We are two girls in the back row. This is Monica.
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Today we have with us Dr. Steven Høstig from the USA. Steven is a chiropractor and a practicing functional medicine. When he was two years old, he was diagnosed with asthma and the doctor gave him inhalators and painkillers. But his condition got worse and worse after having both IBS and allergies. And nine years old, he was diagnosed with autoimmune type 1 diabetes.
And at that time, the only sensible way was western medicine. So he got even more medicines, allergy pills, steroids, prednisone, and the circle was starting. His own history of sickness motivated him to study medicine. He didn't want to develop heart problems, kidney problems, eye problems, and so on. No, on the contrary. Stephen Hussey actually took a doctorate in both chiropractic...
and a master's degree in human nutrition and functional medicine at the University of Western States in Portland, Oregon. He is a health coach, he is a lecturer, and he is a author of two books. In today's podcast, we will focus on the heart and all this with cholesterol.
Understanding the Heart
We are very happy that Stephen Hussey explains this problem for us. About why animal fat is good, about all cholesterol hypotheses, and how stress affects our heart health. This is part one of two exciting episodes about the heart. And in this episode, we dig deep to understand how the heart works, and what happens when you get sick. And we talk about cholesterol and many wrong, slightly confusing ideas.
Thanks for joining our podcast, Dr. Stephen Hussey. How has your morning been? It's been great. I just woke up and did my usual health routine and saw patients this morning, and now I get to talk to you guys. But what's your usual health routine in the morning? I usually get up and do like
like 15, 20 minutes of like this kind of yoga stretching routine that I do. And then I will sit in the infrared sauna and get a good sweat. And then I'll usually meditate while I'm in the sauna. And then I get out of the sauna and do a cold shower. And then I just get ready to go to work. And I head to the office and see patients until about mid-morning. Sounds like a great morning. And we love the book.
We have been reading it and we really want to recommend it to everyone. And your health journey inspired you to do this book.
Can you just, what happened? Yeah. So, I mean, from a very young age, I had a lot of inflammatory conditions. When I was a kid, I had irritable bowel syndrome. I had terrible allergies and asthma. I used to break out in inflamed hives all over my body. My skin was just turned blotchy and red. And the doctors never really told me why.
or couldn't tell me why my parents were just kind of relying on, you know, the doctors to help us manage these conditions. And ultimately all that inflammation ended up with autoimmune type 1 diabetes where my body, I mean, the theory is that my body attacked itself and the cells that make insulin no longer make insulin because they were attacked. Although I don't know that I'm necessarily subscribed to that theory. But yeah, and so that being type 1 diabetic, you know, as hard as I've worked on my health all the years, I've cured all those things that I had.
except for the type one diabetes, was kind of collateral damage that was created with all that inflammation. So that heavily predisposes me to heart disease. And so I've spent a long time looking into heart disease.
trying to figure out, you know, what creates it. And I found a lot of things that aren't necessarily what I was told in my training and medical school and in my master's degree and everything. There's a lot of things that fly in the face of the conventional wisdom of what causes heart disease. So I've always been trying to prevent it. And sometimes unsuccessfully, because if you will read my book, you,
they will know that I did have a heart attack at the age of 34, which further pushed me into this realm of heart disease and trying to figure this thing out. And so all of what I found and all the misconceptions about heart disease that I found are in my book. And I started sharing that a while back and people seemed to like it. And so here I am talking about this, trying to get to the bottom of it, trying to find the truth. So we think everybody should read your book because it gives us such a deep understanding of everything around the heart. But why don't you share more about your own heart attack when you were 34? Yeah.
That's very young. If you don't mind. Of course, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I was doing many of the things that I had discovered over the years. You know, I'd always been really, really controlled about diet and, you know, not necessarily about other things that I had figured out. I wasn't the best at doing those things, but I was always really strict on diet. And so I say that first because I want people to understand that, you know, this conversation about heart disease is...
is largely consumed by diet. Everybody talks about cholesterol, they talk about saturated fat and animal foods and everything like that and what you should eat to prevent heart disease. But in my opinion, based on everything I found, that is one very small part of what causes heart disease and what causes heart attacks. And so, you know, I had always been very strict on that and I still had a heart attack. And so even though my numbers and everything that are supposed to predict where they have a heart attack all look good, I still had one. And so, yeah, I mean, at that time,
I had the heart attack on January 5th, 2021. And so that was right after the first year of COVID and all the changes that we saw in the world at that time. And there were some personal things that I was going through that were quite stressful. And a day and a half before the heart attack, I had some very stressful news about a very close family member. And so, yeah, I was trying to think of how I could alleviate that situation and there was nothing I could do. And that was the thing is that nobody in me
or my family could change that situation for this individual. And so it was the inability to do something that was quite stressful. And so, yeah, I woke up Tuesday morning after hearing the news Sunday night and I did my usual workout and took a shower. And then I was standing there making lunch and I had a heart attack and it was a massive heart attack. It was 100% clot formed in the left anterior descending artery. And so there was no atherosclerosis anywhere in the coronary arteries, just a giant clot formed
in that artery. And there are reasons why I think that happened. And I go into more detail about those reasons in a talk that I gave at Roanoke College here locally. And I put that on my YouTube channel. If people want to go check that out, it's Resource Your Health. I go into more detail about exactly what I think happened to me in the heart attack. But long story short, I was laying there in the cardiac ICU thinking I'm a hypocrite. Like all these things I learned are, you know, I'm not doing them.
I was letting stress get to me or all this stuff. And I had gotten away from meditating and I'd gotten away from doing the sauna and lots of different things. And so I was like, I can't release this book. There's no way. I mean, I can't. And then over the next three days, the experience I had in the hospital, you know, showed me that I really needed to release the book because, you know, they were completely confused about
what causes heart disease, what causes heart attacks, and the advice they were giving me to prevent the next one or it was just totally wrong. I mean, they were telling me to eat a processed food diet. It's terrible. Like the diet they told me to eat was mainly processed foods, vegetable oils, processed grains, sugars, things like that, just terrible foods. They were telling me to eat no salt to prevent heart failure and things like that. There was no talk of beneficial supplements
I guess, lifestyle practices outside of like diet and exercise. They almost scared me about exercise. And they told me that I could do cardiac rehab and that was pretty much it. And so, which is a very, very minimal exercise, which for me, I mean, maybe for some people I understand, but for someone like me, it didn't make sense. But it was clear that it was just a very cookie cutter approach. They put me on or they tried to put me on 11 different medications while I was in the hospital. And so, I...
And when I disagreed with them, the worst part about the whole situation was that not that I disagree, but when I tried to open up the conversation and ask them why they wanted this or what about this information or this or that, they just shut down the conversation. Either they didn't know anything about it or didn't have time to talk about it or whatever it was.
But it was just a conversation we shut down. And so, you know, the main reason I decided to still release my book is because, you know, I'm not claiming in my book that everything I say is true or that it's accurate, but we need to open up the conversation. We need to not have it be shut down in the face of questioning so that we can find the answer because clearly heart disease is the number one killer in the world and it continues to be, and rates continue to go up. So we must not have it right.
And so even if the ideas in my book are not completely accurate and they're just theories, but they're opening up the conversation so that we can find the answer. But so many medications. It was really interesting to read your story because you dig deeper into it. But you did take one or two medications during this time. And I mean, you really need some force and believe in yourself to stand against all these advices you get from. Absolutely. It's so impressive that you, yeah, went your own way. I, I.
I had just researched this whole book, you know, so I was pretty confident, you know, I could say things like, I know there's no evidence behind that, or there is evidence behind this. And I had that in my mind, whereas most people wouldn't know that. But, you know, that's what gave me that confidence. And I have, you know, medical training and that kind of thing. But
Yeah, I did take one medication for a while. That was the blood thinner because I had a stent in my body and I didn't know how my body was going to react to that foreign object. So I took that for about six months and I started taking one blood pressure medication and then talked to myself and let my senses get to me and realized that that was completely unnecessary. I took that for about two weeks and
And so, but yeah, so I kind of let things get to me at some point, but I was very adamant about not taking statin drugs, cholesterol lowering drugs, because that was not the cause of anything. It never has. So yeah, I had to have that knowledge. And so that's another reason why I released the book is that I think people should also have this knowledge so that if they're faced with the same decisions I was, they can make educated decisions about it.
and not just have to blindly trust their doctors, even though the doctors may be well-intentioned, they may not have all the information. So I wanted to put the information out there. So how has your healing process been after this? You were talking about food and workouts and lifestyle changes. Yeah, so that was the thing, you know, that they were telling me all these different things. And I was in the hospital for three days, which I found out later that it's normal for someone to be in the hospital for three or a week after on average for having a
a heart attack. Yeah. So, but you know, they didn't know what to do with me anymore because I wasn't going to take their medications. I kept questioning or asking questions about their recommendations. And so, I couldn't wait to get home and start my own routine. And so, at this point, you know, I took, I was fortunate, I guess, because I just researched this whole book. I took everything that I learned in that book or from writing that book to and implemented it into myself, you know. And so, yeah, at my three-month echocardiogram, my heart had pretty much 100% healed. My ejection fraction, which is how much
Blood is ejected out of your heart. Every beat had decreased to below normal. And it was in the normal range of a three-month echocardiogram. And there was no evidence of heart failure. The part of my heart muscle tissue that had been damaged was almost completely back to normal.
again so it's been almost two years now so i imagine that that's completely back to normal now because i was only at three months and you know my cardiologist was kind of stunned he was just like you didn't take any medications and i was like no um i told him what i did he didn't really seem interested but i you know i stayed on the type of whole food diet that i'm usually on which is high in animal products and and very metabolically healthy you know decreased toxins but i really got into
I use my sauna like every day or at least, you know, five to six times a week during this time. And then I also decreased toxins quite a bit, but also really got into like the mindfulness aspect of things, you know, the meditation and just that aspect because that was –
I think what drove my heart attack is that improper stress response that I had. So yeah, I mean, I did that and I got great results. And I understand, you know, that I was 34, 35 at that time. And so I'm younger and I've taken care of myself prior to that. So my recovery was probably at better odds from the start. But, you know, in doing those things and not following their recommendations, not eating the diet they recommended, not avoiding exercise and doing my own thing. And I took certain supplements too that
or helped with heart healing that weren't recommended to me, which the research is pretty robust about some of these nutrients. So I don't understand why it's not recommended. So, so yeah. And my heart has done well. I'm a, I'd say a hundred percent recovered and, and living my best life. So. But are you like conscious or anxious about it? You know, I'd be lying if I said no, you know, once that happens, I mean, it's scary. I, during the entire thing, I never felt like, oh, this is it. I'm going to die. I was just like,
I got to get to the hospital. They have to do a cath and I'll figure it out from there. It was never like, oh my gosh, I'm going to die, which I don't know why. I mean, I could have been very close to that. But yeah, there's always an aspect of fear of that happening again, you know, and I think there always will be, but it's become much less so over time.
as I do more and more things and get back to more and more normal of a life, which I have pretty much a hundred percent now. And, you know, I think it was a wake up call for me. It was a wake up call in that, you know, stress, stress kills and how you let stress affect you kills. It does. And, and I was very good at controlling diet and I had not paid attention to that. And so I,
I feel like it's almost like a wake-up call that reinforced a lot of what I said in the book and also gave me a little bit of a calling to identify this and to draw the attention away from cholesterol and saturated fat and the diet aspect of heart disease and start drawing attention to the bigger aspects that maybe aren't as profitable for a pharmaceutical company to pay attention to, but very, very important and they need to be talked about. Yeah. But
But let's go back a couple of years because through your extensive research, we want to know about the history of heart disease. What happened in the 50s with Ancel Keys and everything? Yeah. So how did we get to this time now where everybody thinks that cholesterol causes heart disease and that saturated fat and red meat are demonized? Like how did we get there? Well, first of all, it's...
humans and pre-humans, the species that came before modern humans, have been eating red meat and saturated fat as a large part of their diet for a very, very long time. And it's only... And then heart disease itself is a very modern disease. If we look at it in the epidemic that we have it today, yes, there's evidence that some civilizations had aspects of heart disease, like the Egyptians and things like that. But as far as the epidemic that we know it, and the number one cause of disease is a very new disease. So how could...
a food we've been eating forever be the cause of a modern disease, a disease that we're only seeing in modern times, at least in these levels. It doesn't make sense. So there's that. And then in the 1940s and 1950s, heart disease started to become more and more prevalent. The rates were rising. And President Eisenhower had a heart attack very famously while he was in the Oval Office, while he was in, or be the president, I mean.
And so it was all over the news and it was this scary thing that was rising. Kind of like when people talked about COVID the last three years, it was this scary thing that was rising. And, you know, whatever you think about COVID, you know, that's what was happening. This fear was being created, you know, and so the same thing was happening with heart disease. And so people were looking for answers. And this one guy named Ansel Keys gave everybody an answer. And he did some research that we call epidemiology, which is
a type of research that can only show that two things are associated with each other, but it can't show that one's causing the other. It's the lowest form of research. And he did this form of research and he showed that in some countries, the more saturated fat and cholesterol they ate, the more heart disease they had. However, what you don't know, what you don't hear is that at the time there was data available
that type of data was available from 22 countries. And he picked the six countries. And then later, he did another study where he picked seven countries that gave him that association, that gave him the right answer that he wanted, and he ignored the other countries' data. And so, he kind of cherry-picked the data. And so, later, I think it was maybe five years later, two other scientists repeated that study
And they'd used all the data that was available at the time and they found no correlation whatsoever. But by that time, by the time they had tested this theory that eating more saturated fat and higher cholesterol levels would cause heart disease, the theory had already taken off. And there's a lot of money behind it from industries that would benefit from decreasing saturated fat intake and increasing sugar and grain intake. So those industries, you know,
kind of took that theory and ran with it. And so by the time the studies came out that showed that the more unsaturated fats you ate, the more heart disease you would get, because there's lots of those studies that directly show that. Before those studies came out, the theory had taken off. And so that's why we are here today. Lots of money backing this idea for a very long time. And it's only recently that lots of studies are starting to come out. You know, people are actually, actually eventually starting to do the studies. It's not like that all this time, the studies weren't showing this, is that nobody was looking at them or they were ignoring the ones. And now,
There's big studies coming out of the American Journal of Cardiology saying that, oh, the information on saturated fat was probably pretty overblown and that that's not really the case. And so, yeah, this idea that cholesterol and saturated fat cause heart disease is completely unfounded. There's no real evidence behind it.
And there's actually evidence to the contrary. But it all makes sense, too, because cholesterol is a vital molecule in the body. And it's needed for lots of different things. And so it makes sense that we're coming back around to that. Yeah, this cholesterol scare has really wrecked us, I would say. But Stephen, what causes heart disease then?
What have you found? Yeah. You know, ideological question. If it's not testosterone saturated fat, then what is it? Um, and so when you talk about what causes heart disease is there's different types of heart disease, right? There's atherosclerosis, which is the hardening of the arteries or, or plaque buildup in the arteries. Uh, there's a heart attack. Um,
or myocardial infarction. And then there's heart failure. There could also be like different arrhythmias or there could be cardiac arrest, which is a bit different from myocardial infarction. I mean, that's kind of this, you know, this situation that, you know, really hurts the heart itself. But when we're talking about saturated fat cholesterol, the main idea is that saturated fat or cholesterol builds up in your bloodstream and then it clogs your arteries or it gets stuck on the side of the artery and clogs it. And that's not what happens. So we have to ask ourself,
why do we get atherosclerosis? Why do we get plaque buildup on the side of the arteries? And it's the same kind of thing. If we look at what an atherosclerosis is, if we took some of it out of an artery and analyzed it, like out of a cadaver, we'd see that the largest percentage of it, like 87% to 90% of it is fibrous tissue, which means clotting tissue. So clotting tissue is what happens. Like if you cut your...
cut your hand and a scab forms on it to stop the bleeding. That's clotting. The body's clotting that so you don't keep bleeding because you don't want to lose all your blood. So the same kind of thing more or less happens in the lining of the artery. If we get damaged the lining of the artery, then the body is supposed to be able to repair that damage to the body. And so to do that, we need
insulin signaling. We need proper insulin signaling to trigger that damage to be repaired. However, if the damage becomes too much or we become insulin resistant, i.e. type 2 diabetic, then we can't repair that damage and the body has to do something else. And what it does is it forms clots. It forms clotting material so that the lining of the artery doesn't start bleeding and we start bleeding out, right? So, that's what's happening. And so, if we're doing things to damage the lining of the arteries, then we're
and we're not able to repair it as well, then we get atherosclerosis. So natural question there is what damages the lining of the arteries, right? Right. And so what damage – there's many things that can do this. There could be – I mean, and cholesterol can do that, but it's not the cholesterol that does it. It's the things that damage cholesterol that then causes damaged cholesterol to damage the lining of the artery. So we blame the wrong thing, right? So there's lots of things. There's –
toxin exposure so different heavy metals or everything from artificial fragrances to um to you know things you put cleaning products things like that all these different things that are just the synthetic chemicals that humans have made over the years that are very incompatible with our physiology so toxin exposures toxins have been heavily linked you know bpa in plastics things like that those things are heavily linked to development of atherosclerosis
There's psychological stress, which is, I mean, if you look at studies that show that being stressed or acute stress can damage the lining of the artery, it's just robust. There's so much evidence that that's the case. There's something called endotoxemia, which is when bacteria get into the bloodstream. And that can happen if we have poor dental health or poor gut health.
that bacteria can get into the bloodstream and when the body attacks that bacteria, it releases toxins that also cause atherosclerosis. So it can be a poor diet, a diet that creates what I would call poor metabolic health, which means you're not metabolizing your food in a way that's healthy. And so that type of diet, which is full of vegetable oils and processed grains and processed sugars and things like that can be very damaging to the lining of the artery.
and cause a lot of inflammation. And so all this stuff can kind of create this storm that damages the artery. And like I said, if we can't repair it because of various things, like if it's too much damage or if we're not responding to insulin well because we're in that type two diabetic state, then
the body has to do something else and that is form clots and then clots can form on clots on clots on clots and it builds up this atherosclerotic plaque in the arteries well is there any times of the year or week that we suffer from more heart attacks than others definitely yeah and so a lot of this has to do uh with like these these three imbalances that i talk about in the book and i've kind of alluded to two of them already uh which were you know good metabolic health but also um
decreased toxin exposure. And then the third one is imbalance in the autonomic nervous system, which is basically an improper stress response. We don't respond to stress well, which is what I got into. I got into this space where I'm not having a proper stress response. But what we see is that
When it gets colder outside during the winter, we're not spending as much time outside. A lot of these imbalances are more pronounced, I'd say. So if we're already metabolically unhealthy and then we go toward the holidays where people are eating more processed food and things like that, we're also not as –
I guess, willing to go out and get fresh food and things like that. We kind of stay in and we eat the, maybe the processed food that stays better. You know, that kind of thing happens toward the winter. We also spend less time outside. So, you know, uh, we're not in contact with the earth as much. We're not getting as much sunlight, uh, those types of things. And those all can all mess with our stress response that can cause inflammation. Um,
We also spend spending more inside time inside also exposes us to more manmade toxins, you know, the different, you know, because we're not out in the ventilated air as much, you know. And so even just I mean, daylight savings time is another thing that really sets off our circadian rhythm, which is incredibly important to our stress response.
And so all these things that happen seasonally, specifically going in toward colder months, is why we see more heart attacks in the colder months, in my opinion. But it's all because we're driving these three imbalances that happen. But there's evidence that heart attacks are more common on Mondays when people are going back to work and it's stressful. There's evidence that heart attacks are more common on days where there's big sporting events.
where people are betting on the events and they're very stressed about it, you know, or they're just really passionate about their team or something and it stresses them out. There's evidence that heart attacks are more common around different holidays because holidays can be very stressful for people as far as money and, you know, pressure from family and these types of things and pressure from work to get things done. Like it's a stressful time, unfortunately, for lots of people. So there's a reason for that. And it's because it drives these imbalances. Yeah.
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As a biohacker, we chose the Solution Collagen Powder because there is good research on how this actually helps with fine lines and elasticity in the skin. It's a pleasure to work with Oslo Skin Lab, and they have been very good at answering all of our most important questions about this powder. So, to the results of the skin scan. We can say that we are reasonably satisfied, Monika. Yes.
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So could we talk a little bit about glucose and ketones, how they play a role? Can you explain why the ketones is a better fuel source for the heart? Yeah, definitely. So there's a lot of evidence that the heart prefers fatty acids and ketones as a fuel source. And most of the organs do, but the heart seems to have a special affinity for like even in the presence of glucose, the heart will choose to burn ketones. Yeah.
So, it's, I think, very important to make sure that there's fatty acids and ketones around for the heart to be able to do that. And that comes down to eating a diet that creates metabolic health that encourages your body to make ketones at least on occasion, at least once a day or something like that. And so, if we think about fatty acids and ketones are just –
much cleaner fuel sources, meaning that when you burn them for fuel, you're making less exhaust. It's just kind of like in a car, you know, they burn a fuel and you make an exhaust. And so we kind of have an exhaust too, even though really none of those byproducts that we would consider exhaust are actually waste products. Your body uses them for things. But if we're talking about a clean fuel source,
Fatty acids and ketones are the cleanest. And so if we look at studies where muscle is burning glucose, it creates much more what we call oxidative stress, which is when we have an abundance of
say exhaust, we'll say, and that causes damage to the body, right? And so, we want to stay away from primarily burning glucose, sugar. We want to primarily burn fatty acids and ketones to prevent that, you know, that exhaust from forming too much. And so, in the heart, it's specifically important because if our heart gets too used to burning glucose or it's forced to burn more glucose than it wants to, that's
That can actually predispose us to what I call metabolic heart attacks, which are heart attacks that happen when there's no blockage anywhere. Like there's no artery that's blocked and or there's no artery that's fully blocked. So the idea is that heart attacks happen when an artery is blocked and no blood can get to the tissue and that causes tissue death, which is what happened to me. So it does happen. But there are lots of heart attacks where that's not the case.
And I think they're a result of poor metabolism of the heart combined with stress. And so if the heart's used to or being forced to burn more glucose than it would like to, and it comes to a stress response, without having those fatty acids and ketones around, it can create a very dangerous situation where we're burning more glucose than the heart wants to. And that's kind of like when you go for a run and your muscle starts burning glucose and you start to feel muscle burn in your leg. You can just stop running if that hurts too much.
but your heart just can't stop contracting. So if that happens in the heart, that can become a big issue and it can actually create a situation where blood is prevented from getting to the heart tissue, but in a different way than a blockage due to poor metabolism and that can cause tissue death in the heart as well. And we see that over and over again. I've had so many people come to me and say, yeah, I had a heart attack and there was no blockage. And that's usually what's happening is this
poor metabolism. So fatty acids and ketones are always the better fuel source. So we want to eat in a way that ensures that our heart will always have access to those. And still this was not a recommendation you got from the hospital when you were sick. Definitely not. They were telling me to eat a diet that creates poor metabolic health. Yeah. Diet products. Which is sad. Yeah. Carbs. Yeah.
But if anyone now, maybe they're worried about heart disease and want to check if they are in risk, what's some of the best tests you can do with your doctor? Because I mean, the ultrasound, it won't then, yeah, maybe it's clear, but you can still be at risk. What do you recommend? Yeah. So I like to start off this question with a more philosophical answer first, and then I'll give details about what you should test for or what you can test for. You
You know, testing is, it's a human invented thing, right? And so, you take blood work, for example. Like blood work is, it's taking a sample of the body at one snapshot in time. And it's one tissue of the body. It's just the blood. And so, assuming that we can assess risk or risk,
assess if we're healthy or not from that type of narrow view of things. It's pretty short-sighted in my opinion. And so I always look at testing and I advise people to do testing if they want to, but I don't think that people should base their whole whether or not they're healthy or whether or not they're at risk based on this alone, whether it's an echocardiogram or blood work or whatever it is.
because it's just humans who are flawed looking at humans to see if they're flawed, right? And so we just have to understand that and take testing with a grain of salt. And I'd like to kind of step back and you recognize, be humble before the human body because we're a very complex biological ecosystem that has been evolving for a very, very long time. And so we will probably never fully understand the ins and outs of the body. However, there are some things we can look at that can kind of give us
you know, an assessment of so-called risk. And so they, I take it back to the three imbalances. I talk about my book for metabolic health, inflammation and oxidative stress and imbalance in the autonomic nervous system stress response. Okay. So for metabolic health,
the two best things you can look for on blood work are the trig to hdl ratio the triglyceride to hdl ratio um and everybody's looking at cholesterol and total cholesterol and ldl on the lipid panel but really they should be looking at the triglyceride to hdl ratio now i don't know the numbers for europe as far as the conversion but as as far as in the us like um you should be that that if you divide triglycerides by hdl it should be a ratio of 1.5 or lower all right
Yeah, it's the same here. Okay, good. And then if you do that, then that's a good assessment of metabolic health. And then the other one is the fasting insulin level, which most doctors won't take. They don't understand why you would take it. But that's a good assessment for are you insulin resistant? Because insulin resistance is a much better predictor of atherosclerosis or heart disease than cholesterol ever will be. So those are the two good tests there.
And then the second one is measuring inflammation and oxidative stress, which are different, but they're the kind of same thing because they cause the same issues in the body. And one good marker for just general inflammation in the body is HSCRP, high sensitivity C-reactive protein. That's just going to tell you if there's some inflammation. And you could test a lot of different things like is there inflammation of the lining of the artery and all this kind of stuff, but it kind of gets...
into the weeds. Like it really gets too technical. You don't need all that because whether or not those numbers are elevated, the treatment for them is either going to be good for you and prevent it from being elevated or it's going to fix them, you know? So it doesn't really matter. Just do those things. You don't need to test for it and spend money if you don't have it, you know? And so then you could measure...
different DNA damage to things. You can measure damage to fatty acids and this all gives you an idea about oxidative stress. But I like just taking what's called a liver enzyme called GGT. That's a good marker of is the liver dealing with more oxidative stress than it should be. And that's probably good enough there. And then the last imbalance is
which is the imbalance in the stress response, the best measure there is heart rate variability. And heart rate variability is basically it's measuring your ability to adapt to stress. And so it's kind of, I always say that there's no mistake that
you know, the organ or I guess the way that we measure our stress response and kind of how stressed we are and how emotionally sound we are is measured to this organ that also we associate it with emotion, like our heart. So heart rate variability, there's no mistake there. That was not a coincidence. But heart rate variability is basically the time between heartbeats and we want it to be variable. And so the variability is
assesses our ability to handle a stress and come back to normal because health is the ability to adapt to a stress and come back to normal. That's what homeostasis is. So if we have totally normal blood sugar control, we should be able to eat a high carbohydrate thing. The blood sugar would go up and it would come right back down within two hours. That's normal.
That's a healthy blood sugar response. If we want a healthy stress response, then our body should experience a stress and then it would have the appropriate response to get us away from that stress or fight off that stress or whatever. And then it would go back to normal within 15 minutes or so. And if that doesn't happen, that suggests stress.
a health issue, right? Our body is not able to adapt. If we get stuck in this state where we can't adapt, that's a problem because then we can't adapt to the world and those things that we should be able to adapt to actually cause us illness, right? And so that's what heart rate variability is measuring. That's what insulin, that's what, um, um,
you know, the fasting insulin and metabolic health assessments, all measuring that stuff. How adapted are you to or how are you able to adapt to stresses? But I think we should go back a little bit to the cholesterol because that's pretty much on everybody's lips these days.
As we eat keto or we eat more proteins and fat, the levels go up, as you know. And so many people are afraid these days because the doctors, they would recommend the statins and pretty much based on the LDL levels. But they don't go behind to do like the lipoprints. They just do it based on the general basis of the LDLs. Can you just update us? How is it in the States? And what are your reflections around this trend with statins for every patient?
Elevated number. Yeah. There's even talk at one point, I don't know if there still is, but there was even talk about people trying to put statins in the drinking water so that everybody would have them, which is really, really crazy. But yeah, with cholesterol, again, looking at it and to think that this one molecule is the driver of an entire chronic disease, it just doesn't make sense when we look at how the body works and the complex ecosystem that we are. But
But yeah, sometimes if people go on keto diets or just low carb in general or carnivore diets or whatever, then they can't see changes in cholesterol. And it's not necessarily because you're eating more saturated fat or cholesterol. Sometimes it has to do with like energy delivery. You know, the body's running on fat, so it has to deliver more fats. And that means more LDL because that's what carries fats. Or sometimes even just fasting, like people do long fasts. There's studies that have shown that if you...
fast for a long time, your LDL goes up. It's because your body is starting to run on fat again that needs to deliver that fat to the areas. And so, that's one theory anyways. But then the question becomes, is that dangerous? Is cholesterol going up dangerous? Because I can list all the different things that cholesterol does in the body and why it's beneficial for us and all the important roles that it plays. But then people always say, well, what if it goes too high? Yes, having cholesterol around is good. What if it goes too high? And if we look at studies
On people who have what's called familial hypercholesterolemia, which is genetically high cholesterol, like really high, like they're talking LDL and like 500s when it's supposed to be, you know, 100 supposedly. We see that when we analyze those people, they don't get sick or die any sooner than people who have quote unquote normal cholesterol.
And the people who have that gene and do die sooner, it was actually because they did other things that weren't beneficial to them. They did things that damaged the cholesterol. Like they didn't eat a whole food diet or they smoked or they drank or they did all these things that damaged the cholesterol. It was more lifestyle driven than cholesterol driven. And so the other thing is that people should know is that this idea, like I mentioned before, this idea that cholesterol, you know, was problematic started because of this faulty research.
in the 1950s. And so in 1984, they finally got around to determining like officially is cholesterol good or bad for you? And they put together this meeting, they had this meeting and they decided that it was bad based on what, I don't know, they decided that it was bad. And so after that, they've put together these committees that were supposed to go and this is in the United States that were to go and teach doctors how to lower cholesterol when their patients and teach people or doctors about cholesterol.
And at first cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, which is these days supposed to be 100 or lower, apparently, they started off saying it should be 250 or lower. And then the pharmaceutical companies came in with these committees and they influenced the guidelines. And they said, look, we need to put it at 200. And then it went to 150. And then it went to 100. Yeah.
And so because the lower the recommendation is, the more drugs can be prescribed, right? The more people who are seen as having high cholesterol, the more drugs can be prescribed, the more money the pharmaceuticals make. So that's kind of what happened, which tells me we have no idea what our total cholesterol is supposed to be. We're trying to analyze this thing that's different for everybody. And we really have no idea what normal actually is. But if we look at some studies...
These are associational studies, so we can't really take them for everything that they are. But it's interesting if you look at the studies where we have cholesterol that is associated, the level of cholesterol that's associated with the lowest all-cause mortality. For total cholesterol, it's between 200 and 250, which the recommendation for total cholesterol is below 200. So that's actually what's associated with the lowest all-cause mortality is above the recommendations.
And if we look at the number that's associated with the LDL, that's a number that's associated with the lowest all-cause mortality. It's between 100 and 150, which they tell us now it should be lower than 100. Or some doctors want it lower than 70 when the level that's associated with the lowest all-cause mortality is much higher than that. So, again, those are associational studies. We can't really prove anything from that, but it's just interesting to see that. So, yeah, that's the thing with cholesterol. Yeah.
Yeah, it seems like they're just making up numbers. And now I heard that they're even trying to get kids to start on statins. But when can we take the statins? Is it helpful at all for something or no? I...
I would argue no. I would argue that if the body is elevating cholesterol to that level, it's doing so for a reason. The body's not stupid. Now, that reason may be something problematic that's going on in the body. And that problem may be that there's inflammation and damage to the arteries and things like that. And so, I would argue that there may never be a case where a statin is indicated. But I, technically, as a chiropractor, I'm not allowed to recommend that to anybody. But yeah, I mean, it's just because of the way we view it and how flawed that is.
How flawed it is to think that one elevated molecule could be driving an entire chronic disease and that by lowering it, we're going to fix that chronic disease. It makes no sense. And there's actually a study that came out in 2020 that looked at all the evidence of however long we've been lowering cholesterol with statins.
And it's not working whatsoever. There are some studies that show that statins have this, what they call, pleiotropic effect, where it has this small anti-inflammatory effect, which is good. And it's probably the only reason that we see any benefit from statins is because it has this anti-inflammatory effect, not because it's lowering your cholesterol, but because it tends to decrease inflammation a little bit. But I would say there are much better ways to decrease inflammation in your body than to take a drug that's depriving you of life-giving cholesterol.
And we're going to come back to that in the next episode with you. But still, not everybody has the guts that you had when you were sick. So when...
just a random person goes to the doctor, sees the levels and the doctor tells you to go on statins. What can we do? How can you like give any advices for people who listens here now? What should they ask themselves? It's a very hard situation. And I recognize that because not everyone is as well versed and things like as I am, you know, and so that's why I'm trying to, you know, put this information out there. But, you know,
In this day and age, we have to stay informed. And unfortunately, you know, society has created these the situation where you have to be really good or an expert at one thing. And that's, you know, whatever your career demands you to be an expert in. And you'd be good at that. And you go and do that. And then you outsource everything else. And so it's very hard when you're making this money and you go and you pay someone else to tell you about your health.
If they're telling you something and you shouldn't, you should, you would think we wouldn't have to go and be an expert in that as well. But unfortunately we do. And that's just the reality of it is that you have to go and do your own research. You have to analyze what makes sense to you, because I'm not going to sit here and tell you that yes or no, you should take a statin or yes or no cholesterol is good or bad for you. Like that's,
That's an opinion that I've based off my experiences and all the research I've done, but also my personal experiences, my talking to other experts and all that kind of stuff. And that's just where I've come to. But I fully recognize that someone else may not be there yet. And what's right for them may be to take that statin. And that's okay. But you have to also have the wisdom to understand that that may not be the case anymore.
long term, right? It may change and you should never stop trying to figure out if what you're doing is the correct thing to do or not.
You know, I'm constantly trying to find, not trying, but I'm always on the lookout for things that tell me I shouldn't do sauna, you know, because there may be some out there. And if it's enough to convince me that I shouldn't do it, then I will stop, you know, and that's just my own decision. And so that's just how it's got to be. You have to be your own health advocate and you have to keep looking. Even if you make a health decision and you decide to take that drug or not take that drug.
should always be on the lookout for whether or not you should be. And if there's new information that comes up and if you can't interpret that information, cause it's, you're not well versed in that, find someone who can. That's why I do health consulting so I can help people kind of interpret that and figure that out, you know? So, so yeah, it's, it's not, it's probably not the black and white answer that people will
want. You know, they want concrete things to do, but it's just not a black and white situation. You've really got to, if you just have this natural adversity to drugs and you're just like, I don't know that that's going to correct the problem, then your head's in the right state. You just have to go and find the information that was backed up and then ask your doctor about it. You know, like just, you just got to
Always keep searching and never give up and be open-minded and that kind of thing. Keep asking questions. Keep asking questions, that's for sure. And we want to ask you as a last question in this part because you are really on top of your food choices as one of your levers to minimize heart risk. So what does a day of eating look like for you? Proteins, fat, are you keto? Yeah, I'm...
Largely, I guess what I would call keto. I just say very low carb. I mean, I think that diet is good for most people. But for me particularly, because I'm type 1 diabetic, it's very easy to control blood sugars when I do that type of diet. I don't think that everybody has to be super keto or very low carb. But if they do have carbs, it should be very whole food carbs and not be their entire diet. So my diet is very centered around animal foods and animal fats. I do some organ meats.
And then I do plants as well, but I do very low-carb plants. And I kind of use them to create variety. But my diet is my main nutrient. I guess access is from animal foods. So whether it's chicken, beef, pork.
eggs, dairy, those types of things, and then some plants to spice it up a little bit. Sounds amazing. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much for this conversation. And we can't wait to get back to you. We're going to talk about stress and supplements and our HRV. Yeah. Thank you very much, Stephen. Of course. Thanks for having me.
We have a lot to think about in this, but for those at home who think this was a bit complicated, we're going to make a little summary in Norwegian. Yes, we're going to. And follow up with part two, because it deals with a lot of exciting information about HRV, related to heart health, about stress, and concrete solutions for our heart in its best form. We wish you a still lovely week.
We remind you that you must speak to your own doctor or dietitian about diets and other questions related to medicines and supplements. Information we share can not be used to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any symptoms or conditions.
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