coherence is heart rate variability. Which is again why studying the heart led me to this, this explanation of chiropractic. So I Think it's kind of another way around. So then what the heart's picking up as far as coherence is related to the brain and then that stimulates a change in how the brain is communicating back to the body, creating balance in the autonomic nervous system. So it's kind of a different approach. That's the way I see it. So people go to chiropractors for neck pain, back pain, headaches, and it's effective for those things. And the literature is very clear on that. But what the real effect is is keeping you well and keeping your body coherent and communicating by treating you in a, in a specific, specific way. Which there's many different forms of body work that will do that, but chiropractic is one of them.
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So you mentioned heart rate variability and that's one of those things on the oura ring that pops up on, on there and people don't really know what it means. And you would think like on something like that I have had people get confused that they think when it's low it's good and when in fact when it's a higher it's good. And can you explain what that is and what it means?
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Heart rate variability is, it's basically the term that describes our heart is not a metronome. So it's basically supposed to have this variation between beats. So and so it's not going to be like this steady, like the same, same time or same beat. So when I think about what health is, health is the ability to adapt to a stimulus from your external environment and react to it and then return to homeostasis. If you can't do that, you're in poor health. So like if I want to go sprint a hundred yards and my body literally can't handle that, I'm not in good health, I would say I'm not obviously not able to adapt to that response. So anyway, the heart rate variability is telling us is how, how readily we are able to adapt to a stress and returning homeostasis. And so the way I think about it is like we talk about this variation between heartbeats and I liken it to a player in an athletic stance, if they're in athlete athletic stance, they're kind of bobbing back and forth on their toes like this, they're not standing flat footed. And so when you're bobbing back and forth like your heart is variation improving heartbeats, you're bobbing back and forth, you're ready for that play, you're ready for the ball to come at you, if you're a baseball player or something like that. Whereas if you're standing flat footed and your heart rate variability is low or it's, it's, it's more like a metronome then we, we're just standing there like this. I'm not ready for the ball. Right. That's kind of how I express heart rate variability is that it's, it's something that is measuring your ability to adapt to a stressor in your environment and that's really the true measure of health. Um, which is why we do things like, it's why things like a sauna or a cold plunge or exercise or all these things are helping our body achieve higher levels of health because they're helping us train how to adapt to a stress better. They're kind of these hormetic stresses that have this net positive result and all those things have been shown to increase heart rate variability. So that's what it is. I mean, and the heart rate variability is the best measure that I know of, of balance in our autonomic nervous system. Because when we have this coherence that's reflected in how our heart is measuring this communication in our body that's reflected through the nervous system because the heart's communicating that to the brain and the brain's sending that more non stressing on this, this rest and digest signal, this coherent signal down to the body.
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I'm a big data guy, so that's why I'm relating it to oura ring data. But it's, this isn't just necessarily for that, but I'm gonna relate it to that because it's easy for, and people, a lot of people use it. So if you're sleeping throughout the night and you see 3am You've got this spike and it comes back down and, and things. Is that, is that possibly like a dream or a nightmare or something stressful? And then when your heart rate variability is good ninety, a hundred, which I've come to find out is quite a good score, is that what would trigger something like that? And, and why do you have those jumps while you're sleeping for instance? Cause I think we know why you have a jump when you're sprinting or working out. But why when you're in a, you know, therapeutic state would that occur? And what does that actually mean?
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Yeah, jump in heart rate variability during the night.
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So if your heart rate, it says your heart rate variability is like 95 and you see that your beats per minute are 38 to 40 generally. But then there's a little spike in there somewhere in between. What would cause those spikes and, and, and make that happen to you on.
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The data sheet in the heart rate or the heart rate variability?
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The heart rate variability is showing the spike in there. Yeah.
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Yeah. Well, I mean, the heart rate variability is spiking. There's this, there's a. Increase in, you could say vagal tone or increase in, you know, parasympathetic, I guess today. So something good is happening, I'd say, in that, in that sleep, maybe into a deep restorative sleep where you're healing or something like that. Yeah, I mean, something good is happening. I, I don't know exactly what. Yeah, like dreaming.
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I don't know.
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There's lots of interpretations of what dreaming means, those types of things. But generally when you're sleeping, you're supposed to be in a more parasympathetic dominant. You know, it's not like we're in one or the other. That's kind of a misnomer. We're never in sympathetic or parasympathetic. We're always getting signals of both. And they're supposed to balance each other out. And when we get imbalanced signals, that's when the issue is. So. But we can get inhibition of like a. The vagal tone or the parasympathetic signaling. We would want to create balance and have them always kind of balancing each other out. And so if you're getting at that sleep state, that deep sleep state, that means you're really into that, like you're getting a very balanced signal from both, allowing your body to go into that restive, restorative, healing type sleep. So that's what I would say that means. Yeah.
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Cause I noticed on data, when I have a better REM or better deep sleep, heart rate variability is a lot better. But when I don't or it's disruptive, it's not very good. Drastically different. So, and, and this is a, just a kind of a basic question for people that may not understand. Why is it good to get your heart rate up higher? And how long would one expect after, I don't know, running sprints for like, let's say they get up to the 140 range. We'll just throw a number out. How long would one expect, if they're in good condition, to see it kind of get back down into a normal state after they finish exercising long?
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I. I'm not sure exactly, but I would say within 10 minutes you want it to come back down. Uh, and so that. So it's the same as, like. Like that kind of stress, like, that you want your body to be able to adapt to it and come back down. That's a better indication of health than any, like, one snapshot number. Same as, like, blood sugar. Like, I don't care what your blood sugar is. If it goes up because you ate a carbohydrate, that's normal. It's supposed to come back down within two hours. And if it doesn't do that, that's pathology. Yeah, that's. It just goes to show, like, because people get kind of obsessed with blood work numbers sometimes, or various numbers, like this pinpoint number, and it's like. Well, it's really what that number is over time and how it. How that number performs, so to speak, based on different stresses and when you encounter different stresses, like, that's. So it's really hard to determine health by these snapshots and times of numbers. We have to look at them and how they're doing over time.
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Okay, so let's get into your story a little bit because we got to expound a ton off of that now. I wanted to get some quick questions in there based on your background and everything. And you brought up hrv, and I wanted to cover that because I. I think people don't know much about it. I know how important it is. So let's just talk about first heart attack, 34 years old. That. I mean, that is obviously on the rarer side. I don't want to say strange, because anymore. I've seen more and more issues pop up lately, and we could relate that to whatever we want, but you could get into that as well, the actual fact behind that. But let's talk about that and what happened. What are you thinking at the time that this happens? Because it has to be quite shocking and probably completely unexpected.
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Yeah, I'll kind of give the whole story. And even. Even where I've gotten to now, you know, since I determined that the way I live my life could have an impact on my health and learn that myself, you know, I'd always been very conscious about health as an adult and got these degrees in health and everything, but the main things I focused on was diet and exercise. Uh, those are always things I could control. And. And so I focused on those things primarily. And I did, like, avoiding toxins and things, managing my blood sugars as a type one diabetic. Um, but clearly it wasn't enough to prevent a heart attack. I did that, you know, my entire adult life. And then, you know, the Years. The year leading up to the heart attack was a stressful year. I mean, we were going during. Going through Covid, and there was things happening during COVID I didn't, you know, agree with that was stressful to me. But there was also some relationship stress. Uh, and then I was also pretty dehydrated. I had convinced myself that drink when you're thirsty, which apparently I'm never thirsty. Uh, and so I wouldn't drink water. So dehydration, I think, played a role in it. And then I heard some very unfortunate news about a close family member of mine a day and a half before the heart attack. So I heard that news Sunday night, Monday, spend the entire day trying to figure out how to get to this person. But again, they were in another country, and so we couldn't get to this person. We couldn't figure out the situation. And so that was. It wasn't just the thing that happened. It was the inability to figure it out. Then Tuesday, had two very poor nights of sleep Monday night and. And then woke up Tuesday and did a workout that morning. And 20 minutes after the workout, started getting pain right in my chest. At first I was just like, what is it? I thought my pec was tighten, tightening up after the workout or something like that. And then very quickly I realized this is something different. Yeah. So quickly called the ambulance, you know, and got to the hospital. They did a heart cath procedure and they found a hundred percent blockage of my lad, which is left anterior to sing artery, which is a widowmaker heart attack. And fortunately for me, we have, you know, technologies these days that can intervene in that situation and, and save lives. So, you know, I have, I have questions. I have. So I've looked into this so much and I have questions about whether or not a blockage is what really causes cause my heart attack. It could be that or a totally different mechanism that, that I've come across. Um, and I. I'll never know. But the solution to preventing that from happening, you know, the same things which I'm sure we'll get into. So anyways, I was pretty demoralized at that point, pretty shocked, wondering what was going on. My poor parents. You know, you know, I'm figuring like, you know, they. We just had the stressful thing about a close family member. And then they, here I am having a heart attack. I was in the hospital, just kind of like full of self doubt and everything, you know, just kind of threw my hands up and I was like, all right, you know, what you got for me? To the doctors, you know, like, what happened? What causes these things? Like, tell me what you got. Cause at that point I was like, I just need information. Like, I knew the shortcomings of western medicine at that point. I'd already learned that from previous health stuff, but I wanted their opinions. And it was like a broken record. It was, hey, cholesterol causes heart attacks. Your cholesterol is high. You know, this is what causes plaque. This is. It was like, no matter the doctor that came here, the, the attending, the whatever, the, the interns, the residents, everybody. And I was just like, well, what about this? You know about that? And I wasn't like being combative or anything. I was just like, well, what, what about these things? And there was just no room for discussion. Like, that was the most problematic thing about my entire experience in the hospital was there was no room for discussion. It was. This is. It's our way or the highway. It's cookie cutter approach. I mean, they prescribed me somewhere between 8 to 11 different medications while I was in the hospital, and they told me I'd be on 5 the rest of my life. And I was like, well, what about this? Or what about that? And it was just like, no, this is what you're gonna do. And they may not know any different or know any other recommendations, so they're not really gonna entertain those things. And it's not within the laws of what they can do. I guess. I guess my three days in the hospital really reinvigorated me because the food they served me there, the food they recommended that I eat, like they told me to eat, pretty much a processed food diet. That was the heart, healthiest thing I could do. I mean, literally, things like animal crackers and fig Newtons. Wow. And things of full vegetable oils were all on the things that I was allowed to eat that were healthy. And there were healthy foods on there too, but, you know, they were demonizing saturated fat and all these things. So I was just like, okay, you know, I knew this was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad. And so I kind of realized at that point that, you know, there's gonna be people, unfortunately, in this situation, like I'm in. And I kind of made it a mission to figure out why this happened to me and share what I find so that people can make more informed decisions. Because I was fortunate enough to have some medical background, some previous knowledge. Yeah, most people don't. And so they're going to be in that situation, just living in fear, not knowing what to do. So Just to share where like I went from there. So like I did not take their recommendations. I took a blood thinner for six months because there was a stent in my heart. Now other than that, I did not take their medications and I never have. Three months later I did the follow up echocardiogram and my, my, originally my, there was damage to my heart. The septum of my heart had been damaged, so my ejection fraction was lower than it should be and the conduction signal of my heart was lower than it should be. And those things returned to normal at three months. And at that time they were like, oh good, you must be taking your medications and stuff. And I was like, well no, actually I'm not. And I actually been doing my own heart health routine that I kind of come across and researched in those three months. So anyways, about that three month mark, I started being more active and I realized that if I've tried to even just walk fast, I would get pain in my right lower leg. And so I was like, what's going on here? I didn't know what it was. It was like a DVT or deep or you know, compartment syndrome or something. Eventually, finally, like six months after the heart attack, got to a vascular surgeon, they did an ultrasound and I developed plaque in my leg. I don't know how else that could have gotten there besides the intervention. They did displace the stent cause they went into the femoral artery in my leg on the right side and that's the side where I got this issue. And the morning I had the heart attack, my leg was fine, I did a sprint workout, I did lunges to failure, I did all this stuff and my legs were fine. And then all of a sudden I can't walk. And they kind of denied that that was what caused it. And I found some literature that shows that those devices they use to seal up the artery after those procedures can cause interruptions in blood flow down the leg and cause some plaque formation or it's likely, it's more likely to happen. So anyways, uh, they said they didn't want to mess with it at the time because it wasn't interfering with my day to day life, just things that I like to do. Like I couldn't snowboard, I couldn't walk fast, I couldn't play soccer, definitely couldn't run. So I was like, okay. So I kept doing my routine and I actually added some things to it at that time. Uh, and a year later that it was only 50% blocked, it was 75 to 99% blocked is what they found. Um, and then it was only 50% a year later. At that time, he was. The vascular surgeon, said, well, we can't say it's better because we don't see these things get better. I mean, the testing just showed this. And they even did the test twice. Twice. Like the vascular. The. The technician came in and did the test twice because they didn't believe it. A year later, I kept doing my thing, and a year later, it was normal. There was no more plaque in my artery. And so then a year after that, it was still normal. So. Which they told me it was impossible to reverse plaque like that and did it. So no curiosity from the vascular surgeon. He wasn't. He wasn't like, well, how'd you do this? Or like anything like that. So. So anyways, and then just this past February, I went and I got a CT angiogram to image the arteries of my heart, and I had it analyzed by clearly. And my arteries are pretty much clean. I have a mild amount of plaque and RCA that was there at the time of the heart attack. So that hasn't progressed. And the stent is there, and it's. It's. It's open, it's patent, and there's no plaque in my LAD or any other arteries anywhere else. This is with LDL levels in the three or four hundreds, because I ate a low carb diet, because it makes it easy to control type 1 diabetes. And if people are familiar with Dave Thelman's work, we know that that can cause elevations or quote, unquote, elevations, if you think there's such a thing in LDL levels. And so I reverse plaque, and I have no plaque in the arteries of my heart with LDL levels that high over the last probably six or seven years. There's a lot of nuance here. There's a lot of things about heart disease and heart attacks that I've. I've dug into because of this story. You know, that's. That's just what I've done. And I'm an end of one person, and I've been able to have very good success with this, with reversing heart disease. But I'm sure we can get into many different facets of what causes atherosclerosis or heart attacks or anything you want to.
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So, yeah, there's a lot there that you said. The first thing, though, that I just. I struggle so much with this when they tell you that you can't reverse plaque, because some of the best minds that I have ever met in medicine have told me that is completely false. You're living proof of that. I'm gonna get it clearly scanned done in a few months and I'll have you talk about that in a minute because that's probably the best look you can get that'll tell you how much soft and hard plaque you have. But I'm gonna let you get into that and discuss that. You would be a better expert on it than I. I have a good deal of knowledge on it, but I have an. I have the feeling you have a great deal, so I'll let you talk about that. But I. I really want to get into a few things with you that we'll discuss. I just want to agree with you on several points there that I encountered in some of the things I went through. I went to the Mayo Clinic and was just. It was the most disheartening thing that I've ever been to. Going all that distance, going there and to hear what they had to say to me and wanting to put me on a statin that would actually exacerbate the problem I already had, raise my LP levels and, and just not even what I was there for or wanted to hear what you said. What I found from people that I know quite well is they're just. A lot of doctors are just educated one way and we know how they're funded when they go to school and they're taught this way. And some of that goes into insurance issues that I've heard very, very well into detail about. And I'm not trying to throw stones. I'm just giving facts on what I've heard and know from people that are in the industry that know and they can get dropped from their insurance if they're not prescribing the right things or they prescribe something obscure like in my situation that I talk to you about that I'm. That I use. And it's just. It's messed up. You can't really get the proper answers that you need. And you went in there asking genuine questions and were just dismissed. And it's troubling. And that's why it's important that we do things like this, so we can educate people and help them to think for themselves. So I thank you for sharing all of that. And now I want to dig into your knowledge base on things that you've done. First of all, will you just give a little quick understanding of what the clearly exam is and why it. What I feel the best way to actually check your heart for the most complete and accurate detail.
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Yeah. So it clearly is a company that uses AI to take the results from a CT angiogram or a ccta, so that we're inject contrast and they're measuring, you know, the, the flow through the heart and they're getting an idea of. Of plaque. But those things can be hard to read. The CTs, and even in lots of times, they're read by a radiologist instead of a sort of a cardiologist. So you can get some differing, you know, results and opinions. And that's not me talking, that's cardiologists I know talking. They're like, they get frustrated with the results they receive or the reads they receive from the radiology center. Yeah. So clearly you. You give them that data from that scan and they'll put it through their AI software. And it gives you these very nice images of the coronary arteries of the heart. And it's really cool. You can like, image them and rotate them around and, and see, you can. Then they like, stretch out the arteries like this so you can see where the plaque is and, and how thick it is. But so it's, it's very. It's a much more accurate way to depict things. Now, I am very big on emphasizing that. Yes. Like, if you have a bunch of calcified plaque in your arteries, the research shows that you. That's. That's associated with higher risk of having a heart attack. However, that's not true for everybody. My CAC score was zero. Six months before my heart attack. I had no calcified plaque on my artery's perfect score, and I still had a heart attack. So obviously there's things here we don't understand, or at least medicine doesn't understand. I like to think that I have a little bit more of an understanding because of the things that I've. I've found. But anyways, the, the most revolutionary thing that I found from the clearly scan was not my results, which was. My results were great. That's. I was happy about that. But was when you, when you look at that, when you see the imaging, like, people think that here's, like here's an artery, right. And they think the plaque develops on the inside like this, you know, and that's not true. Like, if you go online, you type in atherosclerosis and you look at these images, that's what they all. All the cartoons kind of depict that, but that's not true. Uh, so if you look at the clearly images, it's. It's Very clear, no pun intended, that the. Like, the plaque starts in the artery wall. And we always say that, you know, people say, oh, yeah, it's in the artery wall, but it's not on the artery wall, like, the inside of the artery. So, like, if you. You take. Like if my hands together are the artery wall, like one side of the artery wall, plaque starts to form like this, and it grows in the middle of the artery wall, and it expands both ways. So it's not like there's a flat artery here, and there's plaque developing on the inside of it like that. It's doing this because it's happening in the intimal layer of the artery. And so then when you analyze plaque, it's clotting tissue. It's not this huge accumulation of cholesterol or fatty. Fatty acids or anything. It's. It's primarily clotting tissue. And there's studies that show that it's 87% plus or minus 8% pretend, depending on the cadaver. They studied clotting tissue. And so how does clotting tissue get into the artery wall? Like, they start expanding like that. And the answer comes from this guy named Vladimir Sabotin, who's a Russian scientist, I think he's Russian, who came up with this brilliant theory that whenever. So you've got these cells that line in the inner lining of the artery called endothelial cells, vascular endothelial cells. And when they start to grow or proliferate, they're supposed to be this thin layer of them. And when they start to grow, they start to proliferate for various reasons, which we can talk about. Then those cells, they need a blood supply. All cells need a blood supply. Right? But that blood supply does not come from the blood flowing down the middle of the artery. It comes from what's called the vasobazorum, which are the arteries that supply the artery walls with blood. And so when those cells start to grow and proliferate in the middle, the arteries that are supplying the artery wall with blood then have to grow in and create new arteries to get to those new cells. And when the process of growing new arteries, you get arteries that are incomplete. They're trying to build themselves up, and they're leaking blood at that point. And when they're leaking blood, the blood kind of flows out into the intimal layer right there in the artery wall. And this blood is no longer flowing because it's leaked out of these vessels, and it starts to clot, and you get this clotting tissue Formation. And that's what causes this expansion of the artery wall. And that was like when I saw the clearly scan and I saw that it was. You can clearly see it happens in the artery wall like that. And it's not on the. In the. In the lumen of it at first, anyways. And I knew about Sabotin's work. I was like, ah, this is it. This is it right here. And so the question then becomes, how do we prevent the proliferation of the growing of the endothelial cells in the middle of the artery? And that is the answer to preventing plaque. Now, does plaque cause heart attacks? That's a whole nother question that we can talk about. But if we want to prevent plaque, it becomes about stopping that proliferation of those endothelial cells.
- [32:10]
B
Let's just take a look at this first, because you said you had a 0.0 calcium score. Now, I want to convey this to people because I think it gives a false sense of security. With a zero score or a very low score. How on earth. I think I have an idea, but I want you to explain this. How on earth could you have a zero score and have a hundred percent blockage? Can you explain that?
- [32:34]
A
One of two things. One is that the clot formed acutely. It formed instantaneously. Okay. And it was large enough to block the entire artery. Just like that. That could be the first thing. So there was no plaque there before, or there was no hard plaque there before. Because this is just measuring hard plaque. This is not measured off plaque. Exactly. It could have just been an entire blockage of soft plaque. But it's hard for me to get. It's hard for me to believe that a hundred percent blockage formed and none of it calcified. Right. So it makes me think that there was this acute situation where a clot formed and it was large enough. And it happens in the artery under the most pressure of any artery in the body, which is the left anterior descending artery. And there's also a turn there, which creates turbulent blood flow that can induce clotting. That's one potential mechanism. The other potential mechanism is that that a hundred percent blockage was there prior to my heart attack. And we have no way of knowing if that's true or not, because they went in and they saw it and they said, oh, this must be why he's having a heart attack. But there's an entirely different mechanism, which is probably good that we started this off with heart rate variability and autonomic balance, because there's entire different mechanism of heart tissue Death that can happen. That has to do with imbalanced nervous system signaling to the heart. Um, and in medicine, they call these menocas, where they find people who have heart attacks with no blockage whatsoever. But I think that they're much more common than medicine thinks because they go in and they find the blockages, but maybe the blockages have been there before and nobody's. We've never had any data before to look at them. And that this imbalanced nervous system signaling causes this change in this. This cascade of events that changes metabolism in the heart, causes. Causes buildup of lactic acid and causes tissue death, which. We can get into the details of that if you want to, but those are the two different mechanisms. So how did I have a heart attack? Potentially one of those two things. Now, they did place a stent. So they opened up, they. They busted open that clot there and they placed a stent in there. And I. The timeline is kind of confusing. I was awake the entire time during this whole episode, and even in the cath lab and everything. But it's confusing because, like, they. They did that and they gave me morphine at the. Almost the exact same time, around the same time. So when did I start feeling better? I don't know. Morphine just stopped me from feeling pain. Did the morphine calm my nervous system response and stop the tissue damage from happening from that type of heart attack? Or was it that they opened the clot with a stent, with a balloon angioplasty and a stent, or with the. The clotting enzymes they gave me, It'll bust out the. Bust open the clot. Like, what was it? I don't know. And so it's an important distinction to think about because then it tells us about these mechanisms of heart attacks. And there's other evidence I have that support these different theories, other different work of different researchers. I don't know the answer to your question specifically, but those are two potential mechanisms by which heart attacks can happen. That's how you can have a heart attack with a zero CAC score is those types of things. I personally, I think that having a higher CSE score, it being associated with higher risk of heart attacks doesn't have anything to do with the plaque in there. It has to do with the fact that there's. There's harder plaque in the artery wall that is now interrupting blood flow. Right. We know that. Like, we look at a water flowing past a rock and a river and the eddies on the other side. You know, it creates this disturbance in blood flow. And that disturbance in blood flow we've known for many years, since 1850, that disturbance in blood flow can cause clotting responses. Um, and so if you have this plaque in there that's interrupting blood flow or creating turbulent blood flow, that can increase your risk of this clotting response. Um, so I think that's why the higher CAC scores are associated with that, but doesn't mean it can't happen. If you have dehydration, sludgy blood, which is what I was going through, if you have a stress response that's acutely inflammatory, lots of different things can cause the predispose us to these clotting responses. But I'm also a huge proponent of. It's not just one thing. It's never just one thing. There's always multiple things. And so, so yeah, I mean, I could go on and on, but so.
- [36:40]
B
You keep mentioning dehydration. How, how dangerous is that? I mean, I, I want to understand because I want to convey this to people how like if it's really that important, I mean, I know it is that important. But I'm saying for, for heart health, can you kind of just get into why that can be such a factor and what caused something like this?
- [36:59]
A
That's a perfect question. And, and it leads you right into a whole nother aspect of something that I found. So first of all, like the vascular system and the lymphatic system is a, is a hydraulic system, right? It's, it's fluid. And a hydraulic system needs enough fluid in it to function, to operate. Uh, and so, you know, cellular hydration comes from mitochondria, mitochondria, metabolic water. Um, but for like from my perspective, vascular hydration, lymphatic hydration mostly comes from the water we drink. And that water needs to be toxin free, mineral rich and somewhat coherent or energized, I would say. And so what do I mean by that? We all know that there's a solid liquid, gas form of water, there's ice water and steam. But there's actually a fourth state that water can exist in. They call it the fourth phase of water or structured water or exclusion zone water. And this is, there's many different scientists that have found that water exists in this state throughout the last a hundred years. And they've called lots of different things over the years. Cause they all discovered it at different times and called it different things. So it's more like a gel state. And so you can think of it as the consistency of Raw egg white or like Jell O, or when you put your bone broth in the fridge, if it's got lots of collagen, it comes out like a gel. And so most of the water in the body is in this state, which is why like I feel like a gel. Like you poke me and I, I bounce right back. Right. And so this. But there is liquid water in the body too. Like the blood is half water. The system is, is water. But anytime water gets next to a water loving surface, which all biological, biological surfaces are water loving, and the water holds enough energy to it, it will become this structured water next to that surface. And so they've actually shown that this does occur on the lining of the arteries. And so this structure of water forms on the lining of the artery. And so you think of it like this gel layer. And they think that the glycocalyx is what forms this gel layer, but really it's the structured water forming on the glycocalyx that is making it this gel. And so that's really, really important because this water, this gel, like water has some very unique characteristics. One is that it's very negatively charged, which is important. And another is that it's, they call it exclusion zone water for a reason, because when it forms, almost nothing can penetrate it. Excludes everything. That's not it. The only things that can penetrate it are very small hydrated ions of minerals that are smaller than potassium, potassium or smaller. And so anything that's not it can't penetrate it. That means lipoproteins are extremely too big. Even albumin, which is in the blood, smallest protein in the blood's way too big. Red blood cells, way too big, bacteria way too big. So if we have this layer of structured water, it's, the artery is protected. Let's see things that may damage it. It's also creates a frictionless barrier. So structured water is actually what forms on the ice when your ice gate goes across it. So that's why you can slip on the ice. You ever grabbed ice out of the freezer and it sticks to you at first? Yep. As soon as it starts to melt, it slips right outta your hand.
- [40:08]
B
Right.
- [40:08]
A
That's what that structure of water forming on the ice and your finger and it slips out. Now there's this frictionless barrier. And so that's two things. The other thing is that fascinatingly this structured water creates an energy gradient because I remember I told you that the structured water becomes very electronegatively charged because of how it forms, which. Yeah, I Get into that we can. And then it cleaves off hydrogens, and hydrogens are concentrated into the lumen of the artery now, so there's a negative area next to the positive hydrogens, and that's an energy separation, a charge separation, which is a battery. And so structured water forming in the body is basically a battery. It's an energy storage form of our body. And this battery creates the energy needed to move blood. And they've done this as experiments in Dr. Pollock's lab, where they put a tube made of a hydrophilic surface surf material into a vat of water, and they put infrared light on the water. The structured water grows in the tube, and the water starts flowing through the tube with no force acting on it whatsoever. And they've actually done this in the arteries of chick embryos, too. They, you know, euthanize the heart, stop the heart of the chick embryo, shine infrared light on the blood, and the blood continues to move through the arteries without the pumping. Heart, I don't think, is the main mover of blood. And then the last thing that structured water does is it doesn't just form in the lining of the arteries. It also forms on the elements of blood themselves. So we have evidence that the red blood cells and the lipoproteins have a zeta potential, which is a negative charge around them. And that negative charge is structured water. And so when all these things have a negative charge, like charges repel each other, so nothing's sticking together, which is what happens when we have clots as things start sticking together and coagulating. So if we want to protect the lining of the artery, keep blood moving and keep elements of blood separated and not sticking together, we need enough water, and we need that water to be structured water. So having enough of the raw material is very important. It being free of toxins and it being free, full of minerals, and then energized is also very important, which takes us to what I think is the number one cause of heart disease today, which is lack of infrared light exposure, because infrared light is what creates structured water, the best of anything that we know, which makes sense, because the sun is 40 to 50% infrared light. So all life on the planet would have this stimulus all day long if we didn't enclose ourselves in these indoor spaces all the time.
- [42:32]
B
Okay, so now that you said that, what are the best ways to get infrared light, aside from the sun? Because I know some people have this in their head, that the sun is so bad and scary, and what are the best times to, to get the sun. So two part question.
- [42:46]
A
Yeah, well, sun's always going to be the best. But there are modern day things we can use to boost our infrared light exposure. But just to be clear. So I guess there's really no best time to get sunlight exposure because anytime the sun is up, it's 40 to 50% infrared light is being emitted. What changes throughout the day is the amount of blue, green, yellow light that Z up and down and tells what time it is throughout the break. Whereas the red infrared light stays pretty much the same. Right. Anytime you can get outside. It's just that people say like morning and evening, those are the best times you get infrared. But that's just like it's highest at that time. It's not really highest at that time, it's just higher than the other forms of light at the time. So. And then yes, there are things like infrared saunas, which I'm a huge fan of, and infrared light panels or red light panels. So you gotta think of it like the only visible or the only light we're supposed to get that's native to us really. Is that from the sun or from fire? But fire is very high in infrared light. Uh, so yeah, there's another stimulus for you. But it's supposed to be UV through infrared. Right. If you look at the spectrum, what they found in Dr. Pollock's lab is that UV was the least effective at producing structured water. But it did just not near as good. And the further you went down, you know, down here, so you go through violet, orange, whatever, yellow, green, whatever, all these things over to red and then infrared. Far infrared is the best of at structuring water. So the furthest you go down that way. So like the sauna that I like use, it gives off the most far infrared light of any sauna that I know of. But near infrared will do it. Red light will do it. It's just far infrared is the best. So yeah, it's really. So you gotta think about it like this. Our bodies are just designed to harvest energy from the environment. We can do that multiple ways. We can do it from direct sunlight exposure, mainly infrared. We can do it from direct contact with the Earth because the sunlight is concentrating energy into the Earth, through the outer sphere, through lightning into the earth. And we can do it through harvesting the chemical bonds in food. We can gain energy that way. When we gain energy, our body wants to store it. And the way that it stores it is structured water. I told you that structured water is this battery. The more structured water we have in the body built up in our cells, in our vascular system, the more energy we've stored. So if we give our body more energy to store, it's gonna build more structured water. And that's what we want. So that's what we have to think about it. It's like it's energy dynamics is all it is. So that. But it makes sense because that's where life was. Life was outside, in contact with the earth under infrared light all day long, Even if you're sitting in the shade, the infrared reflecting off the grass onto you. And then we were harvesting the chemical bonds from food and making electrons from that. And so. And so that's where we get energy from. And so when you. You look at what humanity has done over the last a hundred years. So heart disease, coronary artery disease, was almost unheard of in the right hundreds. And all of a sudden, here it comes. What have we done? Well, around the 1940s, late 1940s, early 1950s, that's when heart disease really started to skyrocket. Before then, there was a couple world wars, and there was a lot of smoking and a lot of things going on that could have contributed to the gentle rise. But then it really skyrocketed in the 1940s and 50s. And what did we do at that time? We invented fluorescent bulbs in the 50s. We had sunlight, we had incandescent bulbs, we had fire. And then we had fluorescent bulbs, which create a very bright indoor light environment, which means that we could be indoors more. And then later came leds in the 70s, and they became more prominent in the early 2000s, late 90s. And so that allowed us to live more indoors. And so we're removing the stimulus that creates the structured water, protects the clotting response, protects that growth of the endothelial that creates a clotting response. Then we added a bunch of insults without the structured water. We added toxin exposures, processed food dye in the 50s. That's when processed food just skyrocketed. Oh, and then c. Oils were much earlier than that. But we added all these things that were inflammatory to us without the protection. Now the damage happens to the artery, and we're supposed to be able to repair that damage. Um, however, we then in. We then created this situation where we interfere with our body's ability to heal stuff. So you have an epidemic of type 2 diabetes, which the number one issue with. With being diabetic is poor wound healing. So when you get a wound or clotting tissue in your artery and you can't Heal it, it sticks around. And the other thing is we disrupted our circadian rhythm. And if you disrupt circadian rhythm, you don't get into the deep restorative healing sleep that you're supposed to. And that really means low melatonin levels. And melatonin is like the number one thing for stabilizing rupture prone plaques. It heals the lining of the artery, it gets you into the deep sleep where you detoxify at night. So that's, that, that's like the three pronged approach that I, I kind of see heart disease as, or coronary artery disease. Now whether or not that plaque developing over time causes heart attacks is a different conversation.
- [47:44]
B
Right.
- [47:44]
A
Um, but that's, that's the recipe right there from my perspective. And I know all you asked about was water, but.
- [47:51]
B
No, no, no, no, no, no. I just have a million questions.
- [47:54]
A
Now.
- [47:55]
B
First basic question, how much sunlight do you recommend a day to get the proper amount of, of infrared that we need to get that water developed?
- [48:06]
A
I mean, it's going to be pretty instant. Like you're going to, you get in for a light exposure, it's going to, it's going to build structured water pretty instantly how long it stays there. Right, right. And so, I mean, you got to think about it. I always go back to, you know, if I lived in the woods today, which is the natural environment of all life on earth, how much infrared would I get? I'd get infrared all day long. You know, it would always, all it was, it would also always be balanced with all the other colors and wavelengths of light. I think that is important too because I think that when we look at, today we look at LED bulbs and how high in blue light they are and how unnaturally high they, they are in blue light and low in the other colors of light, that's becoming a problem for us. We're getting this imbalance. Like it's like a processed light, just like a processed food is bad for us. And so if you look about it that way, an infrared sauna is processed light. So I do think we could overdo it. And if you look at studies like, you know, chiropractors love their low level light therapy with their red light lasers and things like that. If you look at the studies on those things, the red light lasers have a, it's a bell curve, it's a threshold. Like it's positive, positive, positive, positive. And at some point it becomes negative because I think it's a processed light. It's not balanced by all the colors and Wavelengths, it's going to have a negative at some point. But we're so deficient in red and infrared light that at first it's very positive. It's a positive like response. It's anti inflammatory, it's building the structured water, that kind of stuff. So when you say how much it depends on what type of light you're getting. I'd say I wouldn't sit in infrared sun all day long. No, with a red name for red light or red and near infrared light panel on all day long. I would sit in the sun all day long or outside all day long. You know, even if it's in the shade or something like that, that seems more appropriate. But I do use infrared saunas and red light panels to boost my infrared, especially like on rainy days or cold in the winter and things like that. I'm gonna use my sauna year round, maybe fans six times a week for 20, 30 minutes. Um, and then so like today I use my sauna this morning for 20 minutes. I use my red light panel once for like 20 minutes. And then I sat out in the sun for like almost an hour and a half today. Um, but that's my schedule allowed for that today. That, that doesn't allow for that every day, but that's what I do.
- [50:18]
B
Okay, got it. So if somebody like goes out for a morning walk, hits a red light panel, throws in a sauna here and there, they're doing okay. Then basically just getting that in daily and trying to mix that in.
- [50:33]
A
I mean, you think about, people wake up. I mean, I think the, the study is they did a survey and they determined that the average person today spends 93% of the time, 93% of the time either indoors around closed vehicle.
- [50:46]
B
I knew where you were going with.
- [50:47]
A
That and I did. And so like you could think about it like we're supposed to have infrared all day long and 93% of the time we don't. And even then when we're outside, we may have thick clothes on that prevent your infrared putting there. I mean, it's not going to prevent it totally. Infrared can go through clothes a little bit, but the thicker the clothes, the worse it's going to be. So you just got to think about that for a second and you have to think about, okay, that's a huge change. Everybody talks about the processed food, which is a huge deal. And I talk about toxin exposure, which is a huge deal, but that is a really big exposure. When you start to understand it in the context of what it does for the body as far as it builds structured water and the blood is half water. And like it kind of irfs me a little bit. Uh, I don't get angry very often. Uh, I'm not an angry person, I could say. But like, it kind of irks me that everybody's still talking about lipids. You know, they're still like, we have this disease process that's happening in an artery wall and there's lipids in the blood. That's true. And there are some lipids we find in plaque. That's true. That's cuz when things clot, it tends to suck in the things that are around it, you know. But there's also a lot of other things in our physiology and we're trying to study just one aspect of it. Just the, the lipids, the, the cholesterol people. I don't know if people know what I'm mean by lipids, but just the cholesterol, LDL and HDL and all these things. And trying to dis. To, to understand or, or figure out a whole disease process with ignoring the water, the electrolytes, you know, the proteins, glycocalyx, the endothelia, like we're ignoring a lot of that stuff and we're just trying to analyze lipids in the blood and assess our risk of heart disease, which is incredibly short sighted. Which to me is. I could go on and on about the shortcomings of modern day research even though I look at it all the time.
- [52:32]
B
Treat lipids or put lipids out there like it's such a problem. Then you can put every human on a statin. But I'll leave that alone.
- [52:38]
A
You said it. That's all we need to say, really. Yeah. You create a problem to sell the solution.
- [52:43]
B
That's, that's what it is. And it's really sad. And I've seen it done to so many people Mindset or my nightstand and never got used with good reason. But like I said, I, I'll, I'll leave that alone. I don't want to do that. I want to get, you know, I want to stay on, on topic. I'll, I'll do a episode of where I give my own thoughts later. But anyway, this is going back because I have some diet related questions. But I just want to ask you one quick question because we got going and I didn't get to ask you and it just popped back into my head. You were talking about clotting and we're talking about like soft. You didn't say this, but I was I'm thinking in my head, soft plaque rupture. What would cause that clotting? That perhaps was what happened to you? Because we don't know, but you brought that up as one of the possibilities. Or what would cause a soft plus plaque like to rupture? Because I, I, I'm, we didn't get into that. But soft plaque rupture is one of the things that could cause the blockage in the artery, which could cause a heart attack. Correct?
- [53:39]
A
Here's my thoughts on that. Yeah.
- [53:40]
B
Tell me.
- [53:40]
A
That's why I'm asking.
- [53:42]
B
Yeah.
- [53:42]
A
So, yeah, CC score measures hard plaque, but there's also soft plaque. And it's. The soft plaque is what ruptures. And when the rupture happens, it's like a little volcano out of like, if I'm describing this like this on the inside, a little rupture happens and that causes a clotting response, body response could block an artery. That's the theory. Anyways. I've, I've asked multiple cardiologists, which are the ones that go in and when a heart attack's happening and, and bust open clots and stuff. Like, I've asked them about five different ones at this point. What do you see when you go in there that tells you this was a plaque rupture that caused this heart attack? You're absolutely sure? Is it something on blood work? Is it, is it something you see when you go in there and they come up with some theoretical thing, but there's really no consensus like it. We don't know that this plaque rupture thing is causing the heart attack. Just see a blockage and we fix it, which is good. We need to fix it at that time.
- [54:32]
B
Right.
- [54:32]
A
And there's also a paper published in 2015 called the Myth of the Vulnerable Plaque, which is free to read. People can look, type that in and go look it up and read it right now.
- [54:40]
B
Yeah.
- [54:40]
A
And they, in those art and those authors, they, they reviewed the evidence for this plaque rupture theory of heart attacks, and they basically stated that in, in the article, they stated that plaque ruptures, yes, they do happen. Um, but they rarely cause heart attacks. Um, now some people take that as plaque ruptures. Cause they say that plaque raptors happen all the time, but only a certain very small percentage of them are what causes heart attacks. And some people would say that that means that plaque ruptures cause all the heart attacks. It's just, they happen all the time, but they don't always cause a heart attack. I take it to mean that plaque ruptures happen all the time and they don't cause heart attacks. And their number in the study was that the chance of any plaque or stenosis in an artery causing a heart attack by plaque rupture was.06%, which is essentially never so. And again, I think it has more to do with blood flow dynamics, which is plenty of research for that too. Mayor Texan and Richard Thoma also did very good work talking about blood flow dynamics and causing plaque and heart attacks. So, um. So anyways, I don't know that the plaque rupture theory to me is sound enough for me to say yes. Now, the other thing is, is that when you look at what medicine tries to do to prevent plaque ruptures is treat the stenosis. They try and do a bypass procedure to bypass the stenosis, or they try and place a stent in there to open up, you know, a 70, 80% stenosis in an artery. And if the plaque ruptures are happening at that point where that stenosis is, and they open it up like that, you'd think that that would help prevent a heart attack, but they don't. If you look at the studies on bypass surgeries and elective stent placements, where the stents are placed when there's not a heart attack happening, they don't prevent heart attacks. Whether you have those procedures or not, they don't prevent heart attacks. They can alleviate symptoms in some people, like chest pain and things like that. They tend to do that for some people, but some people, they don't. So we're doing this procedure that's supposedly preventing heart attacks, but it's not preventing a heart attack, because I don't think the plaque ruptures are what cause heart attacks, at least not all the time. They do sometimes, probably. And so, yeah, and it just. It goes on and on. Because now when we would talk about hard versus soft plaque, I know that within the field of cardiology, now they're saying, well, they're trying to justify the use of statins by saying, well, we have evidence that it increases the amount of calcified plaque in your arteries, which calcified plaque is safer because it's not soft, it's not gonna rupture. It's just like. Yeah, but the studies are also very clear that the more calcified plaque you have, the more risk of heart attack you have. So which one do you want? You know, do you want me to have more calcified plaque? So it's not gonna rupture or the calcified, like I don't know. But again that, that's what, that's what happens. You get these kind of theories and treatments that don't make sense whenever you're chasing down the wrong thing, you know, and to me they're chasing the wrong thing. The way you prevent a heart attack. From my perspective, what I'm doing personally to prevent it from me again is building structured water, giving my body energy. That, that's what, that's what happens. Like if you don't have enough energy, you get disease. Your body doesn't have enough energy to maintain its physiology against disease. So that would be the focus for me. And then if you are worried about plaque ruptures, I, I mentioned before that melatonin has been shown to stabilize rupture prone plaques, which means you need to pay attention to your artificial light exposure, especially after sunset. Because when you block blue light, that's when you tell your body to make melatonin. And we have a chronic melatonin deficiency in society because of this light pollution that we have. So yeah, that's, that's the, the story on ruptured plaques.
- [58:27]
B
So, so blocking melatonin is a good. Or block. Blocking, blocking blue light is a good thing because it's gonna help to get you more melatonin, correct?
- [58:35]
A
Yes, yes. So melatonin is the hormone that's produced in response to a darkness signal or a lack of blue light signal. And there are other things like green light and the brightness of light can also shut down melatonin production. But blue is the main thing by far. And then blue light will stimulate cortisol. So cortisol during the day we're supposed to be awake, an alert and then melatonin at night. Sleepy repair heal that kind of stuff.
- [58:59]
B
That's one of the things I've been doing with this with the viva rays glasses throughout the day and there's multiple lenses and because it's trying to fix my circadian rhythm on top of blocking out, because I'm on a computer all day in front of screens and there's a three step layer to it too because if you block it completely out all day then it can throw off your sleep patterns too. And this is kind of harmonizing the light and then it goes into blocking it, you know, a certain majority and then all of it right before bed. But it's, it's working it out properly and I think sleep is very important. I have learned quite a bit of significant information on how important sleep is to all overall health. But cardiovascular Health and then, you know, inflammation and these kind of markers that we need to look for. Now, I know that the main focus for doctors and certain people with priorities is lipid on, on a blood panel, but in your view, what are the markers that would, would really need to be aware of? My assumption is that you're gonna say like C reactive protein or high sensitive C reactive protein is one as one because it's an inflammation marker. But what you tell me what, what should one be looking for and what's of importance and what is completely overblown or just something that we're told that needs to be looked at that maybe not necessarily is the key indicator?
- [60:24]
A
Yeah, I mean, this is a, it's a tough question for me because I don't have a super straight answer.
- [60:29]
B
Okay.
- [60:29]
A
Because I think my philosophy on testing, whether it's imaging like a CST score or CT scan or whatever for blood work, is that technically those things kind of determine your risk. Like, we have some studies that show that yes, it's having a high CAC score or having a C reactive protein that's high can increase your risk, but what really increases your risk is what you do from that point. You got that test the lifestyle and environment and behaviors that you choose from that point. Which is why I'm so passionate about this. Because if you don't know which lifestyle behaviors to do from that point, which medicine's not gonna tell you? Those are things I had to find out for myself. Then you're putting yourself behind the eight ball. You're not really decreasing your risk regardless of what the test shows. You know, my testing, aside from cholesterol levels, my testing looked perfect. I had low C reactive protein, low CAC score, all this stuff. And there are people out there that would say, yeah, but your cholesterol is high, so that's why you have your acting, you're just ignoring it. I'm like, well, I also reverse plaque on my arteries with cholesterol that high. So what are you, what are you gonna say? So anyways, when I look at those numbers, if those are just one snapshot in time of one tissue in the body, how's it, how is it really determining our overall health and overall risk? And I would argue that it's really not. Which is why what I teach people in my programs and the way I work with me is like, how are we really decreasing our risk? And that is the environment and the things you choose to do day in and day out. And the saddest thing is that medicine is clueless about those things. And I, I was confronted with that in the hospital, and I knew that it was gonna be the case, but I didn't know it was that bad, you know, so just to give some people some practical things, because you asked. So a fasting insulin level is way more important than what your blood sugar is. Because if your insulin is high, it means you're insulin resistant regardless of what your blood sugar is. And even the fasting leptin level would be an earlier indication of if there's poor metabolic brewing. Poor. More poor metabolic health brewing. And those things, when you have poor metabolic health, you're interfering with the body's ability to send the signal to heal. Especially like the lining of the endothelial need an insulin signal to heal. And so they're getting damaged by whatever, all the different things that can damage it, heavy metals, stress, plastics, whatever. Then we can't heal them. So that's a big one. Like, metabolic health is a big deal. Which on a lipid panel, you can get some indication of poor metabolic. Triglycerides are really high. Or if the trig to HDL ratio is off, it should be 1.5 or lower. Some people even say it should be better than that. But. But those are much better indicators of your metabolic health, which could be predictive. But again, those don't matter. What matters what you do from that point. Um, if you have a systemic or a consistently elevated high sensitivity C reactive protein, that's a marker of general inflammation in the body, that could be high, though. If you get sick, you're having a, you know, cold or flu like symptoms. So it's not always necessarily an indication of pathology. It's just. It could be that way. Right. Um, but if it's consistently high, that's a bad thing. So you could do that stuff. Um, erythrocyte sedimentation rate. ESR is a blood test that measures how readily your red blood cells come together. We don't want them to clump together that readily. That, right, indicate there's high risk of clot. But that's very transient. Like what my ESR is. If I'm sitting in a lab under fluorescent light, ungrounded, it's gonna be very different than if I go outside in the sunlight, get the infrared build, destroyer water, create the zeta potential, or if I'm grounded or all those things. So, like, it's really hard to tell. People tell me all the time, like, oh, my cholesterol is this, or my ESR is this. I'm like, it was that when you measured it. It probably hasn't been that since.
- [64:23]
B
Right.
- [64:24]
A
That's why the environment and what you do day and day is way more important than any of those tests. And Even then, a CAC score, let's say it's 3,000. I. I know someone whose CAC score is over 3,000. And these riddled with plaque. Never had a heart attack. Never had heart attack symptoms. Oh, explain that to me, you know, and I can, because the work of Giorgio Beraldi, which as far as I know is largely ignored by cardiology, showed that anytime or the vast majority of the time that an artery gets to about 60 or 70% narrow with plaque, the body builds collaterals around it, or like, arteries from the other artery over here build over to this one. And he showed that happen. He. He autopsied thousands of hearts over his career, and he developed techniques to study the arteries. Um, and he found that that happened a hundred percent. He never found a. A stenosis of plaque, 60 or 70% narrowed or more, that didn't have collaterals that fully compensate the heart with blood. And I found evidence in animal models that those collaterals can form within four to seven days. Like, it's amazing. Like, life finds a way. You know, there's all these different things. Like, you can get all these images. But do we really know? And I would argue that we don't, despite what all these. This testing tells us or what the doctor tells us. And so, again, what really determines your risk is what you're doing day in and day out. And we humans are pretty hardy. We can handle a lot of stuff. I mean, look at what the way humans are living today and lots of us are doing all right, you know, despite those bad environments, doesn't mean we always will. The more we can learn about what environment to put our bodies in and, and take away that risk, the better. And that's what I've had to figure out for myself. And now all I can do is share it.
- [66:10]
B
Beautiful, man. I appreciate it. Let's touch on diet, because that obviously is gonna play a role here. And I'm wondering, I. I fell into this lipophobia, fear of fats for so many years, even as a nutritionist, man, like, and that's on my. My own personal issue that I've gotten into. But what I found is once I made the switch to a higher fat diet, the. The foods that are supposedly the ones that are gonna cause us the problems, and you touched on saturated fat, and I implemented, you know, lean cuts of red meat every day. And Avocados and basically everything that's in higher fat range.
- [66:55]
A
It's not.
- [66:55]
B
Not only has it made my fat burning, you know, better, but my panels and blood panels and the way I feel and just my mental clarity and just everything has dra. And when I say drastically improved, I mean it's night and day. And I'm wondering if a low fat diet has caused some of the increases that we've seen in heart disease or issues like that. And also what you're feeling on, you know, higher fat diets, higher protein diets, a little bit like lower carb in terms of heart health and, and debunk. Maybe some of the things that we've been taught are so bad that I think many of us in this space are coming to find out and talking about we're just so fabricated and completely backwards and untrue. It's really disheartening, honestly, to see how misled we were for so long. And then it's easy. I'm a professional nutritionist for I don't know how many years and still going against what I teach because mentally I couldn't wrap my head around it, man. Like I'm being honest. I totally flawed and it took me up until last year to get over it and figure it out and now I'm, I'm not a Mr. Regret guy. But it's like, man, not only did I waste a lot of years probably harming myself, but missing out on all these good foods too that are so hid. But, but you know, that's, that's a different story. But touch on that please, because I just have this theory that the low fat diet is a contributing factor in that regard.
- [68:26]
A
I would say that for two reasons. One is without high amounts of animal fat, we're not getting enough K2. Yep, K2, which can lead to increased risk of calcification of arteries. These K2 is what takes minerals like calcium where it needs to go. So if it doesn't go there, that it's deposit in arteries. The other thing I'd say is that there is some evidence, which I talk about in my book, that plant fats can be problematic for us. Cuz plant fats are for plants and animal fats are for animals and we are animals. So cholesterol is animal fat and phytosterol is plant fat. And there's some evidence that shows that phytosterol, if we try and build our body with too much phytosterol, it can cause problems. Like there's evidence that people who ate More phytosterol, had more of that phytosterol deposited around the valves of the heart because the body can't use it as well. So it just gets stuck place it. There's another, there's some research that shows that when our red blood cells are made of too much phytosterol rather than cholesterol, they become rigid and make us more prone to stroke. Because when the red blood cell is trying to get through those capillaries, it has to go like literally single file. It has to bend a little bit to go through those capillaries. And if it's rigid it can't do that. And that can create damage to those capillaries. So you can create these little mini strobes and stuff. Um, so I, I think that we can, we can handle some amount of plant fat and I think that you know, avocado oil, e. Avocados, olives, olive oils, all that's pure and not contaminated with vegetable oils. Like those are fine but we're really supposed to use animal fats. That's the main thing. And the he, the issue, the main issue with our phytosterol exposure is, is vegetable oils and all the processed foods that have those in them. Um, but yes, you're right. I think there's, I mean there's even, but there's even a study published in 2020 called A Reassessment of saturated fat and basically found that if you look at all the evidence we've overblown this fear of saturated fat. There's really no evidence for it, for to fear it. And there's, and it said that actually saturated fat has some protective effects against stroke which I just talked about, you know, and we build too much plant fat. We are predisposing to stroke because we're creating rigid red blood cells. So there's lots of evidence. But you know, I, I like to illustrate these things and like I think that because cholesterol got so associated with heart disease because they were looking for an answer and like Nina Tysholtz book is really good expose on like this whole story. So people really want to dig into that. Her book the Big Fat Surprise is really good and I talk about it in my book too. Um, but it shows that that cholesterol was kind of blamed and cuz cholesterol is in food, we may have a conversation about heart disease, about food and I think it's the wrong conversation to be having. I don't think that food or diet is the main contributor or way main way you're going to prevent heart disease. I mean, it's not the main thing that's going to cause your heart disease. It can be a contributor. If it's a processed food, diet inflammatory, full of toxins, all this stuff, yes, it's gonna contribute, but it's still not gonna be the driver, I don't think. I think lack of infrared light, other toxin exposures and the inability to heal those things is. Is more important. So. But I do think that animal foods are the best food for humans based on anthropological data that we have what humans were eating historically. Even, uh, I know there's people that. Even that. That look at the Bible and say, the Bible is telling us that we should eat more meat. And they make that argument. Uh, there's just one girl named Kat Owens that had wrote a book about that. So anyways, that kind of stuff's important. But what I really want to illustrate here with this question is, you know, I just. Like we were talking about earlier how people get so focused on this one thing like the lipids in the blood or saturated versus unsaturated fat, or. And we have all this literature that shows both ways. You know, we have literature that shows that LDL levels cause it and that they don't or that they're associated. I wouldn't say cause, but they're associated and they're not associated. Or saturated fats associated or it's not associated. We have all this literature. So if you have all this literature showing all these different things and it's conflicting, and like you said, you're just like, I'm confused, I'm conf. I'm fed up with it. To me, that means we're asking the wrong question. Right? So, like, one of my favorite scientists is Albert Sinjorgi, and he says that nature answers intelligent questions intelligently. So if there's no answer exists, something must be wrong with the question. And I think that that's plaguing our society. And I see all these X battles people are arguing about saturated fat or different studies about ldl, and I'm just like, you're missing the point. Nature answers and questions intelligently, which means nature has the answers and we're trying to, you know, put it down to this minutiae and to this one aspect of things in this study and trying to flesh out if this is the cause or not or if it's contributor. It's just like, that's never going to tell you the answer. It's just not going to. And I think that this really backs things up. And it makes us be humble before nature or God or love or whatever it may be, whatever you call it, you know, it makes us humble before that because we realize that we just need to go back to that and we need to stop thinking that we are smarter than nature or God or whatever and try we can figure it out with our, our science that we invented. And we just need to say, hey, you know what? The answers are here. And then for my philosophy, I go and do that. And then I actually got go look in the literature and there's things that reinforce that. And I'm like, oh, it's here too. You know, it's this philosophy. We've had things that we kind of intuitively know, but it's also there in the literature too. You look at sunlight's effect on endothelial cells, it's beautiful. You look at infrared sauna's effect on endothelial cells, that's beautiful. It's like this makes the most sense and it's all right there before us.
- [74:05]
B
I'm a super spiritual guy, so I, I don't have science to back this up, but I will always say that God put something here to treat anything that came up or that, that it's sitting here for us. And some people might not like that. I'm sorry, but that's my belief. But I believe that there is something here to protect us, no matter what the case may be. And there's always ways. Like you were talking about how resilient the body is. That's how we were constructed for a reason, to be able to fight these things off and battle them against our own will of doing all these terrible things to ourselves. And you know, I was doing that 13 to 14 servings of vegetables a day type of thing for so many years. And I swear to you, that probably had part of the reason that I ended up with plaque in my arteries. And I'm just glad I caught it early enough and made these switches. But, you know, a lot of people just don't think or aren't aware they have poor, poor just habits in general, whether it be smoking, drinking, bad diets, processed foods, not enough light. You've brought so many things to light for people. And I really appreciate all of the insight and your work in doing this and actually making it what it would seem to be like. One of your life's works and goals now is to uncover this and talk about it and present it. And a lot of people just aren't willing to talk about it or take the time to do it though, just survived, you know, like great. And attribute it to luck or whatever they may want to attribute it to. So we need to far more people like you that do this. It's really appreciated. I. I will ask you one more question while I have you here. You said that you were able to reverse your plaque, and universally that's supposed to be impossible. What is your. I know we've talked about the water and the light. Is there anything else we're missing on how to reverse plaque that, that you can discuss or talk about that you would tell people would work?
- [76:01]
A
Yeah. So part of, I mean, I guess most of what I do for people when I work with people is, is I make them aware of all the different things that could be contributing. Because I know for a fact they're not getting it from, from most cardiologists they're talking to. I mean, there's a lot of really good ones that I know, but they're few and far between. So I know they're not getting this information. And so I think that that three pronged approach that I talked about is the big thing. Getting enough infrared light and grounding is another way to build structured water, removing the toxin exposures in it and then restoring the body's ability to heal by creating metabolic health and, and optimizing circadian rhythm, which are kind of one of the same. But I think that one, just because we haven't talked about it, I'll mention it, we don't have. We don't have to go into a deep conversation about anything. Is that one of the biggest contributors, I think to the middle part, which is the damage. Things that are causing damage is endotoxemia, which is when bacteria gets from our digestive tract into our bloodstream and it should not be there.
- [76:56]
B
Got it.
- [76:56]
A
And this can happen from leaky gut. People know about leaky gut. It's a pretty popular thing these days when the bacteria from the gut is leaking into the bloodstream or various form, various dental issues. Um, that could be gum disease, it could be root canals, it could be when teeth are pulled and there's a cavitation in the jaw. There's various ways that that can happen. That bacteria from the oral cavity is now leaking through the tissues into the bloodstream. So that's. Those are big deals that you gotta sort out too or get to the best situation you can, which not all dentists are aware of that stuff. So you gotta find good dentists. But yeah, that's one that I'll just bring up briefly, just because people should be aware of that. And there's other things too, but it's, that's a big one.
- [77:39]
B
You told me when we talked before about that, because I told you how many root canals that I've had. How does one go get checked to see if they have an issue. And let's say they do have an issue. And I'm assuming that's like a bacterial type of infection. Is that what that, that'll find out. Then what do you do from there? If that's foul?
- [77:56]
A
Yeah. So, I mean, I'm not a dentist, but there's, there's lots of good dentists that know this stuff. But from my understanding, um, I mean I've, I've heard some good arguments that there are better ways to do root canals and you can do them in a way that they won't get infected. And I've heard some good arguments for that, but that's usually not done is what I'd say. Uh, so it's, it's. You're, you're willing, I'm willing to bet that most root canals have the potential to be infected because it's possible to clean all them out. You can't clean out that dead tissue. Honestly, if you talk to any general surgeon and you ask them, hey, would you ever leave dead tissue in the body? They'd say nope, absolutely not. That's, that's risk for infection and that's just gonna cause this big issues. That's exactly what we do with root canal. We kill a tooth and we leave dead tissue in the body. And so it has potential to get infected. And so when it's infected like that, your body can't feel it can't feel an infection because the nerve is gone, you can't fight it off, cuz the blood supply is gone. Cause they drilled the root out and so it just sits in there and then that leaks through the tissue, that bacteria slowly into the bloodstream. Um, and then, and so what you would do in that situation is, well, first of all you gotta get, you gotta get looked and see if any of those root canals have become infected. And, and the way you do that is you get to a knowledgeable dentist, which, you know, it can be hard to find, especially if you're in more rural areas. Um, but the term biological dentist is generally a better term to look for. It doesn't mean that they know all this stuff, but it's a better term to look for biological dentistry. Hopefully they would have a CT scan that they would look at the take an image of your jaw and detect if there's cavitations there. Cause an X ray doesn't always show that it's hard to see it. So you need a CT scan. And then they would. I mean, it's infected, it's gotta come out. From my perspective, I mean, maybe there's different ways that dentists know that I don't. But for me, it's gotta come out. You gotta clean it out properly, clean out that periodontoid ligament and get it all. All the infection out of. They use ozonated water to do that, which is historically not been a thing. So if you had root canals way back in the day, it probably wasn't cleaned out. Or extractions back in the day, it probably wasn't cleaned out well enough. And they. You gotta clean it all out. And then if it's. Especially if it's an area that aesthetically you want a tooth put back in, then you should get a ceramic tooth, not a metal tooth. A metal tooth is a heavy metal in your body that's could be giving you metal toxicity. But it also makes your mouth an antenna to wireless signals, which is something we didn't even get into. But so yeah, that, that's from my understanding, my perspective, that's what the route that I would take or look for. But again, there's people way more like dentists that are way more into this than I am. They may have different perspectives. But yeah, that would be the solution. Cause you gotta. It's like if you do the infrared light, that's great. If you, if you do all the stuff we talked about, all that is great. But if you don't stop the exposure to the toxin that's causing the damage, it's like putting out the fires without catching the arsonist. So you gotta remove that too.
- [81:00]
B
Got it. All right. I've heard a lot of relation to. To dental, you know, with things like that too. And I think that's important to check all avenues and see if there's any of these things going on, because you just. Cause you find one area is. Okay. There's a multitude of other areas to check. So I, I think that it's important that we covered all the bases here on things to be on the lookout for and to understand. So that's great, man. I really appreciate it. So right now what do you, what do you do then? Do you take patients? Do you take virtual patients? How can people get treated by you or taken care of by you or advised by you? What, what's. What's your, your whole procedure right now.
- [81:44]
A
It might be kind of a big announcement, but so right now I'm working as a associate chiropractor in a clinic and I also have my own online health consulting business and I've actually decided to step away from chiropractic and do the consulting full time. So I'm actually developing a program as we speak. It's almost completed and I'll be working with people in more of a program coaching setting. Whereas I was just doing one on one, so that should be ready. I don't know when this is going to come out, but it will likely be launched soon, so that's an option. But I also work through a one on one as I am right now, so, and so that's what I do now and I'm, I'm transitioning towards more this full time. So. So yeah, I mean if people want to find me, my website is resource your health.com and everything is always going to be there as, as things change. That's always where you're going to find what I'm doing. And then I'm also on social media, just Dr. Stephen Hussey. Dr. Stephen Hussey. People can find me there as well.
- [82:45]
B
Awesome, man. I'll link everything in the descriptions and, and I, I know that I took a lot from this, but I know that a lot of people out there are going to really appreciate this and have a lot of different things that questions answered and things that they can look at that are going to be helpful for them to really protect themselves and, and take a look at things they may not be looking at and make lifestyle changes too that are necessary. And, and although for cardiovascular health, really some of this stuff is for all around health. I mean just longevity, wellness, everything. And I think a lot of the things you talked about too are just going to give you a better quality of life, better demeanor, more mental clarity. I mean it all adds up. So it's, it's more well rounded than just heart health.
- [83:31]
A
Definitely. Yeah. I mean all this stuff like regardless of if the toxins in your teeth are, are causing your heart disease, they don't. You don't want that in there.
- [83:39]
B
No, no. I really appreciate the time, man. We'll have to do it again. And, and like I said, all your work is really appreciated in all that you do. So a big thank you for me and everybody else out there and it's been a pleasure talking to you today.
- [83:55]
A
Yeah, thanks for having me on. Pleasure talking to you as well.
- [83:57]
B
Absolutely. All right, everybody. Well, that wraps up another one. I hope you found this helpful, insightful and really information that you can use, like I said, to improve your overall, overall quality of life. So that being said, stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli and Dr. Stephen signing off.
- [84:20]
A
Sam.