Transcript of Episode 231: The Paleo Cardiologist
With Dr. Daniel Pompa and Dr. Jack Wolfson
Dr. Pompa:
Cellular Healing TV fans, exciting few weeks. You are on location with me at SocMed, the Society of Progressive Medicine. Do you know why we’re here? Because we are bringing together MDs, NDs, DCs, all types of practitioners to mastermind, bring the best of what we believe people need to get well today, and as a matter of fact, even this very evening, tonight, we have the leaders coming together in this profession to meet on the future of alternative medicine.
You’re on location, so I’m going to be bringing you some exciting interviews with some of the leading practitioners in the area that you’re going to want to hear from, cancer researchers, doctors, stem cells, you name it. You’re going to hear some exciting interviews right here, so the next few weeks, stay tuned to Cell TV for these exciting interviews that I know that you’re going to love, and it’s going to definitely affect and change your life.
Ashley:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith. This is the last of our series of special episodes recorded on location at the SocMed Conference in Colorado Springs, and in this episode, we are joined by our friend, a paleo cardiologist, Dr. Jack Wolfson. Dr. Pompa and Dr. Wolfson talk about focusing their practices on treating the root cause of disease and not the symptoms. Many conventional doctors are not talking about diet and lifestyle, and the public is suffering as a result.
Dr. Wolfson, a conventionally trained cardiologist, shares his journey of becoming a doctor who turned on the prescription medication model of treatment and began to focus on prevention and causation. Once his eyes were opened to the powerful world of holistic medicine, he dove in and became passionate about teaching his patients how to change their lifestyle so they can address the root cause, heal, and get off pharmaceutical drugs safely.
The doctors share valuable information about diet, important supplements, and lifestyle to help improve heart-related issues, from stress management to grounding to sleep and nutrition. You will also learn about the downside of statins and other pharmaceuticals and gain a better understanding of which tests to ask for to assess markers which contribute to cardiovascular events. Such a great episode.
Before we jump in, let me tell you a little bit more about Dr. Jack Wolfson. Dr. Jack Wolfson is a board-certified cardiologist and a member of the American College of Cardiology and has emerged as one of the world’s leading holistic, natural cardiologists. A trusted leader in natural heart health, Dr. Jack owns Wolfson Integrative Cardiology in Arizona and wrote the bestselling book, The Paleo Cardiologist: The Natural Way to Heart Health. He is an in-demand lecturer about natural, healthy living without Big Pharma pills and invasive procedures. Let’s join Dr. Pompa and Dr. Wolfson. This is Cellular Healing TV.
Dr. Pompa:
All right, welcome to another episode of Cell TV, man, on location here at the—you’re part of the SocMed series, man, but actually you and I are friends. We’ve had many dinners, so welcome. Welcome, and I love your information, man. You’re a cardiologist who is bringing a very unique message. How many cardiologists talk about diet anyway? I don’t know. Did you get banned yet?
Dr. Jack:
Well, you know, I’m definitely banned from a lot of societies. I’m still a member of the American College of Cardiology, which is the governing body, but it’s just—you go to their meetings, and it’s all about the next pill. It’s all about the next procedure, and you’re right, they’re not talking about diet. They’re not talking about causation. They’re not talking about why people have heart attacks, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, so it makes me definitely a black sheep in that community when I talk about it, but it’s unfortunate, because we just don’t get the training in causation, and therefore, they don’t talk about it. It’s the public that suffers.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I think this show’s important, because we look at a lot of different conditions, diseases, and we talk about causes. I really don’t know that I’ve done a show specifically on heart disease, the risks, and meanwhile, it’s the number one killer. I do a lot of shows on diet, and of course, we’ll talk about that here, but let’s start there. We’re talking about the number one killer in people, so they may have concerns. They’re concerned about this, that, and the other thing, but the number one killer is the one we don’t think is going to get us, and unless you pay attention to this show, chances are, it will, unless we do something about it.
Before you go there, I’ve got to ask the obvious question. How in the world did you go from that world to this? You have to have a story. We’re friends. I kind of know your story, but tell them.
Dr. Jack:
You know my story. I’m a conventionally trained cardiologist, went through four years of medical school, three years of internal medicine, three years of cardiology, and then I’m on the job for a couple of years. There’s so much sickness all around me, and I meet this woman who changes my life, and she starts saying all this stuff to me, like—
Dr. Pompa:
It’s always that way.
Dr. Jack:
—the pharmaceuticals are worthless, and the procedures are killing people, and you’re not going after the cause. Everything you’ve learned is wrong, and you’ve got to change your entire paradigm. Dan, she’s telling me this on our first date, and of course this is my now beautiful wife, Dr. Heather, who’s a doctor of chiropractic, as she says, a doctor of cause. She said, Jack, you have to become a doctor of cause, so that’s what I did.
I think the reason why maybe I’m—some of your shows, maybe you don’t put as much emphasis on heart disease is because you are a doctor of cause as well, and you’re talking about why people have all these different labels, all these diagnoses, what doctors like me are trained at. Let’s call this person heart disease. This person has a stroke. This person has cancer. This person has diabetes, but they’re all labels that stem back from the causes, and you’re just going after the cause, which is really—
Dr. Pompa:
I focus on the cause, right, so I don’t talk about heart disease. Yeah.
Dr. Jack:
Which is what matters. It doesn’t matter what type of autoimmune condition you have. Something is attacking your body, and it’s up to the person with the help of a natural healthcare provider to figure out why.
Dr. Pompa:
My goal is to live longer healthy, but when I look at the stats on just sudden cardiac arrest, I realize, oh, my gosh, statistically, this is something we should be really concerned about, and again, I look at cause myself, and I avoid those causes. Talk to them, because the average person out there, if they want to live long healthy and be around for their loved ones, you have to know what’s going on here. What are the stats on just having a heart attack?
Dr. Jack:
Obviously, as Dr. Dan said, it’s the most common cause of death, heart attack. Stroke is right up there, along with cancer, and then, after that, a lot of people are suffering from atrial fibrillation. Obviously, millions are diagnosed with hypertension, and the only remedy that the medical doctor has is the pharmaceuticals, so when I learned how to go into the natural space, you talk about nutrition. You talk about lifestyle. You talk about the importance of sunshine. You talk about the importance of sleep, about walking and standing barefoot, grounding, getting stress out of your life.
Stress is horrible, horrible. We heard speakers today talking about how important it is, as us clinicians—because I still see patients on a daily basis—for me to address those emotional issues with people, and when I take a history from someone that’s had a heart attack, that’s had a stroke, if we go back in that history, we’re going to find some level of stress that the person was under. It was a divorce. It was a surgery. It was some loss of life or just finding out bad news, finding out that somebody was adopted.
There’s major stressors in people’s lives that are tremendously affecting it, and we know there is a fancy diagnosis for women under stress that develop a heart attack. Then, we go in there with a catheter, and we take a look around. We look for blockages, and they don’t have a blockage. It’s an artery spasm called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, and it’s becoming more and more common in these women that have a sudden stressor. That vessel clamps down, and they’re done.
Dr. Pompa:
What are the symptoms?
Dr. Jack:
It looks like a heart attack, because it is.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, okay, so they get pain in the chest maybe.
Dr. Jack:
It’s the exact same story, but the difference is that, the average heart attack, you go in there, and you see evidence of blockage, and you see plaque and a fractured plaque. These women, you go in there, and the artery is clean, because whatever that stressor was, it was some kind of spasm. Invariably, when I do nitric oxide testing on those women, and we do salivary test strips in the office, those women do not have any nitric oxide. I think, if we be proactive, because stress is always there—
Dr. Pompa:
If we ask the question—oh, yeah.
Dr. Jack:
You’ve got to do your techniques to crank up nitric oxide, and when you crank up nitric oxide, I think women will be—and men, for that matter—will be a lot safer.
Dr. Pompa:
There’s a product on my site called Eventa. It’s all about pumping up the nitric oxide. We also talked a little bit about hydrogen and molecular hydrogen, which we are learning a lot about at the conference here. That’s another big one for that as well. Okay, other prevention, because I know what they’re thinking. They’re saying, I can’t avoid the stressors. If you have teenagers, you have stress, right? If you have a spouse, you have stress.
Dr. Jack:
If you have a newborn baby, you have stress, right? It never ends.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, so besides the classic answer of meditation, do you have any other suggestions?
Dr. Jack:
I think very clearly is that it is important to get the—just like the chemical situation, just like EMF, you want to get it out of your life if you can, so if there are stressful things in your life, I think you really need to get it out of your life, and that may include family members. That may include longtime friends.
Dr. Pompa:
You said it.
Dr. Jack:
I said it, and it’s true, but that being said, just the importance of all the different things that we’re doing, trying yoga meditation, tai chi, deep breathing, parasympathetic maneuvers, a lot of different things that can help with stress, a million and one different supplements to help with stress. We deal with stress better when our omega-3, DHA, EPA levels are high, when our certain D vitamins are high, when our levels of antioxidants, whatever it may be, but certainly giving the body what it needs to deal with the stressors is very important, because most people have a junk food diet, and they’re trying to deal with the stressors. Of course, you’re under more stress, you want more junk food.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I call it the stress bucket. You can’t do anything about a lot of them, but you have to do something about the ones you can do something about. That’s why cellular detox—but if we—physical, chemical, emotional stress will fill that bucket. You’ve got to dump the ones you can, folks, and your teenagers, can’t do anything about that half the time.
Dr. Jack:
No, you can’t do anything about that.
Dr. Pompa:
You better dump the other stressors. I mean, it sounds trite, but it’s so true. When your bucket is literally filled with stressors, physical, chemical, and emotional, it’s going to get you. Now, it’s the next stressor that gets you. Then, it’s the phone call of whatever it is, the stressful event, and if your bucket’s filled, there’s a good chance you’re going to end up in the cardiac unit.
Dr. Jack:
That’s what’s scary is that the medical doctors aren’t talking about this. I have a chapter in my book called “One Nation Under Prozac,” because that’s the medical doctor’s response to this. You’re under stress? Here’s your pharmaceutical. Then, when that doesn’t work, you try another one and another one, and it’s just sad for these millions of people.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s talk about it, the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and it’s a 9-billion-dollar industry, statins. Is that what it is, or am I just making that up? Did I just read that somewhere? I don’t know.
Dr. Jack:
No, I mean, clearly, it is, over the lifetime of that. There’s a new class of pharmaceuticals called PCSK9 inhibitors—
Dr. Pompa:
K9?
Dr. Jack:
—which dramatically lower down LDL numbers, and that is estimated per year as a 250-billion-dollar industry from Amgen that was the first company that came out with that. Whether it’s statins or that pharmaceutical, first, obviously, it’s not addressing the cause of why people have cardiovascular disease. They’re not deficient in statin drugs, but those drugs are so damaging because of the downstream effects from using statin. You’re losing your hormones. You’re losing your squalene. You’re losing your prenylated proteins. You’re losing, of course, Co-Q10, dolichol. My father died of a rare neurologic disease called PSP, which is similar to Parkinson’s, and that is linked with dolichol destruction in the substantia nigra, similar to Parkinson’s, and my father took that poison drug, statins, and I wish he was around to save him, but I’m here to save some other dads.
Dr. Pompa:
Right. I’ll say this for the show’s sake. We’re not telling anybody to come off their medication. He might be. I’m not saying anything. No, I’m kidding. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but let’s talk about these dangers, because you just mentioned a few of them. Statins are linked to type 2 diabetes, for goodness sake. Statins are linked to dementia, Alzheimer’s. Come on, people need to know this.
Dr. Jack:
Statin drugs obviously—even if we took the word for it from the pharmaceutical companies who did the actual research on it, statin drugs can lower the risk of heart attack and stroke in certain populations from here to here. What you and I are talking about and what we talk about with our patients and in avenues like this, we don’t talk about here to here. We talk about lowering your risk down to zero, because you’re—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely. They rely on that small percentage.
Dr. Jack:
They rely on it dramatically, and their pharmaceutical reps come into the doctor’s office, and the doctors are so inundated with so many patients. The reps come in with these big, different graphs, and it’s all marketing. All of those pharmaceutical dollars where they spend—where the pharmaceutical companies spend their money is not on research. They are marketing companies, and this is horrific, because young dads like you and I are thinking, I’m taking this statin drug, and the reality is that the benefit is so small. Yeah, you mentioned, we’re not telling anyone to stop their drugs. I certainly tell people in my office when they’re my patients, because we come up with a plan to replace the statin drug and find the optimal level for each people.
Dr. Pompa:
Right, well, you know, when you look at the studies, the big studies—and I’ve looked at them—that little bit of percent, if you take away the percent that could go either way, we know how these studies work, right? You kind of can get the data going in one direction and pop out four percent better. You take that away. I don’t know. It’s almost a wash, but let’s give it to them. Let’s say that there is a percentage better, but I’ve heard and read that you can really hit the same numbers with just some things as simple as vitamin C.
Dr. Jack:
Oh, no doubt.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, so it’s the risk. Let’s talk about the risks, because people are going to say, yeah, but does it work? Okay, we’ve handled that, but what are the risks? It is showing that it causes brain problems and potentially receptor problems, diabetes.
Dr. Jack:
I did a video, which was basically saying statin drugs are killing millions of people.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, good for you.
Dr. Jack:
People looked at that, and they were like, where would you come up with that from? I say they’re killing millions because it’s the false sense of security. If all we’re doing is taking the risk from seven percent down to six percent, six percent of people are still dying. We’ve failed those people. We’ve failed those moms and dads and that entire population, so yes, that six percent amounts of millions of people that, if they were under the care of doctors like you and I, they would literally be as close to zero percent as you’re ever going to get. We know their side is a failure. Six percent is a failure. We were not born to have heart attacks, strokes, or die. We were born to live until we’re 150 and then not wake up one day.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, significant. I think that’s bold of you, to come out with that, because in your profession, you’re one of its enemies, and I know it did. You went through some hard stuff, like most people that stand up for truth, so applaud him please, because honestly, even people that believe what you believe, they’re not coming out and doing videos about it, and that’s the truth.
Dr. Jack:
The book, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, early 1900s—it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his job depends on him not understanding it. The cardiologists are not going to listen to this interview and say, wow, I want to go read Wolfson’s book. Oh, I want to learn about Dr. Pompa’s cellular detox. They’re not going to want to—they don’t want to do that, because the money train is where they’re at.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Jack:
They’ve got bills to pay. They’ve got school loans. They’ve got the houses and the cars, but I’m here to tell you, as the ultimate insider of the cardiology industry, it is a money factory, and I sat in on these meetings where it was basically, you’re going to order a nuclear stress test, injecting nuclear material into every patient possible, because every time someone says yes to a nuclear scan, it is essentially two grand, 2,000 dollars, into the pocket of the cardiology practice. That’s a lot of dollars to sway opinions, so those guys, those men and women that are making that kind of money, they’re not going to listen to our conversation.
Dr. Pompa:
No. They don’t want to listen, obviously. What’s your—the cholesterol myth, there’s books written about it. What’s your view on cholesterol as a causative factor with heart disease?
Dr. Jack:
I think that clearly cholesterol is very important. It was so important, I made it chapter one in my book, and cholesterol, of course, is important for every function in the body, every cell in the body, the cell fence, the cell membrane. It’s a fence. It’s made up a lot of cholesterol and of course the hormones and digestion.
Dr. Pompa:
Support.
Dr. Jack:
Then, the sunshine hits. Cholesterol turns it into vitamin D.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, cholesterol sulfate.
Dr. Jack:
This is a critical, critical molecule. I think a lot of people that have quote, unquote high cholesterol, it is the sunshine deficiency syndrome, and the answer to that, of course, is to move to a sunny climate, so if you’re interested, I live in Arizona. It’s sunny in Arizona 400 days a year. It’s sunny at night in Arizona.
Dr. Pompa:
I was bragging about Park City, 267 average sunny days.
Dr. Jack:
It’s sunny at night in Phoenix, and for people that come from all over the world to see me in the office, and they come from—they’re coming from cold weather climates. They’re coming from Canada, Minnesota, my hometown of Chicago, a lot of people from Seattle, Portland. I’m like, move. You live in a non-sunny climate. You’re in trouble when you do so, and that’s very, very, very clear in the medical literature. To answer your question, Dan, there is that sweet spot of total cholesterol, which is 160 to 260, based on 40-year-old Framingham data, so below 160 total cholesterol likely means you have cancer or something autoimmune. Then, those super high levels of total cholesterol are a sign of a problem as well, whether or not—
Dr. Pompa:
It could be a liver issue, for goodness sake’s.
Dr. Jack:
No doubt, and whether or not that it’s actually causative in a million species as far as having high levels or it’s just kind of—it’s an association, so the total cholesterol’s really high, but the problem is all these other factors that are causing that, which like we said, sunshine deficiency, dietary deficiency. The body’s making the cholesterol. The liver’s making all this cholesterol to boost the immune system, to get the job done around the body, and the other factor may be if they’ve got liver dysfunction, they’re not able to get that excess cholesterol out of the body, which then circulates around as damaged LDLs.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s bad.
Dr. Jack:
Then, you’re done.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s bad. What’s your feeling on the particle theory, meaning cholesterol just doesn’t float around our body? It needs a particle to actually make its way where it needs to go, so it’s been said that the number of particles are more important than the total cholesterol and also the size of the particles.
Dr. Jack:
Totally true. Total cholesterol, that’s what I—when my father was a practicing cardiologist, 1970s, that’s what he was doing, but state of the art testing when it comes to lipids is what’s called the Apo B to Apo A ratio, so Apo B is the stitching if we call the LDL a baseball. The Apo B is the stitching on the LDL baseball and other particles that are like that, but the HDL particle has the Apo A, so you want that ratio, Apo B to Apo A—you want that ratio as low as possible. Probably around 0.3, 0.4 is that magic number, and that is the single most predictive lipid marker that we know of, much more important than total cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL numbers. It’s really about that ratio, which is key, and then, of course, you measure all those markers of inflammation. If your ratio looks good, and your inflammation levels are low, you’re in pretty good shape. You’re unlikely—
Dr. Pompa:
The Apo B, think bad, right?
Dr. Jack:
Apo B, bad. Apo B, bad.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s easy.
Dr. Jack:
That, as you know, though—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it’s not bad.
Dr. Jack:
There is no—no, but I agree, and there’s definitely a need for it, but we probably want those levels lower, because some people may have high Apo Bs, but their Apo As are really high, and they’re just as protected, so that’s good news.
Dr. Pompa:
The Apo As are more protective, like you said HDL can have a protective anti-inflammatory effect. All right, but no—listen, all cholesterol is not bad, so I don’t like the term bad ADL. That’s the bad cholesterol. That’s the one that actually you need to make hormones, right?
Dr. Jack:
That’s pharmaceutical speak. The pharmaceutical companies, even myself sometimes, I’m a victim if I ever watch TV, which I don’t. If I turn on the TV, it’s always some kid show, because my kids see me trying to watch anything, and boom. You know how that is, but yeah, it’s just brainwashing, this whole bad cholesterol, like evolution or God or the creator or whatever made us gave us this bad killer particle to cause us to have a heart attack, stroke, and die. You and I both agree, all disease is manmade. We are built—it’s like the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks, he works for FedEx, he’s in the plane crash, he gets on that remote island. If all we did on that remote island was eat coconuts, fish, and vegetables and get the sunshine and the sleep and the fresh air and the grounding, we would live forever. We would.
Dr. Pompa:
At least to our genetic ripe age, right? Okay, so the test I tell people to take—because that’s what they’re ask is, what do I tell my doctor? I tell them it’s called an NMR test, and you can get them from Lab Corp, but there’s other ones. That measures those particles that we were talking about, but what other tests can they get?
Dr. Jack:
Yeah, so you know—
Dr. Pompa:
Plus CRP. Name all the tests.
Dr. Jack:
Yeah, so obviously you want to get that advanced lipid particle analysis, and whether it’s a company like Vibrant America or Boston Cleveland, or yeah, like you said, some of the major players. You want to—really what you need is that Apo B to Apo A ratio, so look at that.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and they can ask their doctor for such a test.
Dr. Jack:
They need to ask their doctor about that test, because conventional cardiology right now, Dan, is like, just take your statin drug, I don’t even care what your numbers are.
Dr. Pompa:
I know.
Dr. Jack:
They literally believe that the statins should be in the drinking water.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I know. Everyone should take them.
Dr. Jack:
They don’t care what the numbers—
Dr. Pompa:
Right, and they think it prevents brain problems, which now we’re finding out the opposite is true, so anyway.
Dr. Jack:
Most certainly, but yeah, those markers of inflammation, hsCRP, myeloperoxidase. Oxidized LDL is a fantastic particle measurement. Phospholipase A2.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, PLA2.
Dr. Jack:
You can go down that whole—as far as looking at the inflammation. The most studied one, of course, is the hsCRP, so that may serve as just—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, CRP. We’ve talked a lot about it.
Dr. Jack:
—that 30-dollar, 10-dollar marker you can check. What else?
Dr. Pompa:
What number do you like them to be with the CRP? I know the standard’s under three.
Dr. Jack:
Yeah, and there’s different scales on that, so some, it’s—depending on what the scale is. Definitely the lower the better would be ideal for the CRP. You want to look at your marker of homocysteine. Homocysteine is basically a surrogate marker for your B vitamin level, so you want to drive that homocysteine level down to a sweet spot. You want to definitely check your omega-3 levels and make sure that you’ve got high levels of omega-3. The highest levels of omega-3, the lowest risk of everything, so you want to crank them up, and you’ve got to eat seafood, people. You’ve got to eat wild salmon, sardine, anchovy.
Dr. Pompa:
I prefer my omegas not from fish oil but from food, like you said.
Dr. Jack:
Listen, if you’re—and one of my favorite recipes is making your own salad dressing and dumping the anchovies into that blender, so you hide the look. Hide it, but—
Dr. Pompa:
I just like anchovies.
Dr. Jack:
I like anchovies in the fresh—
Dr. Pompa:
They might not.
Dr. Jack:
Whole Foods recently by us, they had fresh sardines. I just threw them in a pan with some ghee and fried those up. They were delicious. Omegas, too, and of course, vitamin D levels, not because you need to be taking your vitamin D supplement. It’s because you need to be in the sun and getting the sunshine.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes, I agree.
Dr. Jack:
Then, another one of my favorite test, and truth be told, I am on the speaker’s bureau and a paid consultant from Vibrant America. They run a test called micronutrient, and it’s the intracellular nutrients. One of the things intracellular they test for is vitamin K1 and intracellular K2.
Dr. Pompa:
Love it.
Dr. Jack:
I think that intracellular K2, from a cardiovascular standpoint, could be one of those holy grail moments.
Dr. Pompa:
Vibrant America—my doctors run tests from Vibrant America. We run some of their other profiles. In the past, we’ve used the SpectraCell micronutrient. How is it better than SpectraCell? I should switch over maybe.
Dr. Jack:
I do like the people at SpectraCell. Nice people, nice company, and they were one of the first people that came out, but I think Vibrant has taken it to a totally new level, totally high-end technology. I’ve been to the factory, I’ve met the owner, and the principles over there—and they’re just testing for a lot more, and I think they’re giving you a lot more actionable data as far as—SpectraCell was kind of like, is it an area of need, is it borderline? This is really telling you to the number where you’re at with that K1, with that K2, with Co-Q10, with glutathione, so they’re really giving you some more actionable steps.
Me, as a cardiologist—and I see patients with cardiomyopathy or congestive heart failure, and we know that thiamine deficiency in alcoholics that was called and is called beriberi, which is also a brain-based disease—well, all these people that I’m seeing with cardiomyopathy, I’m testing their intracellular levels of things like thiamine, and they’re coming back low, like nondetectable. Some really cool tests when you’re doing advanced things.
Speaking of Vibrant and the other offerings that you said—and there’s other companies that are doing this, so due diligence, that’s fine. I’m just telling you in all candidness what we use. The Wheat Zoomer analysis.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, yeah, we use it.
Dr. Jack:
That’s the leaky gut, and when I met my wife in 2005, and she starts talking about this leaky gut, I’m like, where’d you come up with that bogus diagnosis? Stream of consciousness here. Please make your primary care doctor a doctor of chiropractic. I just said it. I just said it. Not because Dan makes me say it or because my wife makes me say it. It’s because it’s totally true. She mentions this diagnosis of leaky gut, and I said, where—I went through all these years of training and never heard of it, and she said, that’s your problem. Go read about it. I went to the medical literature, and I don’t really find much there.
Over the last ten years, the medical literature on leaky gut or intestinal hyperpermeability has exploded, and now you can test for it. There’s some easy treatments for it. I’m going to be talking about that actually in my cardiology presentation tomorrow here at SocMed, and it’s really phenomenal stuff to kind of march it back now where you say, why does someone have coronary artery disease? It’s from inflammation. We all agree on that. The cardiologists know that, but what’s causing the inflammation is it’s starting from that leaky gut. The number of cardiologists that talk about leaky gut is just about zero.
One of the things on that leaky gut panel is anti-actin antibodies. Actin is part of the muscle tissue in the skeletal tissue, in the smooth muscle of the intestines, and in the smooth muscle of the coronary arteries. Coronary artery disease is autoimmune. Your immune system is attacking the coronary artery, and you better figure out why, and it’s not a deficiency of statin drugs.
Dr. Pompa:
That test shows that actin antibody, which is huge, right? It’s affecting obviously anywhere there’s actin in the body. Just so that y’all know what we’re talking about, when you look at micronutrients in the blood, it’s very up and down, in and out, but this is what we’re looking at in the cell, intracellular nutrient deficiencies. That’s a big deal, so this testing, it’s really unique, because looking at the blood, not so big of a deal. Maybe sometimes it is, but this is more accurate.
Dr. Jack:
Like you said, listen, all the action is happening inside of the cell, and this is really where your specialty is, because you can measure extracellular, what’s floating around in the bloodstream, all day long, but if it’s not getting in the cell, it doesn’t work. If you need cellular detox because you are loaded with toxins and metals, that’s why it’s not driving it into the cells, so that’s certainly part of the picture is that from a standpoint of—if you’re taking all these nutrients especially, you need to get tested, because how do you know what you’re doing? How do you know how the levels are being affected? If you’re taking all this vitamin K or the B vitamins or C, and they’re not getting into the cells, you better figure out why.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, exactly, and oftentimes, it’s not because you actually aren’t eating the vitamin. You could have a cellular inflammation issue and receptors being affected to the nutrient. Let’s talk about some of the possible nutrient deficiencies that drive heart disease that we’re trying to avoid. You mentioned K1 and K2. These are big ones that aren’t really talked about. I think vitamin D is starting to get talked about more, but what about K1 and K2?
Dr. Jack:
K1 and K2 are tremendous. K1, of course, has to do with the coagulation with the blood or making sure blood clots normally, and you can’t overdose on K1 or K2. You can go home and take that whole bottle and say, look at me, I’m going crazy. You’ll be totally—you’ll be healthier, probably, because of it. The only people that have to watch out for vitamin K are those people that are on Coumadin. For anybody else, vitamin K, especially when it comes in food, is fantastic.
Dr. Pompa:
K1 in particular.
Dr. Jack:
K1 in particular, but K2 really, the evidence is quite clear. The people that have the highest intake of K2 have the lowest risk of cardiovascular disease. It inhibits vascular calcification, so it’s very, very important, through certain proteins that vitamin K activates, to do that, but yeah, intracellular levels of vitamin C and how that affects as an antioxidant as far as the health structure of collagen in the cellular and extracellular matrix.
What else? Vitamin A. Vitamin A is part of the immune system, and here we’re talking about cardiology as an autoimmune disease, which it is. Vitamin A is part of the immune system. Vitamin A, actually—when you upgrade levels of vitamin A, it increases reverse cholesterol transport from the HDL particle as it’s traveling around the body, and it’s pulling out excess cholesterol from plaque or wherever it’s no longer needed. Vitamin A as retinoic acid and retinyl palmitate, not beta carotene, helps to upgrade that system as well, so that’s why we do the testing, because all those different things are all important. Co-Q10 levels.
Dr. Pompa:
Huge.
Dr. Jack:
If your Co-Q10 levels are down here, your risk of heart failure is here.
Dr. Pompa:
Statins deplete the crap out of it.
Dr. Jack:
Forty percent. Forty percent reduction on average from statin drugs, and the average cardiologist, like I said, just doesn’t care. We mentioned the B vitamin is so important. Control of homocysteine is so important, on and on and on.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s talk about having K1 and K2. I think that it’s—I always talk about these five big deficiencies that people have, magnesium, vitamin D. A lot of these are related to the heart here. K2, because people aren’t eating grass-fed anything, and maybe we enter into the diet conversation here.
Dr. Jack:
Yeah. The only time I’ve had soy in the last ten years is when I eat natto, and I was—
Dr. Pompa:
How many of you eat natto?
Dr. Jack:
Yeah, or even know what natto is, right? It’s a fermented soybean. You want to make sure you find a high-quality one. There’s a company that I found called Nyture, like Nyture. They’re from New York, and I was at a business that I would love for any of you to patronize, because it’s so fantastic. It’s in Costa Mesa, California, and it’s called Fermentation Farm.
Dr. Pompa:
I’ve had their yogurt. They used to do it from raw, grass-fed cream.
Dr. Jack:
They still do.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, now they went to the coconut one, which it’s pretty unique, but oh, my gosh. You open it, and sometimes they pop.
Dr. Jack:
A husband and wife, doctors of chiropractic, opened up this place. They’ve got 20 different kombuchas on tap, tremendous source of probiotics. They’ve got the free-range, grass-fed meats. They’ve got the fermented veggies. They’ve got—
Dr. Pompa:
The broth.
Dr. Jack:
They’ve got the bone broth. They do it correctly. They’ve got a pickled egg and a turmeric, like turmeric pickling juice. It’s insane.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m fasting today. You’re ruining my fast.
Dr. Jack:
Sorry. Sorry. Your attitude’s actually good for fasting. When I fast, I get totally cranky, and my wife’s like—
Dr. Pompa:
I’m used to this.
Dr. Jack:
—is your fast starting? I tell my wife, I don’t—
Dr. Pompa:
I just finished a six-day fast. I took 10,000 people on Facebook through a six-day fast.
Dr. Jack:
Oh, wow.
Dr. Pompa:
I got more done in one week than I typically do in two.
Dr. Jack:
Oh, I love it.
Dr. Pompa:
Today, I’m not eating today. I’m lecturing. I’m doing all this. I’m too busy, so there’s just days where I eat a lot, and I have days when I don’t. I call it feast/famine. You’re going to learn about that at SocMed. Just come to my talk at SocMed.
Dr. Jack:
I’m coming to the talk. Yeah, definitely, and by the way, obviously, cardiac data on fasting, on intermittent fasting, is tremendous.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s huge.
Dr. Jack:
I absolutely love it, love it, love it, tell it to all my patients, but finally, so I’m going through the Fermentation Farm, and I’m looking at some of their refrigerated section, and I find this jar of natto. I’m like, oh, I’ll give it a try. Why not? It’s a bean, but it’s bean in this sticky kind of paste that almost looks like it’s wrapped in honey, but it’s not sweet. It may be one of the secrets or the secret to the Japanese longevity, why they live seven years longer than we do on average, and natto is very high in K2. It’s also very high in nattokinase, which is an enzyme that is a little Pacman that dissolves clots in the body, helps people with a condition called L-p-little-a, which is a nasty marker that you need to get tested for as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Part of the heart, yeah.
Dr. Jack:
L-p-little-a, get tested for that. It’s a genetic marker, hard to move, so you want to definitely make sure you’re on some kind of a natural blood thinner. There’s a million of those, but we’re talking about nattokinase. Oh, where’d you come up with nattokinase? First of all, the Japanese have studied it, and back in the 80s, if you were in the midst of a heart attack—I was just a young pup back then, but if you were in the midst of a heart attack in 1985, they gave you—there was no angioplasty, stents—bypass surgery, yes, but as far as angioplasty and stents—they gave you a clot buster, and that clot buster is called streptokinase. We’re taking nattokinase in the food—of course, it’s available by supplementation as well.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s an enzyme.
Dr. Jack:
It’s an enzyme that’s a little Pacman that does its magic, and it’s a tasty food.
Dr. Pompa:
Add that, if you’re worried about heart disease. Add it. Nattokinase.
Dr. Jack:
Add it, yes. You add nattokinase—
Dr. Pompa:
Where can you buy it? Can you buy it at Whole Foods now?
Dr. Jack:
I’ve never seen natto there.
Dr. Pompa:
No? Okay.
Dr. Jack:
You can also go to the Japanese or the Asian markets and get it. I think you can order this online as well, so yeah, Fermentation Farm for all those reasons. There you go. You also mentioned magnesium and potassium, and the ability to measure those intracellular is so key, because I’ve seen so many patients over the years. They’ve had a heart rhythm problem, atrial fibrillation but hypertensive, and they’re told their magnesium levels are normal.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s not what’s going on in the cell.
Dr. Jack:
It’s not even close to normal in the serum, let alone they’re markedly deficient in the cell, so get the intracellular testing.
Dr. Pompa:
Awesome, and then the nattokinase is one of the only vegetable sources that I know of—there might be another slight—in another seaweed type source, but you have to get the vitamin K1 and K2—well, the K2—from fat in a grass-fed animal, so if you’re eating conventional meat, you’re not going to get the levels, or conventional butter, because it’s in the fat of grass-fed meat, so explain that, because that’s a big deal.
Dr. Jack:
Yes. Obviously, whenever—I am the paleo cardiologist, and whatever I talk about, I’m talking about—
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, yeah. By the way, I didn’t even give his—that is—he is the paleo cardiologist.
Dr. Jack:
I throw it out there.
Dr. Pompa:
They throw it out there. I think they named you.
Dr. Jack:
Yeah, no, my patients obviously gave me that moniker, and I accept it. Sometimes I get accused of going to the keto cardiology side after I talk with you, and you teach me about keto, so it’s funny, because I was interviewed for a couple of these keto summits, as you know, and people are like, oh, now you’re switching over to keto. What happened to paleo? It’s like, listen, they’re pretty synonymous. You profess, obviously, cycling of the two and stuff like that, but back to K2. You want to eat organ meats, and the organ meats, of course, are high in K2, and liver. Our ancestors ate organ meats.
Dr. Pompa:
They did.
Dr. Jack:
Free-range, grass-fed is always the key, but I found an article from a couple months ago that said they discovered for the first time ever that K2 is in Manuka honey and in buckwheat honey. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell us how much, but it’s just another excuse to use one of those type of honeys.
Dr. Pompa:
I love Manuka honey. You can use that stuff for a sore throat. It’s got antibacterial properties, good for the microbiome.
Dr. Jack:
I do think it is a good situation, though, that I think that this is where we can use the supplements industry and say, you know what, this is an opportunity to really crank up levels of K2, because they’re doing randomized trials now, and they’re looking at 360 micrograms of K2. That’s pretty difficult to get from food unless it’s from natto, because if it’s from natto, you’re sky-high levels, and you’re awesome.
Dr. Pompa:
What about another thing that people miss from not eating grass-fed anything? It’s conjugated linoleic acid. Does that play a role that you see?
Dr. Jack:
I think all these healthy fats, and especially when you test people’s levels of fats, and you want to find those great ratios of omega-3s and your 6s and your 9s and making sure you’re in the right place.
Dr. Pompa:
In grass-fed meat, those ratios are perfect, by the way.
Dr. Jack:
They’re perfect. That’s just how nature intended for us to eat those meats, eat those organ meats. Of course, you want to get your B vitamins, but specifically B12 are notoriously low in people that do not eat animal products. Every society in the history of the world has been a meat and/or a seafood eater. If you don’t eat seafood, please do. Please, please, please. Why can’t a vegan eat an oyster?
Dr. Pompa:
I don’t know.
Dr. Jack:
Why can’t a vegan eat a scallop? A scallop. What even is a scallop? It’s a mussel.
Dr. Pompa:
What about an egg? We could talk about an egg.
Dr. Jack:
It’s just—
Dr. Pompa:
I guess an egg’s a—I could see, okay.
Dr. Jack:
No, but it’s just a—
Dr. Pompa:
A nonfertilized egg.
Dr. Jack:
We’re talking about the best way to eat, but it’s just—how do we know that an oyster has any more feelings than a head of cabbage? We have no clue, but what we’re talking about is the best way to live, and why mess with mother nature? What if one of these food gurus or natural health gurus came out with the helium diet? It’s like, you no longer breathe air. We’re going to breathe helium. You’d laugh in that person’s face, and sometimes that’s how I feel about veganism.
Dr. Pompa:
There are airatarians, actually.
Dr. Jack:
Are there?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I swear. I hear these things. You think I’m kidding. I guess they’re just breathing and eating air. How long does that take? Yeah, I don’t know. I dry-fasted for a couple of days, so I guess I was an airatarian for two days, but—
Dr. Jack:
You tell me, what do you think? I grew up of the Jewish faith, and because of circumcision, I’ve kind of excommunicated myself from the Jewish religion, and maybe a few other things, because eating bread and gluten, and I think gluten is an absolute poisonous toxin to the body, but for the day of fasting—and Yom Kippur, as you know, that’s the day of atonement, and you have no food, and you have no water. I hear people talk about the benefits of it, but I personally—I like the water fast. I like the greens juice fast. That’s where I go with it, but that’s me.
Dr. Pompa:
Fasting. Feast/famine. Our DNA is set up with it, right? It’s set up for it, and there’s a benefit via adaptation, so I call it hormone optimization via—meaning from—the adaptation, because through the adaptation process, just like starting an exercise routine, the body adapts via hormones, raises up growth hormone. Norepinephrine has all these anti-inflammatory effects. Actually, we should talk a little bit about exercise. Before we do that, though, when we look at—we talked about cholesterol. We talked about risk factors, right? What about blood pressure? I would say, opposite of statins, blood pressure meds, they do—they can lower risk more. However, we’re not getting upstream, but what’s your feeling on blood pressure and the meds for that?
Dr. Jack:
Blood pressure, once again, is another sign that you’re unhealthy. If your blood pressure’s high, it’s an indication to figure out why, not here’s a pharmaceutical. When blood pressure’s high, it’s going to be from either an excess of something or a deficiency of another, and there’s so many different natural strategies to lower blood pressure down.
Dr. Pompa:
To lower blood pressure, yeah.
Dr. Jack:
Chiropractic care. Upper cervical adjustment lowers blood pressure 17/10. It’s better than any pharmaceutical could ever imagine.
Dr. Pompa:
This -inaudible- controls.
Dr. Jack:
See your doctor of chiropractic, and I know sometimes, when I speak at chiropractic events, and there’s always a couple DCs in the audience, and they’re like, chiropractic care doesn’t treat hypertension. It’s doesn’t—you know, all this stuff, and I’m like, in my mind, it does. I’m sorry. I’ve heard your philosophy. I’ve got my philosophy. My philosophy’s real simple, because I think this is what the public needs to hear. You walk into your chiropractor’s office, and they’re like, why are you here? You’re like, because I’ve got high blood pressure, and my cardiologist, Jack Wolfson, said for me to get adjusted. That’s why you’re there. Chiropractic for cholesterol, on and on and on, but for blood pressure, magnesium, potassium. Eat tons of avocados. Avocados are loaded with magnesium and potassium, C, E, fiber, you name it.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, it’s okay if he says it, but if the chiropractor says, I’m treating blood pressure because of the—oh, the board’s going to be knocking on their door.
Dr. Jack:
You tell your board that Wolfson said—
Dr. Pompa:
He said it.
Dr. Jack:
—chiropractic for hypertension, for diabetes, for thyroid.
Dr. Pompa:
The public gets that, but that’s why they don’t want you to say that. All right. Jack said it.
Dr. Jack:
Don’t get in trouble, but magnesium, potassium, omega-3s, Co-Q10, cranking up nitric oxide levels. That’s fundamental for blood pressure.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we’re hitting—we hit them all. Co-Q10, though. We both said that’s a major risk factor, right? Statins deplete it. I could mention some supplements for them, but why’s it so important, number one, and number two, why do so many people have deficiency here?
Dr. Jack:
Co-Q10, once again, it’s a matter of giving your body the tools it takes to make Co-Q10, and the best source of Co-Q10 is eating heart, animal heart tissue.
Dr. Pompa:
I had three hearts today. Kidding, obviously. I’m fasting.
Dr. Jack:
Yeah, right, but that’s a different fast, right? The all-heart diet, says the cardiologist. That’s where we get the organ meats. When’s the last time you ate heart tissue, which is so high in Co-Q10?
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, that’s a trigger to them of why Co-Q10’s so important. Why is it so in the heart? You’re eating the heart. There’s a relationship.
Dr. Jack:
The heart, obviously, is a highly, highly, highly aerobic organ, and it takes tons of ATP, as you have billions of heartbeats in your life, 35 million heartbeats a year. Your heart is really cranking, and if you’re not fueling that heart, if you don’t have that Co-Q10, which is just that shovel that takes the coal and throws it in the surface—you’ve got to have plenty of Co-Q10 that’s there, and you take statin drugs and other pharmaceuticals that can deplete Co-Q10 levels, and frankly, how many drugs have been studied in their effects of Co-Q10? The list will be very long if it was all looked at, but statins are notorious for that. Bisphosphonates, which are drugs for osteoporosis, also help to destroy your Co-Q10 levels, so wow, and then you trigger back to K2, and you talk about building strong bones. That’s all through K2. K2 keeps the calcium in the bones and out of the arteries.
Dr. Pompa:
Two products, HQ from Systemic Formulas and ENRG. Both are loaded up with the Co-Q10. Oh, man, I tell you what. This is like—when we’re talking about prevention, and we’re talking about heart attacks, now we have to talk about one more thing. Stroke is another big one. Happened to my mother, so this one hits really home to me. She had post-stroke dementia, and there’s a little regret in my life, because I didn’t know what I know now then. I felt like I could’ve prevented it, and she’d be around today, so a little emotional for me, but how do they avoid strokes?
Dr. Jack:
I know when you and I first got together, and we first had that meal together, and you were sharing the stories of your mom, and I’m sharing the story of my father, who died at 63, and it’s just like, as we get older and start getting closer to those ages, wow, how scary is that? That’s what we’re here for, but as far as stroke, once again, it’s about making sure you’re giving the body the tools it needs and taking away what it doesn’t. You want that blood flow to be nice and slick.
I personally think maybe the greatest thing to stroke prevention is sunshine. Once again, I keep hitting that thing over and over and over. We’re both familiar to Gerald Pollock and the work of The Fourth Phase of Water and his work that’s going to—he’s going to win the Nobel Prize eventually, professor, PhD, University of Washington, and what he comes up with is the exclusion zone, how the sun hits that structure in the body like a blood vessel and creates that layer called the exclusion zone. That’s the buffer between blood flow and the wall, and if you have a nice, large buffer that’s energized by the sun, you will not have a stroke. The sun will make everything flow better, all the energy, do all that.
Then, of course, you have natural blood-thinning strategies. Listen, if you’re eating McDonald’s, cookies, and cupcakes, your blood is going to be stickier, and when you’re intermittent fasting, and you’re eating all organic, paleo foods, and cycling with keto and all the things that we’re talking about, you’re getting the sleep, you’re getting grounded, you’re getting chiropractic care, you’re taking evidence-based supplements, garlic, vitamin C, vitamin E, and then the aforementioned natto and nattokinase, those are all the strategies. Not smoking, not drinking to any excess, on and on and on.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Is there any studies on aerobic versus high intensity, which one’s better, or is it a combination of both? What’s your feeling on that exercise?
Dr. Jack:
I think, first of all, whatever exercise you do, please do it outside. Do it away from the artificial lights, outside in the sun, hopefully in the fresh air. It’s not about sitting in some kind of EMF bomb treadmill while you’re in the artificial lights, and they’re spraying chemicals all over you inside of there. Get outside and do it in that fashion, and then I think hiking, biking, walking, gardening, outdoor yoga. I do agree with more of the high-intensity stuff.
Dr. Pompa:
I think they all have their place. There’s studies on both. I think high intensity works better for weight loss. I do, but I think that there’s the aerobics stuff, not too much. There’s absolute benefit.
Dr. Jack:
The literature shows that people that run marathons, for example, have a higher risk of coronary artery calcification.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s why I said not too much.
Dr. Jack:
I think, to your point, if Dan Pompa was going to be running marathons, you would be doing so and giving your body the appropriate fuel as opposed to the average marathon runner that runs—
Dr. Pompa:
And appropriate rest.
Dr. Jack:
—and then they have a power bar and then a Gatorade, and they’re just—I remember when I used to do century rides, one of the century rides that I did, at the 30-mile mark, they were offering Krispy Kreme donuts. As far as I know, people may have been dropping dead during that ride.
Dr. Pompa:
We lost three.
Dr. Jack:
Yeah, right, exactly, so eat the right foods if you’re going to do it, but our paleo ancestors, it was much more likely, of course, to be that burst activity. They weren’t running marathons. They weren’t doing century rides. I understand all of it’s fun. I get it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I love it.
Dr. Jack:
Just make sure you do it the right way.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I love it, too, but I agree. I think the bursts, we’re set up, again, genetically to definitely do more of that, but if the endurance is done right and the recovery, those people, they go out again and again and again. Most of the endurance freaks—and believe me, I kind of was one—they abuse themselves completely. With the food, of course, I didn’t do bad, but without recovery, and that could be really damaging and part of the reason why the statistics are not good.
Dr. Jack:
The other thing, obviously, is that not only are they at higher risk for coronary artery calcification, they’re also at much higher risk of atrial fibrillation. In that athletic heart, the irregular heartbeats—
Dr. Pompa:
I wanted to talk about that, because I feel like that’s something I should get checked. Tell them what you’re talking about, because this is another—this is a big hidden cause, so tell them that. Athletes, healthy people, get this, and it’s partly genetic.
Dr. Jack:
There is certain genetic predisposition, but I certainly believe we’re built pretty darn perfect.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree.
Dr. Jack:
I know you feel the same way. We are built absolutely perfect until we screw it up with all these unhealthy lifestyle choices, but I think also atrial fibrillation is autoimmune, because as we mentioned, if you are attacking actin when you have leaky gut that’s sitting in the coronary artery smooth muscle, the heart, as we said, is a muscle organ loaded with actin, and now your immune system is attacking it. The literature is—clearly, inflammation is linked to A-fib. What caused the inflammation? Reverse that, and you help to get rid of the A-fib. A-fib is probably the number one reason why people come to see me in my office. People are scared. They’re frustrated. They are highly symptomatic with palpitations, skip, flip-flops, and then they go to the regular cardiologist, and the cardiologist either offers a shocking procedure called a cardioversion, they offer an ablation procedure where they’re burning cardiac tissue—a hundred years from now, we’re going to look back at that and say, how barbaric, the stuff that we were doing back then. Then, of course, the blood thinner story, and these people that are on blood thinners, it’s catastrophic, so find out why, and then are there natural strategies you can use? Let me say one more thing, too, about blood thinners before you get bullied. Doctors like me are bullies, right? We’re total fantastic bullies, okay? This is my way or the highway. I did it for so many years, but look up a website called chadsvasc.org, and there it tells you your stroke risk if you do have atrial fibrillation. Share this with a loved one so you can find out your numbers. We’re all about what the numbers are. We were talking about this earlier today as far as cancer therapies. We’re not saying, hey, don’t take drugs, or don’t do chemotherapy, or don’t do whatever it is. It’s find out the data, and if the data says one therapy works a hundred percent of the time versus ten percent of the time in something else, then take that one that works, but when it comes to atrial fibrillation and stroke risk, know your numbers, because if your risk is two, three percent a year, maybe there’s a better strategy for you.
Dr. Pompa:
What about the heart becoming oversized, if you will? I can’t recall right now what that’s called. Athletes get it.
Dr. Jack:
The athletic heart, there is a remodeling that happens, because the athlete is in such a high cardiac output state that, in order for the heart to compensate with cardiac output and trying to push as much blood out as it can, well, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Then, as it does so, it can start to cause structural changes, remodeling changes also in the atrium, and that can lead to atrial fibrillation as well, so it’s something to watch, but I think there probably is some happy medium.
Dr. Pompa:
Is there a test you can take?
Dr. Jack:
The test would be a cardiac ultrasound, an echocardiogram, non-radiation, non-ionizing radiation test, so that’s a totally safe test, to get an ultrasound of your heart to tell you where you’re at. If your heart’s starting to enlarge, it would be best probably for you to find out why and start changing some of your exercise activities.
Dr. Pompa:
One more question for you. Does fat cause high cholesterol, and does fat lead to—I know what you’re going to answer, I just want them to hear—increased risk of heart disease? Eating fat?
Dr. Jack:
No. Obviously, we’re talking about the quality fats, and with quality fats, the answer is definitely no. Fat is not the problem.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s talk about the saturated fat I’m getting in my grass-fed steak, the butter that I’m eating. What about it?
Dr. Jack:
How about this? How about if you—we were talking about atrial fibrillation before. If you take saturated fat out of the diet and substitute it in with mono- and polyunsaturated fat, A-fib risk goes up.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, those fats are in just about everything. Even in Whole Foods—I mean, even in health food stores, the polys are everywhere, canola oil, plant, vegetable oil. Those are all the ones you’re talking about.
Dr. Jack:
Yeah, most certainly. Saturated fat is not the problem. It never was the problem. Clearly, I think that sugar and obviously all the artificials, those are all the problems, and then, of course, any kind of processed or packaged food is an issue, but fat is certainly fat for fuel. Fat’s your friend, whatever you want to entitle your next podcast or blog post. I love eating fat, but then again, I think that, first of all, the person is so individual genetically, so get tested, right? Don’t take our word for it. Just see where you’re at, and if you’re on a higher-fat, lower-carb diet, get tested, see where your numbers are. There are people genetically—those Apo E, which is another stitching on the LDL baseball—those Apo E people, certain people that have a 3, 4 or 4,4 gene. You can get tested for that gene, but they have difficulty processing excess fat, so I don’t mind them getting fat from avocados and from free-range, grass-fed meats, but the question is oils, added oils, yet new data just came out more so about the Mediterranean diet, and the Mediterranean people are amongst the longest-lived people in the world, and they’re sucking down olive oil like it’s going out of style, so get tested. Just get tested.
Dr. Pompa:
Great advice, man. Dude, thank you for being on the show.
Dr. Jack:
Absolutely.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re saving lives, man. You’re saving lives.
Dr. Jack:
You, too.
Dr. Pompa:
Once again, give him an applaud, because he’s not afraid to stand up, so thanks for the truth.
Dr. Jack:
Thank you.
Dr. Pompa:
See you on the next show.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode of CHTV with the paleo cardiologist, Dr. Jack Wolfson. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern. You may also subscribe to us on iTunes or find us at podcast.drpompa.com. Thanks for listening.
